Word: botanist
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Louis XV offered it to his Queen in 1741, only to take it back a few years later and install Madame de Pompadour in the apartment next to his. An amateur botanist, he made its garden famous throughout Europe for its hothouse pineapples, coffee and figs. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette preferred the nearby, smaller Petit Trianon, but this did not spare either building when revolutionaries carted off their contents...
Fascinated by the dormant seed, botanists have long been frustrated in their efforts to see or photograph it clearly. Preparing slides for microscopic inspection usually necessitated the use of liquid solutions that immediately revived anabiotic cells, altering the dormant structures. Now, because of the perseverance of German Botanist Ernst Perner, several theories about anabiosis have finally been confirmed. By using dry osmic-acid vapors to fix and stain his slides, Perner has successfully photographed anabiotic pea cells with an electron microscope...
...computer firm, found himself "traveling 15,000 miles a month between California and the East Coast," which took him away from his family and his plant collection. He lived off his stock dividends while earning a doctorate in botany at U.C.L.A., figures he will make less as a botanist "than I paid last year in income taxes." But, he says, "I will be earning a living while I indulge my interests-my two lives will be one again...
...trouble the hyacinth causes, cautioned Oxford Botanist Dr. E.C.S. Little, a member of Britain's Weed Research Organization, the plant is not all bad. It could be harvested, he said, as a new source of food; it has about the same nutritional value as the turnip. Little need have little fear that the plant will be wiped out. It once grew only in fresh water, but in Louisiana it now grows in salt marshes, has even lived for a while out in the Gulf of Mexico. It may soon be attacking tropical ports all over the world...
...Botanist Norman Taylor, editor of the excellent Taylor's Encyclopedia of Gardening, feels that plant advertising should specifically note which areas of the country are suitable for each species of plant or tree. Most reputable catalogues nowadays do in fact list preferred zones and soil conditions. But in general, Taylor points out, "people have been given the impression that spruce and hemlock and firs will thrive in the prairie regions west of the Mississippi. And you should be very careful about what rhododendrons you buy. The beautiful Rhododendron Maximum, for example, does well in New England and New York...