- An award-winning, beautiful, and fascinating natural history of seeds, jointly created by an artist and a scientist
- Critically acclaimed by national and international press, in print and on TV
- IP Book Awards Gold Medal winner for Outstanding Book of the Year – Most Original Concept
- Seeds / Pollen / Fruit series over 220,000 copies sold across 10 languages
- The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is the largest conservation project ever conceived and includes the rarest, most threatened and most useful species known to man
- All images were created exclusively for this book
- Will appeal to anyone interested in gardening, science and the natural world
- A source of inspiration for painters and sculptors, architects, designers, and fashion designers
Seeds are tiny parcels of life, poised to give rise to anything from ephemeral herbs to giant trees that can live for thousands of years. A close look at these tiny miracles of nature through a scanning electron microscope opens up a view into a fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful microcosm few people, even scientists, have ever seen before. The range of sizes, shapes, and patterns plants have evolved over 360 million years to perfect their one and only chance in life to travel is beyond our wildest imagination.
In this astonishing book, artist Rob Kesseler and botanist Wolfgang Stuppy, previously of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, present a unique and highly unusual natural history of seeds. The story of how seeds evolved to ensure the survival of their species and how they adapted to their natural environments including the animals they share them with is stunningly illustrated, combining close-up photography with digitally enhanced scanning electron micrographs.
This book not only captivates and enlightens those interested in the natural world, but also artists, designers, architects and everyone else drawing inspiration from the wonderful and endlessly fascinating world we live in.