The Reason for Flowers
Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Yen
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By:
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Stephen Buchmann
About this listen
Flowers, and the fruits that follow, feed, clothe, sustain, and inspire all humanity. Flowers are used to celebrate all-important occasions, to express love, and are also the basis of global industries. Americans buy 10 million flowers a day, and perfumes are a worldwide industry worth $30 billion annually. Stephen Buchmann takes us along on an exploratory journey of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes while simultaneously bringing joy and health.
Flowering plants continue to serve as inspiration in our myths and legends, in the fine and decorative arts, and in literary works of prose and poetry. Flowers seduce us - and animals, too - through their myriad shapes, colors, textures, and scents. Here he integrates fascinating stories about the many colorful personalities who populate the world of flowers and the flowers and pollinators themselves with a research-based narrative that illuminates just why there is, indeed, a Reason for Flowers.
©2015 Stephen Buchmann (P)2015 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder
- The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books
- By: Marta McDowell
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The universal appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder springs from a life lived in partnership with the land, on farms she and her family settled across the Northeast and Midwest. In this revealing exploration of Wilder's deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You'll learn details about Wilder's life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder's books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world.
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For fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder
- By Maurizio on 03-07-19
By: Marta McDowell
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The Beekeeper's Lament
- How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America's foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations.
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From a beekeeper
- By Argos on 06-14-17
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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Song of Increase
- Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World
- By: Jacqueline Freeman
- Narrated by: Jacqueline Freeman, Robin Wise
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The most joyful emanation produced by a colony of bees is known as the "song of increase" - declaring that the hive is flourishing and the bees are happy in its abundance. Song of Increase takes us inside the world of the honeybee to glean the wisdom of these fascinating creatures with whom humanity has shared a sacred bond for millennia. Within these minutes is a bee-centric approach to living with honeybees, rather than advice for simply maximizing the products they provide.
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Couldn't Get Past the First Few Chapters
- By Stephen Hopper on 06-10-17
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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The Book of General Ignorance
- By: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
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Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British best seller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.
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Interesting.
- By A. Hawkbird on 12-07-08
By: John Mitchinson, and others
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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
- The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe: the chicken. Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it.
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Never imagined the volume of bird trivia
- By Neuron on 11-04-18
By: Andrew Lawler
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Nature's Best Hope
- A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard
- By: Douglas W. Tallamy
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Douglas W. Tallamy's first book, Bringing Nature Home, awakened thousands of individuals to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives. In this new book, Tallamy takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation.
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A must read for everybody! Not just nature lovers.
- By Steve Ebert on 06-11-20
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A Naturalist at Large
- The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich
- By: Bernd Heinrich
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the finest scientists and writers of our time comes an engaging record of a life spent in close observation of the natural world, one that has yielded marvelous, mind-altering insight and discoveries. In essays that span several decades, Bernd Heinrich finds himself at his beloved camp in Maine, plays host to annoying visitors from Europe (the cluster fly) and more helpful guests from Asia (ladybugs), and unravels the far-reaching ecological consequences of elephants in Botswana bruising mopane trees.
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Listen and See the World Anew!
- By Thoughtful Learner on 06-03-18
By: Bernd Heinrich
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Silent Earth
- Averting the Insect Apocalypse
- By: Dave Goulson
- Narrated by: Dave Goulson
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.
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Important book for all
- By Wren Jen on 03-24-24
By: Dave Goulson
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How to Read Nature
- An Expert's Guide to Discovering the Outdoors You've Never Noticed
- By: Tristan Gooley
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 3 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to shut down their senses and stumble through each day in an oblivious bubble, and yet some people end up having much richer experiences than others. In this guidebook, natural navigator Tristan Gooley strives to reawaken our senses to help us understand and deepen our personal experience of nature. His message is to connect - however we can and to whatever draws us in.
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A fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees
- By Mark A Bleakley on 08-07-18
By: Tristan Gooley
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So informative!
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The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
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Entertaining perhaps but not science.
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What listeners say about The Reason for Flowers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-19-16
Only for the Flower Lover
I was hoping that this book would be more science based but found it to be a compilation if facts rather than scientific. If you are a lover of flowers, you will probably enjoy the book. If you are looking for a good science book, keep looking.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Drone Boy
- 12-14-20
A Bit Of A Drone
This book was, to be honest, a bit of a factual drone and a mansplain. However interesting i found the topic, the constant flitting from theme to theme, spitting out of popular cleches, anecdotes, lay prose, recipes, and lists, made "The Reason for Flowers" hard for me to enjoy in audio form. There were, of course, many aspects to this book i enjoyed, and i'd encourage anyone with a dawning interest in floriculture to check it out. It is well worth listening to, but, for me, the study seemed to lack structure and a governing thesis to keep me listening.
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- Laura Lea Evans
- 08-17-15
A Gardener's Thoughts
If you could sum up The Reason for Flowers in three words, what would they be?
Latin sucks big-time! Why do I say that? Because learning a dead language to use for the name of flowers is a hard thing to do when one is no longer in school. The author is justified in using the botanical names however, which is understood.
What other book might you compare The Reason for Flowers to and why?
Can't think of any off hand other than those from cosmologists. Same sort of difficult nomenclature to assimilate.
Which character – as performed by Jonathan Yen – was your favorite?
There was no character in this book. Not that I recall.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Absolutely not.
Any additional comments?
I'm a professional gardener, so spend four hours at a time, weeding beds, deadheading flowers and keeping other people's gardens looking nice. I enjoyed the book on several levels but sadly won't retain those Latin names, for the most part. And, most folks are content with common names for their plants anyhow, when we talk. Still, it was a worthy narration chattering in my head while I worked. Not panning this book in the least. I enjoyed it and have respect for the author.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sharon
- 01-13-16
Dull
Rambling, a bit disjointed. Narrator seems to epitomize the expression "tongue in cheek." Maybe an abridged version would be the way to go.
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