SOMEONE INFORM ME EXACTLY HOW I MISSED THAT THE BADASS KEW PLANT GOD PUBLISHED A BOOK ABOUT HIS BADASS PLANT ADVENTURES???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
i ordered it bc i have no self control
update: this shipped out today but it’ll take 8-12 days to get here and im dying. carlos magdalena why must u do this to me
okay so i got this book today and spent like 6 hours reading it and im almost done but i really wanna talk about this plant nerd and his many endangered plonts that he loves and protects with all his heart and soul
carlos magdalena, kew botanical horticulturalist, is honestly an unproblematic fave
also btw heres some pics of carlos with the smallest water lily in the world, which he saved from extinction. he talks in the book about how he learned later on that at the time he finally figured out how to propagate this species in cultivation, rats had broken in and killed the only other specimens in the world at the german conservatory they were being kept at, and the habitat where the 1 or 2 wild plants had been living had been destroyed for a concrete company. he had been working with the last seeds in literal existence without knowing it (he had assumed they were still alive) and the other scientists and botanical horticulturalists in germany had been living in grief over having lost this plant to apparent extinction. he originally had 200 seeds recruited for trying to cultivate the species, and by the time he realized how to cultivate it, he had been working with the last 5 seeds in the world. he didn’t know at the time. (x)
Nava 