Das Varieté der Pflanzen

Surprising insights into the realm of colorful shape-shifters, life artists, and tricksters - vibrant, entertaining, and with a special eye for curiosities, master storyteller Richard Mabey reports on plants that are so much more than the furniture of our planet. From Ice Age cave paintings to Carl Linnaeus's descriptions and the hymns of Romantic poets: people have always engaged with plants and tried to unravel their mysteries. Alchemists hoped to find the panacea in the plant world, the botanical counterpart to the Philosopher's Stone, and even today, myths surrounding the spectacular healing powers of ginseng elevate its market value to over $10,000 for a single root. Richard Mabey takes us on his extensive journeys through familiar and exotic flora, narrating the natural and cultural history of plants that begins right at our doorstep and leads us around the world - an encounter on equal footing with another, wilder life form that existed before us and will outlast us.

Mabey at his best, an eclectic, global collection of stories that combines color, intimacy, and emotional depth with facts.