Our lives are so ubiquitously intertwined with the Plant Kingdom, it’s easy to sometimes take it for granted.The Botanical Bible (Harper Collins / Abrams Books, published Autumn 2018) tells the story of plants – from how they evolved and what they do, to the ways in which they feed, heal and inspire us – and celebrates our connections with the natural world. Author Sonya Patel Ellis illuminates further . . .
What are plants? I’ve asked this question of many people during the course of writing this book and the combined answers are hugely revealing. My own children (aged four and six at the time of writing) approached the query with a refreshing innocence, largely based on what they could see in their immediate environment or how plants made them feel: ‘Plants are cacti, trees and bluebells’, ‘Plants grow’, ‘Plants have roots’, ‘Plants are in my garden’, ‘I love flowers’, ‘I love playing in the forest’, and the suitably abstract, ‘Sometimes I am a plant.’
The response from most adults was much more complex, revealing as much about the person themselves as it did about the Plant Kingdom. A significant number felt compelled to describe plants in a scientific manner, in many cases weaving together botanical facts and figures learned at school: ‘Plants belong to the Plant Kingdom’, ‘Plants photosynthesise’, ‘Plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen’, ‘Plants need the sun’, ‘Plants are all around us’.
With just a small amount of further prompting – But what do plants do? How do plants make you feel? Do we need plants? Do you work with plants? – what many people felt was the ‘right answer’ (i.e. an educationally formulated one) evolved into a more personal narrative about their own botanical world. Conversations were initiated about plant-based food, materials and medicine, stories were shared about gardening, walks in the woods, favourite flowers, joyful plant-filled occasions, travels to different biomes, herbal medicines, nostalgic floral perfumes and working with plants, and thoughts were expressed about our role in the future of plants based on how much we rely upon and therefore need them.
The point of asking such a question was not to expose a lack of botanical understanding but rather to highlight just how much most people actually do know about plants from their everyday interactions with them – and by doing so, to encourage a more dynamic foregrounding of the wonders of the Plant Kingdom and thus greater enthusiasm for our understanding, care and pleasure of it. You don’t need to have a Masters degree in botany to relate to plants (although a deeper knowledge of the Plant Kingdom can open as many doors of perception as an Aldous Huxley-inspired mescaline trip for some people), but the idea of looking closer at plants and elevating them to the same lofty status as other living organisms (animals and humans, for example) is ultimately inspiring – the Plant Kingdom really is a wonderful multifaceted prism through which to view the workings and abstractions of the world at large.
For my part, I’ve inhabited a ‘botanical world’ for as long as I can remember. As a young child, my mum would take my siblings and me for regular walks down the Nagger Lines (an abandoned railway between two former collieries) of the West Yorkshire village of Stanley, where I grew up. Between illicit jaunts into adjacent cabbage or rhubarb fields (this being the heart of ‘The Rhubarb Triangle’), we’d pick the wildflowers that grew along its scruffy banks, carefully placing ox-eye daisies, dandelions and mother die (cow parsley) into beloved flower presses bequeathed by a neighbour. At home, we’d turn them into pictures like the ones my mum had hanging on our lounge walls, in classic 1970s hippy-meets-Victoriana style, faded petals pinned upon deep black velvet or creamy handmade paper.
These flower presses would go everywhere with us: on plants-meet-art days out to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; on holiday to Wales where we marvelled at our first sighting of a snake’s-head fritillary (no one would believe that we had seen a chequered flower, as our intuitive feeling that it was rare saved it from the press); or further afield when we experienced our first foreign climes, courtesy of the Spanish isle of Ibiza. There we saw and tasted olives for the first time, inhaled the uplifting aroma of native rosemary and thyme clustered around boulders or patches of parched earth, and witnessed our first palm tree. I also fully realised at the eye-opening age of seven that my dad too, like these plants, was originally from another country, namely India; a place that came with its own culture, colours and natural scenery. This was my ‘flower power’ summer: July 1981 – the year that the narrative of my own personal ‘botanical world’ went global.
My sister, brother and I owe much to our mum and dad for our knowledge of plants. Although my dad studied botany while training to become a doctor, and thus has a good understanding of the science of plants, it was my combined parents’ inquisitive minds and creative outlook that really laid the foundation for much of our learning and sustained interest in nature. We were also lucky enough to have a small garden while growing up, and we spent most of our time in it making mud pies, bashing succulents to extract the ‘medicinal’ juice, crafting with anything we could get our hands on – including foraged sticks, leaves, nuts, seeds, fruits and flowers – and helping grow spring bulbs, vegetables and berries, some of which we would then eat.
My botanical knowledge grew organically and osmotically – including grasping the very concept of osmosis and the idea of a xylem and phloem by way of a split-stemmed white carnation watered by two separate vases of food dye (infinitely more powerful than the words of any textbook) – and along the way I was shown the essential skills of how to marvel and inquire. A lifelong obsession with the natural history television presenter David Attenborough, who first appeared on my TV screen in 1979 with the documentary series Life on Earth, immeasurably expanded my botanical world. These horizons were then further personalised by an art degree specialising in fashion and textiles (mostly spent pivoting around aspects of nature), 20 years of editorial experience (for illustrated books, magazines and environmental organisations, exploring everything from alternative health to plant-inspired design) and a garden to call my own, not far from the ancient botanical wonders of Epping Forest (a new favourite day out).
I am not a botanist per se, but I can enthuse for hours about plants and all that they have taught me (for those with the inclination to listen or the wisdom to teach me more) and the importance of passing on the seeds of this knowledge has also become increasingly vital since having children of my own. Indeed, inspiring plant lust and conservancy in future generations may well be the main catalyst and raison d’etre for this book, a narrative that began to unfold in early 2013.
Around that time, through my work as a commissioning editor for an illustrated book publisher, I had begun noticing a trend for all things botanical – from naturecraft, edible flowers and healing herbs to the emergence of what is now a fully fledged houseplant revival. I began researching ideas around a book on pressed flowers and quickly became enamoured with the art, science and beauty of herbarium pressings. When maternity leave beckoned in July 2013, I was inspired enough to make my own traditional large-scale herbarium press (along the lines of those used by the Victorian plant hunters) and intuitively set about pressing and recording plants and flowers from my garden over the course of a year. The Herbarium Project was born (now part of A Botanical World, www.abotanicalworld.com).
Paying close attention to conservational herbarium methodologies, I was amazed by the results that ensued. Not only had I managed to preserve the seasonal beauty of possibly my most green-fingered year ever – where beds and borders burst with cosmos, love-in-a-mist, sweet peas, lavender, poppies and hellebores (some of the best specimens to press) – I had inadvertently stimulated a possibly obsessive appetite for the taxonomy and nomenclature of plants, the mythology and language of flowers and a deeper desire to know how plants worked. I had liberated the story within, as it were. With each ‘big reveal’ of my flower press, from the tiny spiral tendrils of some species of sweet pea to the elongated seedpods of a California poppy, I discovered new morphological details but also a little bit more about what makes that particular plant or species unique: how it grows, reproduces and ultimately survives, for example, or what plant family it belongs to.
My renewed foray into the world of pressed botanicals has brought numerous rewards, including exhibitions, events, workshops, writing and bespoke commissions, some of which you can read about in chapter 6 as just one of a collection of nature-inspired artist profiles. In parallel with my pursuit of botanical artistry, I continued to develop an idea for a book that embraced all aspects of the botanical world, from how plants evolved to the many ways in which people, past and present, engage with them – from plant scientists, gardeners, nature writers, herbalists and plant-based chefs to nature-inspired artists, photographers, designers and makers. The Botanical Bible is the result (and is a sequel to its pollinating counterpart, The Beekeeper’s Bible, 2010); a reminder of how much one already knows about the Plant Kingdom coupled with numerous expert-led ways of exploring it further.
What are plants? Hopefully you will find your own unique answer within the pages of The Botanical Bible and this accompanying website, www.abotanicalworld.com. I hope you enjoy growing and developing your botanical world as much as I have and continue to do.
Sonya Patel Ellis, Author, The Botanical Bible
FIND OUT MORE
Extracted from The Botanical Bible (US version, Abrams Books, published 25 Sept 2018) // Collin’s Botanical Bible (UK version, William Collins, published 18 Oct 2018). Preorder your copy now direct from the author or publisher plus buy limited edition prints and other botanically-inspired goods via the A Botanical World store >
MAKE THE CONNECTION