The Beauty of Botany

"...the Vegetable World has a higher significance than either the education of man's intellect, or even the maintenance of animal life. With its sweet influences, man's heart, —his moral nature, is in intimate communion; and through them, God reveals himself to the soul in his most endearing attributes. By the teachings of the Vegetable World the tone of our moral being is affected in no small degree, and flowers are often interwoven with the web of human destiny. In a word, the heart of man is susceptible of no purer or more enduring earthly pleasure, than that which it experiences in its free communion with the exhaustless beauties of the Vegetable World."

                                                                                                                         ~Alphonso Wood

   I'm really excited right now over yet another old botany textbook I recently bought! This is The Analytical Class-book of Botany (1855), by Frances H. Green and Joseph Congdon. The title doesn't mark it out as anything special, but it is a treasure! There are so many gems hidden away amongst the bare facts in this book, it is a delight to read! 

    In fact, I think I could have bought it just for the preface! Listen to this...

   "It is a remarkable fact, that with all the beauty of flowers, and the universal love of them which prevails in the world, the Science of Flowers is one of the most unpopular—the dryest and the dullest—in the common estimation—to which the attention of the student is ever called. But there can be no intrinsic necessity of this. Objects which are externally so beautiful, and which address themselves to the finest affections of the soul, must, in their internal structure, their habits, and all the relations of their beautiful life, present corresponding associations of beauty and love, whenever true and familiar views can be obtained. An attempt is made in the present series to disarm the science of at least a portion of those terrors with which it has been long invested, and to make it interesting and attractive to the common mind...To those who have a desire to cultivate their minds, but are unable to expend much time or money for the purpose, this work offers signal advantages; for in the intervals of recreation and rest, when a heavier volume could not be attempted, this would attract and please; and by its aid they may gratify their natural taste by attaining a competent knowledge of this charming science, with perhaps the will to pursue it further, and make themselves thorough and accomplished scholars. As it can be studied without a Teacher, it is especially intended for the Working Classes, who have hitherto been cut off from a knowledge of the science by the heaviness or abstruseness of the best systematic works on the subject. If it could only be accepted as the bearer of good tidings, it would open to the Worker treasures of thought, feeling, beauty, fairer than the pearls of the East, and richer than the beaten gold of Ophir—treasures which all the wealth of the Universe could not purchase; for it would invest him with a transmuting power, to change the meanest objects into the most beautiful. A common weed, nay, a simple leaf, or blade of grass, would be transfigured before him—a luminous expounder of the Divine Life—radiant with gems of undying truth. Could young persons only know the value of this power they would never sigh for the frippery of fashion, the outside show, or the misnamed pleasures of the world. Let this volume, then, fulfill its mission, by scattering flowery truths in the too often waste-places of the world. Let it go to the workshop and the cotton-mill; and the sons and daughters of Toil will find the fable of Aladdin more than realized; for the lighted lamp of science shall unlock a world, rich beyond all human conception, with treasures of immortal life and beauty."

   And here are a few more beautiful paragraphs. These are just what I found by thumbing through the book. I'm sure there are many more! Botany is anything but a dry, dull science! 😊

   "Walking abroad in the fields, we are met on every hand by an inexhaustible variety of plants and flowers, which not only attract our attention, but call forth our affections in a very lively and peculiar manner. Their colors, their forms, their odors, excite the most agreeable sensations. These emotions, however, we have in common not only with the uncultivated of our own species, but also, to some degree, even with the lower animals. The intelligent HUMAN BEING would look for something within—something deeper, higher and truer, which is only shadowed forth in the external character— that the mind may enter into their life, and imbibe their freshness, their purity and beauty, as its own aliment.

  "Look not on plants with the hard and cold eyes of a mere Collector—a hoarder of dry specimens—but study their physiognomy, expression, character, significance, and power—in short, all that distinguishes them in the structure and combination of their several parts, their relations with each other, and with the world at large; for only in this mode of study can the mind attain to that free and generous expansion, which is the highest happiness. Be not wholly satisfied with this, or any other book of the kind, but STUDY NATURE. Those books are the best which present the clearest views of Nature. And when holding up the mirror to her beautiful face, in the bright glimpses they afford, even if they themselves are forgotten, still they do the most that books can do—for they attract to the more informing study of the Divine in Nature—the Wisdom, Beauty, and Love which, in all created forms, everywhere proclaim the goodness of the CREATOR. And of all these way-side Ministers of Blessing, who would not rather sit down and listen to the bright-eyed Flowers, that, with their odorous breath, forever testify so lovingly of Him to whom we look up, in the name and blessing of all things, and call OUR FATHER."

 "Pliny long ago called 'blossoms the Joy of Trees'; and fanciful as the thought is, we feel, even to this day, that there is not less truth than poetry in the sentiment; for flowers, more than most other things, minister to that love of beauty, which is one of our inmost affections."