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Fruit
Edible, Inedible, Incredible
Wolfgang Stuppy and Rob Kesseler in collaboration with The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
| Firefly Books |
| Canadian and US rights |
| 10/10/2008 |
| Book Website |
| 264 pages, 12 1/2" x 11 3/8" | |||||
| color photographs and illustrations throughout, glossary, bibliography, illustration index | |||||
| |||||
A remarkable collaboration of nature, art and photography, celebrating the beauty of fruit. The landmark books Seeds and Pollen were published in 2006 to rave reviews-with adjectives ranging from "breathtaking" to "spectacular," from "spellbinding" to "dazzling." This companion title examines why fruits exist and how their short lives are critical to the natural order. Visual artist Rob Kesseler uses special light and scanning electron microscopy to create astonishing images of a variety of fruits and the seeds they shelter. His razor-sharp cross-sections reveal intricate interiors and pods, pouches, keys, nuts and other examples of botanical architecture. Seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy deftly explains the formation, development and demise of fruit. Literary, historical and artistic references to fruit are included as well. Fruit is groundbreaking in its intimate examination of plant reproduction. An essential source and reference for artists, designers and gardeners, this stunning book will fascinate any reader interested in the natural world and biological structures. |
Wolfgang Stuppy is the seed morphologist for the Millennium Seed Bank Project at London's Royal Botanic Gardens. Rob Kesseler is a visual arts professor and artist whose work has been shown in museums and galleries in the United Kingdom and Europe. |
Table of Contents
PREFACE BY KEN ARNOLD
FOREWORD BY STEPHEN D. HOPPER
FRUIT - EDIBLE, INEDIBLE, INCREDIBLE
WHAT IS A FRUIT
What is a fruit and what is a vegetable?
Angiosperms, Gymnosperms and those that copulate in secret
The naked-seeded ones
The non-naked-seeded ones
An abominable mystery
Angiosperm extremists
No Flower, no Fruit?
Is a pine cone a fruit?
No Carpel, no Fruit?
A shameless display
Not quite the ovary of Eve
Unwitting couriers
Wind, sex and gender separation
What's in a Fruit?
Babylonian confusion
Enhanced female performance
How to be a carpologist
The true meaning of fruits
Simple Fruits
The truth about berries
The miraculous miracle berry
Golden apples
Fragrant citrons
Buddha's hand
Sizeable pepos
Soft shell, hard core or how to be a drupe
Nuts about nuts
Walnuts or waldrupes?
Glans quercus
Two fruits in one - cashew nut and cashew apple
Wheat "grain" and sunflower "seed" - caryopsis and achene
Samaras - nuts gone airborne
Cypselas - achenes gone airborne
Pods and such like
Capsules or seven ways to open a fruit
Teeth, fissures, cracks and lids
Follicle and coccum
Pods as in "pea pods"
Sweet bean pods
The World's largest bean pod
Seeds in prison
Inside-out drupes
To be or not to be a drupe
Multiple Fruits - Several fruitlets from a single flower?
Schizocarpic Fruits or how to emulate the multiple experience
Anthocarpous Fruits - the carpologists' touchstone
Compound Fruits - A single fruit from several flowers?
The breadfruit and the Mutiny on the Bounty
The largest fruit a tree can bear
Figs, gnats and sycophants
Angiosperms with cones?
Carpological Troublemakers
Bogus fruits and how to debunk them
So what is a Fruit?
The biological function of fruits and seeds
DISPERSAL - THE MANY WAYS TO GET AROUND
Wind dispersal
Wings
Monoplanes
Flying discs
Spinning cylinders
Shuttlecocks
Woolly travellers
Love-in-a-puff and other balloon travellers
Anemoballism
Water dispersal
Dispersal by raindrops
Plants that do it for themselves
Hygroscopic tension
Hydraulic pressure
Animal Dispersal
Becoming attached
The story of the sadistic Tribulus
In the claws of the devil
How to catch a bird
Dispersal by scatter-hoarders
Dispersal by ants
Combining Strategies
Directed Dispersal
Fleshy Fruits
The evolution of fleshy fruits
The good, the bad and the ugly, or why fruits are poisonous
Enough is as good as a feast
Young and dangerous
Climacteric fruits
One bad apple spoils the barrel
Dispersal syndromes, the sign-language of fruits
The bird-dispersal syndrome
How to catch the eye of a bird
Fleshy seeds
Flashy seeds
Dangerous beauty
Colourful appendages
Arillate seeds and the fate of New York
Dispersal by mammals
The bat dispersal syndrome
Monkey fruits - the primate-dispersal syndrome
Monkey apple
The Queen of Fruits
Cacao - food of the gods
The baobab
Durian - the King of Fruits
A big fruit needs a big mouth - the megafaunal dispersal syndrome
Africa's large mammals and their fruits
Sausages that grow on trees
Fruits that only elephants like
When the elephants are gone
The aardvark and its cucumber
Mallotus nudiflorus and the Indian rhinoceros
The nitre bush and emus
Galápagos tomatoes and giant tortoises
More inseparable couples
Till death do us part
The dodo and the tambalocoque - a textbook fairy tale
Anachronistic fruits
Size no longer matters
The largest fruit of America
Osage orange
How can it be true?
Where have all the mammoths gone?
THE MILLENNIUM SEED BANK PROJECT
LUSCIOUSNESS - THE CRAFTED IMAGE IN A DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
APPENDICES
Glossary
Bibliography
Index of Plants illustrated
Footnotes
Picture Credits
Acknowledgments




Foreword
Professor Stephen D. Hopper FLS
Director, The Royal Botanic Gardens
Like most people, I must confess at the outset to being an incorrigible frugivore. I have enjoyed consuming fruit since my earliest memories, and do so to this day. It is an honour, consequently, to have been invited by the authors of this book to write a few words about their collaborative and brilliant merger of the science and art of fruit. This is the third such book in an award-winning series celebrating the diversity of plant reproductive structures. Its predecessors were Pollen - The Hidden Sexuality of Flowers, Rob Kessler and Madeline Harley, published in 2004, and Seeds - Time Capsules of Life by the present team, published in 2006. I cannot think of a more fitting contribution to the series.
Apart from their obvious nutritional value, fruits offer an enthralling assemblage of insights, inspiration and wonderment. Rob Kessler's imaginative images have captured such pleasures and made them available to a general readership. Complementarity is assured through Wolfgang Stuppy's lively text -- authoritative but accessible. A powerful combination indeed.
We are told that there are more than 150 different technical fruit names coined by botanists over the past two centuries. This is heady stuff. Yet the book takes the reader along a path that unlocks the riches behind such dry nomenclature. I for one enjoyed reading every word, and learnt much more about fruits than I already knew. As the stories of evolution, biology and the use of fruits unfold, the book becomes a compelling read. There is a fertile field here from many points of view. I'm sure that no reader will regard a humble fruit in quite the same way once they have savoured what's in store herein.
This celebration of the beauty and intrinsic interest of fruits contains a significant and deeper message. Fruits are the containers of seeds, of new life on which all animals, including ourselves, are intimately dependent. Without fruits and their dispersal of seeds to safe sites, extinction, the death of birth, is inevitable. We cannot afford to let this happen, if for no other reason than self interest and our very survival. In a time when we travel down unprecedented pathways of climate change, caring for plants, the primary consumers of carbon, was never more important nor urgent. We must stop destroying plant life, and turn to ways that focus on nurturing and supporting green photosynthesizing organisms. We can only do so if plants continue to bear fruit, in all their amazing diversity. This book hopefully will encourage many to go beyond the aesthetic pleasure it so bountifully offers to helping plants and people survive into the future.
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is proud to play its part in inspiring and delivering science-based plant conservation worldwide, enhancing the quality of life. Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, in particular, has engaged a hundred partner institutions in more than fifty countries in helping save plant life. Together, we all can contribute to such a pressing and important cause. It is a real pleasure to say that Kew remains a staunch partner in this publishing venture.
I congratulate the authors, publisher and all involved in this fine production.
Viva fruits -- edible, inedible, incredible!
This work makes a great source and reference for artists, designers and gardeners.
- Making Scents 2009 10
This lusciously-illustrated volume...fruitfully combines full-page and other photographs of such exotic fruits as Buddha's hand, cashew apple, and Japanese wineberry with scientific names and explanations of the complexities of their classification, evolution, growth and reproductive habits.
- SciTech Book News 2009 12
Fruit is an amazing book. Suitable as a coffee table book, it is full of vibrant photographs and informative explanations on the nature of fruit. I simply love this book.
I believe that Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible by Wolfgang Stuppy & Rob Kesseler is now one of my favorite nonficfion books of all time. The highlight of this fascinating book [is] the photographs. Rob Kesseler used special lighting and scanning electronic microscopy to create the magic that populates the pages... I couldn't put the book down -- I was fascinated by the vibrant images...
I would give Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible 10+ star if possible. The pictures are captivating and the text enlightening. This is now the prize book in my gardening collection. It should be in yours, too.
- About.com Books Review: Trees and Shrubs 2008 10
"Fruit" is clearly an art book. The images are arresting and the stories fascinating.
- Joel M. Lerner Finger Lakes Times 2008 12 21
Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible is pure poetry.
- Garden Design 2009 02
The work is arresting, distinctive, familiar, yet it covers entirely new ground... Fruit is little short of astonishing. If the book never gets further than your coffee table, it's still likely to blow the stuffing out of anything else laid near it... Reading all of Fruit is like a fantastic mini education. Don't feel like reading? Just look at the pictures. They'll take you away.
- David Middleton January Magazine 2008 12 21
Bearer of seeds, fruits have an amazing variety of forms that are displayed in high definition images in this exquisite picture book. The striking graphic design of this publication is artwork of the highest quality; images appear to leap out from its shiny black pages... The highly informative narrative...examines the nature of fruits, their purpose, and an extensive collection of many distinctive structures that serve as a means for seed dispersal and ultimately plant survival. A helpful glossary assists the reader in understanding the particular vocabulary of this scientific discipline.
- National Garden Clubs, The National Gardener 2008 12
Rob Kesseler's digital photographs are extraordinary. Every hair, scale and targeted structure is crystal clear... Simply as art, the book could stand alone. But the reader is in luck. Those marvelous photographs accompany a fascinating text.
- Chris Smith Seattle Post-Intelligencer 2008 11 27
A mammoth undertaking...pictorially magnificent.
- Judy Creighton The Daily News (Kamloops) 2009 01 10
Stuppy divulges the copulating secrets of numerous fruits in a humourous, explicit fashion.
- Joel Bentley GardenWise 2009 03
Amazing images... Up close, many are unrecognizable, appearing to be futuristic landscapes or startlingly human-like sexual organs. Stuppy's thoroughly scientific examination of what makes a fruit a fruit is peppered with amusing observations.
- Wendy Thomson GardenWise 2009 03
A fascinating look at a subject that has baffled botanists for years...The book is pictorially magnificent...Tiny interior structures of plants and seeds are blown up to fill the oversized pages, creating images that are sometimes surreal yet breathtakingly beautiful.
- Canadian Press 2009 01 08
A swanky coffee table tome, packed with truly amazing photos....Kessler's pictures reveal just how precious--and extraordinary--our planet is.
- Sonia Day The Toronto Sun 2008 12 13
Fruit is clearly an art book. The images are arresting and the stories fascinating.
- Joel M. Lerner The Washington Post 2008 12 13
Fruit is just as visually luscious and insightful into the juicy secrets of some of our world's most delicious fruits.
- Linda Stilkowski Winnipeg Free Press 2008 12 07
Beautiful.... By examining fruit at this [microscopic] level users can gain a better understanding of plant reproduction and how it thrives in the natural world.
- Mary Ellen Snodgrass American Reference Book Annual
A remarkable collaboration of nature, art and photography, celebrating the beauty of fruit... Fruit is groundbreaking in its intimate examination of plant reproduction. An essential source and reference for artists, designers and gardeners, this stunning book will fascinate any reader interested in the natural world and biological structures.
- I Can Garden.com 2008
I recently had the pleasure of spending many long winter hours paging through this book. Randomly opening the book, I would be caught by one of Kessler's striking images, and settle in to read, quickly losing myself in Stuppy's writing... This wonderful, oversized book is the perfect gift for a botanist who appreciates artistic images of plants, or the photographer with a keen botanical enthusiasm. At first glance, it appears to be a typical coffee table photography book; on closer inspection, a botanist finds a compelling text with a refreshing degree of scientific rigor. The authors have intentionally used botanical terms, Latin names, and included taxonomic information that will please botanists who look for beautiful books with technical information... The images are beautiful, and illustrate the minutia that we rarely see with a hand lens or microscope.... Stuppy's text is engaging, and covers most everything you would want to know about fruits, from biology to natural history.
- Kurt A. Reynertson, Weill Medical College of Cornell University Economic Botany, Vol. 64 2011 05 01
| | Description | | Table Of Contents | | Sample Pages | | Excerpt | | Reviews / Awards | | Order This Book |
