Review by Booklist Review
Harberd indicates that this book is an attempt to show how science can enhance our vision of the world; it is written, then, principally for nonscientists. The author, one of the world's leading plant geneticists, describes the developing understanding of how and why plants grow. He explains that experiments are revealing the hidden fundamentals of how the growth of plants is controlled. The book is in the form of a diary of the year 2004, its focus on one small weed in a country churchyard in Norfolk, England, the thale-cress. Harberd comments on the weather (The sky a salad of dampness; grays, blues, and yellows, all speeding in one direction ). He writes of his search for thale-cress (What I'd found was a curved line of three, six feet above the remains in a grave buried below the ground.) With 46 black-and-white sketches and diagrams, this book contains some descriptions of plant biology that geneal readers may not nderstand, but his intriguing narrative is not to missed. --George Cohen Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Even the most hardcore city dweller will be moved by British plant biologist Harberd's look at the life cycle of the thale cress plant, as he records not only the stages of a single species through one year but also provides an outline of "the unseen molecular forces that drive plants from stage to stage." Harberd engagingly shows how this common but ignored garden plant, with its short life span and small genome, is perfect for the plant geneticist, "our own Drosophila (fruit-fly)." Once scientists have determined its entire DNA sequence, they will be able to "get to grips with solving some of the most important questions in plant biology." Most enjoyable are Harberd's passionate observations-from the "exhilarating" results of stem cell behavior to how the "awesome velocity" of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring reminds him of the "brutal in Nature"-and how he successfully uses those observations to convey a view that "the world is a whole" and that even the most common plant can help us "see ourselves as part of something sacred. Perhaps even redefine our science as something sacramental." Illus. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Plant geneticist Harberd heads a Norwich (UK) lab that studies Arabidopsis thaliana (mouse-eared cress), a small plant in the mustard family. Although he has written this book in diary form, he reveals little about himself or his relationships with the other researchers in the lab. Instead, Harberd devotes most of the text to lecturing readers on plant anatomy and plant genetics. To make his lessons more accessible, he describes a year in the life of a wild Arabidopsis plant that he finds growing in a churchyard; however, because the plant leads a short and uneventful life, this information adds little interest. Although Harberd claims to be writing for nonscientists, his target audience is unlikely to find the pages of textbooklike material interesting. An optional purchase for large botany collections.-Erin Watson, Univ. of Saskatchewan Lib., Saskatoon (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A scientist discovers a world of wonder in a graveyard weed. Nearing 50 and feeling directionless in his research, leading British plant geneticist Harberd (Biological Sciences/Univ. of East Anglia) stole away from the routine of academic science at the noted John Innes Centre to rekindle his sense of wonder outdoors. In St. Mary's churchyard in Norfolk, he observed over a yearlong period the life of the thale-cross plant. "It's just a weed, we've got plenty of them in the garden at home," remarked his young son. This exquisitely detailed journal--at once rigorously scientific and yet bordering on the mystical--belies that statement. The author recounts the many stories a weed can tell as it grows, flowers, faces threats (first a slug, then apparently a rabbit) and is finally destroyed by a mourner weeding at graveside. Because the plant was in the world (rather than isolated in the lab), Harberd found new ways of seeing its growth, death and regeneration, all of which depended on "connectivity" to the earth and sun. While cycling from home to his beloved churchyard, working in the lab, attending concerts or traveling on business and holiday, the author muses on nature, memory, life and death. His written-on-the-run observations eventually helped break his "scientist's block" and left the hardheaded DNA expert with a newfound, quasi-religious reverence for the oneness of life: "Music, landscape, life, all connected." Although Harberd's intended reader is the nonscientist, some passages are daunting. Those with the patience to stick with him will be rewarded by fascinating glimpses of a first-rate scientific mind at play. Most refreshing is the author's candor about the imperfections of science: its starts and stops; the gap between separating and classifying things in the lab, and the wholeness and harmony of nature in the field. Inspires new respect for weeds--and life. (Illustrations) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
