THE PRIVATE LIFE OF PLANTS.

UK,Qrto HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj - absence of publisher's price - assumed an export edn, which it is believed,precedes the UK trade issue/distribution.Bright, crisp,clean,glossy laminated,colour photographic illustrated dw/dj panels,plant to front with white+green lettering,similar lettering to spine/backstrip,rear panel with author's portrait colour photograph; all with negligible shelf-wear or creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top+fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright, tight,clean,solid and sound - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,appears unread - apart from my own collation. Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original plain maroon cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/ backstrip,a red headband and immaculate plain white endpapers. Production fault to prelims (pp1-8: half-title+title pages,contents list/table and first 2pp of the introduction) over-sized and untrimmed.UK,Qrto HB+dw/dj,1st edn,8-320pp [paginated] includes author's introduction,6 chapters, subjects' (plants) profuse colour photographs interspersed throughout the text and the book,acknowledgements,and an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title with colour photographic frntis to reverse,title page,contents list/table and first page of the introduction these being joined at lower corner and untrimmed.
Without plants,there would be no food,no animals of any sort,no life on Earth at all.yet for most of the time their lives renmain a secret to us,hidden,private events.
The reason is merely a difference of time.Plants live on a different time-scale from ours.Though not obviously to the naked eye,they are constantly on the move: developing,fighting, avoiding or exploiting predators or neighbours,struggling to find food,to increase their territories,to reproduce themselves,to find and hold a place in the sun.We only need to learn to look.
In this book,and his BBC television series,David Attenborough does look.He examines in turn the great trials of plant life the world over: 1 Travelling,2 Growing,3 Flowering,4 The Social Struggle,5 Living Together and 6 Surviving. David Attenborough shows us the natural world and how it works,with a clarity and infectious enthusiasm that few other writers or film-makers have matched.One of the most successful teachers of the late 20th cebtury,his books and films are consistently of the highest quality.'The Private Life of plants' is central to his work,the background to all that he has studied so far.
Given this fascinating new view of vegetable life,anything that grows on soil or rock or water,in open country or the smallest garden, suddenly seems quite different: less gentle altogether,in restless motion night and day,locked in the endless competition necessary for survival.
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