An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children

An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children is an innovative book by writer Jamaica Kincaid and artist Kara Walker. Despite the title, it is not for the youngest of readers, and the word ‘colored’ is a pointed, satirical use of an antiquated term. The second half of the title indicates the book’s purpose: An Alphabetary of the Colonized World. In form, the book calls to mind children’s books of centuries past, which were meant as vehicles of moral education. This aim is true here, too, but the content is distinctive for its intense focus on plant discovery and naming in the historical context of conquest, colonial exploitation, and slavery. This book is a necessary counter-narrative to traditional white Eurocentric perspectives on botany and human-plant relationships.

Kincaid is known for her literary style and her deep botanical knowledge; Walker is best known for her silhouettes and large art installations that both employ and transform racist imagery of past eras. Though each alphabetical entry is brief, all are dense with layers of meaning. Kincaid’s sentences twist and turn as they disentangle a plant’s context. Here are excerpts from the Amaranth entry:

“When the Spaniards were not committing genocide against the peoples they met, who had made a comfortable life for themselves and created extraordinary, glorious monuments to their civilizations, they were forcing them to abandon this source of physical and spiritual nourishment and replace it with barley wheat, and other European grains. This, along with many other cruelties, led to the decline of the Aztecs and the Inca.” Contemporary gardeners are not immune to a bit of sly critique: “Some gardeners, when reflecting on its [amaranth’s] history and its appearance in their garden as an ornamental, have a very fleeting debate within themselves over the ethics of growing food as an ornamental.”

Walker’s illustrations are thought-provoking: two enslaved Black men laboring under the weight of enormous cotton bolls while, on top of one puff of cotton, a white man in colonial dress takes his ease, smoking a pipe. The illustration accompanying the Guava entry shows a Black woman reaching toward a fruit while poised on a shipping crate marked “Exotic Fruits,” “For Export,” while an impish white boy lifts up the back of her dress. The visual double entendre here speaks volumes.

Though at times veering toward didactic or opaquely allusive language, there is much to learn from this book and its illuminating explorations of plants and their complex histories.

Reviewed by Rebecca Alexander.

aromatic Devil’s club

I came across a reference to the aromatic scent of Devil’s club, and wondered which part of the plant is fragrant, and how it is used.

Despite its daunting common name and repellent species name, the wood of Oplopanax horridus, particularly the inner bark, is said to be sweetly aromatic. According to an article, “Devil’s Club (Oplopanax horridus): An Ethnobotanical Review” from HerbalGram (Spring 2014, Issue 62), the Makah tribe has used an unspecified part of the plant much as one would use talcum powder for infants. This is elaborated upon by Erna Gunther’s Ethnobotany of Western Washington (1973), which says that Green River peoples dry the bark and pulverize it for use as a deodorant.

Other tribes have used an infusion of the bark as a skin wash. Nancy J. Turner’s Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge (2014), mentions that “bathing in a solution of devil’s club is said to make one strong,” and so the plant might be used prior to contests of strength or hunting.

[By coincidence, there is a common perfume ingredient with a very similar name, opopanax, but it is derived neither from Opopanax (in the Apiaceae) nor Oplopanax (in the Araliaceae). Some say its source is the resin of Commiphora guidottii (a plant in the Apiaceae that is native to Ethiopia and Somalia), and goes by the names scented myrrh, bissabol, and habak hadi. Others say it is derived from the flowers of sweet acacia, Vachellia farnesiana (Fabaceae).]

Aromatic plants, Economic botany, Ethnobotany, Oplopanax horridus

Around the World in 80 Plants

[Around the World in 80 Plants] cover

I imagined Jonathan Drori’s world tour starring 80 plants would be interesting to a plant nerd like myself. Inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, Drori’s second book follows on the well-received Around the World in 80 Trees, but with more flowers and herbaceous subjects. I was not disappointed. The book is fun and informative with a perfect mix of botany, history, and culture.

I was surprised to learn that the common Rhododendron native to Turkey, which is invading natural areas of Western Scotland, produces toxic nectar. The honeybees that evolved with this Rhododendron aren’t harmed by the toxin. However, the “mad honey” created from this nectar causes low blood pressure and general feelings of wooziness in humans who eat it. Drori reports that the delicious but dangerous mad honey was used as a bioweapon against pursuing Roman soldiers in 69 BCE by a fleeing Persian army.

The country/plant associations are not always obvious nor necessarily plants native to the country or even the region. Scotland gets Rhododendron because it is so invasive that it is taking over the countryside there. One unusual tree representing the USA is the Cook Island pine, frequently planted in California, especially on college campuses. Part of the fun of this book is anticipating which plants represent which countries. Germany has entries on barley and hops, while Australia has the endemic grass tree (Xanthorrhoea), but also the opium poppy because it is the world’s largest legal supplier to the pharmaceutical industry.

Most of the included plants make an economic or cultural contribution to humankind, such as sugar cane, henna, wormwood, or yerba mate. Others, such as sphagnum moss or saguaro cactus, anchor an ecosystem . A few plants are simply botanically remarkable, such as Welwitschia growing in the harsh Angolan desert. It survives by collecting moisture from fog and Charles Darwin described it as the “platypus of the plant world” because it exhibits traits from both cone-bearing and flowering plants.

Drori’s writing style is clear and engaging. He teases us with just enough botanic and cultural highlights, and seldom writes more than two pages of text per entry. I would guess that most of these 80 plants could each have their own book filled with history, lore, and botany. French illustrator Lucille Clerc really brings the entries alive with captivating color drawings of plant habit and flowers, but also little sketches of products made from the plants, such as thread on spools and a bottle of linseed oil for the entry on flax. The illustrations for lotus were so expansive that they required a two-page spread without any text.

Published in Leaflet for Scholars Volume 8, Issue 9, September 2021.

Just the Tonic: A Natural History of Tonic Water

[Just the Tonic] cover

The Miller Library has other books on cinchona (the plant source of quinine), gin (from juniper), and various plant-based spirits, but Just the Tonic focuses on the evolution of this effervescent beverage, a journey from cinchona-derived medicinal preparations to treat fever, purportedly healthful restoratives for a host of ailments (the kombucha and CBD of earlier eras!), to a recreational beverage we still consume with or without spirits. Along the way, the authors touch on the history of malaria and its treatment, the effects of conquest and imperialism, how humans have harvested and stored ice since Mesopotamia’s tamarisk-lined icehouses of nearly 4,000 years ago, and so many other fascinating morsels of information. The book is profusely illustrated and captivatingly written by Kim Walker (a medical herbalist and historian of plant medicines) and Mark Nesbitt (curator of the Economic Botany Collection at Kew).

The Cinchona tree is native to the high-altitude cloud forests of the Andes, from Colombia south to Peru and Chile. It is a medium-sized evergreen tree with cinnamon-colored bark and loose flower clusters said to have a fragrance similar to lilac. It is the bark which was sought for its anti-malarial properties. However, malaria was not a documented ailment in South America until the Spanish conquest, which added population density to damp lowlands where mosquitoes thrive. 1633 marks the first known reference to use of the bark of the ‘fever tree'(arbol de calenturas) in the writing of a Peru-based Spanish priest, who noted that the bark could be dried, pulverized, and dissolved in a drink that would treat the fevers malaria causes. Eventually, the medicinal use of cinchona bark reached Europe. We tend to think of malaria as a tropical ailment, but marshy regions of western Europe harbor a less severe strain of the illness.

Cinchona bark is intensely bitter, so it was made palatable with port wine, herbs, treacle or syrup, citrus peel, and occasionally opium, in an assortment of proprietary formulations. (Advertisements for these are among the colorful illustrations in the book.) Where there is a market for a plant-based remedy, there is a motive for plant exploration, and this led to overharvesting and worker exploitation in South America. Plantations were also created in Java. But the amount of quinine present in the many species of Cinchona varies, and botanists had a challenge in telling species apart based on their dried bark. In the early 19th century, French chemists isolated two of the alkaloids found in the bark—cinchonine and quinine. This facilitated dosage measurement, an important thing, because too little is ineffective and too much is dangerous (even today there are instances of avid homebrewers developing cinchonism from an overdose of quinine).

Because of quinine’s toxicity and decreasing efficacy (the parasites were becoming resistant to it), there was a shift in the 20th century toward synthetic antimalaria drugs such as chloroquine (a name that may have a recent familiar ring to it!). Still, tonic water—like the Schweppes Bitter Lemon I remember drinking on hot days in Israel—remains associated with the eradication of malaria (though the amount of quinine in such drinks is minimal). For me, it conjured the history of Jewish immigrants draining swamps in the valleys and coastal plains of British Mandate Palestine. (By 1968, Israel was deemed malaria-free.)

The tonic water we know today was inspired by the popularity of visiting natural mineral springs, beginning in the times of the Roman Empire. Scientists in the 18th century strove to come up with a way to simulate this effervescence associated with healthful benefits by contrast with turbid swamp water), and gradually refined their devices for creating “bubbling scintillation” (see the illustration of an apparatus for “impregnating water with fixed air”) in a laboratory setting. Eventually, soda water became ubiquitous in soda fountains and grocery stores. These days, one can even make sparkling soda at the touch of a button, at home. Kew has created its own Royal Botanic Tonic and organic gin, and the book’s final chapter includes recipes for cocktails and mocktails. Bottoms up!

plant sources for natural reeds

I know that synthetic reeds are used in making some woodwind instruments like oboe and bassoon, but what plants are the source for the natural reeds? Is there a difference in sound quality between synthetic and natural reeds? Can the plants be grown in the Pacific Northwest?

There is an article entitled “Wind driven: A bassoonist nurtures reeds from rhizome to riff,” by Diana K. Colvin, published July 21, 2005 in The Oregonian. Oregon Symphony bassoonist Mark Eubanks grows Arundo donax in the Portland area. He says that the plants grow best in areas where the temperature does not drop below 10 degrees. They are also sensitive to drying winds and ground freezes. They perform well in areas where grapevines would thrive. His reed-making business, Arundo Reeds and Cane (now archived), has since been sold, but the company website offers a history of how Eubanks started it.

Another musician in New Jersey, Lawrence J. Stewart, has also made reeds from the plant. Musicians’ opinions on the sound quality of natural vs. synthetic reeds may differ but, in his experience, the sound seemed “very resilient and vibrant.” Unlike synthetic materials, the structure and therefore the sound of the reeds made from plants can vary widely. An article [“Anatomical characteristics affecting the musical performance of clarinet reeds made from Arundo donax L. (Gramineae)”] from Annals of Botany, vol. 81, Issue 1, found that “good musical performance was associated with reeds with a high proportion of vascular bundles with continuous fibre rings, and bundles with a high proportion of fibre and a low proportion of xylem and phloem. Significant differences in these anatomical characteristics were also found between reeds originating from cultivated plantation plants when compared to reeds produced from agricultural windbreak plants.”

This plant has been used for woodwind reeds for quite some time. According to “Arundo donax: Source of musical reeds and industrial cellulose” by Robert Perdue Jr. (Economic Botany, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 368-404), it may have been used in making flutes shortly after the late Stone Age.

The invasiveness of Arundo donax is essential to take into consideration. It is on Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board’s quarantine list. It is also considered invasive in many other parts of the country, including California. If you can salvage reeds that are being removed from a natural area and put them to musical use, so much the better. But I cannot recommend cultivating a stand of Arundo donax for any purpose.

on use of juniper berries for flavoring

Our microdistillery is going to be making gin. I’d like to know which species of juniper to use for the berries which will flavor it. Also, someone said that the berries were toxic. Is that true? Any other information about the use of juniper as a flavoring would be helpful, too.

Here is what Amy Stewart says about the use of juniper for gin in The Drunken Botanist (Algonquin Books, 2013):

“The juniper most widely is J. [Juniperus] communis communis, a small tree or shrub that can live up to two hundred years. They are dioecious, meaning that each tree is either male or female. The pollen from a male shrub can travel on the wind over a hundred miles to reach a female. Once pollinated, the berries–which are actually cones whose scales are so fleshy that they resemble the skin of a fruit–take two to three years to mature. Harvesting them is not easy: a single plant will hold berries in every stage of ripeness, so they have to be picked a few times a year.”

North Carolina State University’s Poisonous Plants database lists juniper as having low toxicity if consumed, and simultaneously describes the fleshy cones (“berries”) as both poisonous and edible, which I understand to mean that if you ingested large quantities of them it might be unwise, but there is a long tradition of using them for flavoring.

A 1998 article by J. Karchesy of the Department of Forest Products at Oregon State University discusses the uses of juniper for specialty products:
“The juniper berry oil of commerce is an essential oil produced by steam distillation of
Juniperus communis berries. This oil is composed mainly of monoterpenes, including
a-pinene, myrcene and sabinene as major components, lesser amounts of sesquiterpenes and
other volatile compounds. Commercial production is carried out in several European countries including Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. Perhaps the most famous use of this product is to flavor gin and alcoholic bitters. It is generally recognized as safe for human consumption (GRAS) and also finds use in many other food products such as frozen desserts, gelatins,puddings, and meats.”