“This beautiful book is useful for all of us, novice and experienced orchid lovers alike.” —Martha Stewart, author, entrepreneur, founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Add the vibrant colors and exotic blooms of orchids to your houseplant haven! It’s easier than you think with the help of Orchid Modern. Marc Hachadourian, the curator of the orchid collection at the New York Botanical Garden, shares his secrets to successfully growing these sometimes finicky houseplants. Besides the basics, you’ll learn his top 120 orchid picks for green and not-so-green thumbs. Ten inspirational, step-by-step projects, including terrariums, a wreath, and a kokedama, provide the confidence to make orchids a thriving, vivid part of your home’s signature style.

“This beautiful book is useful for all of us, novice and experienced orchid lovers alike.” —Martha Stewart, author, entrepreneur, founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Add the vibrant colors and exotic blooms of orchids to your houseplant haven! It’s easier than you think with the help of Orchid Modern. Marc Hachadourian, the curator of the orchid collection at the New York Botanical Garden, shares his secrets to successfully growing these sometimes finicky houseplants. Besides the basics, you’ll learn his top 120 orchid picks for green and not-so-green thumbs. Ten inspirational, step-by-step projects, including terrariums, a wreath, and a kokedama, provide the confidence to make orchids a thriving, vivid part of your home’s signature style.

Inspired by the website that the New York Times hailed as "redefining mourning," this book is a fresh and irreverent examination into navigating grief and resilience in the age of social media, offering comfort and community for coping with the mess of loss through candid original essays from a variety of voices, accompanied by gorgeous two-color illustrations and wry infographics. At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit. Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize. Soffer and Birkner, along with forty guest contributors including Lucy Kalanithi, singer Amanda Palmer, and CNN’s Brian Stelter, reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics including triggers, sex, secrets, and inheritance. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message. Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.

In 1923, upon completion of a posting in northern Burma, Captain Robinson returned to Mandalay to await a new assignment. While there he sampled the pleasures of the opium den. This is his account of the seduction of a naive young romantic by the East and of his narrow escape from death. Captain Robinson, completing a posting as a young British administrator in remote northern Burma, returned to Mandalay in 1923 to await a new assignment. One evening, Robinson and two friends, came upon an opium den. While his friends called it a night, Robinson stayed on to sample the forbidden

From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this "absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao" (New York Times), readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min's lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world.

This book on “Orchid Biology: Recent Trends & Challenges” reviews the latest strategies for the preservation and conservation of orchid diversity and orchid germplasm. It is an outcome of the Proceedings of the International Symposium on “Biodiversity of Medicinal Plants & Orchids: Emerging Trends and Challenges” held on 9-11 February 2018 at Acharya Nagarjuna University, India. In addition, eminent orchid experts from around the globe were invited to contribute to this book. All chapters were peer-reviewed by international experts. The Orchidaceae are one of the largest families of flowering plants, comprising over 700 genera and 22,500 species and contributing roughly 40 percent of monocotyledons. They also represent the second-largest flowering plant family in India, with 1,141 species in 166 genera, and contribute roughly 10% of Indian flora. Orchids comprise a unique group of plants and their flowers are among the most enchanting and exquisite creations of nature. Phylogenetically and taxonomically, the Orchidaceae are considered to be a highly evolved family among angiosperms. They show incredible diversity in terms of the shape, size and colour of their flowers, and are of great commercial importance in floriculture markets around the globe. Millions of cut flowers of Cymbidium, Dendrobium, Cattleya, Paphiopedilum, Phalaenopsis, Vanda etc., besides potted orchid plants, are sold in Western Countries and thus, the orchid cut flower industry has now become a multimillion-dollar business in Europe, the USA and South East Asia. Besides their ornamental value, orchids hold tremendous pharmaceutical potential. Root tubers of Habenaria edgeworthii form an important component of the ‘Astavarga’ group of drugs in Ayurvedic medicine. It is an established fact that tubers of some terrestrial orchids have been used to treat diarrhoea, dysentery, intestinal disorders, cough, cold and tuberculosis. Some orchids, particularly those belonging to the genera Aerides, Arachnis, Cattleya, Cymbidium, Dendrobium, Epidendrum, Oncidium, Paphiopedilum, Phalaenopsis, Renanthera, Vanda etc. have been extensively used to produce internationally acclaimed hybrids. Yet paradoxically, Indian orchids are victims of their own beauty and popularity. As a result, their natural populations have been declining rapidly because of unbridled commercial exploitation in India and abroad. In fact, some orchids are now at the verge of extinction, e.g. Renanthera imschootiana, Diplomeris hirsuta, Paphiopedilum fairrieanum, Cypripedium elegans, Taeniophylum andamanicum etc. Given the global importance of orchids in terms of securing human health and wealth, this comprehensive compilation, prepared by international experts, is highly topical. Its content is divided into five main sections: (I) Cryopreservation & Biotechnology, (II) Orchid Biodiversity & Conservation, (III) Anatomy & Physiology, (IV) Pollination Biology and (V) Orchid Chemicals & Bioactive Compounds. All contributions were written by eminent orchid experts/professors from around the world, making the book a valuable reference guide for all researchers, teachers, orchid enthusiasts, orchid growers and students of biotechnology, botany, pharmaceutical sciences and ethnomedicine. It will be equally valuable for readers from the horticultural industry, especially the orchid industry, agricultural scientists and policymakers.