Archives: Book Reviews

This spring I had the opportunity to visit the Cleveland Botanical Garden. Throughout this small garden are a number of treehouses, delighting the school children with whom I was sharing my visit. After climbing the steps up to one and looking out from this new perspective, I understood their enthusiasm.

Later, in the Garden’s gift shop, I explored their several books on treehouses. I was surprised to learn that the most prominent author, Pete Nelson, is from the Seattle area. I quickly had his latest book, “Be in a Treehouse” (2014), added to the Miller Library collection.

At its heart, this book is inspirational. Page after page of excellent photographs will bring out your inner child. The author’s images of his own bed and breakfast of treehouses, located near Issaquah, may inspire your next vacation. If you decide to build your own, “Treehouse U” introduces the design and construction principles that one must consider for a structure typically located 10 to 20 feet off the ground and anchored to a living being.

While many of the examples are in the Pacific Northwest, Nelson also explores the world for outstanding and widely varying houses. Ranging from Austria to Zambia, this review demonstrates that almost any climate that has trees is perfect for elevated houses. In describing one favorite masterpiece, now sadly gone, the author declares it “…inspired many of us to reach for the highest branch and build our wildest dreams.”

Published in the August 2016 Leaflet Volume 3, Issue 8.

“Alien Plants” is a recent addition to the New Naturalist Library, an ongoing series about natural history in the British Isles. It is also a new addition to the Miller Library. While intended for a general reader, these books provide excellent overviews of the latest scholarly research, especially in the UK.

Why are these of interest to scholars in the Pacific Northwest? While the flora and fauna are mostly different, many of the practices of research, management, and instruction are relevant anywhere. These books are also fascinating for their difference of perspective.

For example, in “Alien Plants”, invasives are divided into those known prior to 1500, and the “neophytes” that came later. Some of our natives have become their invasives, and I was surprised to learn that “English” laurel was introduced to the British Isles and escaped into the wild there about 250 years ago.

Published in the August 2016 Leaflet for Scholars Volume 3, Issue 8.

If you are already an avid veggie grower, and especially interested in organically grown, open-pollinated varieties, I recommend you read “The Organic Seed Grower” by John Navazio. This is not a beginner’s book, but it will build on the experience you have, especially if you decide to save your own seeds.

This is also one of the best books for learning about the biology of vegetable crops. The encyclopedia section is not in the expected alphabetical order but instead is grouped by families, each with an introduction to the broadly shared characteristics within the family. A detailed natural and cultivated history of each plant is included along with the growth habits and reproduction methods (I didn’t realize that so many of our favorite vegetables are biennials) with the emphasis, as the title suggests, on growing some plants on for seeds.

Navazio writes for a national audience but he is a local writer, living in Port Townsend, Washington. Many of the examples and photographs are from the region, including those of small scale farmers you may meet at local farmers markets. Some advice is impractical for home gardeners (it’s hard to provide a mile of isolation between squash varieties on an urban lot), but reading this book will give you a depth of understanding and greater appreciation of the fascinating plants you are growing for your salads and stir-fry recipes.

Why write a book like this? Navazio sums this up in his introduction: “My hope is that I have been able to deliver this information in a simple enough fashion to be easily understood and used, while at the same time remaining scientifically based…I’ll know that I’ve been successful in this when I see a dog-eared, dusty, and smudged copy of this book on the front seat of a seed farmer’s pickup truck.”

Excerpted from the Summer 2016 Arboretum Bulletin.

I have become smitten with Cyclamen. Both C. hederifolium and C. coum have been spreading throughout my sun-dappled and shady garden, providing both brilliant color when most needed and an endlessly fascinating pattern of leaves throughout much of the year. There is a lovely spread of C. coum in the Winter Garden and, as many Arboretum fans may remember, they were also a favorite of long time director Brian Mulligan.

There have been several good growing guides about this genus published over the last 30 years, but none are as monumental as “Genus Cyclamen in Science, Cultivation, Art and Culture” – the title only begins to captures the wide scope of this book. Edited by Brian Mathew, who is well-known for his many books on various bulbs, he does a skillful job of linking together the writing and illustrating skills of over 30 individuals.

Like all good monographs, this is first a superb botanical guide to the many species with highly effective photographs showing habitat and various naturally occurring forms. This is followed by an extensive guide to cultural requirements, both in the garden and the greenhouse, with reports from around the world by major growers and exhibitors.

“Art and Culture” is where this book breaks new ground. The earliest illustration of a cyclamen dates to the 6th century and it has been a popular subject of herbals and botanical books ever since. These images are here in excellent reproductions. This account also provides a surprisingly detailed history of botanical illustration and printing practices in western cultures.

In more modern times, cyclamen can be found decorating many media from pottery to jewelry to decorative cards. Here I discovered that Eugene Kozloff, local author of several books on Pacific Northwest native plants and marine life, is also passionate about cyclamen, and has an extensive collection of cyclamen postage stamps.

Excerpted from the Summer 2016 Arboretum Bulletin.

“Hardy Heathers from the Northern Hemisphere” is one of the monographs in a series published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As do the others in this series, this book contains beautiful artwork. Many of the paintings were done by Christabel King, a highly regarded English botanical artist, for a 1980s proposed monograph that was never published. These paintings typically include multiple specimens, in combinations that were chosen for their artistic merit but not always their botanical relationships. Many other illustrations are even more historical, dating back as far as the 16th century.

While this detracts a bit from the overall organization, it does make this book visually rich. In addition to the paintings, there are excellent photographs of habitat and flower close-ups, lots of range maps, and very detailed diagrams – I never knew the tiny bits of a heather or heath could be so fascinating!

Author E. Charles Nelson includes the genera Calluna, Daboecia, and Erica in his broad definition of “heather” and has a great deal of curiosity for the range of forms of his subject and is eloquent in his language: “…gardeners have an ineluctable fascination with the anomalous, even the monstrous and bizarre…” Although he considers his interests to be primarily botanical and historical, there is a lengthy appendix of award-winning cultivars and cultivations notes are liberally sprinkled throughout.

His history is perhaps some of the most interesting. Have you ever wondered if a white heather was lucky? Many have, and Nelson gives a thorough review of the history behind this idea.

Excerpted from the Summer 2016 Arboretum Bulletin.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew have published a series of excellent monographs – in-depth botanical books about a single genus or occasionally a few closely related genera. While all are of high quality (and we have them all in the Miller Library), none match the level of enthusiasm displayed by the authors of “The Genus Betula: A Taxonomic Revision of Birches.”

While most monographs are written by intensely academic researchers, one of the co-authors of “Betula” was a garden designer (Kenneth Ashburner), whose passion was for the living trees in a designed setting. His frustration with the confusion in the nursery trade was a driving force in his authoring this book. His co-author, Hugh McAllister, is a more traditional tree botanist (having written an earlier monograph on Sorbus, the mountain ashes), but demonstrates his own passion as he marvels over a genus that spans the colder parts of the northern hemisphere.

The result is a book will serve a wide range of interests. It is excellent for learning more about the many birches in the arboretum (at least 50 known taxa plus many hybrids and unknown species). Each species is described with the expected botanically precision, but there is much, much more, including its ethnobotany and natural history, cultivation techniques, conservation status, and identification guides.

This book is also handy for shopping. Recognizing that buyers are drawn to white-barked saplings leads to a discussion of comparative “whiteness” of selections and the age of achieving whiteness by popular nursery stock. The authors are keen about other colors, too, encouraging the use of copper to orange or even pink colored forms of Betula utilis. The remarkable peeling habits of different species are praised as well, as is the showiness of the catkins and fall color.

One of the best features of these Kew monographs is the uniformly superb illustrations. In addition to high quality photographs and numerous diagrams, paintings by Josephine Hague make “Betula” a very beautiful book, too.

Excerpted from the Summer 2016 Arboretum Bulletin.

Perhaps the most iconic of trees, the ginkgo has long deserved a book of its own. This has also been a long-time goal of Peter Crane, a former director of Kew Gardens, who wrote “Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot.” Much of his book discusses the fossil records of the ginkgo, its one time vast range around the globe, and its subsequent diminishing to near extinction.

This story has a link to our region in its reference to the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park near Vantage, Washington, which is especially unusual because of the presence of preserved wood. Most fossil sites only have leaves. Even closer to home, ginkgo is the iconic plant for China in the Entry Gardens of Pacific Connections and there is also a fine example at the parking lot entry of the Graham Visitor Center.

The research shows that the genus Ginkgo, now monotypic, once had several species, and several closely related genera. No close relatives are living today. Despite considerable interest in this topic, “…exactly how ginkgo fits into the grand scheme of plant evolution remains elusive.”

While these stories are important, Crane is at his best in his accounts of the cultural impacts of this tree on humans. This is perhaps because he and his family lived near the “Old Lion” at Kew, a ginkgo planted in 1761 and considered the oldest in the United Kingdom. There are many specimens that mark temples and other holy places throughout China and Japan, the only places it has survived from antiquity. Since its rediscovery and revival in western cultures, it has also become an important landmark in North America, for example the giant specimen that Frank Lloyd Wright built his home around in Oak Park, Illinois.

The awe this tree inspires is captured in the author’s description of Hōryō Ginkgo in northern Honshu in Japan. “It is approached with reverence down an aisle of closely spaced, moss-covered stepping-stones. Local people visit it regularly…they explain the tree’s legends to local schoolchildren, and they work to spread word of its importance. This tree was a friend to their grandparents; it will probably also be a friend to their grandchildren.”

The ginkgo’s role in human lives continues to evolve. The male ginkgo, free of odorous fruit, has become a popular street tree in urban centers throughout the temperate world. Many consider roasted ginkgo nuts to be a delicacy and the seeds have been used in traditional Asian medicine for centuries, despite a low level of toxicity. More recently, and mostly in the West, the leaves have become the focus of potential medicinal benefits, with an extract considered to be a memory enhancer.

Excerpted from the Summer 2016 Arboretum Bulletin.

The term “steppes” may conjure up images of Russia and the wide plains of central Asia, but “Steppes: The Plants and Ecology of the World’s Semi-Arid Regions”, a new book published by the Denver Botanic Gardens, brings this exotic image much closer to home.

According to the authors, the Intermountain North American Steppe includes much of eastern Washington and Oregon, and is one of five such regions in the world. In addition to the Central Asian Steppe, these other regions are in central North America, Patagonia in South America, and parts of South Africa.

This book has an even closer connection to home. One of the authors, Larry Vickerman, was a 1993 MS graduate of the Center for Urban Horticulture and the College of Forest Resources.

Published in the July 2016 Leaflet for Scholars Volume 3, Issue 7.