{"id":2222,"date":"2014-07-23T00:02:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T07:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/book\/book-review-10\/"},"modified":"2023-10-28T14:46:46","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T21:46:46","slug":"evolution-of-the-genus-iris","status":"publish","type":"book","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/book\/evolution-of-the-genus-iris\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of the Genus Iris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Evolution
\nThe title of Robert Michael Pyle’s most recent book might fool readers into supposing it a scholarly treatise aimed at the ultra-specialist in the Family Iridaceae. Look inside the cover of Evolution of the Genus Iris<\/em><\/a> and all will become clear: these are poems of everyday life from the particular perspective of a Pacific Northwest naturalist.<\/p>\n

The Miller Library has several other books by Pyle (including Wintergreen<\/em><\/a> about the ecology of the Willapa Hills, and The Butterflies of Cascadia : A Field Guide to All the Species of Washington, Oregon, and Surrounding Territories<\/em><\/a>). These plain-spoken poems feature garden perennials, reflections on the Palouse Giant Earthworm, longhorn beetles, butterflies, banana slugs, and how could I resist mentioning a paean to librarians.<\/p>\n

One of my favorites in this first collection of poems is “Botany Lesson: Cleome.” It begins, “He called it bee balm, but I heard bee bomb.” The poet and his friend are on a butterfly-collecting trip, encountering specimens of wild Cleome. Pyle points out that Theophrastus’s coinage of Cleome was based on a mistaken notion that the plant was related to mustard, when it is actually “a caper called spider plant, or bee \/ plant, for the love of honeybees but never bee balm.” It’s a poem of friendship and reminiscence as well as an observation about the complexities and accidental poetry of naming things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of Robert Michael Pyle’s most recent book might fool readers into supposing it a scholarly treatise aimed at the ultra-specialist in the Family Iridaceae. Look inside the cover of Evolution of the Genus Iris and all will become clear: these are poems of everyday life from the particular perspective of a Pacific Northwest naturalist. The Miller Library has several other books by Pyle (including Wintergreen about the ecology of the Willapa Hills, and The Butterflies of Cascadia :…<\/p>\n

Continue reading Evolution of the Genus Iris<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","keyword":[22],"class_list":["post-2222","book","type-book","status-publish","hentry","keyword-reviews"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book\/2222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/book"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"keyword","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyword?post=2222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}