Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants

Richard Mabey

Harper Collins, Jun 28, 2011 - Gardening - 338 pages

"[A] witty and beguiling meditation on weeds and their wily ways....You will never look at a weed, or flourish a garden fork, in the same way again."
—Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder

"In this fascinating, richly detailed book, Richard Mabey gives weeds their full due."
—Carl Zimmer, author of Evolution

Richard Mabey, Great Britain's Britain's "greatest living nature writer" ( London Times), has written a stirring and passionate defense of nature's most unloved plants. Weeds is a fascinating, eye-opening, and vastly entertaining appreciation of the natural world's unappreciated wildflowers that will appeal to fans of David Attenborough, Robert Sullivan's Rats, Amy Stewart's Wicked Plants, and to armchair gardeners, horticulturists, green-thumbs, all those who stop to smell the flowers.

Contents

• Thoroughwort: 1
• Adonis: 23
• Knotgrass: 39
• Waybread: 57
• Selfheal: 85
• Loveinidleness: 107
• Gallantsoldier: 135
• Burdock: 155
• Grelda: 173
• ΙΟ French Willow: 201
• Triffid: 221
• The Shoreditch Orchid: 277
• Glossary of plant names: 293
• Notes and references: 302
• Index: 310

About the author

Richard Mabey is widely hailed as Britain's fore-most nature writer. He is the author of the groundbreaking book on foraging in the countryside Food for Free and the editor of The Oxford Book of Nature Writing. He has narrated and produced popular BBC television and radio series, and has written for the Guardian, Granta, and other publications. He lives in Norfolk, England.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants
• Author: Richard Mabey
• Edition: unabridged
• Publisher: Harper Collins, 2011
• ISBN: 0062065475, 9780062065476
• Length: 338 pages
• Subjects: Gardening / Lawns; Science / Life Sciences / Horticulture