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Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Human-plant relationships

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.

Braiding Sweetgrass

In Braiding Sweetgrass  Robin Wall Kimmerer unfolds a mesmerizing journey through the convergence of nature, Indigenous wisdom, and personal reflection. Kimmerer’s poetic prose beautifully weaves a tapestry of stories, imparting ecological wisdom that transcends its pages and provides a transformative experience for its readers.
In a world rushing with fast-paced living, the book serves as a gentle reminder to slow down, observe, and welcome nature’s wisdom. It goes beyond being a mere book, extending an invitation to explore our intricate ties with our surroundings, all while challenging the confines of Western science. Rather than outright dismissing ideologies rooted in Western science, it encourages a thoughtful reconsideration of alternative ways of knowing, inviting us to embrace a multiplicity of perspectives in our interaction with the world. 
As a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer guides readers to perceive the world through reciprocal relationships with the land, seamlessly weaving in the narratives and wisdom of her ancestors. Her narrative gracefully dances between scientific understanding and Indigenous perspectives, creating a harmonious blend that resonates deeply. Each chapter felt like a meditative stroll through nature, with Kimmerer as a wise companion, offering insights that inspired awe, reverence, and a profound love for the world and its non-human inhabitants.
Through such thoughtful and skilled storytelling, Kimmerer prompts reflection on our connection to the environment and fosters a sense of responsibility and gratitude.  Braiding Sweetgrass is such an enchanting, enlightening, and inspiring book—a must-read. These stories are not just tales but offerings, gifts that linger in memory, cherished and unforgettable.
 
 
Reviewed by Ashlyn Higareda in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 10, Issue 12, December 2023.
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stars in cottonwoods

I learned about the star shape inside cottonwood twigs from a Lakota story.  The stars were not always in the sky. They originated in the earth, seeking roots from which they could be born. The sound of water drew them to the cottonwood roots (since this tree often thrives near water). They traveled upward into the trees, waiting for wind to snap the branches, releasing the stars into the sky. The story made me wonder if other trees have this star shape inside their twigs and branches, and what purpose does the star pattern inside the twigs serve (other than cosmological)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In exploring winter twig keys and a story by Deb Mowry of the Montana Natural History Center, I learned that this five-pointed (also called five-angled) star shape is common in Populus (aspen, poplar, cottonwood) and Salix species (members of the willow family) but is also found in oaks (Quercus), and chestnut (Castanea). The pith inside a stem is made of parenchyma (large, thin-walled cells), which are often a different color than surrounding wood (xylem). The pith’s function is to transport and store nutrients. Pith is usually lighter when new, but darkens with time (as seen in images like these of cottonwood “stars”).

Mowry’s story notes the importance of cottonwood to the belief systems of Native American tribes: the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, and the Oglala Sioux. Pacific Northwest naturalist and poet Robert Michael Pyle’s essay, “The Plains Cottonwood” (American Horticulturist, August 1993, pp.39-42),  describes an Arapaho version of the story of the stars that you told above: “They moved up through the roots and trunks of the cottonwoods to wait near the sky at the ends of the high branches. When the night spirit desired more stars, he asked the wind spirit to provide them. She then grew from a whisper to a gale. Many cottonwood twigs would break off, and each time they broke, they released stars from their nodes.” Cottonwood twigs sometimes snap off without the assistance of wind, a self-pruning phenomenon called cladoptosis. Pyle suggests looking for twigs that are neither too young nor too weathered if you want to observe the clearest stars: “The star is the darker heartwood contrasting with the paler sapwood and new growth.”

 

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Marijuana or cannabis

Washington’s Governor recently signed a bill replacing the word marijuana with cannabis in the text of all state laws because some say the word has racist undertones. But isn’t cannabis from Linnaeus’s system of plant-naming, and isn’t that system implicitly racist, too?

 

How people feel about use of a particular word is something that evolves over time, and has a complex cultural context. The current sense that marijuana is a racist term is linked to the demonizing of Mexican immigrants and others outside the dominant culture and blaming them for ‘reefer madness,’ but the word on its own is not intrinsically racist. It was used in Mexico as early as 1840 for the plant called Cannabis, and its linguistic origins are uncertain: homophone for Maria Juana (uncertain origin: derived from Spanish mariguan, a non-native plant associated with other psychoactive plants known in Mexico), but potentially connected to a word for hemp used by Chinese laborers in Mexico, itself perhaps borrowed from Semitic and Indo-European words for marjoram—note the Spanish word mejorana, and the Mexican slang term for cannabis, mejorana Chino. West Africans, forcibly taken by the Portuguese slave trade to Brazil, used a term ma-kaña that is similar to the Portuguese term maconha. Theories abound. Though some feel the term should be dropped, others believe that to do so suppresses a history that is worth remembering.

Isaac Campos, professor of Latin American history at University of Cincinnati, and author of the book Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), challenges the idea that the word marijuana is racist. “Marijuana is just the Mexican word for drug cannabis.” The dubious associations of marijuana with insanity and criminal behavior did not originate in the United States, but first appeared in the Mexican press. Marijuana was made illegal in Mexico nearly two decades before the negative associations of the plant and its use reached the U.S. In his opinion, “the more complete story of the word marijuana is a story about the influence of Mexican culture. He believes banning the word would erase that history.” Undeniably, race and class have played a role in the enforcement of drug policies. This article from NPR’s Code Switch explores the subject.

You are right that the scientific name Cannabis is Latin. Linnaeus included it in Species Plantarum (1753). He did not restrict his classification schemes to plants, and it is true that he had theories about ‘varieties’ of human beings that we now recognize as wrong and harmful. Even the Latin name has a complex history:

The Latin name comes from Greek kannabis, which is derived from the Sanskrit root canna, meaning cane. There is a connection to Semitic languages as well (Arabic kunnab, Syriac kunnappa, Aramaic kene busma, etc.) In the book of Exodus 30:23, Moses receives instructions from god:  “Next take choice spices: five hundred weight of solidified myrrh, half as much—two hundred and fifty—of fragrant cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of aromatic cane [kaneh bosem], five hundred—by the sanctuary weight—of cassia, and a hin of olive oil. Make of this a sacred anointing oil.” This might refer to hemp stalks, which were known and used in the Near East in biblical times, or it could refer to another aromatic cane-like plant.

Because societal attitudes change, it is important to be flexible when communicating with each other, and recognize that we do not all feel the same way about words. Delving into the history and etymology of plant names is one way of arriving at a nuanced understanding of why alternative terms might be preferable.

 

 

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Me + Tree

Me + Tree (written by Alexandria Giardino, illustrated by Anna and Elena Balbusso) opens with an image of tight concentric circles. Turn the page to an urban scene with a tree stump, and it becomes clear those circles were tree rings, and immediately the sense of time and history (both arboreal and human) enters the story. The lives of a diverse range of people are intertwined with that of the tree, and their relationship with the tree evolves. Where once it was loved for its fruit and as a place to sit, court, and contemplate, its wood becomes useful for fuel and building, and all that remains is a stump.

The girl who is the “me” of the title is drawn to the stump in the bleak playground, and intuitively grasps the changes it has endured because it reflects what she and her family have experienced . As she draws her own stories on the stump, she depicts joyful times in a beautiful garden, but also the upheaval of fleeing and moving to an unfamiliar place where she feels alone. The sense of connection between girl and tree is mutual, and just as the tree sends up a sprout of new growth, the girl too begins to sense new possibilities of friendship and belonging.

Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, May 2022, Volume 9, Issue 5.

Orwell’s Roses

Orwell's Roses book cover

“In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” Each of the seven sections of Rebecca Solnit’s new book starts with a version of this sentence. The writer, of course, is George Orwell. The book develops from his devotion to roses and particularly to the roses he planted in Hertfordshire in 1936.

In a 1946 essay, “A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray,” Orwell described planting “five fruit trees, seven roses and two gooseberry bushes, all for twelve and sixpence,” ten years earlier. Except for one tree and one rose bush, all were still flourishing.

A few years ago Solnit visited the garden and found the trees gone but some roses enthusiastically blooming. She became convinced that Orwell’s love of roses revealed an important aspect of his life, which is generally seen as pragmatic and focused on harsh realities. She describes this book as “a series of forays from one starting point” (p.15), that 1936 planting. It is beautifully written. Solnit could probably make a description of threading a needle delightful to read.

Each chapter details part of Orwell’s life and connects it to the roses and by extension, to pleasure gained from other flowers, trees, and nature in general. In a 1946 essay “Why I Write,” Orwell explained that he didn’t ever want to lose the affection and wonder he had felt for nature as a child. In an early novel, “The Clergyman’s Daughter,” Orwell creates a miserably unhappy title character, but she finds a moment of delight in a discovery of wild roses. Solnit writes that Orwell did not believe in permanent happiness but did very much believe in the possibility of moments of pure happiness – in his case often connected to roses.

The chapter “We Fight for Roses Too,” describes the origin of the suffragist motto “bread for all, and roses too” (p. 85). Surprisingly, it originated in a 1910 article in “The American Magazine” by Helen Todd. Todd heard a young woman say about a suffragist rally in southern Illinois, that the thing she liked best was that it was “about women votin’ so’s everyone would have bread and flowers too” (p.85). Todd later sent back a pillow marked with the words “’Bread for All and Roses Too.’” Solnit uses this motto as a lead-in to Orwell’s thinking – full of socialist pragmatism but seasoned with a sprinkling of floral pleasure.

Although I have chosen passages in the book that relate specifically to roses and nature, a majority of “Orwell’s Roses” deals with Orwell’s life and thinking. The chapter “Buttered Toast” describes Orwell’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War, but also notes that amid the squalor and rats he found beauty: “. . . if you searched the ditches you could find violets and a kind of wild hyacinth like a poor specimen of a bluebell’” (p. 103, from “Homage to Catalonia”).

Solnit writes that “The gardens of Orwell are sown with ideas and ideals and fenced around by class and ethnicity and nationality” (p.149), which Orwell acknowledged. She includes a brief history of roses coming from China to England and gives some of the many associations that have grown around the plant, including Elton John’s singing about Princess Diana as “England’s rose” (p. 176).

Shortly before he died in 1950, Orwell asked that roses be planted on his grave. When Solnit visited the site, they were still blooming.

Published in the Leaflet, March 2022, Volume 9, Issue 3.

Landskipping

After moving from a lifetime in New York City to the flatlands of central Illinois, my friend Cecile decided to buy landscapes painted by local artists to teach the family how to look at the land around them that seemed oppressively monotonous. That was my introduction to the idea of seeing landscapes from different perspectives. Landskipping shows the reader two ways of looking at rural Britain that emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Along the way, the book describes many engaging places.

In the 18th century English travelers began going to the Lake District and other wild places to experience the views. They were guided by writers and painters who encouraged them to look for locations that were sublime or beautiful or just picturesque, each with its own characteristics. A sublime view, for instance, inspired awe or even terror. As tourism grew, specific locations were described to achieve various effects. Crosses were carved in the turf to make clear exactly where to stand get the best result.

Humans could not resist enhancing the views. In the Lakes the Earl of Surrey had a boat fitted with 12 cannons and fired them so his guests could enjoy the awe-inspiring effect of the echoes. William Gilpin wrote a series of Observations (published between 1782 and 1809) on his travels, including sketches of the scenes he described. In some drawings he modified the actual views so they better fit his criteria for the picturesque, much to the frustration of the tourists who tried to match the view to his sketch. Learning about the rage for scenic travel in this period made me understand better Elizabeth Bennett’s disappointment in Pride and Prejudice, when her trip to the Lake District was aborted.

In the second major section of Landskipping, Pavord contrasts tourist viewing for Romantic effect with that of travelers in the same time period, sometimes looking at the same scenes, with an eye to the productivity of the land. The newly created Board of Agriculture commissioned reports on the condition of farming, and the men sent to write them were “pro-landowner, pro-enclosure,” looking to “improve” land, “maximise profit and . . . use labor in the most efficient way” (p. 97). Thomas Lloyd, for example, noted that “’little attempt was made to feed [the soil] with manure or practice the rotation of crops’” (p. 98).

William Cobbett, in his Rural Rides, articles originally published from 1821 to 1826 in the “Political Register ,” described the landscape as it related to the people who worked there. He loved woodlands because they provided easy to obtain fuel for the laborers, who often lived in extreme poverty. Woods, he wrote, “’furnish . . . nice sweet fuel for the heating of ovens; . . . material for the making of pretty pigsties . . .; for making little cow sheds; . . . for the sticking of pease and beans in the gardens, and for giving everything a neat and substantial appearance.’” He added that the “’little flower gardens . . . and the beautiful hedges of thorn and privet; these are objects to delight the eyes, to gladden the heart’” (p. 112). The productive landscape was to him also beautiful.

Along with further meaty chapters on “Rooks and Sheep,” and on the gradual loss of common land, Pavord includes meditations on her own long connection to and admiration for the Dorset landscape she lives in. She leaves the reader with lots of intriguing information about rural Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries and with new understanding of the benefits of gazing at landscapes from multiple angles.

Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, December 2021, Volume 8, Issue 12.

In the Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing

In the Garden cover

In the Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing is a slim volume that covers a lot of ground. There are essays by well-known writers like Penelope Fitzgerald and Jamaica Kincaid, but American readers will likely be unfamiliar with most of the other contributors. The book is divided in thematic sections: The Garden Remembered, The Collective Garden, The Language of the Garden, and The Sustainable Garden. Fitzgerald writes of a long life in gardens (a childhood garden in Egypt with eucalyptus, lantana, and banyan; large gardens in Oxfordshire full of educational trial and error, and now a much smaller London garden). Like several of the essayists, she reflects on the importance of having a green space during the pandemic in which to find solace.

Several essays are by writers who are descendants of immigrants. I found Paul Mendez’s “The Earth I Inherit” especially poignant. His grandparents came to the industrial West Midlands of England from Jamaica in the 1950s, where they faced racial prejudice on a personal and national scale. They tried to coast beneath the notice of their neighbors by fitting in—planting fragrant plants to conceal ‘strange’ cooking smells that might incite ire, growing plants found in typical urban front gardens (roses, lavender, daffodils, herbs, and vegetables), avoiding anything that might seem outlandish or ostentatious. Still, they derived great pleasure from having even this small patch of earth to nurture and remind them of the home and heritage they left behind.

The communal experience of gardens is the subject of several writers, from a brief history of London’s squares, to the conversion of an abandoned cricket pitch in East London into a thriving community garden where the plants are as diverse as the gardeners, growing what reminds them of their own roots (in Bangladesh, the West Indies, and elsewhere).

Gardens are places where several of the essayists find common ground with their parents. Niellah Arboine and her mother spent many happy days wandering around Kew, but it is their time in the allotment plot that felt like paradise for the author as a child. She abandoned these visits as a teenager, but later reconnected with green spaces and growing things through a gardening group for women of color. During the pandemic, she returned to the allotment with her mother after a long absence; it was the only place they could safely spend time together during lockdown.

Another persistent thread in the essays is the therapeutic and restorative potential of gardens and gardening. Singapore-born Zing Tsjeng’s mother suffers from depression, but has always been an enthusiastic gardener, from tending orchids (which she nourishes with steeped banana peels) and lemongrass to the Japanese maple languishing in her daughter’s garden which she restores to good health. Although her mother has returned to Singapore, she continues to send gardening advice to her daughter, who is gradually becoming more of a gardener.

Poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s “What We Know, What We Grow at the End of the World” is philosophical and prompts thoughts of the garden as metaphor: “In a time during which it is necessary to ask what structures must be dismantled in order for all peoples to live freely and well, thoughts about what will need to be abolished come in tandem with those asking what we will need to learn to grow.”

Published in the Leaflet, Volume 8, Issue 12, December 2021

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.

The Kinfolk Garden: How to Live with Nature

[book title] cover

When I first picked up The Kinfolk Garden, I was impressed with the breadth of photographs capturing the many ways people engage with plants in diverse settings of gardens and in homes. Supplementing these photographic essays is text that is brief, but I found effective in capturing the individual and collective passions of those profiled.

Kinfolk.com describes itself as “a leading lifestyle authority.” Founded in Portland, Oregon ten years ago, it is now based in Copenhagen and publishes a quarterly magazine, social media posts, art prints, and several books including The Kinfolk Garden.

Aside from a few short sections, this is not a how-to book, nor is it about the plants to be found by trekking into nature. Instead, it gave me insights into the human drive to use plants for nurturing in ways both casual and immersive. This is a passion that spans all cultures, all climates, and all peoples.

An example is Ron Finley, who is described as a community garden activist in poorer communities of Los Angeles. He sees gardening as a way to foster self-sufficiency that “can also positively disrupt the social and political systems that perpetuate self-defeating cycles in low-income communities.”

Umberto Pasti, an Italian novelist, has embraced the plants and people of northern Morocco, developing a garden near Tangiers that rescues endangered native flora. He has discovered this also helps rescues the native people who, like the plants, are endangered by industrialization. More on Pasti and his work can be found in the book Eden Revisited.

The subtitle of The Kinfolk Garden is “how to live with nature.” I think a more complete description would be “how to bring nature, specifically plants, into everyday life.” Sometimes, the separation between human life and plants in nature is not very wide. Eduardo “Roth” Neira designed and built a hotel and museum near Tulum, Mexico and yet avoided chopping down trees in the dense rain forest setting. How to do this? “Build around them.”

Published in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2021.