{"id":2033,"date":"2017-01-09T08:44:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2017-01-09T08:53:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:53:40","slug":"botanicum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/botanicum\/","title":{"rendered":"Botanicum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A museum at a glance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the great joys of gardening and writing about plants is amassing a collection of books.\u00a0 These days, you might argue that everything is available online, via e\u2013books or other electronic means.\u00a0 That may be so, but it would be hard to find a substitute for Botanicum<\/em> by illustrator, Katie Scott, and scientist, Kathy Willis, a book that was published last year under the auspices of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.\u00a0 It is monumental in just about every way.<\/p>\n

To begin with, the bountifully illustrated book is an impressive size\u2014about 14.25 inches by 10.5 inches.\u00a0 It is printed in full color on the kind of heavy paper that is a rarity in the world of modern book publishing.\u00a0 But the content is the real revelation.\u00a0 The authors intend the work to be a museum in book form, cataloging the world\u2019s plant groups and describing the history, appearance and reproductive habits of each group\u2019s members, with botanical illustrations that show representatives of different plant types.<\/p>\n

The whole work starts with a two-page tree of life that connects all plant groups to swirling, branching stems that wind all the way back to the simple algae that first arose about 3.8 billion years ago.\u00a0 Farther up the page, the main stem divides into angiosperms, the flowering plants that make up about 80 percent of all plant species, and gymnosperms, those plants, like conifers and gingkos, that bear exposed fruits.\u00a0 The branches multiply to include characteristic examples of every growing thing.\u00a0 The organization is straightforward; the simplest, oldest plants are at the bottom of the \u201ctree\u201d and the most recent, like carrots and hibiscus, are at the top.<\/p>\n

As befits such a large book, the illustrations are bold and bright. The turkeytail fungus\u2014Trametes versicolor\u2014in the \u201cFungi and Lichens\u201d section, for example, is both botanically correct and so artistically rendered that taken by itself, it might be mistaken for an abstract painting. \u00a0The illustrator, Katie Scott, was inspired by late nineteenth and early twentieth century German botanical artist and polymath, Ernst Haeckel, whose colorful illustrations for his 1904 work, Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature) <\/em>are so full of life that they seem ready to dance off the page.<\/p>\n

Representative plants may be depicted via illustrations of fruits, branches, flowers or stem cross sections.\u00a0 In some cases, like the pages illustrating \u201cEnvironment: Carboniferous Forests\u201d and \u201cEnvironment: Rainforests\u201d, an entire grouping of plants dominates a single page.\u00a0 Unlike some other botanical artists, Ms. Scott does not pair plants with their pollinators or insect pests.\u00a0 The unusual hawkmoth that is the sole pollinator of the Christmas star orchid\u2014Angraecum sesquipedale\u2014is the lone insect inhabitant of Botanicum.<\/em><\/p>\n

In her text, Dr. Willis gives a wonderful sense of the great span of horticultural history and the ways in which plant groups evolved.\u00a0 She also includes tantalizing practical details, as in the passage on giant sequoias that mentions the 30 meter or 98 foot root run that the sequoia requires to anchor its great height firmly in the ground.\u00a0 She is equally good at describing natural processes, including the annual chain of events that ends in deciduous trees shedding their leaves as shorter daylight hours take hold in the fall.<\/p>\n

Being a lover of flowers, I am especially taken with the illustration for \u201cEnvironment: Alpine Plants\u201d, which shows a rock pile abloom with primulas, saxifrages and gentians, all under a rounded sky that looks like a Victorian glass dome.\u00a0 The picture perfectly illuminates the idea of an ecosystem as a blooming world in miniature.<\/p>\n

The exhaustive treatment of the plant kingdom also includes important food crops, lest we forget that staples like rice, corn and various forms of wheat evolved along with all other plants.\u00a0 Now, those three grasses\u2014for that is what they are–account for over 50 percent of the world\u2019s food.<\/p>\n

As an adult, I am enchanted with Botanicum<\/em>, but I can see it having equal, if not more value as a teaching tool for children.\u00a0 The illustrations all by themselves would fascinate some children and tales, such as that of the sponge gourd or loofah, which is both edible and useful for bathing, would pique interest.\u00a0 I can easily imagine Botanicum<\/em>, as the vehicle that launches a thousand questions from curious kids.<\/p>\n

The authors share that sense of wonder and they conclude the book with an inspiring thought:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe journey goes on.\u00a0 Not only are scientists continuing to discover new plant species every year (almost every day), but plants are continuing to evolve in response to changing conditions and new challenges.\u00a0 The story has just begun.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the great joys of gardening and writing about plants is amassing a collection of books.\u00a0 These days, you might argue that everything is available online, via e\u2013books or other electronic means.\u00a0 That may be so, but it would be hard to find a substitute for Botanicum by illustrator, Katie Scott, and scientist, Kathy … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1562,1556,1558,643,1080,1561,1557,1560,1559],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-botanical-illustrations","tag-botany","tag-ecology","tag-garden-books","tag-garden-reference","tag-kew-gardens","tag-nature-study","tag-plant-families","tag-plant-taxonomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}