Stamen Alive

Thirty years ago, no one knew how a plant began to make a flower.

In her new book, Blossoms: And the Genes That Make Them, Maxine Frank Singer ’52, H’78 shares the science behind the solution to this floral mystery.

“My hope is that after reading this book, whether you see long-stemmed red roses in a street kiosk, or yellow tulips in spring gardens, or wild purple asters covering a mountainside in late summer,” she writes, “you will remember that they are the result of genes working and evolving over the long history of life on Earth.”