ranunculus and the squid

Maureen Corrigan on Gail Godwin’s new novel, Flora:

“Children are like bombs that will one day go off.” That’s a line that Gail Godwin says also served as inspiration for her novel, Flora. Godwin wrote the line in one of her journals, which she started keeping at the age of 12. Godwin is still writing in her journals and drawing upon them to explore the more out-of-the-way reaches of women’s interior lives.

Apparently Sir Joseph Paxton’s structural ideas for the Crystal Palace came from plants - and more specifically the Victoria Regia Lily pictured, which were later cultivated inside the palace.

I don’t know about you guys, but it’s still feeling gloomy and cold over here on the east coast. Here’s to keeping our spirits up and our minds on warmer and drier days.

- Heidi

Reading Back Words Our booksellers’ recommendations on what you should read right now.

Ginkgo, by Peter Crane

Ginkgo. Yes, the beautiful tree with the awful smell (though the smell is really just the butyric acid in the fruit). There’’s much more to the ginkgo than this, and Peter Crane combines science, culture, and history to tell this tree’’s fascinating life story, a story that began some 200 million years ago in the Early Triassic period. Following the fossil record, Crane traces the ginkgo’’s ancestors back in time and around the world; some images of the ancient leaves are remarkably well preserved (Crane explains why) and immediately recognizable as ginkgo. In addition to the perseverance that earned it the status of a “living fossil,” the species is also capable of growing for over 2,000 years, reaching heights of nearly 200 feet and surviving atomic bombs. Possibly extinct in the wild but found almost everywhere thanks to human cultivation, the ginkgo flourishes in cities and parks and, in the East, graces shrines and temples, —partaking of the sacred, if not actually endowing these sites with it.