Never has the structure of seeds been revealed so powerfully than in Rob Kesseler and Wolfgang Stuppy's Seeds: Time Capsules of Life (Papadakis, £35. What may appear at first glance to be a coffee table publication is in fact a remarkable documentation of seeds, photographed close up, using scanning electron microscopes capable of magnifying up to 5,000 times. This magnification brings them into hyper realistic focus and reveals their amazing shapes, diversity of form and structural complexity.

Each grey magnified image has been painstakingly coloured, giving the images a mysterious other worldliness, using colours often inspired by the hues of the original flower. , the seeds featured were selected with the express purpose of revealing extremities of form with an intimate and awesome clarity.

Stuppy reminds us that our entire civilisation is built on seeds, which are the main source of nourishment for billions of people worldwide who rely on rice, wheat, maize, barley, rye, oats and millet and pulses such as beans, peas and lentils. Seeds also include the nuts we nibble, the coffee we crave and the spices we use to flavour our foods. They provide valuable oils that serves as both food and fuel too. In addition to their usefulness however, seeds can be extraordinarily beautiful, as visual artist Rob Kesseler's amazing images show with such clarity.

Images of seeds such as the Blepharis mitrata - klapperbossie from South Africa are included to illustrate the bewildering number of ways that seeds can be dispersed and rooted in the soil. This remarkable seed is shown in its dry form and also the moment after it comes into contact with water, when within seconds the hairs become erect, slimy and sticky and literally glue the seed to the ground.

The relationship between the plant world and architecture is illustrated dramatically too with the juxtaposition of the Encephalartos inopinus endemic from South Africa and London's unconventional Gherkin building. The Downland Museum, Sussex, is printed alongside a Delphinium peregrinum seed, suggests another link between architecture and the plant world, while the Eden project is compared to the seed of a fiesta flower from the US.

This impressive book, published in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, is both a work of science and a work of art, and is essential reading for all those fascinated by the natural world.

See August 31 issue of Weekend for details of Rob Kesseler's latest project, which opens in September at Oxford's Botanic Garden.