Mabey, Richard

Learn how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.

Explores the plants that have been dubbed as weeds, such as dandelions, crabgrass, poison ivy, poppies, and thistles, discussing their histories, portrayal in books, destruction of ecosystems, restoration of war-torn lands, and more.

Follows an oak tree and its company of plants and animals from its beginning as an acorn to its death 282 years later.