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novella42's review
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
4.0
I came for the historical curiosity, and stayed for the cultural context and excellent breakdown of how to buy plants ethically in a modern era.
The section on the effect of the pandemic on the houseplant industry was eye opening. I'd been caught up in these trends without even really being aware of it, and it was great to get some detailed perspective.
I almost marked this as a medium-paced book but reconsidered that it moved quite fast for a nonfiction historical book.
I took away a star for several reasons, none of which were enough to make me stop reading:
- It would have helped a ton to have illustrations or an insert of photos to go with each plant featurette. I spent so much time googling everything, it kept taking me out of the book.
- It was a little annoying that she kept repeating plants in different chronological sections, with slightly different info, so to get a full read on the ficus or monstera, etc., you would need to reference an index (there isn't one) or get a digital version so you can search for the plant that way.
- While I definitely appreciated her pushing back against Christopher Columbus worship and the colonizer attitudes that led to poaching and deforestation, I kept expecting Williams to go further and was disappointed that the book left out the voices of Indigenous people. It was cool to see the native habitats of all our favorite plants, but there were lots of instances of "this plant was discovered by [white European dude]." One example is poinsettia, which she mentions was named by a US Ambassador to Mexico who found it and named it in 1828. I was hoping she'd mention the Indigenous context: "The Aztecs called poinsettia cuetlaxochitl (brilliant flower) and the Mayans referred to it as k'alul wits (ember flower). These indigenous peoples had a variety of aesthetic, practical, and medicinal uses, as well as magical beliefs for poinsettia." (Quoting from UMass Extension online.) It also would've been interesting to note that Poinsett was a slaveowner and proponent of slavery, he was deeply racist towards Native Americans, and he was so rude and awful to the people of Mexico that they coined the term "Poinsettismo" to refer to terrible intrusive behavior—right before kicking him out. Anyway, I digress, but there's a push towards using the Aztec name instead, Cuetlaxochitl (ket-la-sho-she). The author clearly cares enough about Indigenous voices to recommend Braiding Sweetgrass in her Further Reading section, but she does so in the Neolithic section, and not in a way the recognizes Indigenous people are more than just a footnote in history, they are alive today and probably have many interesting things to say about some of the plants in this book.
- The book does make efforts to bring in more than the average American pop history book, but it still ends up being pretty Euro-centric, with a clear narrative spanning from Mesopotamia through Greece, Rome, Europe, (slight one-chapter detour to China, Vietnam, and Japan to discuss miniature tree pruning traditions), then back to the main story of Europe and specifically England, then on to America and focused on America from 1800s onward. I do give her props for exploring the 1383 Japanese play Hachi no Ki and its cultural impact, as well as going beyond bonsai to explain penjing and Hòn Non Bô. She did such a good job of that, it felt like a disappointment to miss out on other things for the standard historical narratives that focus on everything only as it's relevant to America.
All of this aside, I learned a lot from this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone else caught up in the latest houseplant/gardening trends.
I loved the wealth of practical advice, too. I kept finding little tidbits on plants and techniques I thought I already understood pretty well. I need to remember to thank my librarian friends for putting this up on a springtime display!
The section on the effect of the pandemic on the houseplant industry was eye opening. I'd been caught up in these trends without even really being aware of it, and it was great to get some detailed perspective.
I almost marked this as a medium-paced book but reconsidered that it moved quite fast for a nonfiction historical book.
I took away a star for several reasons, none of which were enough to make me stop reading:
- It would have helped a ton to have illustrations or an insert of photos to go with each plant featurette. I spent so much time googling everything, it kept taking me out of the book.
- It was a little annoying that she kept repeating plants in different chronological sections, with slightly different info, so to get a full read on the ficus or monstera, etc., you would need to reference an index (there isn't one) or get a digital version so you can search for the plant that way.
- While I definitely appreciated her pushing back against Christopher Columbus worship and the colonizer attitudes that led to poaching and deforestation, I kept expecting Williams to go further and was disappointed that the book left out the voices of Indigenous people. It was cool to see the native habitats of all our favorite plants, but there were lots of instances of "this plant was discovered by [white European dude]." One example is poinsettia, which she mentions was named by a US Ambassador to Mexico who found it and named it in 1828. I was hoping she'd mention the Indigenous context: "The Aztecs called poinsettia cuetlaxochitl (brilliant flower) and the Mayans referred to it as k'alul wits (ember flower). These indigenous peoples had a variety of aesthetic, practical, and medicinal uses, as well as magical beliefs for poinsettia." (Quoting from UMass Extension online.) It also would've been interesting to note that Poinsett was a slaveowner and proponent of slavery, he was deeply racist towards Native Americans, and he was so rude and awful to the people of Mexico that they coined the term "Poinsettismo" to refer to terrible intrusive behavior—right before kicking him out. Anyway, I digress, but there's a push towards using the Aztec name instead, Cuetlaxochitl (ket-la-sho-she). The author clearly cares enough about Indigenous voices to recommend Braiding Sweetgrass in her Further Reading section, but she does so in the Neolithic section, and not in a way the recognizes Indigenous people are more than just a footnote in history, they are alive today and probably have many interesting things to say about some of the plants in this book.
- The book does make efforts to bring in more than the average American pop history book, but it still ends up being pretty Euro-centric, with a clear narrative spanning from Mesopotamia through Greece, Rome, Europe, (slight one-chapter detour to China, Vietnam, and Japan to discuss miniature tree pruning traditions), then back to the main story of Europe and specifically England, then on to America and focused on America from 1800s onward. I do give her props for exploring the 1383 Japanese play Hachi no Ki and its cultural impact, as well as going beyond bonsai to explain penjing and Hòn Non Bô. She did such a good job of that, it felt like a disappointment to miss out on other things for the standard historical narratives that focus on everything only as it's relevant to America.
All of this aside, I learned a lot from this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone else caught up in the latest houseplant/gardening trends.
I loved the wealth of practical advice, too. I kept finding little tidbits on plants and techniques I thought I already understood pretty well. I need to remember to thank my librarian friends for putting this up on a springtime display!
Content Warnings
Minor: Cultural appropriation, Pandemic/Epidemic, Colonisation, Classism, Slavery, and Trafficking
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