The Reasons for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology and How They Change Our Lives — By Stephen Buchmann

“ The Reason for Flowers is an extraordinarily good book. It covers the subject with thoroughness and scientific accuracy, working it (as flowers deserve) into history and culture, and written with poetic sensitivity."

— Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

“Fascinating...Buchmann’s knowledge and enthusiasm jump off the page.”

— The Wall Street Journal

The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology and How They Change Out Lives is the lively and definitive story of the beauty, sexuality, lore, economics, and ecology of the world ’s flowers, written by a devoted scientist and illustrated with his stunning photographs.

Flowers — and the fruits they often become — feed, clothe, and inspire us. Indeed, they have done so for all of human history. Yet, although we use flowers to celebrate important occasions, to express love, and to please our senses, we know little about them, their functions in nature, or even how we depend on them.

In a volume that will delight gardeners, naturalists, cooks, artists or anyone interested in history or culture, pollination ecologist Stephen Buchmann serves as an expert guide through the fascinating world of flowers.

He explains how other species relate to flowers in ways crucial to the natural world. Next, he takes us on an engaging exploration of the roles flowers play in the production of food, spices, medicines, and perfumes.

Flowering plants, Buchmann then shows, have long served as inspirational themes in art and literature. Flowers have in fact so thoroughly seduced us that we now buy some ten million a day, driving breeders to create infinite varieties and unusual blooms.

In this cultural and natural investigation of floral history, Stephen Buchmann’s masterful narrative illuminates just why there is, indeed, a reason for flowers.

THE DETAILS

Format: New, paperback

Published: February 9, 2016 (Reprint)

Publisher: Scribner

ISBN: 9781476755533

Pages: 352

Dimensions: 8.4 inches L x 5.5 inches W x 0.9 in D 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Buchmann, a pollination ecologist specializing in bees, is affiliated with the Departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona.

A fellow of the Linnean Society of London, he has published more than150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and ten books, including The Forgotten Pollinators with Gary Paul Nabhan, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.