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Article: THE ROSE'S KISS.(Review) (book review)
- Article from:
- Whole Earth
- Article date:
- December 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Point Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE ROSE'S A Natural History of Flowers Peter Bernhardt. 1999; 267 pp. $24.95. Island Press.
During this century, botany has taken a back seat to other sciences. By the fifties, most students would have agreed that the great discoveries had been made, and that it was an irrelevant subject taught in a dead language. In The Rose's Kiss, Peter Bernhardt observes that most otherwise scientifically literate adults now know less about botany than did typical schoolchildren a hundred years ago. For many of us--particularly gardeners--botany was the arcane business of renaming and reclassifying plants, until the hubbub over genetically engineered crops and Earth's loss ...