When I made my first forays into wild plant identification as a child and teenager, a handy field guide always lurked somewhere nearby. My trusty and well-used Peterson’s Guide—actually Peterson Field Guides: Wildflowers—still sits on my office shelf. Some of the plants have been reclassified and renamed since it was published, but its arrangement, descriptions and helpful line drawings and color photographs still enlighten me many times a year. It is also small enough to put in a backpack or tote bag.
Of course, there are now plenty of websites and apps that do the same job. EflowersNA for Apple devices is one of them. The apps are terrific, but antique lover that I am; I stick to my faithful field guide.
Carol Gracie’s Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History, is not a field guide. It is just as practical, but infinitely more complex and beautiful. Gracie, a naturalist and botanist, used to work for the New York Botanical Garden. Now she writes and botanizes. Spring Wildflowers is the result of those efforts and came about after years of careful observation, travel and research. The photos, for which Gracie is also responsible, are works of art, depicting all the above- and below-ground parts of each wildflower, along with its pollinators, predators and, sometimes, companion plants. The close-up of a miterwort flower, for example, would not be out of place in New York’s Guggenheim Museum.
The book combines botany, natural history, ethnobotany, entomology, etymology, plant morphology, history, ecology and probably a few other “ologies” as well. Despite that, it is extremely accessible. You don’t have to know the Latin name of a common wildflower, like the lady’s slipper orchid, to find it in the book or understand Gracie’s plant portrait.
Each plant holds center stage in a carefully constructed botanical drama with a story line that includes its plant family and the supporting cast that comprises its ecosystem. The historical information is fascinating. The section on violets, for example, details the many symbolic and romantic links between the “shy” flower and the towering ego of the Emperor Napoleon. The Emperor is long gone, but the violet remains, which is a wonderful object lesson for those who can appreciate it.
Natural history is ultimately about the ways in which species adapt in order to flourish in specific circumstances. Gracie revels in the complex relationships between plants and their pollinators and how various adaptations have sealed those relationships. A close-up of a wasp sipping nectar from a Claytonia flower shows exactly how the insect’s long proboscis facilitates that big drink.
The details of plant sex, also integral to natural history, make you appreciate the fact that Nature’s permutations are endless. Gracie introduces us to plants that are male, female, male and female, or able to change sex quite freely. Pollen flies around with wild abandon, with or without the help of pollinators. A romance novelist writing about plants would have enough imaginative scope for scores of good bodice—or perhaps foliage–rippers. The truth of plant reproduction really is stranger than most fiction.
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of Spring Wildflowers is that the flowers are under constant threat from pollution, development, environmental degradation and predators. The author makes specific reference to the largest and best known of those predators—the white-tailed deer, scourge of rural and suburban landscapes. Less well known, but also destructive is the alien earthworm, which changes the nature of woodland ecosystems by “consum[ing] leaf litter, organic matter, and microbes in the soil at a rapid rate, causing a reduction in humus depth and a redistribution of soil components.” This worm action uproots tender seedlings and forces other seeds so far down into the soil that they cannot germinate.
While not an herbal, Gracie’s book also details some of the traditional medicinal and practical uses of the wild plants. She is careful to point out plants and plant parts that may be poisonous to either humans or animals, including helpful information on the chemical compounds that make them toxic. At a time when an ever-decreasing number of us are familiar with the natural world, this kind of knowledge is much needed.
Spring Wildflowers gives readers a rare view into the inner lives of plants that are often ephemeral–flowering, setting seed and dying back, all before summer’s heat sets in. It reminds us that even in the face of competition and depredation, beautiful species like mayappple, trillium and bloodroot survive. If increased knowledge of these plants inspires human appreciation, perhaps it will also inspire efforts to increase wildflower survival.