Artists Bring Big Bad Book of Botany to Life
By Alma Kadragic
The Big Bad Book of Botany. The World’s Most Fascinating Flora by Michael Largo has just been published in the US by Harper Collins. It’s a kind of dictionary of plants organized alphabetically.
Largo likes to go deep into where specific plants came from and how they have been used by mankind over the centuries. These words from Ralph Waldo Emerson are the epigraph: “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
He finds virtue in all kinds of plants including poisonous specimens like belladonna and be-still better known as oleander. Both are extremely dangerous for humans and small animals, but like many poisons, they also have medicinal applications and can save lives as well as kill.
I would probably never have known about this book if it weren’t for my friend Susan Cumins who is one of the 18 local artists whose drawings bring the plants that Largo describes to life on the printed page.
They are 16 women and 2 men, the youngest around 50, the oldest 90. Most are not professional artists but enjoy drawing the plants in a scientific manner. The illustrations are done by pen with black ink; Photoshop was used to turn some watercolour versions into black outlines with shading.
They are members of Tropical Botanic Artists, an informal group organized in 2006 after they had taken botanical drawing classes with Donna Torres at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida, in the Miami area.
The group meets once a month at the home of a member. There are no dues, no membership applications, and no bureaucracy.
Torres who is one of the artists represented in Big Bad Book of Botany contributed five drawings. Beverly Borland, co-director of Tropical Botanic Artists, provided 25. Cumins is responsible for 13 illustrations including the wattieza that Largo calls “the tree that changed the world.”
According to Largo, the wattieza is “officially the first and oldest known tree to have thrived on the planet.” Cumins’ drawing above shows the top of the wattieza, a crown of branches with leaves like a fern.
A fossilized version was found in New York State in 2004 and led researchers to conclude that this plant – basically a trunk 24 feet tall with a brush at the top – flourished millions of years before dinosaurs and other animals existed.
The book also covers more familiar plants like skunk cabbage, sunflower, tobacco, tulip, tupelo, vanilla, and yew to focus on the last part of the alphabet. Largo doesn’t explain why he selected these plants rather than others, but he does say that he tried to combine the traditional “reference-like quality” of works like the Indian Avestan Writings from about 1100 BC and the Historia Plantarum from about 200 BC with “descriptions, life cycles, advice on cultivation, and the benefits these plants provide.”
“I hope to capture the incredible diversity of plants and marvel at the vast plant kingdom’s many wonders,” writes Largo. For the reader the illustrations and the stories like the one about the bleeding heart are a delight.
A young man pursued a maiden who didn’t respond no matter how many gifts he gave her. Discouraged, he stabbed himself in the heart. Where he fell, the first bleeding heart flower appeared.
Dragonwort, on the other hand, is similar to tarragon and adds flavor to foods that don’t have much. It’s used in classic French cuisine to make Bearnaise sauce and in some other countries to flavor a soft drink. Why dragonwort? Apparently, long ago, it was used to repel dragons . . . who didn’t like the aroma.
