The library
Stories
Long reads and short finds: the plants in our lives, and what they reveal about us.
- EssayNo. 13Breakfast: the plant is half the recipeSeason I opens with the first meal of the day, and the plants on its table
- Long readNo. 11The Poor Man's BowlThe finest tea in Japan is grown in the dark and drunk from bowls that look like nothing. For four hundred years, looking like nothing has been the expensive part
- Long readNo. 10Bread by DecreeContinental bread really is better, and a plant magazine would love to say it's the wheat. It isn't. It's time, and the living things that use it
- Long readNo. 09The Recipe Left BehindMaize is a plant that people made, and it has never been able to manage without them. When it crossed the ocean, the half of the bargain that lived in the kitchen stayed behind
- Long readNo. 08Food for HorsesSamuel Johnson's most famous insult was true. It was also unfair, and in the end a breakfast beat it
- Long readNo. 07Too Many CallersHow a merchant's problem with visitors taught London to talk to strangers, and what London did with the talk