Wily Violets and Underground Orchids: Revelations of a Botanist

By Peter Bernhardt

Book Overview

In this book, Peter Bernhardt takes us on a grand tour of the botanical realm, weaving engaging descriptions of the lovely shapes and intriguing habits of flowering plants with considerations of broader questions, such as why there are only six basic shapes of flowers and why the orchid family is so numerous and so bizarre. Everyone from amateur naturalists and gardeners to plant scientists will find Wily Violets and Underground Orchids a lively guide to botanical lore.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688083501
• ISBN13: 9780688083502
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.

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.