Alice Oswald Quotes

Vegetables, which are the lowest in the scale of living things, are fed by roots, which, implanted in the native soil, select by the action of a peculiar mechanism, different subjects, which serve to increase and to nourish them.

The main stem was then in most cases twisted in a zigzag form, which process checked the flow of the sap, and at the same time encouraged the production of side branches at those parts of the stem where they were most desired.

In plants, vitamin K is found principally in all kinds of green leaves; leaves which have grown in the dark and therefore have not formed chlorophyll are poor sources.

Trees love to toss and sway; they make such happy noises.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

A tree you pass by every day is just a tree. If you are to closely examine what a tree has and the life a tree has, even the smallest thing can withstand a curiosity, and you can examine whole worlds.

To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives: the fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top.

Trees are complicated, fascinating things, usually older and more beautiful than any of us.

Look, Sage. I don't know much about chemistry or computer hacking or photosynthery, but this is something I've got a lot of experience with." I think he mean photosynthesis, but I didn't correct him. "Use my knowledge. Don't let it go to waste.

The plants look up to heaven, from whence they have their nourishment.

Think about a seed. Once it lands, it's stuck. It can't move to find better soil, moisture or sunlight. It's able to create every part of itself to grow and reproduce with the help of air, water and sun.

Storms make the oak grow deeper roots.

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.

Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots.

You must grow like a tree, not like a mushroom.

I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

With the exception of autotrophic bacteria, the green, or chlorophyll-bearing, plants are the only living forms on this planet capable of synthesizing organic matter out of inorganic elements and simple compounds.

Green, red, and mixed shades of haemins are known. If magnesium is replaced by iron in chlorophyll, green haemins are obtained. Their colour is due to a strong band in the red which is already recognized in chlorophyll.

A tree is an incomprehensible mystery.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

Trees are great. Don't get me started about how clever they are, how oxygen-generous, how time-formed in inner cyclic circles, how they provide homes for myriad creatures, how - back when this country was covered in forests - the word for sky was an Old English word that meant 'tops of trees.'

For a tree, to endure four months of daylight is like you or I going without sleep for four months.

Evolutionary biologists have long pondered the phenomenon of the changing colours of autumn leaves. It's possible that the red pigments are manufactured in the leaf as a side-effect of something else that's happening at this time.