Customer Reviews

Anatomy Of A Rose: Exploring The Secret Life Of Flowers

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ANATOMY OF A ROSE: EXPLORING THE SECRET LIFE OF FLOWERS is slightly mistitled. The book has a few things to say about roses--a section on the scent of roses and a section about the commercial interest in concocting a blue rose. The subtitle best describes the contents of Russell's book--the secret life of flowers.

I'm a plant/gardening/nature enthusiast who is fairly well read but I learned a new things from Russell's book. For example, I did not know that the great taxonimist/plant classifier Linnaeus (born in 1707) acquired his love of and interest in plants from his relatives. Seems his great-grandmother was burned as a witch because she knew too much about plants. Linnaeus fared better probably partly owing to his ability to read and write about plants in Latin.

Russell has done a very good job of reviewing, selecting, organizing and distilling the current thinking on flowers --including the projected 7th Extinction which has already begun and will continue over the next 100 years. Like Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, this little book warns the reader.

Russell says only one percent of the known flowers have been fully studied, and many will become extinct before we understand them. Flowers hold the key to saving lives, promoting good health, and ensuring the survival of the planet as we know it. Russell tells of the discovery of a plant extract that can fight EBOLI; the discovery of Taxol in the fungus of trees cut down for the Taxol in their bark (the implication is that a really smart person would harvest the Taxol, not kill the goose that lays the golden egg!!); and the uses of many of other plants for medicinal purposes. Pharmaceutical companies are beginning to take an interest in preserving the wilderness--or at least preserving it for their uses.

The jury is still out on the affect of gentically engineered plants on other life forms. Gentically engineered corn has been empirically linked to the demise of Monarch Butterfly and too date it is not "off the hook" as another reviewer suggests, however, the "not knowing" is clearly an issue.

We have much to learn from the flowering plants. I recommend this book to any one who wants to become familiar with the current outlook for plants as well as the history of plants and their role in evolution. You don't need to be a botonist to understand Russell's clearly written and elegantly told story of the flowers and their connection to our own lives.

Sharman Russell uses poetic language to explore scientific technicalities of flowers and related natural elements. Some of the more interesting facts revealed in the narrative telescope into the author's personal experiences. Against the backdrop of scientific fact, Anatomy of a Rose explores deeper issues of ecological harmony, sacred aspects of culture, and survival of species. A fascinating read, even for the least scientific of readers.

This isn't a book you would use as classroom material because of the style it is written in. But it is that style that makes it so wonderful.

It is laced with beauty. The beauty of discovery about flowers and the beauty of the written word.

Filled with eloquent language and vivid description, this is a must read for those who love both flowers and literature.

I found this little book extremely powerfull in changing the way I look at life....for the good mind you...it gave me an awareness and sensitivity to the natural world around me and an awe of what has come before and how we arrived here on this planet....
Reccomend for readers of all ages...even children can grasp the concepts put forth here and will open the eyes just a little wider for all who read it!

Readers interested in the botany of flowers will enjoy Anatomy Of A Rose, a fine study, which examines how the plants evolved, survive, and how they interact with their environments. Roses aren't the only plants to be studied in this thoughtful presentation: all manner of flowers are considered in a lively tone blending science, scholarship and descriptive phrases.

I thought I knew all the basics about flowers, but no. This book is packed with vivid images and great stories. It's full of surprises. The author combines a deep love of flowers, in-depth scientific knowledge and a wonderful sense of humor. A real gem.

This book is more about flowers in general than rose in particular. Russell has clearly researched the subject extensively, and done a very good job of distilling that research into of 230 page book. Russell's book is a precautionary tale - as the author says only one percent of the known flowers have been fully studied, and many will become extinct before we understand them.

Russell frankly discusses what the cost of this extinction to the planet and to humans means; the many plants which have medicinal purposes that will never be discovered. Also, the fact some parmaceutical companies are starting to take a keen interest in preserving the wilderness - but only because of the enormous profit potential from developing and patenting drugs made from these plants.

Flowered plants can teach us a lot, and I recommend this book to any one interested in nature, the history of plants, and the role of plants in evolution.

When the prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven, drops of his sweat fell to earth and turned into roses. Apollo, the sun god, transformed a youth he coveted into a hyacinth after Zephyr, the god of the west wind, killed him. The Incas worshipped the sunflower as a symbol of their sun god.

Russell's fine book explains not only how all cultures and peoples have elevated flowers to the realm of the spiritual but also how flowers survived the rampaging dinosaurs and provided our earliest ancestors with their basic physical and spiritual needs: our Neanderthal ancestors buried their dead with blue hyacinth, yellow groundsel, knapweed and yarrow. Even then, we were looking for beauty and something higher than ourselves.

Russell shows us how the physics of beauty allows flowers to serve nature's needs in ways much more miraculous than the more mundane ones of Moses parting the Red Sea or the Greek legend of the North Wind fertilizing wild mares. Such manifestations of the divine are, the author explains, commonplace in the temporal world of flowers.

Russell, for example, shows how flowers are literally the fruit of life. Their pollen is 16-30 percent protein, 1-10 percent fat, and 1-7 percent starch. Because pollen has no sugar and contains a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, bees are on to a very good thing. So too are the flowers because the bees and similar insects spread their seeds far and wide. The same applies to such unattractive specimens as the skunk cabbage, the corpse flower and the stinking goosefoot. Russell's clear prose paints out their survival strategies as eloquently as he does those of other, more beguiling flowers.

Although the fable of the flowers and the bees is the most well known one of mutual dependence and coevolution in nature, Russell lists a breath taking variety of other ones, such as the yucca and yucca moth, which are so perfectly attuned to each other that they remind us of mating swans.

However, as a first rate writer like Russell knows, no good love story is complete without a crown of thorns. Because so many animals like to eat entire plants and not just suck their nectar or collect their pollen, the flowers have to develop effective defense shields. Typical of these is the way the fungus gnat is lured into a trap by flowers that mimic fungi. When the unfortunate gnat leaves the flower covered in pollen, the eggs are left behind to die of eventual starvation. This means there will be fewer gnats in the future to harass the "defenseless" flowers. That is not the only trick the flowers have up their collective sleeves. They use one animal variety to protect them from another variety and then they develop special chemicals to protect themselves against their protectors. And they are past masters of chemical warfare.

Russell's highly recommended book gives countless other examples of the fox being outfoxed. The water lily, for example, offers a banquet Roman in scope and delight to a wide variety of bees, hoverflies and beetles. Then, like the most treacherous lover, it tricks them into serving its own selfish own needs. The water lily is only one of the many examples of particularly strong iron fists being enveloped in very alluring velvet gloves that the author gives.

Perhaps we too, who are so foxy with nature, might end up in a trap of our own making. After regaling us with a lavish banquet that even the water lily might envy, Russell explains that there will be more environmental changes in this century than at any time since the dinosaurs became extinct tens of millions of years ago. Although we might cause the symphony of life and evolution to end sooner rather than later, Russell's fine book makes the point that flowers are probably more adapted for what lies ahead than we are. A cautionary tale, in other words, within a most pleasurable read.

This wonderful little book is a revelation for anyone who has always seen flowers, but never understood them. Russell writes like a modern day Thoreau, deeply attuned to the beauty and wonder of nature. She marries her aesthetic appreciation of flowers to a scientific understanding of their secret, busy lives. Each chapter is filled to the brim with fascinating facts about how flowers behave - why they smell like they do, how petals and pollen work, even how dinosaurs may have been the midwives to all flowers today.

I read science books all the time, and few have the grace and appeal of this slim volume. Russell makes it clear that to those who will stop and smell the roses, the Earth is always an awe-inspiring garden, even on the darkest of days. A real treasure, I highly recommend it.

Anatomy of a Rose is solid science information presented with a dash of humour and an opportunity to know the author. I didn't know I was so fascinated with flowers until I read it.