What a Plant Knows The enchanting look at the lives of plants, from the colours they see to the schedules they keep, in time for the start of the planting season Full description
“Thick with eccentric plant experiments and astonishing plant science... Delightful” - The Sunday Times
“Exhilarating” - The RHS Garden
“Elegantly written... Chamovitz lets us see plants in a new light, one which reveals their true wonder.” - The Guardian
“Chamovitz's book is pop science at its best, full of vivid examples of barely imaginable ways of living”
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BBC Wildlife, Book of the Month
“An intriguing and scientific - but easy to read - look at how plants experience life ” - Gardens Illustrated
“Plants may be brainless, eyeless and devoid of senses as we know them, but they have a rudimentary “awareness”, says biologist Daniel Chamovitz. In this beautiful reframing of the botanical, he reveals the extent and kind of that awareness through a bumper crop of research.” - Nature
“The reader... will find enough absorbing science to concede that plants continue to inspire and amaze us.” - Wall Street Journal
“By comparing human senses to the abilities of plants to adapt to their surroundings, the author provides a fascinating and logical explanation of how plants survive despite the inability to move from one site to another.”
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Kirkus Reviews “What a Plant Knows is lively, eloquent, scientifically accurate, and easy-to-read... I commend this engaging text to all who wonder about life on Earth, and seek a compelling introduction to the lives of plants revealed through centuries of careful scientific experimentation.” - Professor Stephen D. Hopper, Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
“Chamovitz walks the Homo sapiens reader right into the shoes - or I should say roots - of the plant world. You will marvel and be haunted by a plant's sensory attributes and the shared genes between the plant and animal kingdoms.” - Elisabeth Tova Bailey, author of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
“With deftness and clarity, Chamovitz introduces plants' equivalents of our senses, plus floral forms of memory and orientation. When you realize how much plants know, you may think twice before you bite them!” - Hannah Holmes, author of Suburban Safari
“Just as his groundbreaking research uncovered connections between the plant and animal kingdoms, Daniel Chamovitz's insights in What a Plant Knows transcend the world of plants. You'll see plants in a new light after reading this book.” - Gloria Coruzzi, Professor of Biology, New York University
“A fascinating book that explores accessibly the evidence that plants share more properties with animals than most people appreciate.”
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John and Mary Gribbin, authors of
The Flower Hunters
