Blog Posts by Subject: Botanical Sciences

Despite the shift from the Patent and Trademark Depository Library designation to our new Patent and Trademark Resource Center status, one vestige of over 140 years of being a patent depository remains. Color images for Plant Patents are only available in print, and are still being received here at SIBL in paper format. This seems like a good opportunity to take a look at some of the most recent ones we've received here, and so we've done a bunch of QAD color image scans. Please take a look...

Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.
— Hindu verse from Avadhoota Gita

Terence McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000), America's most beloved psychonaut, bard, ethnobotanist, folk hero, and freewheeling philosopher, rose to fame in the early 1990s with the publication of several influential books: The Archaic Revival (1992), Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge — A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (1992), Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, 

My favorite way to celebrate Earth Day is to bring more plants into my home.  But sadly, the plants rarely make it to see Memorial Day.  For all of you out there who want to fill their homes with plants, but then have trouble keeping them alive, terrariums might be the answer. 

April showers bring Sydelle's flowers at Ottendorfer!

Witch-hazel. Many plants have evocative names, but few can beat witch-hazel. It sounds magical, although as an old-fashioned treatment for insect bites, maybe it is less than magic, but its scent always makes you feel cooler and fresher.

Green used to think her story was written. The day her beloved city was burned to the ground seemed to be the end of things. Her mother, her father, and her beautiful sister were gone. The boy she loves is far away searching for his own family. The past is filled with dangerous memories and the future seems like a distant hope. So Green tries to focus on the present.

“If you want a garden of your own, but have no yard---
If you wish you had some way of growing plants all through the year, even though you live where winters are long an cold---
If you want a garden small enough that you can care for it easily---
This book is for you.”

If the answer is not so green, perhaps you might think about coming by the Harlem Branch Library on June 1st at 5:30 pm to get some helpful tips from Kellie Madden of Harlem Lofts. 

The LIVE from the NYPL program featuring Richard Holmes in conversation with Paul Holdengräber was off to a rocky start last night; the technology controlling the microphones kept malfunctioning. Mr. Holmes joked that it probably had "something to do with homeland security." This prompted a few chuckles from the crowd. When the microphone started acting up again twenty minutes later, Richard commented, "this gives new meaning to [part of] the subtitle of the book; ‘the Beauty and Terror of Science.'" At this point, he had the audience roaring with laughter. On hand to talk about his new book, The Age of Wonder, two things could be gleaned from an