Hope Jahren 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.

Spring, when the earth tilts closer to the sun, runs a strict timetable of flowers.

For an Apple is in it self a little Universe; the Seed, hotter than the other parts thereof, is its Sun, which diffuses about it self that natural Heat which preserves its Globe: And in the Onion, the Germ is the little Sun of that little World, which vivifies and nourishes the vegetative Salt of that little mass.

Next it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the same in the plant, that it was the living part of the plant, that which manifested the life and did the work in vegetable as well as in animal organisms.

As a result of the carbon-dioxide enrichment of the Earth's atmosphere, plants are now growing faster. Furthermore, global warming lengthens the growing season and increases net rainfall.

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.

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

In April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.

In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs.

Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.

There are cases in which the blade springs, but the plant does not go on to flower. There are cases where it flowers, but no fruit is subsequently produced.

You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! ... Then what becomes of it? Wonderful is it to find that the change produced by respiration ... is the very life and support of plants and vegetables that grow upon the surface of the earth.

One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.

You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not.

The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds.

All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.

The blooming of a flower is, in my mind, not a miracle. It's something that we can understand on the basis of molecular biology these days.

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Life set itself to new processions of seed-time and harvest, the skin newly turned to seasonal variations, the very blood humming to new altitudes.

One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb.

Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be aiding to grow in it.

Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run.

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.