The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives

by Stephen Buchmann

Overview

“Fascinating...Buchmann’s knowledge and enthusiasm jump off the page.” —The Wall Street Journal

“An extraordinarily good book.” —Edward O. Wilson

The lively and definitive story of the beauty, sexuality, lore, economics, and ecology of the world ’s flowers, written by a devoted scientist and illustrated with his stunning photographs.

Flowers—and the fruits they often become—feed, clothe, and inspire us. Indeed, they have done so for all of human history. Yet although we use flowers to celebrate important occasions, to express love, and to please our senses, we know little about them, their functions in nature, or even how we depend on them.

In a volume that will delight gardeners, naturalists, cooks, artists, or anyone interested in history or culture, pollination ecologist Stephen Buchmann serves as an expert guide through the fascinating world of flowers. He explains how other species relate to flowers in ways crucial to the natural world. Next he takes us on an engaging exploration of the roles flowers play in the production of food, spices, medicines, and perfumes. Flowering plants, Buchmann then shows, have long served as inspirational themes in art and literature. Flowers have in fact so thoroughly seduced us that we now buy some ten million a day, driving breeders to create infinite varieties and unusual blooms. In this cultural and natural investigation of floral history, Stephen Buchmann’s masterful narrative illuminates just why there is, indeed, a reason for flowers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476755533
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	02/09/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	418,061
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Stephen Buchmann, a pollination ecologist specializing in bees, is affiliated with the Departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. A fellow of the Linnean Society of London, he has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and ten books, including The Forgotten Pollinators with Gary Paul Nabhan, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. Visit him at StephenBuchmann.com.

Read an Excerpt

The Reason for Flowers

Most open by dawn’s first light or unfurl their charms as the day progresses. Others unwrap their diaphanous petals, like expensive presents, after dark, waiting for the arrival of beloved guests under a radiant moon. We know them as flowers. They are nature’s advertisements, using their beauty to beguile and reward passing insects or birds or bats or people willing to attend to their reproduction. The beauty of their shapes, colors, and scents transforms us through intimate experiences in our gardens, homes, offices, parks and public spaces, and wildlands. Importantly, flowers feed and clothe us. Their fruits and seeds keep the world’s 7.2 billion people from starvation. Flowers represent our past along with our hope for a bright future.

Before recorded history, all cultures collected, used, and admired flowers not only for utilitarian purposes, but for their elusive fragrances and ephemeral forms that, ironically, symbolized recurring vigor and even immortality. They have enthralled and seduced us, exploiting entire civilizations to enhance their sex lives and spread their seeds. We give and receive flowers as tributes, and to commemorate life’s many triumphs and everyday events. Flowers accompany us from cradle to grave. As spices, they flavor our foods and beverages. We harvest their delicate scents, combining them into extravagantly expensive mixtures, for perfuming our bodies to evoke passion and intrigue. Some yield a woven textile for every purpose, like the valuable fibers surrounding cottonseeds that began their development inside the ovary of a fertilized flower.

Flowers inspired the first artists, writers, photographers, and scientists, just as they do today on street corners, in florist shops and farmers’ markets, in books, paintings, sculptures, and commercial advertising. They moved online with ease. Arguably, because of the sustaining role they undoubtedly played in the lives of our hominid ancestors, we might not be here if there were no flowers, a love affair, begun early. Once captivated by them, I observed nature’s infinite palette of garden blooms and California wildflowers in the chaparral-clothed canyons near my boyhood home. The honey bees I kept visited flowers for their rewards of nectar and pollen. The bees fed upon the pollen and converted the nectar into delicious, golden, thick honey I drizzled atop slices of hot toast at breakfast. As a child, finding and observing bees of all kinds on wildflowers became my passion and quest across California’s wildlands. The bees showed me the way, leading to a lifelong dedication to flowering plants.

As a pollination ecologist, and entomologist, my professional career has focused on flowers and their animal visitors. Using 35 mm film and making silver gelatin prints of blossoms has been an abiding interest since my teenage years. Today, I carry a 35 mm digital camera and close-up lenses to photograph flowers and their pollinators. (I have selected some favorite floral portraits and included them in this book.) Having written books on bees, I knew a different kind of book must follow, one that traces humankind’s fascination with and use of flowers for every imaginable purpose and delight, since prehistory across all continents and cultures. There is much that we fail to appreciate in flowers, especially the roles they play in human affairs. Why do they make us happy and lift our spirits? Many people insist they heal our bodies and minds.

You are about to undertake a journey into the secretive world of flowers, animals, and humanity. I want you to see and smell like a hungry bee, and a hummingbird, but also like a plant breeder, flower farmer, importer of cut blooms, or a floral biologist. Together, we will explore the industry and economics of the global production, distribution, and sales of container plants and cut blooms. As you join me, consider keeping a single flower or a colorful bouquet close by, as your botanical muse along our shared path of discovery.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Part I Sexuality and Origins

1 Attracting Attention 3

2 Flowers and Their Ancestors 25

3 The Pollinators 44

Part II Growing, Breeding, and Selling

4 Pleasure Gardens Ancient and Modern 81

5 Flowers for Eternity 105

6 Best of Show 124

7 Arriving by Jumbo Jet 150

Part III Foods, Flavors, Scents

8 Eating Flowers 167

9 A Little Dab behind the Ear 186

Part IV Flowers in Literature, Art, and Myth

10 The Secret Language of Flowers 209

11 Flowers on the Page 221

12 Flower Power: The Meaning of Flowers in Art 240

Part V Flowers in the Service of Science and Medicine

13 The Flower and the Scientist 265

14 Good for What Ails Us: Healing Our Bodies and Minds 286

Acknowledgments 303

Appendix 1 Flower Statistics 306

Appendix 2 Cooking with Flowers: Selected Recipes 308

Appendix 3 After Bringing Them Home: Caring for Your Cut Flowers 310

Appendix 4 Online Resources for Wildflower and Pollinator Conservation Organizations 312

Notes and Sources 313

Photo and Art Credits 322

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

The Reason for Flowers is an extraordinarily good book. It covers the subject with thoroughness and scientific accuracy,working it (as flowers deserve) into history and culture, and written with poetic sensitivity.

Edward O. Wilson

"[Buchmann's] knowledge and enthusiasm jump off the page...fascinating."

Wall Street Journal

"Humans often use flowers as decorative accessories. But in this book, Stephen Buchmann, a professor of ecology at the University of Arizona, explains that they also serve other, more urgent purposes."

Time magazine

Do flowers need a reason? In The Reason for Flowers,Stephen Buchmann reminds us that flowers exist for more than just beauty and fragrance. They are miniature chemical factories, wireless signal stations,inspiration for artists, and—of course—sustenance for the most important creatures living on the planet. In short, flowers run the world. Stephen Buchmann is a gifted storyteller and an inquisitive scientist who is intrigued by the dazzling and intricate world of flowers. Thanks to this delightful new book, you will be, too.

Amy Stewart

"Buchmann, a prolific and ardent pollination ecologist, peels back the petals to reveal fascinating aspects of floriculture....Intensely researched, well paced, intricately detailed, and delightfully accessible, Buchmann’s exploration of this trove of living sensory delights is a boon to both casual and committed flower lovers."

Booklist

The Reason for Flowers is a gardening book and more. Buchmann entertains with particulars of the patriotic gardens of Washington and Jefferson, and those of Asia and ancient Rome. We learn how our most beloved flowers came to be, along with new oddities like the black petunia. Every gardener and flower-lover will want this book.

Carrie Hulburd

Aesthetically, flowers enrich our lives and symbolize our emotions, but they are of even greater importance to us in their natural function in nature. In this attractive book, Steve Buchmann brings to life for the interested reader the many facets of their existence and their interplay with insects and other animals, informing us well about how they evolved and the roles that they play in our world.

Peter H. Raven

Stephen Buchmann is to plants and their pollinators as Jaques Cousteau, Sylvia Earle and Carl Safina have been to the oceans. He opens our eyes to wondrous worlds we have never seen before. This world-renowned explorer of nature’s inner workings will delight you while unobtrusively edifying you at the same time.

Gary Paul Nabhan

"The Reason for Flowers is a riveting account of the science, history and culture surrounding blooms since the dawn of humankind."

Science News

"Buchmann, a prolific and ardent pollination ecologist, peels back the petals to reveal fascinating aspects of floriculture....Intensely researched, well paced, intricately detailed, and delightfully accessible, Buchmann’s exploration of this trove of living sensory delights is a boon to both casual and committed flower lovers."

Booklist

"[Buchmann's] knowledge and enthusiasm jump off the page...fascinating."

Wall Street Journal

06/29/2015
Buchmann (The Forgotten Pollinators), a biologist specializing in pollination ecology, uses his eighth book to enthuse about the importance that flowers have played in human civilization. While his excitement is both palpable and contagious, and while some of his anecdotes are fascinating (for example, some flowers might be losing their scents because of climate change), the book doesn’t work well as a whole because Buchmann only has time to touch lightly on all of his myriad topics. The section on the modern flower industry is captivating, as he discusses the worldwide movement of flowers and the centrality of the Amsterdam auction house where every day millions of flowers are flown in, sold, and then redistributed around the globe. Unfortunately most other sections do not meet the standard he sets there; too often they read merely like interesting, eclectic lists of subjects that have some passing relationship to flowers. Few readers, for instance, will be surprised to learn that artists have painted flowers for centuries or that such paintings have occurred across many cultures. A modest number of photographs are included, but the book would be more accessible had other descriptions been paired with pictorial examples. Buchmann’s passion is not matched by the content. Photos. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Stephen Buchmann is a gifted storyteller and an inquisitive scientist who is intrigued by the dazzling and intricate world of flowers." ---Amy Stewart, author of The Flower Confidential

From the Publisher

Here, we discover through our captivating guide, just how interdependent flowers and people are: from ancient burials to modern Ikebana, to chefs and edible blooms, to Monet’s Wisteria and flower gardens, to jasmine and rose attar in classic perfumes, to Shakespearian sonnets and the Rolling Stones. The Reason for Flowers is a fascinating tapestry of floral inspirations. Buchmann draws inspiration from bees and other pollinators that bring every third bite to our tables as he crafts stories of their sex lives from the field.

Mark W. Moffett

06/15/2015
Flowering plants feed, clothe, heal, and brighten our lives. Buchmann (ecology & environmental biology, Univ. of Arizona; Letters from the Hive), a pollination ecologist specializing in bees, shares stories of the biology of flowers, along with their myriad relationships with humans and other animals. In accessible language, Buchmann offers information about flower anatomy, flowers' past and present uses by humankind, the evolution of blossoming plants, pollinators and pollination, flowers in art and literature, plant breeding, the floral industry, and the language of flowers. Entire books have been written on many of Buchmann's topics, thus readers seeking more details about a specific subject would do well to look elsewhere, and there are unfortunately too few photographs. VERDICT This well-researched book is best for those interested in an overview of the many aspects of flowers, both biological and cultural.—Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove P.L., IL

Library Journal

2015-04-24
With a subtitle that serves as a swift, sweet summary, an adjunct professor (Entomology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology/Univ. of Arizona) compresses the cultural and natural history of flowers into a few hundred graceful pages. Buchmann—the author of numerous scholarly papers and books, including The Forgotten Pollinators (1996), co-written with Gary Paul Nabhan—realizes he has an impossible task: every chapter could be a fat book, so he draws a map of a remarkable world. The early sections deal with biology, which he knows well and explains clearly. The author reminds us of the parts of plants, the evolution of flowers, the role of pollen-carrying critters that include, of course, bees but also moths, butterflies, and even bats. History plays a major role in just about every chapter. How did the Egyptians use flowers? The Chinese? Victorian England? The American Founding Fathers? Buchmann notes that many of the latter were very interested in gardens—including, of course, Benjamin Franklin, who did experiments. Charles Darwin, Luther Burbank, Gregor Mendel—these and other notables arrive now and then for a visit, and there are allusions to a wide variety of artists, including Shakespeare, Walt Whitman (but no Emily Dickinson?), and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. We learn about flowers as gifts, as burial ornaments, as food (becoming more popular again, notes the author), as personal decoration (remember your prom?), and as medical treatments. Buchmann explains how honey (about which he has a lot to say) is now returning to hospitals, where some physicians use it as part of a treatment regimen for burn victims. We also learn about the commercial aspects. No surprise: Valentine's Day is the biggest single purchase day in the United States. A volume that is like a Eurail Pass that will carry you through gorgeous terrain you will want to explore in more depth.

Kirkus Reviews