All The Plants are Brown

Did you know that 58% of the area of the lower 48 states no longer supports natural vegetation? Or that 57% of all ecological communities in the United States are “imperiled” or “vulnerable”? One of the important indicators of these recent environmental changes are the dramatic decreases in certain bird populations. Birds are important indicators of the “health” of our environment and their declines are due to factors like climate change, habitat loss and degradation, poor water management and the effects of sprawl. On Inquiry tonight is JEFFREY V. WELLS, Senior Scientist for the Boreal Song Bird Initiative, Visiting Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and former Director of Bird Conservation for the National Audubon Society. His new book THE BIRDER’S CONSERVATION HANDBOOK: 100 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS AT RISK, lists those species most at risk and what can be done about it.  

Roses may be red, and violets of course may be blue, but why? Why is one rose white while another is pink? On Inquiry we speak with DAVID LEE, Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University and Director of the Kampong of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami. Lee’s NATURE’S PALETTE: THE SCIENCE OF PLANT COLOR is one of the few books that combines a deep knowledge of organic chemistry with an artistic love of the aesthetics of plants in the garden and forest. Lee explains why leaves, flowers, seeds and bark are the colors they are. Tune in and find out about leaves that can quickly change color back and forth, the mysterious iridescent plants of the jungle floor, why blue flowers are so damned strange and how some flowers can even look like rotting meat.