Marvelous, my dear, marvelous

A Garden of Marvels:
How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants

by Ruth Kassinger

A marvellous work! Starting with her garden, she explores the history of plant science through the ages. We mourn the loss of Theophrastus' De Plantis, an ancient Greek work written on papyrus which eventually disintegrated. one surviving observation noted that plants were unlike animals in that they keep growing throughout their lives and can be reproduced by cutting in half.

But soon she moves into modern times, like her interview with Dr. Rufus Chaney, a founding father of phytoremediation. I assume that is the study of how to clean up mankind's messes using well-chosen plants, because the question she presents to him is, "Why do brake ferns pull arsenic out of soil, and such can be used to decontaminate soil and water."  (And at the same time, create fern gardens)

Although it turned out his work was primarily on nickel and the Alyssum bertolnii which, under certain conditions, takes up nickel from the soil into the leaves at levels that should have been toxic. Later she notes,

(The discovery of this dual system for taking up inorganic nutrients--effortless osmosis of some molecules and the selective uptake of others--answered a question that had troubled scientists since the ancient Greek era: Do roots actively choose nutrients form the soil or only passively receive them? The answer, we now know, is both.)

So if you're fascinated by plants, you need to read this book. And if not, read it anyway. You'll become so.