Can we imagine a world without flowers? Their beauty offers us delight in their color, fragrance, and form, and their substance offers medicinal benefits. Flowers also speak to us in the language of the plant's form, provide cultural symbols in different cultures, and, at the highest levels, offer inspiration.

In this beautiful and original book, renowned thinker and geometrist Keith Critchlow focuses on an aspect of flowers that has received the least attention. The flower becomes a teacher of symmetry and geometry (the "eternal verities," as Plato called them). In this sense,...