The History of the World in 100 Plants
Simon Barnes
(Simon & Schuster, £30)
WE have become used, in recent years, to the convention of 100 short essays as a means of raising the reader’s eyebrows and setting away a never-ending series of big ideas from the starting point of an everyday object. Simon Barnes, a man of intelligence, experience and observation, has come up with another version of this format, on the theme of plants. There are ornamental and economic plants, trees, climbers, perennials, nuts, fruits, grasses and a few marginal entries, such as fungi, which not everyone classifies as plants, as the author acknowledges. We needn’t worry about such quibbles, however, as the key idea is to engage with the power and glory of the plant world and this style of thought-provoking pub chat is an enjoyable way of doing it.
The contents leap consciously from one plant type to another quite different, so that there
