NATURAL
AFFAIRS: A Botanist Looks at the Attachments b etween Plants and
People, by Peter Bernhardt. 225 pages, illustrated. Villard, $25
As
I wrote in a review of one of Peter Bernhardt's other excellent
collections of botanical essays, a surefire way to identify a faker
when it comes to discussions of evolution is to ask whether he says
anything about plants. Fakers never do.
The
whole intelligent design fraud is about animals. Darwin knew better.
Even
if he had never written about theory, he would still have been the
greatest experimental biologist of his time (perhaps of all time) and
one of the greatest field naturalists.
In
1877, Darwin published “The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of
the Same Species” based on his study of South African wood sorrels.
What he noticed is heterostyly, an important feature of plant
reproduction that is still not fully understood.
Bernhardt
writes, “For me, much of Darwin's genius comes from his talent for
using the most common creatures to explain complex topics.”
I
guarantee that none of the phonies at the Creation Research Institute
ever heard of a wood sorrel nor could any describe the ins and outs
of the forms of flowers that botanists call pins and thrums.
In
other essays, Bernhardt considers what goes into a salad, why saffron
is so expensive (and describes how phony saffron is made), the
contradictory mystical reactions of Spanish priests to the
passionflower, and daffodils, among other byways of people
inyeracting with plants.
As
always, Bernhardt's writing is graceful and meaty (or should we say
planty?). In three volumes, I have caught him in only one, somewhat
excusable error.
On
a visit to Hawaii, he fell for the tall tale about forest places too
dangerous to visit because violent marijuana farmers are protecting
their (squatted on) turf. It's a good story to thrill the tourists
but it isn't true.
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