Elle Maruska

“beg them to compare the Oostvaardersplassen not with their dreamtime Europe of the classical age, but with a long-vanished continent where large mammals, rather than agricultural practices, shaped landscapes.”
― Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History

“We in effect challenge the unwanted prodigy to produce forms that slip through our control systems. It does not take much to beat us. One seed in a thousand may germinate later than the last hoeing, pass through the sieve intended to exclude it, show a mysterious immunity to weedkillers. The following year there are five . . .”
― Richard Mabey, Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants

“The most potent protection was to employ a charm or potion based on the Anglo-Saxons’ nine sacred herbs, which included several familiar weeds: mugwort, plantain, stime (watercress), maythen (mayweed or chamomile) atterlothe (probably betony) wergulu (stinging nettle), chervil, fennel and crab apple. The fact that weeds might be simultaneously a curse and a benediction wasn’t a cause of confusion. As today, it was a matter of context. In the soil, they were trouble; in the sickroom, a cure. Their ubiquitousness and obstinate power in the fields may even have strengthened their healing image.”
― Richard Mabey, Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants

“Instead, the Snake Detection Theory, as Isbell refers to it, posits that as our ancestors split from the lemurs and other early primates, they were forced to adapt to a change in the predators they knew all too well. In Asia or Africa around 60 million years ago, the snakes became more venomous (though scientists aren’t quite sure why then and there). The Viperidae and Elapidae were born.”
― Christie Wilcox, Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry