Robert Fortune 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 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.

A living tree is a changing, sleeve shape, a wet, thin, bright green creature that survives in the thin layer between heartwood and bark. It stands waiting for light, which it catches in the close-woven sieves of its leaves.

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

The developing science departs at the same time more and more from its original scope and purpose and threatens to sacrifice its earlier unity and split into diverse branches.

Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.

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

Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it.

When the yields of biofuels per hectare are known, one can easily calculate how much of the energy of the sunlight is stored in the biofuels.

Being a baseball player is most important, first and foremost. Obviously, there are other obligations that come with everything. You just need to balance it and take it in stride, but at the same time, be mindful of your time and prioritize everything and what is most beneficial.

Plants are decisive to a fault. A stem produces a bud that flowers once and once only. It offers pollen that is either dispersed or goes nowhere. One pollen grain either enters a stigma or it falls upon stony ground. An ovum is either fertilized or the whole project stalls out.

While both plants and animals awaken via distinct changes in metabolic functioning, most plants prefer to err on the side of caution, waiting for hints of full-on summer before they bloom.

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

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I haven't quite got over the miracle that you plant things, and they do sprout up.

As a competitor, you want to be out there. It's always tough to watch others play and know you've put in the time, you've put in work. But at the same time, you have to support them. You're a teammate, and you have to be the best teammate you can be and go out and continue to better, and hopefully you get an opportunity.

What is a berry? It is an ovary swaddled within a sugary womb. Plainly put, a berry is the fruition of a flower - the ultimate tautology.

Trees and flowers are so important. The idea of blooming is the idea of becoming something different.

I've been a workaholic for many years, but at the same time, I do it because I love it.

You cannot increase the efficiency of photosynthesis. We improve the performance of farms by irrigating them and fertilizing them to provide all these nutrients. But we cannot keep on doubling the yield every two years. Moore's law doesn't apply to plants.

Pulmonarias need splitting every two or three years, as they rapidly develop into a doughnut with an empty centre that quickly gets filled with weeds.

Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.

The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing.

The sun gives spirit and life to the plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.