Florapedia: A Brief Compendium of Floral Lore

By Amy Jean Porter and Carol Gracie

A delightful illustrated treasury of botanical facts and fancy

Florapedia is an eclectic A–Z compendium of botanical lore. With more than 100 enticing entries—on topics ranging from achlorophyllous plants that use a fungus as an intermediary to obtain nutrients from other plants to zygomorphic flowers that admit only the most select pollinators—this collection is a captivating journey into the realm of botany.

Writing in her incomparably engaging style, Carol Gracie discusses remarkable plants from around the globe, botanical art and artists, early botanical explorers, ethnobotanical uses of plants, botanical classification and terminology, the role of plants in history, and more. She shares illuminating facts about van Gogh's sunflowers and reveals how a hallucinogenic weed left its enduring mark on the early history of the Jamestown colony. Gracie describes the travels of John and William Bartram—father and son botanists and explorers who roamed widely in early America in search of plants—and delves into the miniature ecosystems entangled in Spanish moss. The book's convenient size allows for it to be tucked into a pocket or bag, making it the perfect companion on your own travels.

With charming drawings by Amy Jean Porter, Florapedia is the ideal gift book for the plant enthusiast in your life and a rare pleasure for anyone interested in botanical art, history, medicine, or exploration.

• Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9780691217543

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Florapedia

Copyright © 2021 by Carol Gracie

Princeton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the progress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission.

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Published by Princeton University Press

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-691-21140-4

ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-21754-3

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Robert Kirk and Abigail Johnson

Production Editorial: Mark Bellis

Text and Cover Design: Chris Ferrante

Cover, endpaper, and text illustrations by Amy Jean Porter

This book was written during the COVID-19

pandemic and is dedicated to all of those

who worked so hard and endured grave

risks on the frontlines of the medical

world and in other essential services to

protect and provide for the rest of us.

Preface

The earth laughs in flowers, a phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Hamatreya, is often quoted, not in the dark context of its meaning in the poem (that of Earth reclaiming the bodies of those who once boasted of owning it), but instead to imply that flowers are Earth’s ebullient way of providing beauty and happiness for the beholder. There is little doubt that flowers elicit a positive response in the minds and souls of most humans; Earth’s floral laughter certainly brings smiles to many. Indeed, to be unmoved by the sight of a field of wildflowers or an intimate look at an individual flower’s beauty would be a sorry state. Flowers are used to symbolize love, happiness, and beauty, and despite all of nature’s other enchantments, the world would be deficient without flowers. Yet flowers are so much more than pretty adornments of the landscape. I hope through the short entries in this book to instill an appreciation for some of their many other dimensions.

Flowers have played a role in history, cultural rituals, medicine, nutrition, perfumery, and even insecticides. They serve as emblems of countries, states, and villages and are strongly associated with holiday celebrations around the world—think of poinsettias at Christmas, lilies at Easter, and chrysanthemums at fall festivals; they also play a major role in many of life’s milestone events, among them weddings and funerals.

The lives of flowers can be complex, interesting, and even deceitful. A fuller appreciation for the importance of flowers can be gained by learning about the reasons behind their beauty (speaking of most flowers), the ecological role they perform in their environment, their methods of achieving their main purpose in life (reproduction), and their importance to wildlife and people. A discussion of these aspects may be found under the entries for several specific flower species. In many ways, the lives of plants are as interesting and complicated as those of animals. Of course, the principal purpose of all life on Earth is to perpetuate itself. Most animals are capable of moving about in search of a mate, but plants are rooted in the ground and must utilize more creative means to achieve reproduction. Thus, there are several entries about the unusual methods employed by plants to lure their pollinators and ultimately produce viable seeds.

Plants, of necessity, preceded animal life on Earth, for unlike animals, plants are able to manufacture their own food through photosynthesis (using the sun’s energy to convert CO2 from the air, along with water drawn up by the roots, into sugar that serves as the plants’ energy source and enables them to make other materials such as cellulose and starch). Thus, plants form the basis of nearly all food chains, from simple phytoplankton consumed by a range of marine life from jellyfish to whales, to top predators like the wolf—which feeds on other mammals, which in turn feed either directly on plants or on other animals that feed on plants. The exception to this plant-based food chain occurs in the more recently discovered microbes that live near deep-sea hydrothermal vents and utilize chemical energy from the minerals and chemical compounds emitted by the vents, in a process called chemosynthesis, to form and release new compounds that are fed upon by larger deep-sea animals.

All disciplines have their own vocabulary, and there are terms that are descriptive of, or limited to, the plant world. Some of these words may have other meanings in different fields, but understanding this terminology as it applies to flowers will help in the comprehension of plant form and function. Thus I have included some of both the common and the more esoteric of those terms herein.

Lucky are those whose lives and work revolve around flowers—not only gardeners and horticulturists, floral designers, and creators in the decorative arts, but also botanical explorers, scientific illustrators, perfumers, and all those whose works of music, dance, painting, literature, and the other arts are inspired by flowers. Some of those people are profiled in this book.

Achlorophyllous plants

Plants that have no chlorophyll and are thus not green; therefore, they cannot photosynthesize to produce their own food. Among these plants are parasites and mycoheterotrophs (plants that obtain their food via an association with a fungus). The fungus absorbs carbohydrates from a photosynthetic host plant by attaching its threadlike hyphae to the fine roots of the host—often a tree—and transports the nutrients to the nonphotosynthetic plant.

Familiar plants that utilize this lifestyle include beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana), an obligate parasite on the roots of beech trees, and Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), a mycoheterotrophic plant.

Beechdrop seedlings attach themselves to the small roots of beech trees, forming a physiological bridge (the haustorium) between the host and the parasite. Although beechdrops derive all their water and nutrients from the host tree, they do not appear to harm the tree. Mature beechdrop plants are brownish white and produce two types of flowers, bud-like cleistogamous (closed) flowers that never open, and larger, relatively showier chasmogamous (open) flowers. Cleistogamous flowers produce most of the seeds, which are dispersed from the open fruits by raindrops. The sticklike brown remnants of beechdrops persist throughout the winter.

Indian pipe is a waxy white flowering plant that is sometimes mistaken for a fungus. Before mycorrhizal relationships between plants and fungi were known, it was thought that such plants absorbed their nutrition from decaying leaf litter; they were then called saprophytes. It is now documented that certain fungal partners in the family Russulaceae serve as conduits for food and mineral resources produced by nearby trees to the Indian pipe plant. The host trees receive nothing in return from the Indian pipe; thus, Indian pipe is indirectly parasitic on the host tree. The related multiflowered pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys) has a similar lifestyle.

Angell, Bobbi (1955–)

One of today’s most prolific botanical artists, who carries on the long tradition of illustrating plant species that scientists are describing as new to science or writing about for other publications. During her college years as a botany student, Bobbi’s talent for illustrating plants in her taxonomy class became evident, prompting her professor to encourage her to consider a career as a botanical illustrator. It is this combination of botanical knowledge and artistic skill that makes Bobbi Angell one of the most sought after contemporary botanical artists.

Before the advent of photography, most scientific expeditions included an artist to document the collections made on the expedition. In today’s world of curtailed plant exploration and limited funding for such expeditions, several scientists, realizing the value of having a trained botanical artist accompany them in the field to draw living plants in situ, have managed to procure the necessary funding for Bobbi to join them on expeditions to such places as South American rain forests, southwestern deserts, Caribbean islands, and European mountains. Bobbi’s field sketches provide invaluable reference material when she returns home to begin the scientific illustrations that document the plants collected. In cases when she has not been able to observe the living plants, Bobbi is skilled at reconstructing three-dimensional depictions of a plant’s habit from two-dimensional herbarium specimens and dried or pickled flowers. Using a dissecting microscope, Bobbi makes detailed drawings of flower parts, leaf surfaces, seeds, and other diagnostic details that show all aspects of a plant. Her keen eye and botanical expertise have allowed her to point out hidden details to the scientists, who might not have otherwise noticed them. Photographs taken in the field supplement these materials. Her finished plates, rendered in pen and ink, are both scientifically accurate and aesthetically appealing.

Working with botanists at the New York Botanical Garden and other prestigious institutions, Bobbi has illustrated thousands of plants. She has received awards for her work, including the Jill Smythies Award from the Linnean Society of London and the Award for Excellence in the Service of Botanical Art from the American Society of Botanical Artists.

Anther dehiscence

The manner in which an anther opens to release its pollen. The anther is the pollen-bearing part of the stamen (the male part of a flower) and is usually attached to a thin filament. Most anthers are two lobed and contain four microsporangia (pollen sacs). In order for pollination to occur, the anther must dehisce (split open) to release the pollen so that it may be transported by either the wind or an animal vector to the female stigma of the same or a different flower of the same species.

There are several types of anther dehiscence; only the most common are mentioned here. Most anthers open longitudinally, with the anther splitting along a vertical slit parallel to the length of the anther. The slit may be introse (facing inward toward the center of the flower), extrose (facing outward), or latrose (neither inward nor outward, but sideways). An example of a flower with longitudinal dehiscence is the lily.

In certain plant families, among them the tomato family (Solanaceae) and the blueberry family (Ericaceae), many species have poricidal (or terminal) dehiscence. Their anthers open by small pores at their tips. In order for the pollen to be released, it generally must be vibrated out of the anther by the action of a bee; bumblebees are particularly effective at this activity, grasping the anther while vibrating their involuntary flight muscles to release the pollen.

Valvular dehiscence is rarer. It is seen in such plants as spicebush (Lindera benzoin) in the Lauraceae, and barberry (Berberis spp.) in the Berberidaceae, which have anthers that open by small, hinged flaps.

Bartram, John (1699–1777) and

William (1739–1823)

Early American father and son botanists who introduced over two hundred American plants into cultivation. John Bartram was a self-taught botanist who traveled widely throughout eastern North America in search of plants. He was in frequent communication with founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and had a close friendship with Benjamin Franklin, all of whom shared his interest in botany. Through an association with Peter Collinson, a wealthy London naturalist who became a Bartram patron, John Bartram became botanist for the American colonies to King George III.

In addition to sending seeds to Collinson and other European botanists, Bartram began planting them on his own property along the Schuylkill River, south of Philadelphia. Bartram was also noted for his early experiments in hybridizing flowering plants. Bartram’s garden was the beginning of what was to become an important botanical garden full of interesting plants—a mecca for visiting botanists from both the colonies and Europe. The garden remained in the hands of Bartram’s descendants until 1850, when it was sold. Eventually, a national fund-raising campaign resulted in the city of Philadelphia taking possession of the farm in 1891. Now known