The vegetable plot -- How to see a plant. Symbols from the ice : plants as food and forms ; Bird's-eyes : primulas -- Wooden manikins : the cults of trees. The cult of celebrity : the Fortingall yew ; The Rorschach tree : baobab ; The big trees : sequoias ; Methuselahs : bristlecones and date palms ; Provenance and extinction : wood's cycad ; From workhorse to green man : the oak -- Myths of cultivation. The Celtic bush : hazel ; The vegetable lamb : cotton ; Staff of life : maize ; The panacea : ginseng ; The vegetable mudfish : samphire -- The shock of the real : scientists and Romantics. Life versus entropy : Newton's apple ; Imitations of photosynthesis : mint and cucumber ; The challenge of carnivorous plans : the tipitiwitchet ; Wordsworth's daffodils ; On being pollinated : Keats's forget-me-not -- New lands, new visions. Jewels of the desert : Francis Masson's starfish and birds of paradise ; Growing together : the East Indian Company's fusion art ; Chiaroscuro : the Impressionists' olive trees ; Local distinctiveness : cornfield tulips and horizontal flax -- The Victorian plant theatre. 'Vegetable jewellery' : the fern craze ; 'The Queen of Lilies' : Victoria amazonica ; A Sarawakan stinkbomb : the Titan Arum ; Harlequins and mimics : the orchid troupe -- The real language of plants. The butterfly effect : the moonflower ; The canopy cooperative : air plants and bromeliads : Plant intelligence : mimosa -- The Tree of After Life.