Remarkable plants by Helen & William Bynum, 2023. Thames & Hudson, in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
When I discovered that there was a book entitled Remarkable plants by Helen & William Bynum [which tome is here appraised], I was very excited. After all, who can resist such a plant-centred book title? However, when I looked more closely, I was surprised to discover that it is in fact not a new book (as I had assumed), but a new edition of an established text, of the same name, by the same authors, from 2014 (a copy of which rested – unread!!! – on my bookshelf).
But, whilst it was disappointing that the 2023 title wasn’t explicitly disclosed to be a new version of an existing text, it does give me the opportunity to review – and finally read – the book.
What you get…
The 215 pages of Main text of Remarkable plants is divided into an Introduction, and 8 named sections – each of which has 7 – 11 separate plant entries. As you should expect from these authors, the text is very well written; touching upon a very broad range of topics, it delivers excellent plants-and-people stories. And the book is lavishly illustrated throughout (mainly in colour) [which illustrations are copyright RBG, Kew]. Throughout, it providers lots of interesting and appropriate facts* (although none of these are explicitly linked to sources!). However, in doing so, it doesn’t always ‘deliver the goods’, e.g. why not tell us the height of Eucalyptus regans, “the tallest flowering tree in the world” (p. 174)? Nevertheless, the Bynums are great advocates for the importance of plants to people, and to the planet more generally.
The four, 4-columned pages of Index lists personalities, peoples, places, plant products, plus events, scientific names and common names, from Aborigines, Australian to Zoroastrian. The very broad range of topics touched upon in Remarkable plants, which highlight the myriad ways in which plants and people interact, is indicated by this collection of index entries: alpha linoleic acids; aphrodisiac; Art Nouveau; Bligh, William; Boswellia sacra; Bronze Age; capsaicin; carnivorous plants; Columbus, Christopher [although Columbian Exchange is not mentioned…]; Darwin, Charles; domestication; dye; Earl Grey tea; enzymes; epiphytes; farmers/farming; flax; furniture; gardens; gods/goddesses; Green Revolution; hallucinogenic; heroin; hunting and gathering; India; Islam; jeans; Jesus; Jurassic; Kaempfer, Engelbert; Kew, Royal Botanic Gardens; kohlrabi; Lakshmi; lino; lysine; McClintock, Barbara; Mesopotamia; Moluccas; Native Americans; nicotine; nutmeg; oak; orangery; Oryza spp.; paddy field; pigment; proteins; quinine; quinoa; Qur’an; Raffles, Stamford; rhubarb; rubber; saffron; Silk Roads; superfoods; Talmud; tomato; turmeric; umami; urad or black gram; USA[N1] /United States; vanilla; vine; vitamins; war; wheat; woad; [no entries under ‘X’]; yak butter; yew; Yuan dynasty; Zagros; and Zea mays.
A four page listing of 3-columned sources for Further Reading is also provided, split into a general category, and then publications listed by section. None of the sources are dated post-2014 (the publication date for the book’s 1st ed’n); one source is dated 2024 (p. 232 – and the same as in the 2014 version), and several items date from 2010 – 2013. Overall, it is a good mix of books and scientific articles, but all of them appear to be the same as those in the 2014 version of the book. It’s just such a shame that no explicit links have been made between the sources here and facts in-text!
The main text in a bit more detail…
Introduction
Here the scene is set for the rest of the book. Importantly, it also tells us what the book is about: “Remarkable Plants is a celebration of the utility, beauty, diversity and sheer wonder of the plant world gracing our planet” (p. 8). Additionally, “this book is concerned with the diverse plant worlds of the planet as we made the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. How have we exploited some of these plants and what relationships have been forged between humanity and aspects of the plant world since then? In what ways do they impinge on our lives and we on theirs? Although each plant is allocated here to one of a series of categories, it is one of the wonders of the plant world that they can be highly efficient, multi-taskers and could appear in several of our sections” (p. 10).
Sections
At the beginning of each section there’s a short – 2-pages – scene-setting, context-placing commentary, which usually name-checks the plants that are considered in more detail in the separate entries. Notwithstanding their shortness these accounts often pack in a great deal of material.
The structure of a section is pleasingly formulaic. Each section begins with a heading and a sub-heading, e.g. Taste: Beyond the bare necessities; Heal and harm: Getting the balance right; or Revered and adored: From the sacred to the exquisite, which give a little more information about what’s covered.
Each plant entry often begins with a full-page plant portrait, followed by the plant’s common name, and the scientific name – which here may be reduced to just the genus for multi-species accounts [it would be useful to have the family stated as well]. There then follows a pithy sub-heading (e.g. Poppy: Pleasure, pain and addiction, or Oil palm: Economics versus the environment) that adds useful, additional information about the plants that are considered. A relevant quote relating to the plant or its use by people heads up the plant-related text that follows. Each entry is well supplied with illustrations. Generally, the focus is on a single plant – or genus, but there are several multi-plant accounts, particularly in the Transformers section.
Although plant entries varies in length, e.g. 1.75 pages (rauvolfia; cedar of Lebanon); 2 (taro, breadfruit; Gingko); 3.5 (sorghums, yams, cowpea); 3.75 (chocolate [unusually, an entry not headed by the name of a plant]; tobacco; rubber [another entry headed by a plant product rather than the name of a plant]); 4 (olive; grape; poppy; tulip); 5.5 (rice, millets, soybeans, grams); and 6 pages for orchids; wheat, barley, lentil, pea; maize, beans, squash; potato, sweet potato, groundnut, quinoa; and nutmeg, cloves, pepper, they each provide beautifully written, informative and insightful ‘vignettes’ of the plants highlighted. Each entry is a well-crafted essay that provides intelligent plants-and-people information, and is abundantly illustrated with portraits of the plants portrayed or of their products.
1. Transformers
As befits the book’s declared focus upon the transition of humans from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture, this section concerns the plants that sustained that transformative period of human history. Recognising that this change in lifestyle was a global phenomenon, the Bynums look at Asian, African, American, Oceanian, and European staples such as rice, sorghum, maize, breadfruit, and olive. An important reminder here that agriculture took off to some extent ‘against the odds’, because “The early farmers were often less well nourished than their foraging predecessors and subject to a disease burden resulting from close contact with humans and animals” (p. 14). But, such negatives were eventually overcome, and ultimately, “Farming was here to stay” (p. 15). This section also provides good background on plant domestication and the development of agriculture.
2. Taste
Having tackled the essentials in the first section, here are plants that make what may otherwise be monotonous daily diets more ‘interesting’. Or, as the authors put it: “The staple crops were closely bound up with the founding of civilizations, but while they may feed and sustain us and satisfy our hunger, alone they do not always fulfil our craving for flavour, something to make the ordinary special” (p. 56). This is the cue for a consideration of such sense-satisfying plants as spices, onions, brassicas, and hops. Here we have an important reminder of the importance of translocation of food plants, e.g. chillis from the Americas and their eager adoption into the cuisines of the far-East, and tomatoes by people of the Mediterranean (and spices from the Moluccas by everybody globally).
Curiously, beet gets a whole paragraph to itself in the section’s pre-amble, but isn’t then included as one of the plants dealt with in more depth in that section [and doesn’t even merit an entry in the Index…]. Usually, the start to a section gives a shout-out to the plants that will be covered in more depth.
3. Heal and Harm
The often double-edged nature of plant products is explored here as poppy, quinine, rhubarb, willow, and aloe are discussed. Although the story of scurvy amongst sailors and its treatment with vitamin C is well-known, the Bynums remind us of the importance of this condition in hindering European imperial expansion and commercial aspirations. How good vitamins are for you depends on your point of view – whether you are a scurvy-suffering sailor or one of the peoples who suffered at the hands of those seafaring nations.
4. Technology and Power
Plants and their products don’t only feed us and keep us well, they also provide a myriad of materials that help humans to create the world around them. Accordingly, this is the place to talk about the cedar of Lebanon, oak, flax, hemp, and mahogany.
5. Cash Crops
Arguably, a somewhat less benign side of human-plant interactions is addressed here with such plants as slavery-sustaining sugarcane and tobacco – and not forgetting the treatment of those who laboured for their colonial overlords in the rubber plantations of the Belgian Congo. Curiously, although rubber operations in the Belgian Congo are mentioned, the book is silent on the human-human inhumanity that took place there as a consequence [more here, Tim Harford, and Tim Stanley]. Banana, indigo, and environmentally-damaging oil palm are also covered.
6. Landscapes
Just as some plants have been utilised for clothing humankind, here the authors consider plants that ‘clothe’ the planet, or provide vistas that demand our attention. Accordingly, attention is paid to such iconic plants as the larch that typifies the great swathes of boreal forest, the towering redwoods of California, coastal-fringing mangroves [the most taxonomically diverse of the book’s plant entries], Australian eucalyptus, and the beautiful but invasive (when outside of the home range) Himalayan rhododendrons.
7. Revered and Adored
The first word of this section’s title is the reason why all of the book’s plants could be included in their separate categories and this one: All plants should be revered by all of us. But, those selected for special mention here are such emblematic and powerful plants as lotus, rose, date palm, frankincense, pomegranate, apple, Chinese plum (apparently, and somewhat confusingly, also known as Japanese apricot) [and its association with the five blessings of longevity – which include “a natural death”…(p. 196)], rose, and orchids.
8. Wonders of Nature
Finally, and celebrating the extraordinary plant world, is a small collection of remarkable plants that include the baobab, welwitschia, pitcher plant, and giant waterlily. This section also includes gingko, examples of which tree survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. And, if that’s not a wonder of nature – and a remarkable plant, then I don’t know what is.
Comparing the two editions
The full title of the 2014 book is Remarkable plants: That shape our world. The 2023 title is simply Remarkable plants. Apart from that, what’s different between the text of the two versions? I don’t know. But, I can say that there’s at least one place where one might have expected some amendments to the 2014 text in the 2023 edition, and that relates to a consideration of artemisinin. On pages 90-91 in both versions of the book we are told about the work of Prof. Tu YouYou on developing artemisinin as an anti-malarial treatment [which doesn’t seem out of place in a plant entry for quinine]. Prof. Tu YouYou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for her work on artemisinin (Xin-zhuan Su & Louis H Miller, 2015). Although that fact would not have been known when the book’s first edition was published in 2014, it should surely have been mentioned in the updated – 2023 – version. Sadly, I strongly suspect that nothing else has changed in-text between the two editions.
So, why has the 2023 book been published? Again, I don’t know. Those who own or have read the 1st edition will probably not be interested in what appears to be just a reissue of that version. Those who are not familiar with the 1st edition, will be encouraged to buy the 2023 version – especially since it is offered for sale at a price that’s nearly £5 cheaper than the older edition on the publisher’s web site(!) [compare £20.00 here with £24.95 here.].
Link those sources!
The list of Further Reading presumably indicates – at least – some of the sources used by the authors to provide the numerous facts shared in the text. What would have been even more useful is to indicate – in-text – explicitly which sources provide which facts. Some of the many statements that need sources include: “Rice feeds half the world today” (p. 22); “Sorghum remains the most important grain grown in sub-Saharan Africa, and is fifth in world grain production” (p. 41); re redwoods “drawing in of moisture through the stomatal pores” (p. 169); and the successful germination of 1,000-year old lotus seeds (p. 183). Doing the research and tracking down the facts is an important part of writing a book such as Remarkable plants. But, I would argue, that task is not complete until the statements are clearly linked to sources as evidence for what is stated. I do know how arduous a job that is, but doing so makes for a much better book. Adding those links would have been a great way to show how the 2023 version of the book is a considerable improvement over the 2014 iteration.
Summary
Despite absence of links between stated sources and its many factual statements – and the fact that this 2023 publication appears to be a ‘reprint’ of the 2014 version – Remarkable plants by Helen & William Bynum is an excellent book that delivers a fact-filled celebration of dozens of remarkable plants and the remarkable stories of their interactions with people. In the Bynums’ own words: “Utility aside, a plant simply being there, part of the web of life, warrants a profound celebration” (p. 215). And that celebration is just what you get in Remarkable plants.
* Some factual statements that were new to me include: Puy lentils being known as vegetable caviar; some Protestants rejecting the potato because it is not mentioned in the Bible; the existence of a ‘Palaeolithic Hypothesis’ (re grape-gathering and wine-making); the cosmological significance of the multi-layered structure of the onion bulb to Ancient Egyptians; that shortage of beer allegedly being one reason why the Pilgrim Fathers settled at New Plymouth rather than sailed on; that linen was used to hold ammunition in place for machine guns in World War I; and that the ‘upside down’ fronds of silver tree fern placed upon the ground marked trails in darkness when they reflect moonlight. Proof that no matter how many similar books there are on this subject [e.g., Around the world in 80 plants by Jonathan Drori, and the book of the same title by Stephen Barstow, Simon Barnes’ The history of the world in 100 plants, and Plants and us by John Akeroyd], there’s still plenty of plants-and-people information to be found.
Something else that was new to me, and made me think I’d learned a new word, is contained in this statement “pollination by carrion flies or beetles (sapromyophily)” (p. 225). The simplest interpretation of which phrasing is that pollination by beetles is termed sapromyophily. But something about the word didn’t seem right to me. Doing a bit of digging I found that sapromyophily has nothing to do with beetles, but everything to do with pollination by carrion flies, or carrion-flies and dung-flies. The technical term for beetle-pollination is cantharophily. So, whilst I did learn a new word [well, two in fact], it wasn’t in the way that the Bynums intended. Which is a reminder not to take everything you read as fact [especially if it is unsourced]; always be a little bit sceptical.
REFERENCE
Xin-zhuan Su & Louis H Miller, 2015. The discovery of artemisinin and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Sci. China Life Sci. 58: 1175–1179; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-015-4948-7
Plant Cuttings 
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