 | “When flowers evolved, they upended and transformed the planet. … “They created habitats like tropical rainforests and prairies, catalyzed the evolution and diversification of bees, butterflies, birds, mammals, and many other animals. Today 90 percent of all plant species on the planet are flowering plants.” So begins How Flowers Made Our World, a fabulous exploration of the many ways flowers create, nurture, and sustain interspecies communities with color and style. By highlighting the community-building aspect of flowers, the author expands the limited scope of evolution’s “survival of the fittest.” |
“The first cells on the planet, 3.5 billion years ago, lived in communities held together by reciprocity and mutual interdependence. [And] flowering plants took this ancient practice of symbiosis and extended it in unprecedented ways.” In doing so, they outcompeted more solitary life forms.
Sea grasses make their own habitat, accumulating “as much as three centimeters of sediment a year.” The larger the sea-grass meadow, the slower the water current, and the more sediment that settles to nurture more grasses. The sea cows and manatees that graze sea grasses “evolved from hoofed land mammals about fifty million years ago”!
 | These underwater grasses survive by creating internal “scuba tanks,” air channels that run from the sunlight-kissed leaves to the “roots buried in oxygen-starved mud. Air channels also buoy the leaves, holding them up to the light.” The grasses also harbor bacteria in their roots that provide nitrogen “fertilizer” in exchange for excess sugar. “Worldwide, seagrasses are among the most threatened of all habitats.” |
Flowering weeds are “good at arriving on recently disturbed soil, swiftly dropping roots, unfurling their leaves and flowers, then flinging fruits to the wind or onto animal fur in the hope of finding a new patch of exposed soil. [Long before] bulldozers and spades, these weeds sought recently burned soil, exposed areas around fallen trees and landslides [and] the churning aftermaths of hooved and burrowing animals.” Because we frequently plow, till or otherwise disturb the soil, we’ve essentially “remade the world in the weeds’ favor.”
 | Weeds tend to reproduce quickly, which means they can adapt swiftly to changes in their environment. “The arms race between chemical manufacturers and plants has bred what are now called “superweeds,” plants so resistant to one or more herbicides that they become a stubborn presence in agricultural fields.” A stubborn infestation of bindweed helped me accept that my gardening days were over. Like the many-headed hydra of Greek myth, pulling the weeds merely created more—and they regenerated from mere scraps of root. |
Fun facts/great quotes:
- The sunflower and orchid families “include more living species than all mammals and reptiles combined.
- “If plant life stops, all life stops.”
- Flowers “enthrall animal senses with floral aromas and colorful petals” to attract pollinators—and encourage human cultivators.
- “Flowering plants mother and feed the world.” [As wheat, rice, corn, barley and other grains]
- “Almost all newly germinated orchids [are] entirely dependent on fungi for their food, a radical departure from the sunlight-fueled growth of most young plants.”
- Prairie grasses encourage fire by providing ample dried fuel and grow tasty leaves to promote grazing—both of which favor fast-growing grasses over brush and seedlings.
- If the 2023 world cereal harvest were stacked in 110-pound sacks it “would reach to the moon forty times.”
- “When attacked by insects, plants release volatiles into the air and soil that summon parasitic wasps, predatory mites, and insect-killing nematode worms. The bodyguards, drawn by plants’ scent, kill the plant-eating pests.”
- Bat-pollinated flowers have "reflective cups to bounce back the echolocating sounds of bats, the acoustic equivalent of a brightly colored bloom.”
- “Jasmine and violet were considered masculine scents in medieval Islamic cultures” and rosewater was considered “both masculine and feminine in the Middle East” where it has been used for over three thousand years.
- “Flowers and humans alike flourish in relationship with others and wither in isolation.”
The author notes that science is “always wrapped in the cultural context of its time and the prejudices of its practitioners.” An example is the Linnaean classification system used to categorize our living world:
 | “By using the Linnaean system, we value database consistency over local knowledge. We turn living kin into abstract categories. … Linnaeas took the task of naming upon himself, with the explicit intention of centralizing authority.” Even more disturbing are the chemical toxins and horrendous environmental destruction supporting the floral and horticulture industries. “In our pursuit of beauty [we] inadvertently cause harm, often to the very life processes that we want to nurture in our gardens.” Bees and butterflies are among the pollinators dying from toxins infusing many nursery plants. |
“We humans are causing a mass extinction, a collective act of stupendous harm and disrespect for the living Earth. [But,] Flowers made our world and they will remake” the post-human world.
 | There’s lots of fascinating science in this book, from biology to genetics to paleontology, laid out in easy-to-grasp language. The author’s colorful stories and poetic language make these facts come alive: “Bees sense rose volatiles through hundreds of minute hairs that fur each antennae, along with odor-sensitive pits between the hairs. Scrabbling through a flower must be an intense aromatic thrill for the bees, every sensor slathered.” “The [rose’s] aroma is a brocade, soft sweetness textured by threads of golden spice and a few strands of musk.” “[L]avender is the signature aroma of [Provence, France], a lively, slightly astringent, herbal smell, like pine resin dressed up for a Saturday night.” |
When we interact with flowering plants, our senses become “enmeshed with more-than-human lives.” Flowers are “there to get attention. They’re there to be alluring. And we are seduced [just] as we should be.” Gardeners, flower lovers, environmentalists, artists, anyone who looks to nature for spiritual solace, and science nerds will all find something to love in How Flowers Made Our World.
Read other books by award-winning David George Haskell: The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken
Read more about our fabulous plant cousins: The Hidden Life of Trees, The Light Eaters,
Serving Plants, Whacky Weeds, The Green Man
Read more about our fabulous plant cousins: The Hidden Life of Trees, The Light Eaters,
Serving Plants, Whacky Weeds, The Green Man
