No Title
Andal Jagannathan
501 FACTS FACTORY: AMAZING PLANTS AND TREES OF THE WORLD by Amreen Toor. Illustrated by Mistunee Chowdhury Hachette India, 2021, 170 pp., 399.00
November 2021, volume 45, No 11

An orchid that grows underground, wasps that come to attack pests on a plant in response to a chemical signal sent by the plant, glue from the juice of flowers, a poisonous seed used to weigh precious metals…there’s plenty of fascinating stuff happening in the plant world.

Amreen Toor has a captivating lineup of facts in 501 Facts Factory. The book, all 170 pages of it, is packed with interesting information.

Gigantic pumpkins (68 kgs!), fruit salad trees that bear multiple types of fruits, a bonsai pine that survived the Hiroshima bombing—the list goes on! 501 Facts Factory is a well-researched book with information packed in easy-to-digest, bite-sized blocks of text. Some of the information is supported by photographs, but black and white ones. Maybe the author intends to pique your curiosity enough to make you go out there and find these plants/trees to relish the sight in colour!

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