Plants and People

It’s not only the plants themselves that are fascinating. The people who are passionate about them also represent a very special kind of personality.

In English, they are called „Plantsmen“. The Autor Duane Isely has dedicated his worthwhile book to them„One hundred and one Botanists“ http://(https://www.amazon.de/One-Hundred-Botanists-Duane-Isely/dp/0813824982) .

He sketched their life stories in concise portraits, from Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) to the botanists of the 20th century.

Also interesting are the sometimes curious circumstances under which botanists met their deaths on research expeditions. You can read about this in the article series „How they died“ of the renowned botanical journal „Taxon“ .https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19968175).

Wilfrid Blunt and His “Scientia Amabilis”

Plant fanatics are people in whom “the world of plants races through the mind.

When plants become addictive, intoxicating drugs aren’t always involved. “The world of plants races through my mind,” Goethe once wrote to a friend. And isn’t it true? Once someone catches the botany virus, they usually never get rid of it for the rest of their life.

The most unconventional—and perhaps also the most interesting—are the true enthusiasts who earn their living in completely different ways.

Among them are garden enthusiasts, plant photographers, painters and illustrators, bibliophiles, florists and plant lovers of many other kinds besides.

This passion spares no profession. I once knew a train engineer and a bank branch manager who were both true experts.

In a southwestern German botanical working group, teachers, a gemstone dealer, and a master shoemaker are among the leading figures.

Wilfrid Blunt (1901 - 1987)

The refined Wilfrid Blunt

The British scholar Wilfrid Blunt (1901–87) was a “plantsman” par excellence, who worked professionally as an art historian. He was literally interested in everything about plants. In his book „Of flowers and a village“ – an entertainment for flower lovers“ he offers insights into his passion.

Blunt co-authored, together with William T. Stearn The art of botanical illustration - (The art of botanical illustration; https://www.botanicalartandartists.com/book-review-the-art-of-botanical-illustration-by-wilfrid-blunt.html) and a highly successful Linné-Biographie (The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus; https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1676146.Linnaeus) He also published works on the “Hortulus” of Abbot Walahfrid Strabo and on the Bavarian fairy-tale king, Ludwig II.

Two of Blunt’s younger brothers were also devoted to the fine arts, and one of them became famous in another regard. Anthony Blunt was an outstanding art historian and curator of the Royal Collection. At the same time, he was exposed only in the 1970s as a double agent for both the KGB and MI5 in the United Kingdom.

But that’s another story—and it reads more thrillingly than most spy novels.

„Of flowers and a village“

As his “alter ego” Wilfrid Sharp, Blunt portrays the people of a fictional village whose model can easily be identified as his hometown Compton, Guildford. There, he worked as curator of an art gallery (Watts Gallery).

The village life is told over the course of a gardening year through letters to a fictional niece named Flora. On the surface, it’s about the growth and flourishing of the garden beds, but along the way, Blunt—alias Sharp—takes a thorough and witty look at the inhabitants of the tranquil little village.

Blunt described his work as a “frivolous book about flowers”. It is indeed witty, charming, amusing, and above all, very British. Blunt seasons his reflections with anecdotes from the world of plants and botanical science.

The reader learns about a nettle that Linnaeus himself pressed over 200 years ago. It was still stinging noticeably in 1942, when the herbarium and library of the Natural History Museum were evacuated.

The author lightly transitions first to the extremely potent tropical elephant nettle or Mealumma (Dendrocnide sinuata) and then on to the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) in the Botanical Garden of Munich. The specimen found there was kept in a cage for the protection of visitors.

Elsewhere, he questions the legends surrounding the resurrection plants (e.g., Anastatica hierochuntica).

Jabs at Scientific Botany

Sharp, alias Blunt, does not hold back with his jabs at scientific botany.

“I only hope I shan’t make too many enemies through it in the botanical world,” he worries. He strongly criticizes the Nomenclature Committee of the “International Botanical Society,” accusing it of an out-of-touch attitude in naming plants and supports this with examples. For instance, he is outraged that the committee refuses to correct the erroneous naming of wisteria as Wistaria instead of Wisteria, even though the botanist Nuttall clearly intended to honor a Mr. Wister with the naming.

Blunt advocates for a reliable system of plant naming oriented toward human needs. He was never alone in this view, and in the meantime, critics like him have been partially accommodated through the project “Names in Current Use.”

Sharp, alias Blunt, comments on the zeal of some botanists to rename a plant after every new scientific reassessment of its phylogeny with:

„The right names of flowers are yet in heaven”.

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