Delighted to be in conservation about the marvels of flowers with @breezybrik.bsky.social in @sciam.bsky.social Listen: www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/epis... And online article: www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...
David G Haskell
@dghaskell.bsky.social
Writer, biologist 🌻How Flowers Made our World, now in bookstores! Sounds Wild and Broken 13 Ways to Smell a Tree The Songs of Trees The Forest Unseen
For no particular reason, I've just read two books about plants that I recommend. How Flowers Made Our World by @dghaskell.bsky.social: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/775876... The Light Eaters by @zoeschlanger.bsky.social: www.harpercollins.com/products/the...
I'll be speaking this Thursday at 6pm @ Cambridge Public Library. Flowers as catalysts for life's diversity, creativity, and vitality! Please let your Cambridge/Boston friends know 🏵️ Free reg: cambridgepl.libcal.com/event/17160556
CPL Presents: David George Haskell (Main/Virtual)
Join the Cambridge Public Library in celebrating our Summer Reading theme—“Plant a seed, read!”—by gathering with us for a reading and talk with author and biologist, David George ...
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Jewelweed launch velocity varies from 0.2 to 4 m/s. Data from Hayashi, M, KL Feilich, and DJ Ellerby. "The mechanics of explosive seed dispersal in orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis)." Journal of experimental botany 60, no. 7 (2009): 2045-2053. www.instagram.com/reel/DbEQs0G...
David George Haskell on Instagram: "Bang! The five walls of the pod coil inward, slapping against the seeds and sending them spinning away. Launch velocity varies from 0. 2 to 4 m/s. Data from: Haya...
0 likes, 0 comments - davidgeorgehaskell on July 21, 2026: "Bang! The five walls of the pod coil inward, slapping against the seeds and sending them spinning away. Launch velocity varies from 0. 2 to...
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On the other hand, squash bees: www.instagram.com/p/Da74DoqRPCq/
davidgeorgehaskell on Instagram: "In the early morning, look in your squash plants for these amazing bees. They have longer antennae, friendlier faces, and more gold…"
In the early morning, look in your squash plants for these amazing bees. They have longer antennae, friendlier faces, and more golden thoraxes than other bumble-like bees. Quite why they only fly in the early morning, sometimes well before dawn, I don't know. Perhaps to avoid hungry birds? To get the day's first flush of nectar? I think this one may be Xenoglossa pruinosa but I am no bee expert and am happy to be corrected
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Let's celebrate some flowers. Please join me at an upcoming event! Details and registration here: dghaskell.com/speaking/
As you enjoy your morning coffee, did you know that bees can be addicted to caffeine, too — the original “caffeine buzz”? (Excerpt is from @dghaskell.bsky.social’s excellent “How Flowers Made Our World”.)
The level of punnery in this thread is perfect for Fathers Day. I for one am conflicted as an anti-monarchist who wants to cheer on the valiant soldiers of the Protista Kingdom
Thor Benson@thorbenson.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe reflecting pool is being sabotaged by paid protistas
France will be at the epicenter of the most significant heat anomaly on the planet over the next few days. The sheer extent of the country that could experience temperatures above 40°C is nothing short of astonishing.
What to do with the freshly torn-down letters from the Kennedy Center? Give them to artists who can then melt them down and make...[the floor is open]
For many flowers, aromas and visual signals are strongest when the flower is shedding pollen. So give the fathers in your life flowers this year 🌼 The symbolism of flowers belong to all.
Next, they'll shoot love darts at one another Lapidary snails (Helicigona lapicida) getting amorous in the rain, southern France For more on the endlessly fascinating and highly contorted subject of snail love, check out the excellent recent @radiolab.bsky.social episode on the subject 🐌❤️🏹
Another rainy day and I’m curled up on the couch, thoroughly inspired by David George Haskell’s descriptions of how flowers transformed our planet, sustain us and connect us with nature in his latest delightful book. @dghaskell.bsky.social
Appalling focus in this article on the "threats" to US corporate profiteering from cancer. How about the benefits to, you know, human beings with cancer? A reminder that patients are commodities in US. "China’s Rise in Drug Development Looms Over U.S." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/b...
China’s Rise in Drug Development Looms Over U.S.
nytimes.com
Can we condemn the regime without making derogatory comments about the culture of rural America? The tsunami of comments/"jokes" about "white trash" and trailer parks feels like "deplorables 2.0". The problem is Trump, not that some folks, usually not urbane pundits, like to watch wrestling.
Nicotinotia, Magnolia, Robinia, Begonia ... so many plant names from 16-17th century French aristocrats, royal gardeners, diplomats, often people with little to no relationship with the actual living plants. My video over in Zuckerlandia: www.instagram.com/reel/DYzZIuG...
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
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Just finished reading @dghaskell.bsky.social new book "How Flowers Made Our World." It's the best kind of book, a work of beauty that transforms perception. I now understand flowers as life-shaping beings filled with evolutionary wisdom, which humans respond to out of our own evolutionary wisdom.
Lovely morning in West Marin at Commonweal hearing @dghaskell.bsky.social speaking about not just the biology of flowers but how we understand ourselves through flowers. And got to catch a few minutes chat with @ssparks.bsky.social while I distracted him from doing his business!
Chelsea Flower Show -- the elephant in the room = toxic chemicals and biodiversity collapse www.instagram.com/reel/DYhZciA...
🏵️Bay Area friends🍃: UC Botanical GardenBerkeley with Alexis Madrigal. May 20, 5:30pm Tama One, Olema. May 21. 4pm, Incense - To Burn, Forest, Fire by Katie Paterson, then Flowers 5pm reading and chat. Commonweal New School with Susan Grelock Yusem. Bolinas. May 22nd, 11am Links in comments
🎙️Combining scientific study with lived experience, @dghaskell.bsky.social's latest book, How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries, tells the story of the adaptability and cooperative nature of flowering plants. Listen here: www.wortfm.org/you-can-lear...
Loving this book -- highly recommended. It begins w a deep dive into magnolias, one of my favorite flowering trees.
David G Haskell@dghaskell.bsky.social · 4mo agoStunned and delighted that The New York Times has given How Flowers Made our World a wonderfully enthusiastic and generous review, penned by Adam Nicolson. Gift article: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/b...
Inside that spiky seed pod, elaiosomes attached to seeds. Ant snacks. The seed gets deposited in a nice underground ant compost heap. A great wildflower nursery. Working with ants in this way is called myrmecochory. A meadow of vocab. Glad to see one of my fav flowers leaping into the next gen
Bay Area friends: I'll be in conversation with Alexis Madrigal at University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley on May 20th. botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/event/how-fl...
Congratulations to the Pulitzer finalists and winners! I served on this year’s jury for the General Nonfiction category, alongside Luis Alberto Urrea (chair), Marcia Chatelain, Andrea Elliott, and David Greenberg. Three brilliant and important works stood out to all of us on the jury. Thread...
Flowers literally reinvented botanical motherhood, so this seems appropriate. Delighted to see How Flowers Made our World listed in NYT. Guess which kind of mother they thought would most like the book... www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/b...
Moving out to the 11th century step by step. Only 800 unelected cronies and two dozen bishops to go.
Kiran Stacey@kiranstacey.bsky.social · 3mo agoOne detail I hadn't realised about parliament finishing today - today is the last day a hereditary peer will ever sit in the House of Lords.
A joy to join Alan Alda to chat about flowers, scicomm, and why "weeds" give me confidence (com-fidere = trusting together). Also: Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek meets Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene in an impressionable teenage mind clear-vivid-with-alan-alda.simplecast.com/episodes/dav...
