Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly

In this expert debut, Cardina explores humans' 'long and ongoing relationship with weedy plants.' Focused and fascinating. * Publisher's Weekly * [John Cardina's] penetrating analysis disentangles botany from history by offering eight interwoven stories, each focused on one weed, some familiar, others less so. * Nature * Cardina weaves together autobiographical and historical anecdotes, precise explanations of plant biology, and speculative but startlingly plausible evolutionary scenarios involving human agency and facilitation for eight common plant species currently considered weeds, or "plants of disrepute." The result is a series of highly readable vignettes about agricultural weeds and their interaction with human culture. Students and researchers in agriculture and ecology will likely enjoy reading Cardina's witty natural history of weedy plants and should consider his suggestions for how and why to treat them with greater respect. * Choice * Blending personal anecdotes of eight weedy plants with research from a broad range of disciplines, Cardina covers a diversity of topics in a remarkably fluid and comprehensive manner. Drawing upon such fields as botany, ecology, evolutionary biology, conservation, and agriculture, the book is a captivating and accessible narrative of humanity's complex and intermingled relationship with the "botanical misfits" commonly referred to as weeds. * Economic Botany *