Dale Pendell
Copyright © 1995 by Dale Pendell. Foreword copyright © 1995 by Gary Snyder.
This is a book about plants. Green, sweet, peaceful plants: the harmless beings who give us flowers, nuts, fruits, roots, sap, bark, fiber, and shade. But some aren’t so great to eat – sour, bitter, or worse. Plants are all chemists, tirelessly assembling the molecules of the world, and in their transactions with insects, birds, animals and fungi, they find elaborate ways to defend themselves, to seduce pollinators, to confuse. So it’s a book about the interplay of plants, insects, animals, and humans, and suggests a bit how toxins shaped ecological systems. How much we assume about plants, and how little we know them! Pendell playfully says, “Only plants had consciousness. Animals got it from them.”