The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History
Thor Hanson
Language: English
Pages: 246
ISBN: 2:00284919
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment, and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the Fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
In nature and in culture, seeds are fundamental—objects of beauty, evolutionary wonder, and simple fascination. How many times has a child dropped the winged pip of a maple, marveling as it spirals its way down to the ground, or relished the way a gust of wind(or a stout breath) can send a dandelion's feathery flotilla skyward? Yet despite their importance, seeds are often seen as a commonplace, their extraordinary natural and human histories overlooked. Thanks to Thor Hanson and this stunning new book, they can be overlooked no more.
What makes The Triumph of Seeds remarkable is not just that it is informative, humane, hilarious, and even moving, just as what makes seeds remarkable is not simply their fundamental importance to life. In both cases, it is their sheer vitality and the delight that we can take in their existence—the opportunity to experience, as Hanson puts it, “the simple joy of seeing something beautiful, doing what it is meant to do." Spanning the globe from the Raccoon Shack—Hanson's backyard writing hideout-cum-laboratory—to the coffee shops of Seattle, from gardens and flower patches to the spice routes of Kerala, this is a book of knowledge, adventure, and wonder, spun by an award-winning writer with both the charm of a fireside story-teller and the hard-won expertise of a field biologist. A worthy heir to the grand tradition of Aldo Leopold and Bernd Heinrich, The Triumph of Seeds takes us on a fascinating scientific adventure through the wild and beautiful world of seeds. It is essential reading for anyone who loves to see a plant grow.
with seed plants fills more than our bellies—it also feeds the human imagination. The knowledge we’ve gained from this long relationship may be our deepest reservoir of insight into the workings of nature. Without it, the most famous experiment in history might never have taken place. CHAPTER FIVE Mendel’s Spores The various forms of Peas selected for crossing showed differences in length and color of the stem; in the size and form of the leaves; in the position, color, size of the flowers; in
a reference to the fatty seeds at the center of each fruit. I noted the tiny plant’s size and location in my field book, and then crouched down for a closer look. FIGURE 1.2. The sprouting seed of an almendro tree (Dipteryx panamensis). PHOTO � 2006 BY THOR HANSON. The seed’s shell, so difficult to open in the lab, lay upended in halves, neatly split by the pressure of the growing sprout. A dark stem arched downward into the soil, and above it two seed leaves had begun to unfurl. They looked
crowned the Best Coffeehouse in America at the annual Coffee Fest trade show. Slate occupies a former barber shop on a side street in Ballard, one of Seattle’s trendiest neighborhoods. (Coincidentally, it’s just down the hill from where my Norwegian great aunts Olga and Regina once lived, in an era when Ballard was a Scandinavian enclave better known for pickled herring than espresso.) The ambiance inside was conspicuously spartan. A vintage record player in the corner hummed with jazz, but
simple joy of seeing something beautiful doing what it is meant to do. Standing there together, heads tilted skyward, we laughed and laughed until it disappeared from view—a papery wisp at the edge of vision, still rising. CONCLUSION The Future of Seeds By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty famine. All things change. —Heraclitus (sixth century BC) Every family has its lore. My father’s ancestors all hailed from Norway—stoic fisher-folk who plied the
plant breeders discovered that chromosomes could be doubled chemically, and that back-crossing a tetraploid with the diploid parent produced infertile hybrids.* The upshot for watermelons was a normal-looking, sweet-tasting fruit incapable of filling itself with seeds. For consumers, it offered convenience, and for seed companies it offered control, since farmers and gardeners would have to buy new seeds every year rather than saving their own. Today, seedless varieties account for over 85