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Emily Carr (1871-1945) was a native of Victoria, British Columbia and lived much of her life in that city.\u00a0 She is best known as a painter, but was also an accomplished writer.\u00a0 Many of her works in both disciplines reflected her passionate interest in the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island and other parts of British Columbia.<\/p>\n
She also had a great love for the natural world and would camp out on Vancouver Island in a trailer she named Elephant.\u00a0 While recovering from a stroke, she completed a manuscript in early 1941 about wild flowers, expressing her desire to end her convalescent and experience the rebirth of spring.<\/p>\n
Titled \u201cWild Flowers\u201d, this work was not published until 2006 by the Royal BC Museum.\u00a0 As Carr\u2019s paintings do not feature close-ups, the editor chose to pair her descriptions with the art of Emily Henrietta Woods (1852-1916).\u00a0 An early art teacher of Carr, Woods was noted for her full-size water color illustrations of wild flowers.<\/p>\n
Carr has a distinctive way of describing her subjects.\u00a0 This is not a traditional field guide in any way, but reading it will give you a very different appreciation of some of our most familiar plants.\u00a0 She described our native dogwood (Cornus nuttallii<\/em>) as resembling a \u201cbadly cooked flapjack\u201d, Fritillaria affinis<\/em> as \u201cbrown tulips\u201d, while a mock-orange (Philadelphus lewisii<\/em>) is an \u201cunderstudy to true orange blossoms.\u201d<\/p>\n Carr also had her own ideas about punctuation, making her plant descriptions especially lyrical.\u00a0 Of our native flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum<\/em>), she writes: \u201cThis bare little bush begins to erupt little bumps all along her wood branches at the first burst of spring every glint of cool sunshine swells the bumps a little more till presently they burst and out squeezes a folded up rosy little tuft of blossom with a sweet, tart smell, very invigorating.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emily Carr (1871-1945) was a native of Victoria, British Columbia and lived much of her life in that city.\u00a0 She is best known as a painter, but was also an accomplished writer.\u00a0 Many of her works in both disciplines reflected her passionate interest in the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island and other parts of British Columbia. She also had a great love for the natural world and would camp out on Vancouver Island in a trailer she named Elephant.\u00a0 While…<\/p>\n