two bits of surreal botany news
I and several of my Surreal Botany authors will be appearing on Jim Freund's radio show Hour of the Wolf this Saturday morning at the asscrack of dawn (i.e. 5-7 a.m.). The show will be broadcast in the New York area on WBAI 99.5 FM and streamed live at stream.wbai.org, and then archived afterward for on-demand listening at archive.wbai.org. If you're up that early, please tune in (although I'll understand if you need the sleep).
The journal Science will be reviewing Surreal Botany in the 19 December issue:
With its delicate illustrations, Latin names, notes on ecology and life cycle, and seemingly aged paper, this appears to be an old-fashioned botanical treatise. What makes the imagined species so much fun is the extent of the details, which draw the reader into plausible descriptions that suddenly take a turn to the bizarre. It is hard to pick a favorite, but contenders include the kvetching aspen (the only known tree with a mating cry, which resembles the call of a stilter's jay), the wind melon (which can levitate), the twilight luon-sibir (which has an "abyss-probability" center), and the bone garden (bottom right, also known as Adam's ribcage). The small book is a bit of lunacy sure to appeal to slightly twisted plant lovers.
W00ts!