Quotes About Plants

Dr. Buford's profession was medicine and his obsession was anything that grew in the ground, so he stayed poor.

I first studied the effect of plants on humans for my Yale thesis... and it was a 185-page thesis, and luckily I got honors on it.

I was more of, like, into butterflies, insects, playing out in the yard, planting flowers. I was really into plants.

Here at this site, Solyndra expects to make enough solar panels each year to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. And over the lifetime of this expanded facility, that could be like replacing as many as eight coal-fired power plants.

The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.

I don't think that you can possibly embrace the kind of joy which one who has worked with plants and plant structures such as I have over a period of nearly 40 years, how wonderful the plant laboratory seems.

I remember, as a boy of 17 years of age, this was a fascinating thing for me: how we human beings breathe out carbon dioxide into the air, the leaves of plants pick this carbon dioxide up, and the plant gives off oxygen, which we can breathe in and keep our life going.

Earth: Work in the garden. Sit on the ground while holding brown or black gemstones in your hand. Take long walks in the woods. Keep potted plants in your home and workplace. Eat lots of root vegetables: potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets.

Earth (north): Alfalfa sprouts, beets, corn, fern, honeysuckle, magnolia, moss, peas, potatoes, turnips, vervain Air (east): Anise, clover, dandelions, goldenrod, lavender, lily of the valley, marjoram, mint, parsley, pine Fire (south): Basil, bay, cactus, chrysanthemum, daylilies, dill, garlic, holly, juniper, marigolds, onions, rosemary, sunflowers Water (west): Aster, blackberries, catnip, cucumbers, daffodils, gardenias, geranium, iris, lettuce, lotus, roses, water lily, willow

Aries: Holly, snapdragon, cactus, jonquil Taurus: Daffodil, clover, lilac, columbine, daisy Gemini: Azalea, honeysuckle, lily of the valley, heather Cancer: Iris, jasmine, water lily, white rose, gardenia Leo: Red rose, poppy, marigold, sunflower, dahlia Virgo: Lavender, myrtle, aster, fern, heather, daylily Libra: Cosmos, gardenia, pink rose, violet, hibiscus Scorpio: Orchid, violet, eucalyptus, foxglove, pinks, wolfsbane

Sagittarius: Paperwhite narcissus, Christmas cactus, red clover, dandelion Capricorn: Holly, carnation, mistletoe, pansy Aquarius: Carnation, wild rose, lady slipper Pisces: Lotus, passion flower, violet, narcissus, wisteria

Long before Porphyry, the Sicilian-born Greek philosopher and root-cutter Empedocles spent time at Selinunte, as well as at many of the other temples in Sicily. Empedocles is credited as being responsible for the earliest doctrines of the four elements. He campaigned against animal sacrifices, worked with plants and roots and appears to have strong associations with the cult of Hekate during his life.

Once upon a time, we were Africans involved in a unique lexicon of beliefs, lore, stories, and customs that were designed to help integrate us into an environment filled with plants, animals, elements, and a complex array of spirits. With the advent of slavery, the physical bond with the motherland was broken, but like seeds lifted from a ripe plant by wind, we found fertile ground in distant lands elsewhere.

People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with animals—discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others; and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds.

What phenomenon is that?" "Gender transition," Grant said. "Actually, it's just plain changing sex." Grant explained that a number of plants and animals were known to have the ability to change their sex during life—orchids, some fish and shrimp, and now frogs. Frogs that had been observed to lay eggs were able to change, over a period of months, into complete males.

Even as recently as 10,000 years ago humankind had spread to and over every habitable continent on Earth, including New Zealand's nearest neighbour, Australia. And this occupation and colonisation had major effects on the subsequent evolution of plants, animals and land forms. But not in New Zealand. In New Zealand, as an early geographer put it, 'a land without people waited for a people without land'.

When we use these words and we talk about plants having a strategy to do this or wanting this or desiring this, we're being metaphorical obviously. I mean, plants do not have consciousness. But, this is a fault of our own vocabulary. We don't have a very good vocabulary to describe what others species do to us, because we think we're the only species that really does anything.

Plants are nature's alchemists, expert at transforming water, soil and sunlight into an array of precious substances, many of them beyond the ability of human beings to conceive, much less manufacture.

Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower's point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.

Human cultures vary widely in the plants they use to gratify the desire for a change of mind, but all cultures (save the Eskimo) sanction at least one such plant and, just as invariably, strenuously forbid certain others. Along with the temptation seems to come the taboo.

The true socialist utopia turns out to be a field of F-1 hybrid plants.

Curiously, growing Papaver somniferum in America is legal—unless, that is, it is done in the knowledge that you are growing a drug, when, rather magically, the exact same physical act becomes the felony of "manufacturing a controlled substance." Evidently the Old Testament and the criminal code both make a connection between forbidden plants and knowledge.

These plants have discovered that they can attract pollinators by offering them a small shot of caffeine; even better, that caffeine has been shown to sharpen the memories of bees, making them more faithful, efficient, and hardworking pollinators. Pretty much what caffeine does for us.