Amazing Plant Powers: How Plants Fly, Fight, Hide, Hunt, and Change the World

In Amazing Plant Powers, Spike, a cartoon cactus, introduces himself as a TV-show host for a series on the world of plant life. Seasonally he weeds his way through a scientific introduction to the materialist powers for which a number of plants are famous: photosynthesis, natural flame retardations (e.g., bark), foliar feeding (e.g., the Venus flytrap), and inter alia, defense mechanisms like toxins to ward off voracious leaf-eating insects.

With detailed kindergarten through third grade vocabulary on plants in water, snow, rain, and shady areas, and those without water, Spike covers the basics of botany from physiology, structure, and genetics to ecology and weather. The text is short, simple, even sparse. One wonders whether a broad survey of the entire world of plants might be out of a cactus’s reach? Is his plan to shed light on every leaf in the entire plant kingdom just a little too ambitious? Followed by plant projects, the book ends with a glossary that makes for great review of anatomy such as chlorophyll, but the list is not comprehensive or referential.