The Reason for Flowers

If you think about all the ways flowers are in our lives, you’ll find they’re everywhere. That’s what Stephen Buchmann covers in “The Reason for Flowers,” a pleasant, well-written read. One of the main reasons I enjoy natural history writing is to learn, and there is a lot to be learned here. A well-published researcher, Buchmann writes with the organizational precision of a scientist, and the editing breaks down the chapters into linked nuggets. Due to this polished style, it makes for a long read; some might be better served if this were an audiobook – my only complaint. The author travels all over the world, and has a global audience in mind. As he lives and works in Arizona, many of his anecdotes come from there.

Buchmann is a bee biologist, so we learn a lot about them and other pollinators, which are so closely tied to flowers throughout evolutionary time. There is some fascinating description of how bees see flowers - and everything else. The three light receptors they have are not the same as those we have; their memory and visual processing time work at a different scale too, but one that suits them of course. They might even use electric signals with plants, to avoid redundant flower visits. Certain types of bees act like tuning forks (or electric toothbrushes) to remove pollen, and we should be aware that true honey bees are not always the best choice to pollinate your crop.

Having the science in the first part of the book makes it easier for non-botanists to follow the rest of the book, and he even encourages the reader to have a real flower accessible for reference. I found that if you don't have one at hand, looking at one the next chance you get will still be a good experience. The black and white images are a nice inclusion, too. If you do have access to flowers, he provides home science instructions for how to determine the scent of a flower, by concentrating its molecules in a sealed glass jar in sunlight. The Latinized scientific names are often included if you want to look up a certain plant.

Precious few flowers are fossilized, but ecologists have managed to work out how the first flowers evolved. In the second part, there is less science but some archaeology, and good history worked in, such as one of Darwin's many incredible predictions, and the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, Greece, Mexico, Iran to Spain and the colonial United States.

Moving on to other cultural uses are today's funerals and ancient rituals, spirituality and superstitions, popularity and tastes. I had read about flowers as code (I think in Jane Goodall’s “Seeds of Hope”); here he gives wide-ranging examples. He transitions from flower shows, such as “the Chelsea,” to maintenance and ethylene gas and ripening, or accelerated decomposition. There's a whole chapter about how flowers are especially grown and chemically treated in South America, flown and distributed in the U.S. year round. The largest building by footprint in the world in Amsterdam is a sort of flower warehouse, with a different auctioning system, and there is a growing center in Dubai.

There is some esoteric description of perfumes, and their pyramidal design, such that three layered or grouped scents with different molecular weights evaporate after different periods of time, to keep things interesting. Personally, I’d prefer to have no scent at all, but I can appreciate the aromas when they come from the flowers themselves.

Next are the origins of mentions of flowers in poetry in both western and eastern lineages, followed by an overview of art history with floral depictions – also worth looking up. From the Dutch trade empire and pre-Raphaelites to hippie vans and current photography and even scanning, flowers leave an impression. In the last part are scientific advancements thanks to flowers, notably Mendel and Darwin. However, his own interesting study of jojoba plants in a wind tunnel (they are wind-pollinated, and have special adaptations); comparing scent against visual mimicry in cactus flowers; and other neat experiments are discussed. Finally, some herbal treatments, or medicinal uses derived from flowers are featured. I didn’t realize that honey, with such a high sugar content, could be anti-microbial. Like any good nature book, he calls attention to the need for informed conservation at this important time for action and change. I remembered this timeless message written on a wall in Granada, Spain: “A thousand machines can never make a flower.”