Dirt By Amy Stewart

Wicked Plants at the White House

This just in from The Onion.

WASHINGTON—In his first major gaffe since taking office, President Obama accidentally stepped too close to the ferocious, man-eating plants of the White House Rose Garden Monday and was nearly devoured whole.

read on:

Obama Narrowly Survives Carnivorous Section Of Rose Garden

Mother's Day Flowers

I wrote an essay for the Guardian on Mother's Day flower in anticipation of the British Mother's Day (which happens earlier than ours) and in anticipation of the publication of the UK edition of Flower Confidential.  Read it here.

Wicked Plants--The Art

 I think Wicked Plants just went off to the printer, and in about six weeks I should have a copy.  That'll be cool, but what's even cooler is the spin-off project that has come out of this:  the artist, Briony Morrow-Cribbs, who created original copper etchings of 40 wicked plants for the book,is doing a limited edition set of the etchings to sell to art collectors. 

Check out the set here.  It includes an introduction I wrote and one by Briony, each set in letterpress type, and the set is numbered and signed and comes in a fancy box, etc. etc. 

It wasn't until this project was nearly over that I really stopped to think about how unusual it is to have a book illustrated with original copper etchings.  It's a very old technique that was used to illustrate botanical books in centuries past, but who does that anymore?

Well, Briony does, and as you can see from these pictures, she's young and energetic and really talented.  We were lucky to get her. 

If the complete set is out of your price range--they start at $2500--I think that individual prints will also be for sale, and we're working on printing a set of Wicked Plant notecards.  (Coming soon: Wicked Plant action figures!)

But seriously, the idea behind all of this is to give her work some broader exposure. Her prints will be on display at Brooklyn Botanic Garden starting May 30 and continuing through the summer -- more on that later -- and we're going to have an exhibit of it in our bookstore in May.   Briony will also teach a class on drypoint etching at BBG this summer.  I'll post details on that soon, too.

And as long as I'm bragging about Briony, please check out her annual suite of botanical prints. I'm not sure if there are any left from 2008, but they are very dramatic and richly detailed.  Click to enlarge.

sLowlife

Here's a podcast I recorded to go along with the very cool sLowlife exhibit about plant science.  Check it out.

Gilding the Lily

Flower Confidential is being published in the UK under a new name and with a new cover.  The British publisher is Portobello Books; I worked with them to add several new sections about English flower farmers and the situation in Kenya, which exports flowers to England. 

I interviewed some great flower farmers, including Heather Gorringe at Wiggly Wigglers, Jane Lindsey at Snapdragon, and  the wonderful people at the Real Flower Company, among others.

So if you're in the UK, check it out---and I'll be posting UK reviews and other information here as it comes in.

Evo Morales on a Wicked Plant

In today's New York Times Evo Morales Ayma, president of Bolivia, argues in favor of legalizing the traditional use of coca leaves. He makes a gloriously horticultural argument, stating in part:

Many plants have small quantities of various chemical compounds called alkaloids. One common alkaloid is caffeine, which is found in more than 50 varieties of plants, from coffee to cacao, and even in the flowers of orange and lemon trees....

Another common alkaloid is nicotine, found in the tobacco plant.... Quinine, for example, the first known treatment for malaria, was discovered by the Quechua Indians of Peru in the bark of the cinchona tree.

The coca leaf also has alkaloids; the one that concerns antidrug officials is the cocaine alkaloid, which amounts to less than one-tenth of a percent of the leaf. But as the above examples show, that a plant, leaf or flower contains a minimal amount of alkaloids does not make it a narcotic.

His point is that any number of plants contain compounds that may harm or heal.  In the case of the coca plant, putting a leaf between the cheek and gum the way members of Andean cultures have for centuries delivers nothing like the distilled high delivered by an extract known as cocaine.

And in fact, it is worth pointing out that coca leaves were chewed by Andean peoples long before Europeans arrived and invented cocaine.  One could argue that Europeans (and Americans) should go deal with cocaine in their own country and leave the bushes growing in the Bolivian mountains alone.

And this is fair, to a point, although it doesn't explain away Andean farmers who are growing the plant for cocaine production rather than traditional use.

Regardless.  I included quite a few illegal plants in Wicked Plants, and I have to say that the idea of outlawing a plant is as odd to me as outlawing a bird or a pebble.  It is also surprising to see the number of plants that are perfectly legal, but far more harmful than an illegal plant like cannabis or opium poppy.  (Castor bean, for example.  Hemlock.  Salvia divinorum.) How and why we outlaw plants is an artifact of history that bears little relationship to the actual threat they pose.

Now, what we do with that plant is another matter entirely, and this, I think, is Morales' point.  Leave the plant alone, and concentrate on the manufacturers, dealers, and distributors of its extract.