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    The Nature Book: What It Is and How It Lives
    The Nature Book: What It Is and How It Lives
    The Nature Book: What It Is and How It Lives
    Ebook189 pages1 hour

    The Nature Book: What It Is and How It Lives

    By Marianne Taylor

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    About this ebook

    There is so much to know about the ever changing natural world, but it's impossible to remember everything we have ever learnt about the range of subjects encompassed by the term 'nature'. The Nature Book is a great guide to the natural world, both for the beginner and those who want to relearn the most important and interesting facts about our fascinating environment.

    Including:
    Identifying rock formations
    Names of berries
    Flora and fauna
    Phases of the moon
    The seasons
    Seas and rivers
    Birds and other wildlife

    Comprehensive, yet accessible and entertaining, whether you're a walker who would like to be able to 'name that tree' or simply a gardener who wants to know more, The Nature Book is your one-stop guide to reconnecting and appreciating nature once more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael O'Mara
    Release dateDec 11, 2013
    ISBN9781782432432
    The Nature Book: What It Is and How It Lives
    Author

    Marianne Taylor

    Marianne Taylor is a writer and editor, with a lifelong interest in science and nature. After seven years working for book and magazine publishers, she took the leap into the freelance world, and has since written ten books on wildlife, science and general natural history. She is also an illustrator and keen photographer, and when not at her desk or out with her camera she enjoys running, practicing aikido, and helping out at the local cat rescue center.

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      Book preview

      The Nature Book - Marianne Taylor

      The Nature Book

      First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

      Michael O’Mara Books Limited

      9 Lion Yard

      Tremadoc Road

      London SW4 7NQ

      Copyright text © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2009

      Copyright illustrations © Marianne Taylor 2009

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      ISBN: 978-1-84317-353-3 in hardback print format.

      ISBN: 978-1-78243-243-2 in ebook format.

      www.mombooks.com

      Cover design by Patrick Knowles Design

      Text design and typesetting by K DESIGN, Somerset

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      Flora

      Trees

      Flowers

      Fungi

      Fauna

      Mammals

      Birds

      Reptiles and amphibians

      Fish

      Insects and other invertebrates

      Planet Earth

      Ecology

      Outside influences

      Earth’s neighbours

      Recommended reading

      Index

      Acknowledgements

      I would like to thank Louise Dixon at Michael O’Mara Books for commissioning me to write this book, Silvia Crompton for handling the editing with efficiency and good humour, Kay Hayden for the elegant text design and Patrick Knowles for the stunning cover.

      Numerous friends and colleagues have chipped in with ideas, suggestions and gentle criticisms during the writing process. A particularly big ‘thank you’ to Mike Unwin and Graham Taylor for offering their highly contrasting but equally helpful and amusing points of view. My cat Pickle provided timely assistance by moulting helpfully over my keyboard and providing distraction when it was most needed.

      Finally, I’d like to thank Rob, as ever, for reading and commenting on bits and pieces of text, bringing tea when required, putting up with late nights and early mornings, saying inspiring and soothing things as appropriate, and generally being brilliant.

      Introduction

      There’s a scene in the arty film Orlando in which the eponymous character, disappointed by the opposite sex, rushes out onto a misty moor to a backdrop of sweepingly grandiose piano music, then falls face-down and exclaims passionately through a mouthful of grass: ‘Nature, I am your bride! Take me!’ If you’ve ever felt a similar urge to connect more closely with the wilder world but don’t know where to start, this is the book for you.

      Nature is everywhere. You don’t even have to go outside. Whatever you’re sitting on right now quite possibly contains bits of what used to be a tree. Maybe there’s a plant in the corner of the room, making the most of the carbon dioxide you’re exhaling and providing you with some extra oxygen in return. That spider lurking in the corner might make you jump out of your skin but it will be dealing efficiently with any flies that blow in through the open window.

      Step into the garden and there’s evidence all around you that this world is exuberantly alive. The trees, the small plants, the birds, the insects, the clouds, the wind, the earth: it all fits together on this amazing, dynamic, constantly evolving planet. Look a little more closely at any one part of it and your mind will quickly crowd with questions. Why is that bird singing? Does that cloud mean it’s going to rain? What’s been eating my cabbages? Why do the leaves fall in autumn? What are wasps for?

      You could spend your whole lifetime studying nature and still come away feeling you’ve only scratched the surface. It’s an old truism – the closer you look the more there is to see – but the facts of the natural world are so exhilaratingly diverse, bizarre, comical and shocking that it’s time very well spent. This book aims to ease you in gently to this wonderful world by looking at the basics of nature in all its forms, explaining why some things are as they are and hopefully inspiring you to go forth and identify. There is literally a whole world of nature out there.

      What’s in this book – and what isn’t

      Beginning with the plant world, we then make our way through the animal kingdom. As well as explaining how both live and develop, this book also gives plenty of examples of interesting things you might see for yourself while out and about in the wilds. It rounds off with a look at our planet as a whole: the way plants and animals interact and form functional ecosystems, the way our weather works, and finally our place in the universe.

      Obviously, that’s a whole lot of stuff, and some hard decisions were necessary when it came to choosing what would and wouldn’t fit in. You’re bound to come away with some questions unanswered, and that’s where the last section of the book – recommended reading – comes in. The books listed there will provide essential guidance if you’d like to take things a step or two further.

      If all goes according to plan, you should come away from this book with your school-biology knowledge refreshed, your awareness of local wildlife improved and your understanding of how it all fits together enhanced. But, most importantly, you should find that your curiosity has been piqued, and your inner naturalist inspired to get outside and start exploring your environment.

      We all know that we need nature around us to survive, and that we need to do more to look after it. Of course ‘being green’ does matter, but pro-green messages all too often work on our guilt; to be honest, they can get rather depressing. What we don’t hear often enough is that nature is awesome, extraordinary and endlessly fascinating, and will reward your interest with a lifetime of excitement, beauty and revelation.

      So be like Orlando and throw yourself headlong on nature’s comely bosom. You won’t regret it.

      FLORA

      Trees

      WE HUMANS MAY not be as adept as our monkey ancestors at scrambling about in them, but we have retained a healthy respect for, and appreciation of, trees. And with good reason – they shape our landscape, give us our daily oxygen and provide us with food and extremely versatile construction materials. Next time you see one, give it a pat on the back.

      A tree begins its life as an embryo enclosed within a seed. The entire seed may be very tiny but nevertheless contains enough stored energy – in the form of a starchy substance called endosperm – to sustain the embryo tree while it grows its first roots and shoots. From then the tree sapling starts to collect its own resources from the sun and the soil, and the race is on to grow big and grow fast before it gets eaten or overshadowed. In the tree world, size matters – a lot. You’ll probably see a number of little treelets sprouting close to their parent trees when you walk in the woods in early spring, but they are all competing fiercely for any light that isn’t already being intercepted by the mature trees, and most of them will lose the battle.

      HERE COMES THE SCIENCE PART

      Trees function like other plants: they absorb their nutrients and their water from the soil in which their roots are planted, and they make their energy (in the form of a sugar called glucose) in the cells of their leaves by using sunlight to power a reaction between carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). This is photosynthesis. The reaction converts the CO2 and the H2O into glucose and also some oxygen; the plant stores the glucose and releases the oxygen through the same pores that take in carbon dioxide. In a handy parallel, we animals take in oxygen and produce and exhale carbon dioxide as a side effect of our own cellular energy-making chemistry. This makes for a harmoniously balanced system, gas-wise.

      The photosynthesis reaction takes place in chloroplasts, tiny bodies inside the cells of a leaf that contain a pigment called chlorophyll. This stuff is what gives leaves their green colour and it’s also what absorbs the light energy to power photosynthesis. Some trees, like the dark red-brown ‘copper’ form of the common beech tree, don’t have green leaves but they still have chlorophyll; they just have other, stronger pigments as well.

      Temperate climates (as distinct from polar and equatorial climates) are good for deciduous trees – those that lose their leaves in autumn and remain leafless until the following spring. It’s all about energy economy – short, sunless winter days make it inefficient for these trees to maintain a year-round canopy of sunlight-absorbing leaves, while good, high-nutrient soils mean they can afford to grow new leaves each spring. They stop producing chlorophyll in autumn and, as the green pigment disappears, the leaves’ other more subtle pigments can be seen, producing all the lovely colours of autumn before they fall. Evergreen trees keep making chlorophyll all year round but at a lower level – this strategy tends to work better in more northerly climes and where soil nutrient levels are lower.

      What does a tree do all day?

      At first, a tree doesn’t do much with all that energy and those absorbed nutrients except grow. Within its main stem – its trunk – and all its branches it is constantly adding to the outer layer of wood just under the bark. Across Europe and North America, there is a seasonal pattern in terms of how much new wood is added and when, resulting in the familiar annual growth rings you can see in cut wood.1 The wood just inside the bark is very much alive and active, transporting nutrient-filled fluids (aka sap) around – the bark is there to protect this delicate and important new wood from damage. If you make a hole in tree bark, sap will seep out of the wound. If you cut away the bark in a ring all the way around the trunk, the poor tree will die.

      As the tree grows and new layers of living wood are added, the wood in the layers underneath dies off. However, it’s still an important part of the tree as it has channels for water transport and, more fundamentally, it helps to keep the whole thing standing up.

      From treelet to tree

      As well as growing upwards, trees generally spread out as well. This makes good sense, as the tree needs to suck up as much sunlight as it can; a big broad umbrella of a canopy helps

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