The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

by Michael Pollan

Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.

“Flying penises” is what one botanist called bees.

“If we could hear the squirrel’s heartbeat, the sound of the grass growing, we should die of that roar,” George Eliot once wrote.