Elogio delle erbacce

Mabey is so good at synthesizing ideas. I also really liked his book A Cabaret of Plants, and although his discussion of weeds is comprehensive enough, Cabaret was even longer and more complicated. This book is not one that identifies specific weeds, but certainly many individuals come up for discuss Leggi tutto

Richard Mabey knows his weeds. Seriously. You know those nutty birdwatchers with their field guides and binoculars—that's Mabey with weeds. Yes, you say, but those birdwatchers go out on field hunts searching for rare birds—so does Mabey with a group of botanical nerds, searching for alien weeds in Leggi tutto

A fabulous book by Mr Mabey. Who knew that weeds could be so fascinating with a veritable backstory for each variety. Our garden is admittedly "wild" in many places, purely because we can't be bothered to mow too much of it!! Watching the number of wildflowers and weeds which proliferate between the Leggi tutto

‘Weeds’ is not a gardening book, not a book to tell you how to eradicate the wretched things from your lawn nor one to tell you how to identify them. ‘Weeds’ is a history of weeds, of how plants come to be thought of as weeds, of how society reacts to them, of how they move, spread and adapt. It’s h Leggi tutto

Richard Mabey takes us from weeds' medieval double-employment in sympathetic magic and the theological Doctrine of Signatures, to the cutthroat world of 17th-century soldier-herbalists like Nicholas Culpeper, to John Ruskin’s strange disgust at the idea of photosynthesis (reducing flowers to mere “g Leggi tutto