Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants
Jane Goodall
Language: English
Pages: 432
ISBN: 1455513202
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this wise and elegant New York Times bestseller, Jane Goodall examines the critical role that trees and plants play in our world.
SEEDS OF HOPE takes us from Goodall's home in England to her home-away-from-home in Africa, deep inside the Gombe forest, where she and the chimpanzees are enchanted by the fig and plum trees they encounter. She introduces us to botanists around the world, as well as places where hope for plants can be found, such as The Millennium Seed Bank. She shows us the secret world of plants with all their mysteries and potential for healing our bodies as well as Planet Earth.
Looking at the world as an adventurer, scientist, and devotee of sustainable foods and gardening--and setting forth simple goals we can all take to protect the plants around us--Goodall delivers an enlightening story of the wonders we can find in our own backyards.
tree was found—at the Kauluwai residence! And so, yet again, the Cooke’s koki‘o had risen, like the phoenix, from the ashes. But that is not the end of the story! Eight years after it had been found, in 1978, that one lone survivor, grandchild of old Grandmother Koki‘o, was caught in a fire. Unable to escape, it burned. But by an amazing stroke of good fortune, before the mostly charred remains of the tree had lost all life, someone removed a still-living branch. One branch, the last link in an
beautiful crimson spider orchids, with their intricate and complicated lives,” he wrote, “have survived everything nature has thrown at them over the ages. The eighteen plants in our local population have continued to defy the odds and remain static in their numbers.” Hopefully a way to increase those numbers will soon be found: many orchids can now be propagated in botanical gardens, by horticulturists. All around the world they are doing well in captivity, and already, where the habitat is
chemically poisoned soil is forced to produce two crops per year instead of one, and more wilderness areas are destroyed for agriculture. Even plant nature is being bent to serve this greed, as their genetic inheritance is contaminated with the introduction of artificially modified genes. Moreover, in many developing countries slave labor is not a thing of the past, and crops are grown as a result of the sweat of people, including children, who have little option but to accept this servitude
butter (or margarine) could be added, then closed again to keep everything warm. My mother did not like the skin, but it was the favorite part for Judy and me, and we used to get half of hers each. Finally, of course, there are the memories of cooking potatoes in the embers of a campfire—the only problem being that the skin was usually too charred to eat. We did not have tinfoil in those wartime years. Today, Judy and her daughter, Pip, bring in bags of soil so that they can grow potatoes in the
Other roasters also came, tasted, and bought. With advice from experts, production per acre has greatly increased, and trees are being planted to provide shade, help control erosion, and restore moisture to the soil. This coffee is now regarded as the best in Tanzania, and last year the farmers were able to produce some four hundred tons. The first time I went to the coffee-growing area high in the hills above Lake Tanganyika was to visit, with a small group of VIPs, one of the farmers, Lazaro