Bloomsense: The Hidden Biology, Stories and Meaning of Flowers

We treat flowers as decoration. They are nothing of the kind. For the person who slows down at every garden, every windowsill, every roadside weed. The one who's never quite stopped looking.A flower is a living instrument - engineered over a hundred million years to summon, signal, deceive and reward, all without moving from the spot. And around that quiet biology we have wound something just as intricate: the meanings we give flowers, the messages we send with them, the myths and folklore we have grown around every petal and thorn. Bloomsense is a journey into both: the hidden science of how flowers actually work, and the secret language we have always spoken through them.From the covert chemistry a bloom uses to talk to a passing bee, to the Victorian language of flowers that let lovers speak in bouquets; from the mythology and folklore rooted in the garden, to the sheer ingenuity of a flower's design - this is the story of the most familiar, and most quietly misunderstood, life around us.Written for anyone who has ever paused to look a moment longer, Bloomsense turns a walk past the border into an act of wonder. Lyrical, surprising and beautifully illustrated, it is a book to keep close and return to - and to give to someone who still stops to look.