Introduction
Rumble. It’s the sound of your stomach begging for food. You might wander into the kitchen to grab a snack.
Brrr. It’s your body shivering when the temperature drops. Maybe you snuggle into a sweater. But what about plants? When the going gets tough, plants don’t have the same options as us humans. They need a savvy way to survive in all kinds of conditions. Limited nutrients. The coldest cold, the driest dry. Cracks in sidewalks. Murky water or a moderate fire. Pests that want to eat them to death.
When plants face a problem, it’s not like they can run away or pack up and move somewhere else. That’s why plants thrive using brilliant—and bizarre—adaptations. They use these features to help them succeed no matter what the environment throws at them. Some have thorns to discourage hungry predators. Others scam their way close to helpful pollinators so they can reproduce. Some ask for insect assistance using chemical signals. Wherever you look, plants are masters at survival.
With a focus on some of the biggest, the baddest, the smelliest, and the strangest plants around the globe, the facts you’ll encounter may seem a little . . . unnatural. They’re not. Plants can’t talk or walk and don’t have a brain protected inside a bony skull, but they’ve figured out how to flourish.
In this book, you’ll meet plants that eat meat and one, dead horse arum, that pretends to
be meat—with a smell of rotten flesh that’s so rank you’ll want to plug your nose. Crane your neck back to marvel at plants taller than a twenty-story building; crouch down to unearth plants smaller than your toenail. Find out how—and why—certain plants live for centuries or generate enough heat to melt snow. Uncover bold vegetation that disguises itself to look like something else. Have you ever seen plants that look like stones?
As you leaf through this book, you’ll discover the wildest plant traits. Exploding seeds. Fireproof trunks. Deadly berries. Adaptations so strange you’ll need to know more. Get ready to dig into the sensational science of plant survival!
Copyright © 2025 by Ann McCallum Staats; illustrated by Zoë Ingram. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
