Customer Reviews

The Natural History of Pollination

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This book got me down on the ground to peer up into the cupped flowers of my hellebores to study their pollination structures and set me on stake-out around my crocuses to see who came to pollinate them. Just as The Natural History of Pollination predicted, the first honeybee of the season moved from the chalice of one crocus to the next and to the next, checking out but passing over the intervening primrose, hellebore and Oregon grape flowers. The crocus has an agenda, the bee has an agenda, and I enjoyed an early spring day in the garden more because I had more insight into their agendas. This detailed book is accessible to anyone with a basic science vocabulary and is richly illustrated with photos of plants and their pollinators, as well as helpful line drawings. I recommend this to any gardener who wants to deepen their understanding of what's going on in their garden and to any student of natural history who wants to better appreciate the complex coevolutionary dance around us. This book has made me more attentive to a world of wasps and tiny flies, and to the myriad bee species. It has helped me see flowers from the point of view of the pollinators essential to them: insects, bats and hummingbirds. Those charming dots of color on foxgloves and hellebores serve as landing guidelines for bees. The sweet perfumes of lilac and honeysuckle seduce butterflies. The carrion odor of jack-in-the-pulpit and arum lilies attracts flies. My wild ginger imitates the scent of a fungus on which a certain kind of fly lays its eggs, luring this pollinator to its flowers. And how about those white flowers that open in the evening to draw moths? I keep this book handy as new plants come into bloom, so I can appreciate them better as I understand their strategies for reproducing themselves.

Great collection of information on pollination - quite complete. The book covers a short history of the study of pollination, and an introduction to pollination. The it goes into the details of the different animals that engage in pollination with a chapter on beetles and flies, another on butterflies and moths, another on bees and their relatives, and another on bats/birds, and another on wind.

The text is rather dense and has a lot of technical information and results of studies. Latin names are provided too. This is probably more of an intermediate level book. There are some color plates as well.