SPRING’S KISS

In 2014, Border Press published Between Plants and People, a book of my poetry about plant life accompanied by eighteen color photographs by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a noteworthy botanist. It contained metaphors describing the impact of plants on humans — food plants, medicinal plants, and decorative plants, and is an innovative account of “humanistic botany” in poetry.

The second volume of plant poems I wrote this summer, with accompanying photographs by Dr. Sullivan, is now in press. Spring’s Kiss, a book of poetry praising the qualities of wildflowers that inhabit and create beauty in the plant kingdoms of the world, is a nod to Susan Albert’s: “One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower,” and many of those weeds are included in this volume. Medicinal, as well as aesthetic qualities of the plants, are touted in some of the poems, and the beautiful blooms of these weeds reinforce Albert’s observation about plants.

The cover of this volume is a photograph of Karen Bourque’s glass rendition of the Pickerel Weed as inspired by Susan Elizabeth Entsminger’s illustration of the aquatic weed in Why Water Plants Don’t Drown by Victoria I. Sullivan, and the photograph was used in the cover design by Martin Romero, a landscape architect who renders the final designs for my book covers.

Spring’s Kiss can be pre-ordered from Border Press, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 for $20 including shipping and will also be available from Amazon by Aug. 15.

RESURRECTION FERN

Resurrection Fern on tree along Jump Off
Mountain Rd., Sewanee, TN

In the spring before Easter resurrection, the old live oaks in New Iberia, Louisiana begin to show large clumps of fronds unfurling that become green and show signs of new life – the resurrection fern, an epiphyte fern that clings to its host tree branches, comes to life, and to me, it is symbolic of the resurrection of Christ. During dry, winter periods this epiphyte fern becomes a grayish brown and looks as if it has shriveled up and died. However, the plant can lose up to 97 percent of its water content and stay alive. A few rain showers lately have caused the fern to unfurl and transform into the bright green that forms on our old oaks. Some plant experts say that the fern can stay in a dried-out state for 100 years. 

In 2014 when I was writing Between Plants and People, a volume of poetry about the interrelationships between people and the plants around us, I asked Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a botanist, to take photographs of the plants I wrote about for the book. At the time, I was spending my half year on The Mountain in Sewanee, Tennessee, and Sewanee was experiencing a gracious plenty of dry weather. When I decided to include a poem about resurrection fern, we searched every habitat on The Mountain and couldn’t find a “model” for the poem. We finally decided to drive some distance to Savannah, Georgia to find this fern that reproduces by spores, not seeds. We knew that Savannah has a plethora of old oaks — also, we were often known for suddenly deciding to embark on a trip just to recover a detail for our writings, or to satisfy a yen for peaches or apples… we were called to live up to our rep for uncovering serendipity on such trips. 

Resurrection Fern on Live Oak, Savannah, GA

We walked through the streets of Savannah and finally found a dried up specimen on a venerable oak in the parking lot of a legal firm where we were chased out by a guard but not before we had taken a few quick snapshots. We then drove back to Sewanee. The trip clocked out as a twelve-hour round trip, and when we had recovered, we were told that a patch of the fern grew on a tree not more than five miles away from Sewanee! It was bright with green life, and the intrepid botanist took a photo. Both the green specimen of the fern at Sewanee and the un-resurrected fern in Savannah appear on a page of Between Plants and People. 

Resurrection fern doesn’t steal water or nutrients from the old oaks and cypress on which it most often appears, and it has the distinction of having been taken into outer space aboard the Discovery space shuttle so that space travelers aboard could observe this plant at zero gravity. The fern was able to effect resurrection even without gravity and was named the “first fern in space.” 

The resurrection fern is an amazing plant, and when spring rains begin to fall, or at Eastertide, you might want to look upward at topmost tree branches of our ancient oaks to witness an awe-inspiring resurrection. This member of the plant world has withstood many droughts and seeming-deaths but remains alive and healthy. I’d say there’s a message therein! 

Photography by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan

TOUCH ME NOTS AND OTHER BLOOMS

Take a walk with a taxonomist and inevitably you'll find yourself identifying and classifying plants along the way. During the daily walk regime that I'm now following, I'm accompanied by a botanist who pinches leaves, lags behind to gaze lovingly into the cups of blooms, takes photographs, and calls out scientific names for plants about which I'm forced to ask their common names in order to keep up with the plant world.

Yesterday, I was enchanted when I spied the beautiful and succulent wildflower, jewelweed, also known as touch-me-not , or Impatiens capensis,  as it is known to taxonomists. The orange-yellow blooms spotted with brown looked like tiny jewels glistening in the shadowy light of the woods, and I couldn't resist asking about their identity. We were walking the Mountain Goat Trail again, and the jewelweed was one of the few wildflowers still blooming alongside the walking path. It's a plant especially adapted to hummingbird invasions, but a few butterflies fluttered through the little patch I spied. The trumpet-shaped flowers hang down from the plant, and my botanist friend plucked a pod of the plant to demonstrate how the seeds explode out of it when touched—thus, the name "touch me not."

Although I admire the aesthetic look of certain plants, true to my astrological sign of Taurus, I'm always asking about the practical applications of flowers and leaves. In fact, I've written several young adult books in which the hero boy traiteur (healer) uses plants to treat diseases and perform miraculous healings. I didn't realize until yesterday that the spotted jewelweed has medicinal properties, and the leaves and juice from the stem of this plant are used to treat poison ivy, poison oak, and other types of dermatitis. Salves and poultices have been used to treat eczema, even warts and ringworm. Native Americans and herbalists have been treating those who suffer from serious cases of poison ivy and poison oak with jewelweed for centuries, and I wish I had known about its healing properties the three or four times I've suffered from this skin reaction.

Most of the time I'm more attuned to the beauty of plant life, and just yesterday I received copies of my latest book of poetry, Between Plants and People, which contains striking photographs taken by my botanist friend, Victoria Sullivan. It's a book that explores the interrelationships between humans and the plants around them, and here's a poem about the plant on the cover of the volume, a lovely plant that isn't a wildflower and has no medicinal qualities:

THE JAPANESE MAGNOLIA

Does she ever change her expression,

the open-faced resident in twisted vine

behind bars of an iron fleur de lis?

her cup, a candle-lit window

overlooking the black silence,

upright stakes soldered

to enclose female virtue.

She tells us she cannot stay

beyond the spring she launched,

her inner voice grand with birth

and sweet yearning for the sun,

inviting us to part the stakes,

promising wild happiness

to even the nearsighted

who might gaze upon

something familiar but enlarging,

a pink goddess shaped

like unexpected love.

BETWEEN PLANTS AND HUMANS

If you're interested in humanistic botany or the inter-connectedness of plants and humans, you might enjoy this latest book of poetry that will be available from Border Press by month's end. The collection is entitled Between Plants and Humans and contains new and selected poems that I wrote about cultivated and wild plants and color photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan, a botanist and writer. 

The landscape of plants is centered mostly in the southeastern United States, principally in Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, and the Carolinas. Plants range from Japanese Magnolia to Rapeweed, and my mentions of them are often fleeting but indicative of the inter-relationships between plants and people.

Included in Between Plants and Humans is a particularly arresting story in the poem about the pitcher plant, a specimen for which we searched and found on the grounds of the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell, Georgia. Of course, I'm partial to the lovely Japanese Magnolia that flourishes in the lush environment of southwest Louisiana and forms the design for the cover of this new book, shown at the top of this blog. Martin Romero, a landscape designer, did the artistic design work for Victoria's stunning photograph on the cover.

Between Plants and People, New and Selected Poems is not a textbook edition about plants, and readers who sometimes attribute anthropomorphic characteristics to members of the plant world should enjoy a stroll through this unusual "garden." Perhaps you'll recognize a few favorites.

Available in print from Amazon.