Product Description

This is a perfect bedside book for the literate gardener and makes a terrific gardener's gift book. It is an entertaining survey of 80 plant genera, with a multitude of references to, and extracts from, myth and literature from Shakespeare to the Victorian language of flowers. Based on prodigious research, it includes much literature that has fallen into undeserved obscurity, as well as selections from the great poets. It is a delightful study of the influence of the world's flora on humanity, from the mundane to the mystical.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1341284 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 447 pages

From Amazon.com

"The snowdrop, in purest white arraie,
First rears her hedde on Candlemas daie;"
From an early church calendar of English flowers, ca. 1500

As you pick up spade and shovel and head out into the garden, you might want to offer up a prayer for sunny days and rainy nights to one of the patron saints of gardening described by Bobby Ward in this fascinating compilation of horticultural wit and whimsy.

Have you ever wondered how flowers get their names, both common and scientific, or what Shakespeare or Milton had to say about roses or honeysuckle? Collected in this fat, satisfying volume are quotations from poetry, plays, and stories written by the ancient Greeks up through the Victorians that trace the rich history of the natural world as captured in myth and literature. Symbolism, traditional medicinal uses, and most of all lyrical tributes to favorite plants from acanthus to zinnia fill the pages of this book, to be read for sheer pleasure or dipped into for information about specific flowers. The book is easy to use compared to many such compilations, in part because it is arranged by type of plant, and because Ward has masterfully woven it all together with a blend of historical and botanical commentary for context.

You won't learn from this book how to plant a bulb or grow a tomato, but there are more than enough books on the practical matters of gardening. Rather, folk tales, myths, legends, and lore of the flowers, in the words of sages, saints, herbalists, and poets provide inspiration, humor, and fine reading. --Valerie Easton

From Library Journal
Ward, a retired environmental scientist and gardener, has gathered quotations from poems, myths, novels, and plays from ancient Greece to the 19th century to illustrate the literary history of 80 garden plants. He traces the origins of the scientific and common names for each plant and provides its mythological and religious contexts, symbolism in the arts, and traditional medicinal uses, as well as its meaning in the language of flowers. He also mentions unusual uses of flowers as food, for example oil made from the seeds of snapdragons. The most challenging part of his research was verifying that a recognizable common name was applied to the same plant over the years by different writers. Ward is meticulous in identifying the particular plants referred to in the literary selections he quotes, whose sources range from the familiar to the obscure. This book offers much information and entertainment for patrons of large public and academic libraries.ADaniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ward mentions in his introduction that the word anthology derives from the Greek word for flower gathering--a perfectly apropos description for the impressive bouquet of garden plants presented in this compilation. From acanthus to zinnia, plants have been praised and pondered for centuries. Each entry's plant profile includes fundamental information about a plant and its related species, then goes on to relate historical background. For gardening aficionados who enjoy intriguing bits of little-known lore, the book's references to myth, legend, and the romance of flowers (the begonia symbolizes dark thoughts) will prove satisfying. Calling upon diverse sources that span ancient herbals, the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Poe, and a wealth of botanical and literary works, Ward engages readers with myriad facts and fantasies that are anything but obvious when pottering about in the garden. If a gardener's curiosity about plants seems to increase the longer one plants, prunes, and propagates, this excellent meditation on plants will help appease such inquisitive tendencies. Alice Joyce

Customer Reviews

A dipping book
A Contemplation upon Flowers: Garden Plants in Myth and Literature. Bobby Ward. Timber Press. 1999.

In his introduction Bobby Ward, botanist and environmental scientist asserts that writers have contemplated upon flowers since the beginning of written history, and his well-researched book proves his point.

This book neatly manages to balance science and art, keeping in mind both botanical accuracy and the poetic licence taken by some of the more fanciful Victorian poets. Mr Ward has researched some 82 varieties of flowers and arranged them alphabetically by their common name. You can read it in sequence if you like an orderly approach. I found myself picking out my favourite plants and discovering their ancient history as well as the way in which poets and playwrights had portrayed them. You'll always find treasures:

- the name 'lilac' comes from Persian and Arabic words describing its color. Its Latin name 'syringa' comes from a Greek word meaning 'pipe' and refers to its hollow stem. Our word 'syringe' comes from the same root.

- an ancient legend says that peonies were only to be picked at night. The woodpecker guarding them would attack the eyes of anyone picking them during the day.

This is that rare treat, a "dipping book". You pick out the parts that grab your interest immediately, then keep it beside your armchair to dip into as time goes on. If you enjoy discovering more about the lore and literature of the plants in your garden you'll find "A Contemplation upon Flowers" a treasure to be added to your bookshelf.

Rare book that explains each flower�s role in the history
There are many books that tell gardeners the growing conditions and requirements of different flowers. However, rare is the book that explains each flower's role in the world's history and literature, as well as their medicinal uses and, the roots of each flower's botanical and common names. That is why Bobby Ward's A Contemplation Upon Flowers, which traces the history of eighty plants from the time of the Greek's to today, is such a treasure.

This book is a must have for any serious gardener. Bobby Ward reveals long lost secretes about some of the world's favorite gardening plants that until now where lost and hidden in books and manuscripts that have been out of print for ages. Just when I thought I knew almost everything about some of my favorite plants, this book revealed a wealth of information about their long lost histories.

Dainty young thing....
Bobby Ward, a retired environmental scientist who now edits and writes books on gardening, has assembled a nice compendium on selected literature and folk lore associated with some of our most beloved flowers. He covers Daffodils (Wordsworth) and Pansies (that's for thoughts) and other familiar blossoms, as well as a few not so familiar plants.

My favorite essay is about the Honeysuckle, literally a flower from which one sucks honey. Also known as Woodbine, this little plant has over 180 species, primarily native to the Northern Hemisphere, but there is at least one that grows in England ... "I know a place where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite overcanopied with luscious Woodbine.." where of Tatania the Queen of the Fairies sleeps. The Honeysuckle belongs to the genus "Lonicera" in the family "Caprifoliaceae" literally goat's leaves--probably because they loved to eat them.

We learn of the patron saints of gardeners, and specific flowers, like Saint John's Wort named for saints. The Crocus is the Queen, with it's many religious associations ranging from Lupercalia to Saint Valentines Day. Many poets and writers have created verse and prose to honor the little Crocus, harbinger of spring.

Mr. Ward used secondary material to develop his book, so he perpetuates some myths -- pagans were not likely to have built fires to ward off witches and devils since Christians invented the latter long after the pagens came into being. If the local country folk built fires to ward off witches and devils they were practicing a 'Santaria' type religion (mixture of Christian and pagan beliefs).

Mr. Ward edited a book of essays by Elizabeth Lawrence entitled, "A Garden of One's Own" and is a fellow North Carolinian. So I was quite surprised to see that he did not include her very fine book "Through the Garden Gate" in his bibliography. Lawrence's book covers much of the same material found in Ward's book, and she wrote it some 20-30 years earlier.

All in all, this is a nice book, and since it brings together material from a variety of sources it's a good place to start if you're interested in the connections between flora, folk tales, English literature, and Latin names.