Seeds Time Capsules of Life

About this book

A brand-new anniversary edition with new images, fully updated text, and additional chapters.

Seeds are tiny parcels of life, poised to give rise to anything from ephemeral herbs to giant trees that can live for thousands of years. A close look at these tiny miracles of nature through a scanning electron microscope opens up a view into a fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful microcosm few people, even scientists, have ever seen before. The range of sizes, shapes, and patterns plants have evolved over 360 million years to perfect their one and only chance in life to travel is beyond our wildest imagination.

In this astonishing book, artist Rob Kesseler and botanist Wolfgang Stuppy, previously of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, present a unique and highly unusual natural history of seeds. The story of how seeds evolved to ensure the survival of their species and how they adapted to their natural environments including the animals they share them with is stunningly illustrated, combining close-up photography with digitally enhanced scanning electron micrographs.

This book not only captivates and enlightens those interested in the natural world, but also artists, designers, architects and everyone else drawing inspiration from the wonderful and endlessly fascinating world we live in.

Contents

- Foreword
- Time Capsules of Life
      - What is a Seed?
      - Seed Evolution
      - Naked Seeds
      - The Flower Power Revolution
      - Things can Only Get Better
      - The Embryo of Angiosperms
      - The Seed
      - Bearing Organic of the Angiosperms
      - The Dispersal of Fruits and Seeds
      - Dispersal by Animals
- The Millennium Seed Bank
- Seeds & Climate Change
- Phytopia
- A Fusion of Art & Science
- Appendices

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Biography

Rob Kesseler is an award-winning visual artist and Emeritus Professor of Art, Design & Science at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. For the past 25 years, he has worked extensively with botanical scientists and molecular biologists around the world to explore the living world at a microscopic level. Using a range of complex microscopy processes he creates multi-frame composite images of plant organs. Using a sophisticated coordination of hand, eye and intuition, they are modified by the addition of many subtle layers of colour to create intense large-format photographs that captivate the eye and extend the traditions of botanical art into a contemporary field. Collaborators include The Jodrell Laboratory Kew, The John Innes Centre, Norwich, and the Max Planck Institute, Germany. He works from studios in London and Corfu and exhibits and lectures internationally. In 2010 he was a Year of Biodiversity Fellow at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia, Portugal. 2014 winner of the RMS Scientific Imaging Competition and in 2022 he was awarded 1st Prize, Botanic Garden Rome for images of seeds from the Arts & Science Synergy Foundation. EU Horizon 2020 Programme. Rob Kesseler is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and an Ambassador for the Royal Microscopical Society.

Wolfgang Stuppy is an internationally recognised seed specialist. He began his career in plant conservation upon joining the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1999. In 2002, he transitioned to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst, dedicating 15 years to the meticulous study of seeds from all over the world. It was during this time that Dr Stuppy acquired a wealth of expertise in the rare discipline of seed morphology that made him a world specialist in this field. Trained in Germany, he holds a doctorate in comparative seed morphology and anatomy. Presently, Dr. Stuppy is the curator of the Botanic Garden at Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany.