Plant Science

Discover the plants and animals that live in a cave.

Whether you're a curious explorer, a seasoned psychonaut, or someone seeking alternative paths to personal growth, "How to Grow Psilocybin Mushrooms at Home" is your essential companion on the path to unlocking the mysteries of magic mushrooms.

Flowers, and the fruits that follow, feed, clothe, sustain, and inspire all humanity. Flowers are used to celebrate all-important occasions, to express love, and are also the basis of global industries. Americans buy 10 million flowers a day, and perfumes are a worldwide industry worth $30 billion annually. Stephen Buchmann takes us along on an exploratory journey of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes while simultaneously bringing joy and health.

Beware! The sordid lives of plants behaving badly. A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Amy Stewart, best-selling author of Flower Confidential, takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.

Jennifer Jewell brings listeners on an insightful year-long journey exploring the outsize impact one of nature's smallest manifestations—the simple seed. She examines our skewed notions where "organic" seeds are grown and sourced, reveals how giant multinational agribusiness has refined and patented the genomes of seeds we rely on for staples like corn and soy, and highlights the efforts of activists working to regain legal access to heirloom seeds that were stolen from Indigenous peoples and people of color.

Explore the strange and remarkable stories of poisonous and even deadly plants. Science, history, and true crime converge in an informative and exciting look at Mother Nature's ghoulish garden. From a hallucinogenic fungus linked to the Salem Witch Trials to the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother, learn how certain plants evolved toxicity to avoid being consumed by predators and became the predator on their own.

The first mass dungeon break in history grows nearer. Nick and his growing guild are training against time to be ready to stop this “Red Death” before it ever happens, but no one outside Nick’s closest circle knows this true purpose behind their intense tactical team-combat exercises. The secret weighs heavily on Nick as he considers revealing the truth of his regression to his found family, the Walters, and his other allies, hoping they will believe him and still support him when he needs them most.

Within the minutes of this audiobook, you will discover a blend of plant wisdom and a love of astrology blended in a cauldron of storytelling and poetry. Not merely an herbal compendium, not only historic storytelling and a weaving of ancestor history, The Weaving: Plants, Planets and Women follows the path of herbal medicine from roots in the Earth to planets in the sky. Abrah Arneson brews up magic in every minute.

A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basements Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone.

Penguin Audio presents The Plant Messiah by Carlos Magdalena, read by Roy McMillan. Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens is not your average botanical horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from ecological destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah. From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction.

As Thomas Hatsis reveals, the discovery of the power of psychedelics and entheogens can be traced to the very first prehistoric expressions of human creativity, with a continuing lineage of psychedelic mystery traditions from antiquity through the Renaissance to the Victorian era and beyond. Describing how, when, and why different peoples in the Western world utilized sacred psychedelic plants, Hatsis examines the full range of magical and spiritual practices that include the ingestion of substances to achieve altered states.

Discover a groundbreaking new way of eating that can reverse inflammation, heal your gut, and improve your overall health, fitness and athletic performance—in just one week—while setting you on the path to easy, sustainable weight loss for life! Journalist and bestselling author Stephen Perrine reveals how in his intensely researched, yet simple and engaging new book, The Full-Body Fat Fix.

The catastrophic Purge War at the end of the 21st century destroys planet Earth, jeopardizing the future for the remnants of humanity. Horrific repercussions roll across the ages until, generations later, a scientific group called the Time Forward Project harnesses a deep-space wormhole in which they can travel through time. They find the portal unstable and shrinking, but they have little choice but to take desperate, drastic measures and journey back to prevent the war.

In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China - territory forbidden to foreigners - to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. For All the Tea in China is the remarkable account of Fortune's journeys into China - a thrilling narrative that combines history, geography, botany, natural science, and old-fashioned adventure.

Como botánico, Robin Wall Kimmerer ha sido entrenado para hacer preguntas de la naturaleza con las herramientas de la ciencia. Como miembro de la Nación Ciudadana Potawatomi, abraza la idea de que las plantas y los animales son nuestros maestros más antiguos. En Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer reúne estas dos lentes de conocimiento para llevarnos a "un viaje tan mítico como científico, tan sagrado como histórico, tan inteligente como sabio" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

When Summer Rayne Oakes moved to Brooklyn from the Pennsylvania countryside, she knew that bringing nature indoors was her only chance to stay sane. She found them by the side of the road, in long-forgotten window boxes, at farmers' markets, and in local garden shops. She found ways to shelve, hang, tuck, anchor, secure, and suspend them. She even installed 150-foot expandable hose that connects to pipes under her kitchen sink, so she only has to spend about a half-hour a day tending to her plants - an activity that she describes as a "moving meditation". T

In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed - a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged - and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an arms race over the millennia, a battle of exploitation and defense between two fascinating species.

In the tradition of Jared Diamond and Jacques Barzun, prize-winning historian Anthony Pagden presents a sweeping history of the long struggle between East and West, from the Greeks to the present day.

The relationship between East and West has always been one of turmoil. In this historical tour de force, a renowned historian leads us from the world of classical antiquity, through the Dark Ages, to the Crusades, Europe's resurgence, and the dominance of the Ottoman Empire, which almost shattered Europe entirely. Pagden travels from Napoleon in Egypt to Europe's carving up of the finally moribund Ottomans - creating the modern Middle East along the way - and on to the present struggles in Iraq.

A riveting blend of science writing and true-crime narrative, The Nature of Life and Death details Wiltshire's unique journey from college professor to crime fighter: solving murders, locating corpses, and exonerating the falsely accused. Along the way, she introduces us to the unseen world all around us and underneath our feet: plants, animals, pollen, spores, fungi, and microbes that we move through every day. Her story is a testament to the power of persistence and reveals how our relationship with the vast natural world reaches far deeper than we might think.

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.