Leung Ping-kwan is one of Hong Kong's most acclaimed poets. His poems display a unique blend of the literary and the down-to-earth, the modern and the traditional, the serious and the humorous, the local and the universal. He wrote, 'I want to write a kind of modern poetry that does not have to turn away from the world we live in, that rethinks the relationship between language and objects...' This collection has been carefully curated, and is arranged under ten thematic sections: Lotus Leaves, Hong Kong, Macao, Foodscape, After the Book of Songs, Strange Tales: After Pu Songling, Clothink, Museum Pieces, Places and Friends, Bitter-Melon and Others. These translated poems, and the delight they bring, are a celebration of the continuing legacy of a remarkable Hong Kong poet.

Ryokan is one of the most cherished figures of Zen and Japanese literature and, along with Basho, one of Zen writing's best-known figures. This is a collection of his poems, created by the man renowned for his beautiful verse and calligraphy, as well as his eccentricity of character.

Having revolutionized the world of knitting, designer Kaffe Fassett now turns to the world of needlepoint. "Fassett has firmly established himself as the single most exciting craft-and-color expert today."--Booklist More than 150 full-color photographs. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Bioinspired Design of Materials Surfaces reviews novel methods and technologies used to design surfaces and materials for smart material and device applications. The author discusses how materials wettability can be impacted by the fabrication of micro- and nanostructures, anisotropic structures, gradient structures, and heterogeneous patterned structures on the surfaces of materials. The design of these structures was inspired by nature, including lotus, cactus, beetle back and butterfly wings, spider silk, and shells. The author reviews the various wettability functions that can result from these designs, such as self-cleaning, directional adhesion, droplet driving, anti-adhesion, non-wetting, liquid repellent properties, liquid separation, liquid splitting, and more. This book presents a key reference on how to fabricate bioinspired structures on materials for desired functions of materials wettability. It also discusses challenges, opportunities and many potential applications, such as oil-water separation devices, water harvesting devices and photonic device applications. - Introduces the fundamentals of both bioinspired materials design and the theory behind dynamic materials wettability - Reviews the latest methods and technologies used to create functional surfaces and structured materials that impact and potentially control wettability - Provides a snapshot of potential device applications, such as oil-water separation, water harvesting, fluid transport, photonic applications, and much more

This book covers such plants with edible modified storage subterranean stems (corms, rhizomes, stem tubers) and unmodified subterranean stem stolons, above ground swollen stems and hypocotyls, storage roots (tap root, lateral roots, root tubers), and bulbs, that are eaten as conventional or functional food as vegetables and spices, as herbal teas, and may provide a source of food additive or neutraceuticals. This volume covers selected plant species with edible modified stems, roots and bulbs in the families Iridaceae, Lamiaceae, Marantaceae, Nelumbonaceae, Nyctaginaceae, Nymphaeaceae, Orchidaceae, Oxalidaceae, Piperaceae, Poaceae, Rubiaceae and Simaroubaceae. The edible species dealt with in this work include wild and underutilized crops and also common and widely grown ornamentals.To help in identification of the plant and edible parts coloured illustrations are included. As in the preceding ten volumes, topics covered include: taxonomy (botanical name and synonyms); common English and vernacular names; origin and distribution; agro-ecological requirements; edible plant parts and uses; plant botany; nutritive, medicinal and pharmacological properties with up-to-date research findings; traditional medicinal uses; other non-edible uses; and selected/cited references for further reading. This volume has separate indices for scientific and common names; and separate scientific and medical glossaries.

A captivating history of one of the world's most iconic and mysterious flowers Bewitched by a lotus which flowered from three-thousandyear- old seeds in his English garden, Mark Griffiths set out to track the origins and significance of this sublime plant in this beautifully-illustrated book. The Lotus Quest takes Griffiths from the headquarters of the Linnaean Society in London to a mountain top in northern Japan. As he travels in search of this ancient flower, Griffiths looks at the lotus's significance in ancient Egypt and India, the plant's medicinal uses and the inspiration it has provided to Western artists. As he tracks the plant, its story unveils a stunning vision of Japan's feudal era with visits to shrines, ruins, gardens and wild landscapes as well as meetings with priests and archaeologists, philosophers and anthropologists, gardeners and botanists, poets and artists. He even dines on the lotus in a Tokyo cafe. By the end of Griffiths' journey, when he reaches the hauntingly beautiful Japanese temple of Chuson-ji, readers will finally understand why the lotus has obsessed people throughout the ages.

This book explores a collection of natural surfaces, their scientific characteristics and their unique engineering potential – demonstrating that engineering applications can be found in unexpected places. The surfaces covered range from botanical ones, like rice and lotus leaves, to insect surfaces, like butterfly and dragonfly wings. The variety of surfaces and numerous engineering potentials described show how biomimicry can be utilized to solve countless real‐world problems.