Desperate circumstances led Elizabeth Blackwell (~1700-1758), a Scottish botanical illustrator, to create A Curious Herbal, a gorgeously illustrated book of 500 medicinal plants. Blackwell’s husband Alexander had landed in debtor’s prison in London, and Elizabeth had to support both herself and their child–as well as […]

Bird of Paradise – Strelitzia reginae Edward Donovan, a collector of natural history specimens, wrote about the Bird of Paradise in his short-lived series, The Botanical Review, or the Beauties of Flora (1789-90). His account of the rare plant from South Africa was one of […]

Native serviceberry trees (Amelanchier) abound throughout North America. During their trek across the continent in the early 1800s, Meriweather Lewis, William Clark and other members of their expedition feasted on serviceberry and other native berries, often as guests of indigenous peoples, and recorded these encounters […]

Several of us here on the Herbaria 3.0 team have had passionate interest in carnivorous plants and the people who study them. Maura Flannery’s post “What’s in a Name?” tells us about the carnivorous Darlingtonia californica. Tina Gianquitto and Dawn Sanders have both obsessed over […]

A Trace of Chamomile: Marian Hedwig Mülberger’s Spring Flowers Tucked under feathery chamomile leaves are the geometric initials MHM. Nothing else identifies the artist of the spring flower guide, Frühlingsblumen. Each page of the accordion-pleated booklet displays four or five plants arranged like specimens in […]

  Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American transcendentalist, nature writer, ecologist, and mystic encountered pines daily in the woods of Massachusetts. In these excerpts, Thoreau describes some of thoughts and observations on pines. Thoreau uses the white pines he finds in the Walden woods in the […]