Green Kingdom: A Family History of Plants

A captivating exploration of the weird and wonderful ways plants have found to survive and thrive, from the earliest mosses and toxic cycads to the most fragrant orchids, for fans of The Light Eaters, The Serviceberry, and The Invention of Nature. “Ben Dark has the unusual ability to see both the forest and the trees. Closely observed, wonderfully far-ranging, and sharply written... a fascinating account of man's long and tangled association with plants.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction Nearly four hundred thousand species of plants exist today, but many more have come and gone. What made these ones survive? Through the stories of sixteen plant families responsible for life’s great innovations, Green Kingdom tells the epic tale of how plant-life emerged, adapted and came to shape our planet. Beginning with the lowly mosses and working his way up the Tree of Life through the ferns, pines, palms, and ginkgoes to the giant water lilies that obsessed a generation of Victorian gardeners and beyond, Ben Dark reveals how plants developed stems, leaves, trunks and seeds, how flowers emerged and developed the capacity to create deadly poisons, in…