For students contemplating a career in the plant sciences, being a forensic botanist is probably not at the top of the prospective career list. Reading Planting Clues by David J. Gibson may change that viewpoint. As the author observes, “an appreciation of the value of plants in forensics is often lacking.”
This gripping book relates many cases in which identifying plants is key to solving crimes or making convictions. This includes some very famous cases, such as the kidnapping of the infant child of Charles Lindbergh in 1932. A forester was able to identify the wood in the homemade ladder used to take the child from the second floor nursery. During the trial, the defense moved to have this expert testimony disallowed, but the objection was overruled and the findings helped convict the kidnapper.
This is only one of several grisly murder cases in which plants linked the criminal to the crime. Other stories are less gruesome. These include smuggling expensive orchids by mixing them in with less valuable but similar plants. Out-of-bloom, only an expert can tell the difference.
This garden of horrors provides fertile ground for fiction writers, too. Marta McDowell writes a rollicking book titled Gardening Can Be Murder, recounting all the ways in which mystery writers have used plants (or fungi) to kill characters, or incriminate killers. As the author observes, “criminal investigation, whether vocation or avocation, calls for many of the same skills as horticulture.”
This is a widespread genre and from my own reading I know it is only growing! Nineteen of Agatha Christie’s stories have a garden or plant component, as do four of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
My personal favorite series is Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters. Set in a 12th century abbey on the Welsh-English border, the eponymous monk is the abbey’s herbalist. Although these are works of fiction, the garden practices are informative and largely accurate for the time. More about this can be found in Brother Cadfael’s Herb Garden by Robin Whiteman, published in 1997.
Reviewed by Brian Thompson in the Leaflet, Volume 11, Issue 6, June 2024.