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Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants
A brilliant evocation of the natural and genetic beauty of the plant world, in the form of a year-long journal from one of the world's leading biologists.
Nicholas Harberd, a father, scientist, and nature lover, spends his days at the lab directing a team discovering the secrets of how plants grow, using a common weed as their example. Concerned that he's losing sight of the weed's ordinary days in the world, he sets out to find an example of the same plant in the wild. And so begins this unique and beautiful book―part field notebook, part sketchbook, and part journal. Building on a narrative of the passing seasons of 2004, Harberd relates that narrative to the life history of what becomes an iconic plant. As a biologist and close observer, he is able to describe both what is visible and the hidden molecular mechanisms that underlie the visible events in the plant's life. In the process, he reveals what the daily life of a scientist truly is.
Beautifully produced, with dozens of diagrams and drawings, and written with thoughtfulness and passion, Seed to Seed is a testament to the wonder of the world around us.
Nicholas Harberd, a father, scientist, and nature lover, spends his days at the lab directing a team discovering the secrets of how plants grow, using a common weed as their example. Concerned that he's losing sight of the weed's ordinary days in the world, he sets out to find an example of the same plant in the wild. And so begins this unique and beautiful book―part field notebook, part sketchbook, and part journal. Building on a narrative of the passing seasons of 2004, Harberd relates that narrative to the life history of what becomes an iconic plant. As a biologist and close observer, he is able to describe both what is visible and the hidden molecular mechanisms that underlie the visible events in the plant's life. In the process, he reveals what the daily life of a scientist truly is.
Beautifully produced, with dozens of diagrams and drawings, and written with thoughtfulness and passion, Seed to Seed is a testament to the wonder of the world around us.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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361 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 18, 2011
Stunning book on the science of plant genetics - stunning in that I could understand it!
He wrote beautifully. The journal style helped considerably + the sheer curiosity of how an author could make an entire book based on some tiny Thrale Cress plants which displayed a mutation and which he had discovered in a churchyard.
The book has much more to it than that; considerable amounts of science explained for the layman, accounts of his excitements and trials in his professional work in plant genetics, his sense of wonder and delight in the natural world, some endearing descriptions of his cycle rides around the area he lives in, and the involvement and at times non-involvement of his children in his fascination with his churchyard plants.
Loved the book and learnt an awful lot from it in the best possible way.
He wrote beautifully. The journal style helped considerably + the sheer curiosity of how an author could make an entire book based on some tiny Thrale Cress plants which displayed a mutation and which he had discovered in a churchyard.
The book has much more to it than that; considerable amounts of science explained for the layman, accounts of his excitements and trials in his professional work in plant genetics, his sense of wonder and delight in the natural world, some endearing descriptions of his cycle rides around the area he lives in, and the involvement and at times non-involvement of his children in his fascination with his churchyard plants.
Loved the book and learnt an awful lot from it in the best possible way.
August 4, 2023
This was really refreshing in that it’s nothing like anything I’ve read before. It’s in concept incredibly boring, but the writing style is captivating and beautiful so it’s easy to stick with. I feel like I learned a lot just by farmiliar using myself with the biology terms and systems that he writes about. Definitely makes me want to read more about the plants and the environment around me.
I found it really cool to see that the author, who is an extremely intelligent and important biologist, has the same observations I have had about the way that science can feel really inaccessible; with letters and symbols that have a hard time connecting in our minds with the matter they represent.
If I’m so honest, I found this book at the vacation house I stayed at and I didn’t have time to finish the whole thing, and it’s a rather obscure book that I don’t think I’ll be able to find again. But I read a lot of it and if it ever does find me again I will finish it. I know my Goodreads followers don’t really care but I’m mentioning it anyway because yes I will be marking it as read because I want to so shhhhh.
I found it really cool to see that the author, who is an extremely intelligent and important biologist, has the same observations I have had about the way that science can feel really inaccessible; with letters and symbols that have a hard time connecting in our minds with the matter they represent.
If I’m so honest, I found this book at the vacation house I stayed at and I didn’t have time to finish the whole thing, and it’s a rather obscure book that I don’t think I’ll be able to find again. But I read a lot of it and if it ever does find me again I will finish it. I know my Goodreads followers don’t really care but I’m mentioning it anyway because yes I will be marking it as read because I want to so shhhhh.
April 3, 2023
this was a bittersweet read, as while i enjoyed it, it gave me a lot of regret over how i treated my university work and a strong desire to redo it. despite that this was a charming read, for those with any level of prior knowledge in plants. good blend of well explained science and charming landscape descriptions and small pieces of philosophical thought. my only issues being that - firstly, sometimes the language feels purple prose-ish and pretentious; secondly, the author makes a LOT of points many times over. which was sometimes good, sometimes annoying. despite that I'm glad i read this and would recommend to anyone looking for a new kind of sciencey book.
July 9, 2017
So there is a small, not especially important animal, called the fruit fly. Of course, all animals are equally important, in some sense, but the fruit fly is not as directly important to humans in the ways that, say, dogs or horses or pigs or sheep are. They are, however, easy to breed in a laboratory and (relatively) easy to study, so they are probably the most studied animal there is. In some ways, we know more about fruit flies than we do about humans.
There is a plant which holds a similar role in botany, to the role which the fruit fly holds in zoology. It is the thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana. It is the (relatively) simple and easy to study plant, which the botanist community has decided to concentrate on, because knowing a lot about one plant can help you understand how the pieces go together, in a way that you would not if you spread your efforts equally among all plants.
Nicholas Harberd had spent several years studying the thale cress, and had achieved some success doing so, when he came upon the scientific equivalent of writer's block. What to investigate next? It is not enough to know of interesting questions; you have to know what question to investigate for your very next step. Something not known, but which the path towards is clear.
In a case of surprising self-awareness, or perhaps just luck, he decided to go find a thale-cress in the wild, outside of his lab, and observe it. Of course, the fact that the thale-cress is easy to grow in the lab was one of the reasons why the botany community chose it, so this might seem to be missing the point. Halberd had the feeling, though, that seeing it in a more natural, uncontrolled environment might help to jog his imagination and show how to take the next step forward.
He found a thale-cress (or three) growing in the wild, so to speak, but only sort of. It was, in fact, on a gravesite, in the graveyard near a church. He observed it from 8 January to 18 December, 2004. He mixes in his personal life (bringing his son and/or daughter along some of the time, he tells us about the differences between his response and theirs to the environment around them) and his professional life (trouble writing papers, occasional breakthroughs, trips abroad for conferences) with what he sees of the plant whenever he returns to it.
He is a decent illustrator, and we get sketches of it at every stage. He is also quite good at hopping levels, from the molecular to the genetic to the botanical to the human, explaining how it all connects together. Also, midway through the year, he gets the mental breakthrough that he was looking for, and it provides him with material for several fruitful lines of research.
He is also a decent writer, and the verbal sketches he provides us have an almost meditative quality at times. He is here, at this spot (whether fen or church graveyard or his home or on vacation in Mallorca), and this is what he saw and felt, and this is the effect it had on him. His prose is not elaborate or impressive, but there are a number of scenes that I can see vividly in my memory now, as if I had lived them or at least seen the movie.
What it provides for us, is a snapshot of the way that science actually happens, as a very messy and somewhat scattershot human activity. It is a mixture of lightbulb inspiration and meticulous, tedious follow-through and attention to detail, with many a risk of spending months going down an intellectual dead end. It is not dispassionate, nor neat and tidy, and it is carried out by human beings who don't always know exactly what they should do next, or how, and who sometimes have to act on a hunch.
Involving, as it necessarily must (not-really-a-spoiler alert) the eventual death of the plant, it also has a meditative quality because it takes us full circle. What is it for? It is its own answer, and if you do not understand the full cycle, you probably won't be able to understand that answer. There are men and women out there, right now, expending their mental energies, and in a very real sense their entire lives, to bring back the knowledge of how life works. There have never in human history been more excellent books written, for the interested layperson, by those who have gained that knowledge. Don't spend your entire cycle without looking at what they have to say.
There is a plant which holds a similar role in botany, to the role which the fruit fly holds in zoology. It is the thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana. It is the (relatively) simple and easy to study plant, which the botanist community has decided to concentrate on, because knowing a lot about one plant can help you understand how the pieces go together, in a way that you would not if you spread your efforts equally among all plants.
Nicholas Harberd had spent several years studying the thale cress, and had achieved some success doing so, when he came upon the scientific equivalent of writer's block. What to investigate next? It is not enough to know of interesting questions; you have to know what question to investigate for your very next step. Something not known, but which the path towards is clear.
In a case of surprising self-awareness, or perhaps just luck, he decided to go find a thale-cress in the wild, outside of his lab, and observe it. Of course, the fact that the thale-cress is easy to grow in the lab was one of the reasons why the botany community chose it, so this might seem to be missing the point. Halberd had the feeling, though, that seeing it in a more natural, uncontrolled environment might help to jog his imagination and show how to take the next step forward.
He found a thale-cress (or three) growing in the wild, so to speak, but only sort of. It was, in fact, on a gravesite, in the graveyard near a church. He observed it from 8 January to 18 December, 2004. He mixes in his personal life (bringing his son and/or daughter along some of the time, he tells us about the differences between his response and theirs to the environment around them) and his professional life (trouble writing papers, occasional breakthroughs, trips abroad for conferences) with what he sees of the plant whenever he returns to it.
He is a decent illustrator, and we get sketches of it at every stage. He is also quite good at hopping levels, from the molecular to the genetic to the botanical to the human, explaining how it all connects together. Also, midway through the year, he gets the mental breakthrough that he was looking for, and it provides him with material for several fruitful lines of research.
He is also a decent writer, and the verbal sketches he provides us have an almost meditative quality at times. He is here, at this spot (whether fen or church graveyard or his home or on vacation in Mallorca), and this is what he saw and felt, and this is the effect it had on him. His prose is not elaborate or impressive, but there are a number of scenes that I can see vividly in my memory now, as if I had lived them or at least seen the movie.
What it provides for us, is a snapshot of the way that science actually happens, as a very messy and somewhat scattershot human activity. It is a mixture of lightbulb inspiration and meticulous, tedious follow-through and attention to detail, with many a risk of spending months going down an intellectual dead end. It is not dispassionate, nor neat and tidy, and it is carried out by human beings who don't always know exactly what they should do next, or how, and who sometimes have to act on a hunch.
Involving, as it necessarily must (not-really-a-spoiler alert) the eventual death of the plant, it also has a meditative quality because it takes us full circle. What is it for? It is its own answer, and if you do not understand the full cycle, you probably won't be able to understand that answer. There are men and women out there, right now, expending their mental energies, and in a very real sense their entire lives, to bring back the knowledge of how life works. There have never in human history been more excellent books written, for the interested layperson, by those who have gained that knowledge. Don't spend your entire cycle without looking at what they have to say.
April 14, 2015
Though a non-fiction, it is so good a book that I could not put it down!
The author, Nicholas Harberd, is one of the world's leading plant biologists, and professor of Plant Sciences, his descriptions of nature are very detailed. At times it take all of ones concentration and perhaps some previous knowledge of botany to follow his line of thought. I've learnt quite a bit about plant biology while reading this book, it is so very interesting. The author does liven the text up by treating the explanation of his research in the form of a diary, making it both pleasurable and easy enough to read. I have really enjoyed this book, and it's surely another one to recommend especially for those interested in plant life and science.
The author, Nicholas Harberd, is one of the world's leading plant biologists, and professor of Plant Sciences, his descriptions of nature are very detailed. At times it take all of ones concentration and perhaps some previous knowledge of botany to follow his line of thought. I've learnt quite a bit about plant biology while reading this book, it is so very interesting. The author does liven the text up by treating the explanation of his research in the form of a diary, making it both pleasurable and easy enough to read. I have really enjoyed this book, and it's surely another one to recommend especially for those interested in plant life and science.
September 25, 2010
Too much personal life, not enough science. Written like this. Short, sentence fragments. Highly annoying. Pseudo-profundities about natural philosophy thrown in. If wanted memoir and not information, would have read one.
December 30, 2022
Nice mix of personal and scientific memoir, and nice explications of the functioning of DELLA proteins and interactions with hormones. The framing device of visiting the thale-cress growing in nature is nice, as are excursions with family and alone.
A knock is that the contributions of students and postdocs in the author's lab are subsumed within collective "we" "us" "our" performing experiments and making empirical progress, while the "I" of the author contributes the transformative ideas and insights. I don't recall a single mention of a student or postdoc, and the scope of their contributions is held back until the Acknowledgements. This is a common stance in such writing but is not a fair description of the process and is also unnecessary, as the occasional "when discussing some experiments with postdoc A" or "grad student D suggested" detracts not a bit from the flow and gives the contributions of the many other people directly involved a more apparent place. It is unfortunate whether it is the PI's choice or the recommendation of an editor/publisher.
A knock is that the contributions of students and postdocs in the author's lab are subsumed within collective "we" "us" "our" performing experiments and making empirical progress, while the "I" of the author contributes the transformative ideas and insights. I don't recall a single mention of a student or postdoc, and the scope of their contributions is held back until the Acknowledgements. This is a common stance in such writing but is not a fair description of the process and is also unnecessary, as the occasional "when discussing some experiments with postdoc A" or "grad student D suggested" detracts not a bit from the flow and gives the contributions of the many other people directly involved a more apparent place. It is unfortunate whether it is the PI's choice or the recommendation of an editor/publisher.
April 1, 2025
I'm not sure why people said this book was easily understood, even to non-scientists. I have a science background and I found the parts of the book that discussed plant genetics fairly difficult. I felt like I was in a science class, and at this point in my life I don't need to struggle to understand my pleasure reading. Also, someone should have edited the book before it was released to the unsuspecting public. This man is clearly quite bright, but his use of sentence fragments was SO annoying. This was obviously not the book for me.
February 21, 2019
I love reading about plants, unfortunately, I did not thoroughly enjoy this book as I would have thought.
August 31, 2020
Wonderful descriptions of the seasons changing alongside scientific research, musings and excellent descriptions suitable and reasonable for a non scientist.
July 30, 2024
Really good - I never studied Biology or Chemistry but even I was able to follow and understand his explanations
August 26, 2016
Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants is an absolutely gorgeous book. It is poetry in disguise. Nicholas Harberd (University of Oxford Professor of Plant Sciences) writes with an infectious sense of wonder, vision of unity, and deep specificity. Form and content are perfectly aligned with his journal format, and one feels she is living by his side, he seems so alive and attuned to the sky and the trees and the leaves. One wants to linger in the "pearly mists" of his mind for a long while. Here are some quotes:
"I need to define a question. If I can work out what the next question is, the path will become clearer." (13)
"Life is in layers. We can see it at different levels of abstraction. On different scales. There are the molecules, the proteins, the carbohydrates, the cellulose, and the DNA..." (46)
"To feel almost part of the patches of blue sky." (67)
"There was something new about the world this morning. Something in the quality of the light. It flowed into the room when I pulled back the curtain, banana yellow and soft, something to swim in." (138)
"Sometimes the best ideas - the newest ways of seeing the world - are the most fragile." (214)
"I love the phenomenal, the sense of being in contact with the world that always seems so much stronger here." (220)
"Science concentrates the mind relentlessly on the subject in its view, to the exclusion of the rest of life. Insensitive concentration, separating science from the world. I think these notes are an attempt to address this contradiction." (222)
"I think we should assert the continuing appropriateness of awe." (229)
"The closer we observe - the more we focus on something in isolation - the less we see the world as a whole." (247)
Of course, it is Harberd's ability to so closely focus on a plant's cell walls and protein sequences, while simultaneously conveying an appreciation for the beauty of the world at his feet, that makes this a phenomenal read.
"I need to define a question. If I can work out what the next question is, the path will become clearer." (13)
"Life is in layers. We can see it at different levels of abstraction. On different scales. There are the molecules, the proteins, the carbohydrates, the cellulose, and the DNA..." (46)
"To feel almost part of the patches of blue sky." (67)
"There was something new about the world this morning. Something in the quality of the light. It flowed into the room when I pulled back the curtain, banana yellow and soft, something to swim in." (138)
"Sometimes the best ideas - the newest ways of seeing the world - are the most fragile." (214)
"I love the phenomenal, the sense of being in contact with the world that always seems so much stronger here." (220)
"Science concentrates the mind relentlessly on the subject in its view, to the exclusion of the rest of life. Insensitive concentration, separating science from the world. I think these notes are an attempt to address this contradiction." (222)
"I think we should assert the continuing appropriateness of awe." (229)
"The closer we observe - the more we focus on something in isolation - the less we see the world as a whole." (247)
Of course, it is Harberd's ability to so closely focus on a plant's cell walls and protein sequences, while simultaneously conveying an appreciation for the beauty of the world at his feet, that makes this a phenomenal read.
January 11, 2013
This book chronicles the year in the life of a plant geneticist and it does so in diary form. To me this book appears to be really two books in one: the first book is a small primer on the latest insights on what drives plant growth (the 'release of restraint' mechanism a wonderfully complex way in which a plant combines inputs from the internal and external world to make *decisions*). The second book is the dribble of a secure life: endless descriptions of the weather, holidays, work trips and half-assed almost mystic pondering on how reductionism destroys holistic understanding. It's not very good but on the other hand: step-to-step overviews of genetic pathways make tough reading and maybe another description of autumn weather makes the technical bits more palatable by spacing them out.
January 31, 2017
I was initially unsure if I would make it through the entire book. The opening pages are slow with very little science. The whole book is slow and the author spends large sections on each day's weather and vaguely philosophical tangents but science is wonderfully presented. I learned a lot despite having studied some plant physiology in college. I found the concepts stimulating and the experiments elegant. The authors intention in including so much material not directly connected to plant science is to remind himself and the reader that the plants physiological processes are not remote from the world we live in but are a response to the seasons and underlie the changes in plants we observe without thinking. Even cellular biology is connected to the outside world. I loved the book and found the authors meditations peaceful to read. I was sad to leave him when it finished.
February 16, 2016
To the end it got more and more difficult to be involved with it. This is mostly because of the fact my English is average. So I recommend to read it translated if English is not your native language.
May 28, 2008
Science and philosophy about plants and life. VERY GOOD! Ku - You should read this one!
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February 23, 2010have
January 19, 2013
Some very interesting plant biology managed to sneak between bland the observations on general life.
September 27, 2016
Not for everyone, but if you have an inclination for the hidden world in a very scientific trajectory, you will enjoy.
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