July 2025 Leaflet ~ Elisabeth C. Miller Library, UW Botanic Gardens

Leaflet from the Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Volume 12, Issue 7 | July 2025

Simple Life: Yoshi Nakagawa

Detail from Yoshi Nakagawa's NW Native & Dye Plants

The Miller Library welcomes Yoshi Nakagawa this month. Her Simple Life exhibit runs July 2-30 during library open hours.

Meet the artist at a reception in the library on Monday, July 7 from 5 to 7 pm. Enjoy refreshments from Wild Dreams Farm & Seed on Vashon, with their seeds also for sale.

Yoshi Nakagawa is a Tacoma-based visual artist, specializing in printmaking since 1999. She pulled her first print at the University of Puget Sound, and continued her craft in Seattle and Oaxaca, Mexico. Her artwork is influenced by patterns of the natural world and Japanese textiles, along with her experiences living in Japan, Oaxaca, and the Pacific Northwest. She has exhibited and taught workshops in the US, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Honduras.

The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger
Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy

Plants do astonishing things. This book presents multiple descriptions of the ways they interact with each other and with the environment, including with us. For most readers this information alone will make the book worth reading and contemplating.

One plant, Arabidopsis, responds to gentle strokes with a soft paintbrush with dramatic hormonal and genetic changes that cause it to bulk up or slow its growth. In nature, the plant may be reacting to frequent wind gusts.

Corn plants attacked by caterpillars release a gas that attracts the specific wasps that eat those specific caterpillars. Rye plants, previously scraggly weeds in wheat fields, changed shape to mimic wheat to avoid being pulled out. Eventually they became the rye crop grown for its own value.

Cover of Zoe Schlanger's The Light Eaters

Underlying all this activity is the question of how we should think about plants in the light of this information. What language should we use, and what conclusions should we draw from that choice of language? Are plants intelligent beings? The book’s title offers an example. When plants take in sunlight and convert it to chlorophyll, is that “eating”? When plants interact in ways that in animals can happen only with the use of a brain, which plants don’t have, is that “thinking”?

Or should we develop language to describe all this that doesn’t compare plants to animals? The choice of language has a major effect on our thinking. If plants are essentially like us, they deserve higher ranking on our lists of priorities for protection or destruction.

The title reveals Schlanger’s answer: plants eat. She also makes clear, however, that scientists are seriously divided on the question. While giving lots of fascinating information, this book asks you to rethink the whole concept of the plant world.

Books for your summer road trip

A portion of the books in the Road Trip Reads display

Road trips beckon on long summer days. Whether you're taking a Metro bus to a trailhead in the Issaquah Alps, riding a ferry across Puget Sound, or planning a longer journey, pack a book in your bag.

Before you go (or when you return with questions about plant and animal identification or regional history), check out the fabulous selection of Road Trip Reads featured at the Miller Library throughout University of Washington's Summer Session. We offer field guides, plant-related novels, poetry anthologies, and other titles of regional and global interest.