The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger

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.

All these changes have taken place more quickly than can happen in evolution—sometimes in days or even in minutes.

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.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy and published in the Leaflet, Volume 12, Issue 7, July 2025.

The Serviceberry: Abundance & Reciprocity in the Natural World

The Serviceberry tree lives in a reciprocal relationship with its environment – it takes only what it needs to grow and gives its fruit abundantly. Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the plant, especially in its Native American context, as a model for the gift economy she argues we must create.

Kimmerer’s Serviceberry is a western species, Amelanchier alnifolia, which is good to eat, unlike a common eastern variety, A. arborea. Indigenous groups use it many ways, as an important element of their diet. Readers may recognize the plant by one of its many other names: Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum and Sarvis. Kimmerer uses these alternatives as she writes.

After comparing the Northwest Native American potlatch, which involves much mutual gift giving, and other examples of Native American sharing to the economy she wants us to develop, Kimmerer admits that scaling the process up to a national or international practice has proven difficult or impossible. In the end she submits that even small scale “intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity” provide benefits to the givers and receivers and to the natural world:

“The real human needs that such arrangements address are exactly what we long for yet cannot ever purchase: being valued for your own unique gifts, earning the regard of your neighbors for the quality of your character, not the quantity of your possessions; what you give, not what you have” (p. 92).

The Serviceberry makes a good case on its own. It is even more effective as a follow-up to Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, a fuller account of the interdependence of humans and nature. Read them both.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in The Leaflet, Volume 12, Issue 5, May 2025.

The English Landscape Garden : Dreaming of Arcadia

In the 1720s, the 3rd Earl of Burlington planted orange trees at Chiswick House to show his unhappiness with the current Whig Party. Orange trees were associated with William of Orange, whose accession to the English throne in 1689 had been engineered by the Whigs Burlington favored. Politics in the garden. Think of a Republican now placing a statue of Eisenhower in her garden to show she liked Republicans from that era as opposed to the present party.

With a surprising account of how elements in many gardens showed the owners’ political affiliations, often with the Whig Party, Tim Richardson lures readers from the temptation to skip his text and just admire the many elegant photos. The book presents in chronological order a group of English landscape gardens developed in the 18th century.

Later in the century political elements disappear from these gardens. Richardson shows the changes in garden design from an easing of formality in the first part of the century to the even less formal designs of Lancelot Brown in midcentury to the curated wildness of the Picturesque style at the end.

A landscape garden includes “episodes,” various areas with a particular focus, often a statue or a structure such as a temple or hermitage. Our current concept of garden may be stretched by knowing that dozens of buildings were integral to the design of some of these gardens.

Part of the change of design over the years was from an episode that was intended to be experienced for itself to, in the picturesque era, a location framed so one could look out to a distant vista or a nearby “natural” scene such as a carefully engineered waterfall.

Juicy biographical tidbits about the owners of these gardens add to the flavor. John Aislabie, for instance, turned his attention to developing Studley Royal, his marvelous Yorkshire garden, only after he was disgraced for financial shenanigans leading to the South Sea Bubble in 1720, which caused an international financial crisis.

Excellent photographs and garden maps combine with this lively and engaging text to make The English Landscape Garden a very worthwhile read.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in the Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 12, Issue 3, April 2025

Paths of Pollen

Who would think that a collection of essays on pollen that ends with 23 pages of citations of scientific studies would make fascinating reading for non-scientists? Paths of Pollen wins the prize.

Stephen Humphrey writes of varieties of pollen, of pollinators, of strategies for pollinating, and of many challenges to the process. If you thought honey bees did all the world’s pollinating, he introduces you to the many alternatives – dozens of other kinds of bees, other insects like beetles, animals like bats, even the wind. A few plants even pollinate themselves.

Pollen is tough. Microfossils of pollen survived the Permian Extinction 250 million years ago. Now these fossils have become evidence of the existence of extinct trees otherwise unknown.

Colony collapse, the loss of vast numbers of honeybee hives, made headlines in 2006. Humphrey presents a study suggesting that collapse may not be the most serious problem. Although the cause of collapse remains a mystery, plenty of honey bees survive. Wild bees, on the other hand, face more dire problems.

Squash bees visit and pollinate only flowers of the squash family, including pumpkins, as well as many kinds of squash. These bees live underground, in tunnels they dig themselves. A bee weighing a tenth of a gram displaces three grams of dirt in the process, thirty times its weight. The species has adapted over several thousand years of connecting with squash agriculture, notably Native American agriculture, but elsewhere as well. Now it may disappear. Pesticide used to prevent wilt is widely sprayed on the ground, where the tunnels are, endangering these bees. If honey bees do become scarce, wild bees will be essential.

Numerous accounts like that of the squash bee make this book a good read. Particularly of interest to gardeners, it resonates for all of us who recognize the value of plants.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in The Leaflet, Volume 12, Issue 3, March 2025.

The Tree Hunters

Beginning in the 18th century, collecting exotic trees became a national passion in Britain. Country gentlemen (yes, male landowners) strove to outdo each other in assembling trees from faraway sources. In The Tree Hunters, Thomas Pakenham takes the reader to visit the resulting arboreta and to accompany the tree hunters on the sometimes perilous expeditions to collect the seeds that grew into those arboreta.

Kew Gardens earns a substantial notice as an early site. Princess Augusta and her son George III supported efforts to make Kew a center for multiple varieties of trees. The first arboretum open to the public was not Kew but Glasnevin in Dublin. The Dublin Society opened the site by 1800. It included representatives of Linnaeus’s 23 botanical classes, as was thought appropriate, and in addition some examples of attractive variations of each, such as “all kinds of oddities among the fruit trees” (p. 126). Walter Wade, who selected them may have shocked purists by these choices, “but Wade knew when it was time to play to the gallery.”

Of the many tree hunters in this book, David Douglas may be the most amazing. He collected in South America, in the U.S. on both coasts, and finally in Hawaii. His seeds gave Britain the Douglas fir and the noble fir among many dozens of others. In searching he drove himself to exhaustion repeatedly. In the end, in Hawaii, he died by falling into a hidden pit designed to trap cattle. Or was he murdered? Pakenham tells stories well.

The Tree Hunters recounts many fascinating adventures; it also includes much specific information. The excellent index, for instance, has 19 subtopics under “oak.”

Pakenham lists several reasons for this competition to create arboreta– a change in landscape design to one that popularized variety in trees; huge growth in the number of plant nurseries in Britain; the development and growth of horticultural societies. Surely the dominance of the British empire in the 19th century helped the impulse as well. Something in the atmosphere must also fostered that Victorian love of collecting things, of which these arboreta were a happy part.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 12, Issue 2, February 2025.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin shared a passion for the natural world that included close scientific observation and an awe at what they saw that made nature magical. This was true even though neither of them could commit themselves to belief in God or any other supernatural being.

In Natural Magic, Renée Bergland makes the case that Darwin’s writings showed his enchantment with nature, contrary to a public that often read his works as destroying such awe.

Dickinson showed similar enthusiasm for the plants she wrote about. Her work also shows how carefully she examined and described those plants.

In alternating chapters, Bergland has put together parallel biographies. She combines her argument that Darwin included emotional response and Dickinson a scientific one with a history of the changing ideas about the relationship between the sciences and arts in the nineteenth century. In 1780 science and art were all part of one “philosophy.” By 1880 they were separate and at odds with each other.

It is a pleasure to enter into the challenges and relationships of these two towering figures. Regret that the book must come to an end is rare enough for fiction; for this reader it was a first for nonfiction. The book is easy to read – not always true for works built around intellectual history – and full of memorable details.

Darwin, who was enthralled by geology, plants, and animals from childhood, could not find much formal training in science. He suffered from a classical English education which excluded nearly all science, and he hated school. Dickinson, on the other hand, happened to live in a short period of time in America when science was considered essential to girls’ education, and she loved her classes at her Amherst school and her year at Mount Holyoke. She had more formal training in science than he did. He learned it all on his own.

During the nineteenth century science and art were separating. The term “scientist” was first used in the 1830s, replacing “men of science,” since women were excluded. No one, male or female, could earn a living as a scientist. It’s worth noting that both Darwin and Dickinson came from wealthy families, or in Dickinson’s case, wealthy enough, so neither of them needed to work for a salary. Darwin eventually earned handsomely from his books. Dickinson published only a few poems, for no pay.

Sometimes Bergland’s efforts to show parallels in these two lives seem a bit stretched. Still, she is convincing about the connections between their two worlds, and she brings her two subjects very much to life in a time of exciting change.

Review by Priscilla Grundy published in The Leaflet, Volume 12, Issue 1, January 2025.

The Tree Collectors

Amy Stewart has written several books that are in the Miller Library, covering a wide-range of plant-related topics. She is also an author of historical novels, and she brings that skill of writing narratives to all her books. Her latest, The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession, showcases two additional talents: her ability to conduct insightful interviews and to draw illustrations of both people and plants.

This book represents the author’s process of discovery about the many ways people relate to trees. The results are much more varied than Stewart guessed when she began. Some were expected, such as an individual with sufficient land planting all the species in a genus, or all the trees associated together for some other reason.

Others document all the trees of a place. Some plantings are memorials; others are to promote sustainable forestry. Using trees for bonsai or topiary describes the passion of two collectors, while another has amassed no live trees but nearly 7,000 wood samples.

I found the work of Kenneth Høech of Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland especially fascinating. He has researched trees that survive near the arctic tree line and has begun an arboretum to give this otherwise treeless island arboreal plant life.

Sam Van Aken of Syracuse, New York engaged in a project called Tree of 40 Fruit. He grafted stone fruits, including plums, cherries, apricots, almonds, and peaches, onto a single tree, and planted these at suitable locations throughout the country. Each of the typically historical varieties is documented in his archive of botanical illustrations and herbarium specimens of the leaves and flowers.

I recommend this book for its many fascinating stories. As Amy Stewart concludes in her introduction, “if this book accomplishes anything, I hope it inspires you to plant a tree. Or two. Or maybe a dozen. Watch out, though—trees can be addictive.”

Published by Brian Thompson in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 12, Issue 1, January 2025.

A Kid’s Guide to Plants of the Pacific Northwest

Did you know that skunk cabbage roots look like pale, ropy space aliens? Would you like to learn to make maple syrup from bigleaf maple sap? How about some rose-petal honey for your next tea party?

The author of A Kid’s Guide to Plants of the Pacific Northwest shares knowledge gleaned from years in the field, working with young people at her outdoor school on Denman Island, British Columbia.

The book opens with an acknowledgment of the Indigenous peoples of the coast from Alaska to northern California, and the vital relationships that Indigenous people have formed with this land and its plants since time immemorial. The author revisits this topic throughout the book, highlighting Indigenous stewardship of specific plants, from cattail to camas.

Subsequent chapters introduce readers to plant names (Indigenous, common, and scientific), the ethics of gathering, plant families, plant guilds (also known as plant communities), poisonous plants, and invasive plants.

The groundwork in place, Joly presents a dazzling array of plant profiles, arranged seasonally for ease of use. Each profile includes surprising facts about the plant, an activity or recipe to try, and a mix of photographs and sketches that reflect the joy and wonder she and her students feel as they get to know these plants better.

This book is on my gift list for any young person in the region, but it’s not just for kids and families. Anyone who loves plants is likely to be charmed by this book and learn something in the process.

Reviewed by Laura Blumhagen in The Leaflet, December 2024, Volume 11, Issue 12.

The Garden Against Time : In Search of a Common Paradise

The Garden Against Time offers pleasures on multiple fronts. Olivia Laing weaves together elegantly a narrative of reviving her English garden originally designed by Mark Rumary, a well-known landscape designer; numerous accounts of other gardens and gardeners, some literary and some real; and a thread of deep searching into the exclusion underlying nearly all these gardens.

Although Laing had yearned for a garden of her own since early childhood, she was in her forties when she and her husband Ian found the right neglected garden to restore – in January 2020. It was only a third of an acre, “so cunningly divided that you could never see the entirety at once . . .” (p. 5). Then came Covid, and everything shut down. Three million people in Britain began gardening, and Olivia and Ian moved into their new home in August.

Preparing the soil with huge amounts of manure, waiting impatiently for a year to see which of Rumary’s original plants had survived, then laboring many months to put her plans in place – the story makes one ache in sympathy but feel inspired as well.

The other gardens in the book begin with Eden in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and the poems of John Clare bewailing the enclosure of once public land. They include real English and Italian gardeners and gardens, especially Shrubland Hall.

William Morris receives much attention. One of this book’s great pleasures is Laing’s writing style. Her description of Morris shows that style nicely: “It’s true he was a dynamo, a spinning top, who compulsively taught himself to master a dozen crafts, who could weave a tapestry and dye a chintz, embroider a wall-hanging, construct a stained-glass window, write a poem (often on a bus and often too at the astounding rate of a thousand lines a day), illuminate a manuscript, bind and print a book, perhaps translating Homer or Virgil as an evening’s respite from the more exacting work” (p. 161). This book could be used in advanced writing classes as an example of how to play with the English language as if it were a musical instrument.

The subtitle, “In Search of a Common Paradise,” refers to the book’s underlying theme of unease about the unsavory underpinnings of many gardens – certainly all those Laing visits in this book. Do only rich people get to have gardens? Why can’t everyone have access to that soul satisfying pleasure Laing found in hers? Her research led to the slave trade behind Shrubland Hall’s wealth. On the other hand, Morris hoped for the opposite, a utopia where gardens (and all properties) are held in common.

Instead, Laing opts for a combination of public and private ownership: “We need gardens and the life they support established everywhere, if we are to survive” (p. 284). We do.

Many additional delicious nooks and crannies await the reader of “Gardens Against Time.” Run, do not walk, to the nearest library (ours). Don’t miss this book.

Reviews by Priscilla Grundy in The Leaflet, Volume 11, Issue 11, November 2024.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

The Backyard Bird Chronicles is a winsome account of six years in Amy Tan’s obsession (her word) with the birds behind her house. Mostly she stays indoors, watching the action in her yard. She describes what she sees each day (not all days are included) and sketches bird portraits for each entry. Yes, Tan the best-selling novelist has learned to create attractive art as well as lively avian episodes. She first took drawing lessons at age 64 (now she is 72) and has here produced some accurate and attractive bird portraits.

She convinced a hummingbird to drink from a tiny feeder she held in her hand. As someone excited to see a hummingbird hover just once over my apartment window box geraniums, I’m awed – and a little jealous.

Tan chronicles the many tactics she uses to attract birds to her yard – the bird houses, perches, and especially the feeders. Finding something the squirrels could not figure out took many tries. What foods work best was also a challenge, and discovering that some birds eat only on the ground added complications.

Tan’s entries often describe an encounter and then ask questions about it, often questions she does not or cannot answer. Her entry for October 29, 2019 begins with a quotation from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: “Hermit Thrushes rarely visit backyards and generally do not visit feeders” (p. 89). Then she tells how a Hermit Thrush spent three and a half hours trying to find a way into three of her feeders. It kept trying even when the same food was easily available in a flowerpot on the ground below the feeder. Tan then asks five questions about why the bird acted this way. For example, was it young? Migrating? Just curious? She ends by deciding that Hermit Thrushes are not shy, but “solitary nonconformists.”

The May 6, 2019 entry describes an Oak Titmouse encountering live mealworms where it was expecting to find suet balls. The three drawings show stages of the bird’s bafflement and eventual acceptance, each with an imagined bird comment in a cartoon balloon: “What?! No suet balls? It’s alive!” “The food keeps moving.” And eventually, when it accepts the mealworm, “What are you looking at?” Then Tan reports the bird ate many mealworms and carried many more back to the nest.

Tan says her obsession with birds has some similarities to her work as a writer: She regards herself as an observer who asks questions about the lives, deaths, and surroundings of what she sees. Add that to her success in attracting dozens of birds to her backyard, and this book emerges in full feather.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in The Leaflet, Volume 11, Issue 10, October 2024