Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1718401 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 268 pages

From Publishers Weekly
For nine years an "expatriate botanist" in South America and Australia, Bernhardt, now a botany instructor at St. Louis University, here shares a taste for botanical esoterica--with mixed results. His collection of essays, many published previously in magazines, enjoys the benefit but also bears the brunt of the author's somewhat arcane forays into "orchidelirium" and his unflagging, occasionally tiresome fascination with the pollination of exotic plant species, whether observed in the field or in the pages of Australian children's books (in one of these, "the costumes of minor characters reflect flowering and fruiting fashions within a number of sclerophyll habitats"). Though capable of communicating the botanist's passion for natural wonders, as well as explaining how plants function, the author does not always choose to do so, assuming both a knowledge of and an interest in the mechanics of plant life that many readers will not possess. At his best, however, Bernhardt recounts his "botanical romance" with Kansas grasslands and describes bees who, as pollinators, "appear to be comfortable only when they can visit a violet flower while standing on their heads." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Some of the strangest behavior in nature occurs in plants. Writing in a popular style, Bernhardt (botany, St. Louis Univ.) mingles fact and history with his own observations of plants gained during travels in the United States, South America, and Australia. His absorbing account (based on previously published material) covers amazing conduct of both obscure and familiar plants, including seasonality and its consequences in a tropical, cyclically dry forest; Australian mistletoe, whose leaves mimic those of the trees with which they have a parasitic relationship; the ecology of our North American grasslands; pollination by mammals, beetles, and moths; Amazonian giant water lilies; the eccentric life of the common violet; and five chapters on the strangest plants of all, the orchids.
- Annette Aiello, Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

Customer Reviews

Inspiring botanic tales
A series of eighteen unrelated botanical stories, usually introduced from some personal angle. There is a surprising amount of quite unusual information here, and eminently readable to anybody interested in plants, in pollination and in the ways plants have adapted to survive.

Sparingly illustrated by line drawings, of good quality, and some fair black & white photographs, augmented by eight pages of color photographs. Note: ISBN 0-688-08350-1 is the 1989 hard cover.