Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Botany & Plants

From the chance to live on this planet to the pleasure of listening to the sound of a violin—every story begins with a plant. We animals account for a paltry 0.3% of the planet's biomass while plants add up to 85%. It is obvious that every story on this planet has a plant as its protagonist. Our world is a green world; Earth is the planet of plants. Neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso is back with a book to tell us about the greenprint of our world. He does it through unforgettable stories starring plants; stories combining an inimitable narrative style and remarkable scientific rigor.

Explore sacred trees from around the world and learn how to use their spiritual energy in your magickal practice. From the Norse Yggdrasil and the Christian Tree of Knowledge to the Jewish Sephiroth and the Buddhist Bodhi Tree, this book features the mythology of mystical trees and their influence on societies throughout history. Under the Sacred Canopy introduces you to Universe Trees, as well as Trees of Life and Wisdom from an array of cultures, including the Mayan ceiba tree, Mesopotamian huluppa tree, and Greek oracle oaks.

Wild American ginseng, America's most famous medicinal plant, is in trouble. In plain prose, James McGraw explains why as he translates the latest in ecological and conservation science findings on this unassuming understory herb. As the world's foremost authority on wild ginseng, McGraw is uniquely poised to present this story based on more than twenty years of uninterrupted field research.

America was built on white pine. From the 1600s through the Civil War and beyond, it was used to build the nation's ships and houses, barns, and bridges. Yet this popularity came at a cost: by the end of the nineteenth century, clear cutting had decimated much of America's white pine forests. In White Pine, ecologist and writer John Pastor takes listeners on walk through history, connecting the white pine forests that remain today to a legacy of destruction and renewal.

The carbon dioxide that industrial civilization spews into the atmosphere has dramatic consequences for life on Earth that extend beyond climate change. CO2 levels directly affect plant growth, in turn affecting any kind of life that depends on plants—in other words, everything.

Before 1910 the American chestnut was one of the most common trees in the eastern United States. An important natural resource, chestnut wood was preferred for woodworking, fencing, and building construction, as it was rot resistant and straight grained. The hearty and delicious nuts also fed wildlife, people, and livestock.

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath - known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwigara - has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmon builds on this concept of connection and highlights 80 plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. Salmon teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths.

In a book destined to become a classic, biologist and acclaimed nature writer Bernd Heinrich takes listeners on an eye-opening journey through the hidden life of a forest. A lifetime observer of the natural world shares his vast knowledge and reflections on the trees of the Northeast woodlands and the rhythms of their seasons, from the DNA contained in an apple seed to the great branches beyond reach.

In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed - a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged - and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an arms race over the millennia, a battle of exploitation and defense between two fascinating species.

In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof's engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it - and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree's survival.

Amanda Lewis was an overachieving, burned-out book editor most familiar with trees as dead blocks of paper. A dedicated "indoorswoman," she could barely tell a birch from a beech. But that didn't stop her from pledging to visit all of the biggest trees in British Columbia, a Canadian province known for its rugged terrain and gigantic trees.

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree—and the seeds of an odyssey were planted.

Conservationist and marine biologist Maddalena Bearzi made her career studying the wild creatures of the deep, but when COVID-19 made landfall on the California coast this seafaring scientist found herself shuttered up ashore, her wide blue world constricted by pandemic lockdown. Never good at sitting idle, she despaired at the confines of her Los Angeles flat—until she began to find wonder in the wilderness of her own backyard. Stranded charts Bearzi's discovery of both rapture and resilience in the unsung wildlife of urban LA.