A visually entrancing and esoteric guide to connecting with plants through the senses. In The Spirit of Botany, artist and perfumer Jill McKeever reveals her personal rituals and creative methods of using aromatic botanical materials in incense, perfume, tisanes, ritual baths, and much more. In addition to dozens of recipes, McKeever offers her reflections on sustainability, synesthesia, creativity, and her own experience of turning her passion for this work into the indie perfume brand, For Strange Women. Appropriate for hobbyists and career alchemists alike, The Spirit of Botany features inspiring photography and a mysterious aesthetic, immersing readers in the countless biological, emotional, energetic, and spiritual benefits of aromatherapy and herbalism.

“Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

Explains the patterns method of plant identification, describing eight key patterns for recognizing more than 45,000 species of plants, and includes an illustrated reference guide to plant families.

“This should be the cornerstone of every gardener’s library.” —Jeff Gillman, Director of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens What happens inside a seed after it is planted? How are plants structured? How do plants reproduce? The answers to these and other questions about complex plant processes can be found in the bestselling Botany for Gardeners. First published in 1990 with more than 260,000 copies sold, it has become the go-to introduction to botany for students and gardeners. Now in its fourth edition, Botany for Gardeners has been expanded and updated. It features a revised interior, with new photos and illustrations that clarify the concepts clearer than ever before. Additional updates address scientific advances, changes in nomenclature and taxonomy, and more. As before, Botany for Gardeners shares accessible information about how plants are organized, how they have adapted to nearly all environments on earth, their essential functions, and how they reproduce.

David Attenborough meets Lemony Snicket in The Big Bad Book of Botany, Michael Largo’s entertaining and enlightening one-of-a-kind compendium of the world’s most amazing and bizarre plants, their history, and their lore. The Big, Bad Book of Botany introduces a world of wild, wonderful, and weird plants. Some are so rare, they were once more valuable than gold. Some found in ancient mythology hold magical abilities, including the power to turn a person to stone. Others have been used by assassins to kill kings, and sorcerers to revive the dead. Here, too, is vegetation with astonishing properties to cure and heal, many of which have long since been lost with the advent of modern medicine. Organized alphabetically, The Big, Bad Book of Botany combines the latest in biological information with bizarre facts about the plant kingdom’s oddest members, including a species that is more poisonous than a cobra and a prehistoric plant that actually “walked.” Largo takes you through the history of vegetables and fruits and their astonishing agricultural evolution. Throughout, he reveals astonishing facts, from where the world’s first tree grew to whether plants are telepathic. Featuring more than 150 photographs and illustrations, The Big, Bad Book of Botany is a fascinating, fun A-to-Z encyclopedia for all ages that will transform the way we look at the natural world.