Mycelium Wassonii

The most distinctive of the graphic nonfiction books in the Miller Library collection is “Mycelium Wassonii” by Brian Blomerth. It is a biography of R. Gordon Wasson (1898-1986) and Valentina Pavlovna “Tina” Wasson (1901-1958). Their careers were in banking and pediatrics, respectively, however they are best known for the passionate interest in the significance of mushrooms to different cultures around the world and as pioneers in the study of ethnomycology.

The central story of the book describes the Wasson’s visits to the indigenous Mazatec people of the state of Oaxaca in Mexico to learn about their use of psilocybin mushrooms in sacred ceremonies. Despite making a promise of secrecy, Gordon later allowed the location and identity of those who invited them into their rites to be known. This led to exploitation and considerable disruption of this small community and the ostracizing of their principal contact.

I had trouble getting started with this book, especially as most of the people are drawn with animalistic facial features. However, I soon became engaged and it read much like any other biography, albeit with an unfamiliar artistic expression. Given the subject of “magic” mushrooms, it seemed very appropriate!

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Humongous Fungus: The Weird and Wonderful Kingdom of Fungi

All members of the plant kingdom are supported by members of the kingdom of fungi. To learn more about these sometimes very different lifeforms, read “Humongous Fungus,” illustrated by Wenjia Tang and written by Lynne Boddy.

The illustrator and author’s style uses the text in bursts of one or two sentences, with more numerous illustrations. This approach is effective, conveying a lot of information with very few words. Fungi are essential to plant life, and to animal life, but they can also be killers of both. The benefits and problems are well demonstrated.

For example, a two-page spread on plant partners shows trees and fungi roots co-mingled. “Each tree has a lot of fungus partners in the soil. They can be the same or different species. The mycelium can connect between roots on the same tree and on different trees.” If you turn to the next page, you find examples of fungi plant killers: “some kill their roots or leaves, or even the whole plant. They can kill garden flowers, food crops, and even tall trees.”

Winner of the 2023 Award of Excellence for Literature for Young Adults from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

When Plants took over the Planet

What do you know about plant evolution? My hazy memories from introductory college biology center on the development of animals, while plants got short shrift. For an easy and entertaining way to fill this gap, I found “When Plants Took over the Planet” an excellent solution. Illustrator Amy Grimes and text author Chris Thorogood start with very small algae, then show how these evolved into a group of plants that includes the seaweeds, such as the giant kelp (Macrocystits pyrifera) that can grow 24 inches in a single day.

These water-based plants further evolved into land dwellers, including the lycopods, the earliest vascular plants that could grow to 100 feet tall. By contrast, the only survivors today of this group are tiny. These were followed by ferns and horsetails. Of the latter, the author writes, “Some horsetails grew to a colossal 100 feet tall. Can you imagine wandering among fat pole-like trunks of giant horsetails?” Can you imagine these plants as weeds in your garden?

The book concludes with the conifers and the wide array of flowering plants. Significant groups are colorfully illustrated, often with their typical animal associates. Thorogood summarizes the reader’s journey: “We’ve trekked through fossil forests, swum across prehistoric lakes, and climbed trees. Now we arrive on today’s green planet – a place that still teems with plant life, as it has done for millions of years.”

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

The Miracle Seed

Martin Lemelman is the author/illustrator of “The Miracle Seed” and uses a style similar to comic books to tell his story. The Judean date palm, a cultivar of Phoenix dactylifera, was an important tree for its sweet fruit, medicinal properties, and cultural significance to the Jewish people. Following the bloody put-down of Jewish revolt between 66-74 CE, many of the groves were destroyed by the Romans. In the centuries that followed, a combination of factors led to the tree’s extinction.

In 1963, archaeological excavations in last, first-century Jewish holdout at Masada found a jar with six seeds of the Judean date palms. “The Miracle Seed” tells the story of the two women scientists who very carefully coaxed some of these seeds to germinate 2,000 years after they were harvested.

The first planting was on Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish New Year of Trees in 2005. It wasn’t until six years later that one successful seedling was large enough to flower, revealing it was a male plant of this dioecious species. In the meantime, a few other seeds were found at other archaeological sites.

From these seeds, the first female Judea date palm flowered in 2020. Later that year, with pollen from the original plant (appropriately named “Methuselah”), the first fruit in two millennia was harvested and an extinct plant was brought back to life!

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Herbaria: A Guide for Young People

“Herbaria: A Guide for Young People” is a delight. Written and illustrated by Kelly LaFarge, this book blends a mix of drawings and photographs along with lift-up flaps and fold out pages to introduce these critical institutions to an audience that appreciates an interactive experience.

In just 32 pages, the author guides the reader through the intricacies of collecting and preserving plants while explaining the value of such collections. The scope is global, both for places of plant collection, and the location of significant herbarium collections.

Even though I’m familiar with the Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium next door to the Miller Library, I learned many new facts. For example, while familiar with herbarium sheets that are 16.5 x 11.5 inches, I didn’t know that “all herbaria around the world use the exact same size paper. This makes it easy to trade and store exchanged specimens.”

Excerpted from Brian Thompson’s article in the Summer 2023 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries

Eccentrics have been described as having “varieties of physical and behavioural abnormality that occupied ‘contested space at the juncture of madness and sanity’” (pp. 1-2). In English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries Todd Longstaffe-Gowan shows how a group of English men and women in the seventeenth to twentieth centuries used their gardens to express and develop their eccentricities. That means, of course, that in addition to describing their wonderfully diverse gardens, he also tells us many juicy bits about the gardeners’ lives.

It’s worth noting that “garden” in this case involves many things in addition to plants, and sometimes not many plants at all. The book presents twenty-one of these oddities, each with excellent illustrations: drawings, paintings, woodcuts, photographs – all very worth examining.

At Hoole House in Cheshire the focus falls on the garden itself more than the owner, Lady Broughton. She had come to Hoole House after she separated from her husband, Sir John Delves Broughton, 7th Baronet, in 1814. (Titles abound among these gardeners.) Separating from your husband and setting up your own household was eccentricity enough.

After her arrival, Lady Broughton had constructed a large and very tall rock garden covered with alpine plants and laid out to resemble shapes of the Swiss mountains at Chamonix, including the glacier at their base. A contemporary illustration from Gardener’s Magazine is paired in the book with a pen and ink drawing of the mountains to make clear how exactly the garden rocks matched the outline of the mountains. That the garden’s representation of the glacier made the area feel cool even in summer, as one visitor insisted, readers can only imagine.

One garden with a primary focus on plants was Viscount Petersham’s in Derbyshire. Petersham, a companion of the Prince Regent who became George IV, was described in 1821 as “’the maddest of all the mad Englishmen’” (p. 83). After he married a beautiful but scandalous actress, he developed his garden to entertain her – in the country, far from public view. A central project of this new garden became the transplanting of topiaries and other trees. William Barron, Petersham’s Scottish gardener, learned how to transplant mature trees successfully, and by 1850 had moved hundreds onto the property. “It was as though the earl were devising every form of horticultural diversion possible to keep his wife from pining for an existence beyond the bounds of her prison paradise” (p. 87).

The illustrations show that at least some of his many topiaries had shapes much more varied and complex than the more typical birds. Yews shaped like enormous mushrooms, tall columns, even a cave-like arbor were enclosed in a long, undulating hedge. One visitor responded enthusiastically to the prospect, reporting: “’we actually threw our body down upon the soft lawn in an ecstasy of delight’” (p. 96).

In one final glimpse of another garden, Lamport Hall exhibited the now-ubiquitous garden gnome gone mad: many dozen tiny ceramic gnomes were scattered throughout.

Well researched and lavishly illustrated, English Garden Eccentrics yields both copious information and a great deal of entertainment.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in the Leaflet, June 2023, Volume 10, Issue 6.

The View from Federal Twist: A New Way of Thinking about Gardens, Nature and Ourselves

About a year ago, I watched a webinar by James Golden highlighting his garden in New Jersey. Located on a ridge above the Delaware River, I was mesmerized by his photographs, especially his ability to take the best advantage of lighting, without resorting to any noticeable tricks or enhancements.

Those photographs, and Golden’s concepts of lighting and vistas, are the heart of his new book, “The View from Federal Twist: A New Way of Thinking about Gardens, Nature and Ourselves.” Unlike many other memoirs on building a garden, this author/gardener is very deliberate about working with pre-existing flora including “a tangle of vines, trees and dangling, dead limbs.” Although this approach may not appeal to all, Golden helps the home gardener consider how their plantings fit into the larger, surrounding environment.

Challenges included soil that is both very clayish and very wet. Some invasive trees were removed, but mostly he planted smaller trees, large shrubs, tall grasses, and perennials and allowed the plants to work out their own interaction and layout. Some plants failed, others thrived, and some overwhelmed. Parts of the garden are impenetrable. Throughout there is a thriving ecological web beneficial for many creatures.

Much of the book is a photo essay, well supported but not overwhelmed by text that weaves input from well-known authors, from visits to other gardens, and even quotes from literature or classical music concepts. He carefully watched the varying angles of the sun through the seasons to capture different moods, and for enthusiasts, carefully identifies all his planting choices.

The author also recognizes a “spirit” of the garden, even though that concept is contrary to his deeply held, science-based, rational beliefs. Accepting this idea of spirit has helped Golden to appreciate the development of the garden in ways over which he had little control.

Hardscapes are minimal, but a circle created with argillite, a plentiful grey stone found in the area, is indicative of the whole garden. “Its creation is an example of how the slow accretion of ideas over several years can offer a solution to a problem you didn’t know exists.”

Winner of the 2023 Award of Excellence in Gardening and Gardens from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries

Reviewed by Brian Thompson in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Summer 2023

Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium

Imagine a plant carefully and dutifully dried, pressed, and preserved between sheets of paper. Now imagine a room full of cabinets and drawers in which are stacked plant upon plant upon plant in this fashion, over 140,000 dried plant specimens in all. It would be a feat of admirable persistence and curiosity to explore every single specimen. Yet, that is exactly the task Helen Humphreys set out to do in writing Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium.

Over the course of a year, Humphreys does just this. She lingers, wondering aloud about the individuals who went out into the world, found these plants, and committed those plants to lives between sheets of paper. Images and stories throughout Field Study show the reader the variations between plant collectors: how they displayed the plants, the information they included alongside the plant, what kinds of plants interested each collector, and sometimes snippets of biography of the collectors themselves. Humphreys interlaces her own musings on history, culture, and ecological place as such thoughts are inspired by the specimens.These musings about dead plants collectively create a book about life and death and how we come to understand the losses in our lives. Partway through her project, after spending months thinking about the death of individual plants, Humphreys was forced to reckon with loss in her own personal life when her beloved dog became incurably ill and passed. Much of this book, in turn, became a love-filled meditation on the fleeting joys of her dog and the memories they shared walking everyday in the nearby woods surrounded by beautiful plants. That loss and grief shaped her meditations and sharpened her thinking on what we leave behind us when we pass.

This book is written beautifully and fluidly and Humphreys includes a well-chosen array of photographs and illustrations throughout, making it a delight to read. What at first glance appears to be a light and airy romp through a fascinating world of dried plants, however, ultimately becomes a rather serious examination of the fragility of humanity, personal loss, and what we collectively leave behind. Humphreys initially believed plants were the fragile ones. “And yet,” she says toward the end of her stay, “the flowers still take up their space, still resemble themselves, and I can feel their enduring presence, whereas I am starting to feel like I am the fleeting, temporary thing, that my human life is so brief in comparison to the genetic continuance of this gentian, or this violet.” This is not said without hope, though. As Humphreys understood following her dog’s passing, there is something beautiful to behold in such fragility and impermanence as new insights grow from between the cracks of loss.

Reviewed by Nick Williams in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 10, Issue 5, May 2023

Versed in Living Nature: Wordsworth’s Trees

In the preface of Versed in Living Nature, Peter Dale and Brandon Chao-Chi Yen describe the contents: “We visit many of Wordsworth’s trees and explore their meanings and implications, personal, physical, cultural, religious, historical and political.” To their great credit, they do all of that in 320 pages.

The index under “trees” lists 58 varieties, with multiple pages for many, especially the oak and yew. Each tree is located in William Wordsworth’s poems. (It helps to have a little knowledge of the poems, but it’s not necessary).

The trees are also connected to the poet’s activities, his schooling, his years in the Lake District of England, his travels. Special attention goes to the people in his life, chief among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy. Dale and Yen quote her often, reinforcing her importance to his poetry.

Among others they meet, the novelist Sir Walter Scott appears almost as a side note during a visit to Scotland. The book is quite a literary Who’s Who of the British literary scene.

Adding to the breadth of the book are references to Dale and Yen’s visits to Wordsworth sites. In commenting on a scene with four yews in “A Tradition of Darley Dale, Derbyshire,” for instance, they note that only three survive today, and they are hard to find.

Very helpful are the contexts in which all these trees are placed. Some are political (e.g., the Napoleonic war), some economic (the Highland Clearances), some literary (the controversy over the Ossian poems).

Wordsworth was also a gardener. At Dove Cottage he “began to learn about gardens not as a gentleman dilettante but as someone who would supply cabbages for the kitchen” (p. 132). He learned enough to gain a reputation as a garden guru, someone sought for advice on horticultural matters.

Building on all the above, the authors develop Wordsworth’s ideas and how his trees connect to his understanding of Nature as both physical and transcendent. It’s a very impressive accomplishment.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in the Leaflet, Volume 10, Issue 5, May 2023

Moss: From Forest to Garden

When was the last time you stopped during a walk and looked closely at the tufts of tiny green leaves growing on the sidewalk or on the trunk of a tree or on a humble rock? Have you found yourself staring at a clump of moss in your garden wishing it were gone? If you wish to know more about mosses–and perhaps gain a bit of appreciation for them–this book is for you.

Moss by Ulrica Nordström is a book dedicated to these tiny, ancient plants that first appeared on this planet over 350 million years ago. Coming after green algae and before the vascular plants, mosses are often quite literally looked down upon as a nuisance or as simply less desirable than the more charismatic vascular plants that dominate our collective imagination.

This book is a love letter to mosses. Nordström’s love of these “comforting” plants is clear with page after page giving careful attention and consideration to these oft-overlooked plants that blanket much of our world. promises, “once you have entered the exciting world of moss, you will want to see more of it.”

Moss includes information for those interested in learning to identify mosses, including useful tools to bring to the field, along with photographs, illustrations, and key characteristics of some of the most common species of moss. A large portion of the book is devoted to moss gardens around the world–including Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island–and care-filled spotlights of some of the gardeners who are responsible for those gardens and who also clearly fell in love with mosses. It rounds out with projects and ideas for both outdoor and indoor uses for mosses, for those interested in bringing mosses into their own lives.

This has quickly become one of my favorite books. But, I must confess that I’m biased. Mosses are my favorite plants and have been since I was a small child wandering the forests where I grew up. I think mosses have a kind of charisma of their own, the unassuming kind that invites people to pay closer attention to what makes them special. Mosses teach a kind of meditation of presence if we stop moving long enough to pay attention. After reading Nordström’s book, I can’t help but think she’ll be successful in opening up this “hidden world” to many readers.

Reviewed by Nick Williams in the Leaflet, Volume 10, Issue 4 – April 2023