Alternatively Life is a Cabinet. Richard Mabey (one of the Environment
Triptych above sculpted by Jon Edgar) wrote a selection of musings about Botany and the Imagination and called it The Cabaret of Plants. It reminds me more of a Victorian Cabinet of Curiosity than Liza Minnelli trying and failing to make Michael York look sexy in the musical. Oh what fun they had in Weimar during the rise of the Nazi party!
Anyway, back to this book. As you'd expect from a miscellany of writings on plants and how they have played multiple roles in civilisation - through mythology, medicine and culture - it ranges from the fascinating to the slightly dull. But don't let that put you off. The highlights, of which there are many, are worth catching the cabaret. I particularly enjoyed tales involving the Yew, how to hide a body in a Boabab, the wreckless destruction of the Sequoias and speculation about plant intelligence. So if you don't know what these plant names are then dust off that old vinyl copy of Stevie Wonder's Secret Life of Plants (a more appropriate choice I think than some nice blonde boy belting out Tomorrow Belongs To Me) and find out more about your planet.
