Fantastic Flora: The World's Biggest, Baddest, and Smelliest Plants - by Ann McCallum Staats (Hardcover)

About the Book

"From deadly nightshade to the flying duck orchid, discover how some of the biggest, baddest, smelliest, and strangest plants around the globe earn their reputation as masters of survival."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

From deadly nightshade to the flying duck orchid, discover how some of the biggest, baddest, smelliest, and strangest plants around the globe earn their reputation as masters of survival.

Ready to meet some far-out flora? Leaf through this book and you'll unearth some of the amazing adaptations that help plants thrive: Seeds that explode. Leaves that look like stones. Berries so deadly that swallowing just a few will stop your heart. A plant that eats meat, and another that pretends to be meat--rotten meat, with a smell so rank you'll want to plug your nose. Dig in to the science of plant survival in a botanical book blooming with lush illustrations and filled with engagingly narrated, fascinating facts about how plants flourish, even in the most extreme environments on earth. A glossary, source notes, index, and select bibliography round out the back matter for readers eager to know more.

Review Quotes

Budding botanophiles won't be the only audience for this widely focused ramble through the plant kingdom, as the author charges up general introductions to flowers, seeds and seed banks, plants in space, and more, including basic plant parts in general, from cellular leaf structures on up, with a dozen extreme, uncommon, or sometimes downright lurid examples.
--Booklist

These smoothly written, chatty entries cover a great deal of material, such as scientific names and details about related plants. . . . Ingram includes both lush, striking illustrations of the plants as well as diagrams and close-ups of individual elements. . . . An attractive package that will intrigue and enlighten readers.
--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Ann McCallum Staats is the author of numerous children's books, including the Eat Your Homework series, which garnered two Junior Library Guild Selections and a Bank Street College of Education's Best Children's Book of the Year; The Secret Life of Math; and High Flyers: 15 Inspiring Women Aviators and Astronauts. She has a master's degree in education and lives in Virginia with her family.

Zoë Ingram is an artist, designer, and author. With an honors degree in industrial design for textiles and a career in graphic design and the creative arts spanning over twenty years, she primarily works with mixed media and digital applications, often combining both traditional and digital techniques. You'll find her work on fabric, stationery, greetings cards, magazines, books, and home décor products. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.