All posts by Julia Blakely

The pineapple, indigenous to South America and domesticated and harvested there for centuries, was a late comer to Europe. The fruit followed in its cultivation behind the tomato, corn, potato, and other New World imports. Delicious but challenging and expensive to nurture in chilly climes and irresistible to artists and travelers for its curious structure, the pineapple came to represent many things. For Europeans, it was first a symbol of exoticism, power, and wealth, but it was also an emblem of colonialism, weighted with connections to plantation slavery.

Originating from the region around the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers (present-day Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina), it was an important economic plant in the development of Indigenous civilizations in the Americas. The Tupi-Guarani and Carib peoples called the fruit, a staple crop, nanas (excellent fruit) and several varieties were grown. As well as food, the pineapple was a source of medicine, fermented to become alcohol, its fibers made into robes and bow strings and thread for cloth.

Prominent botanist and cataloger of gardens, William Sherard (1659-1728), was hired by an aristocrat to tutor her grandson in botany for “hee loving my diversion so well.” This was Mary Somerset, the first Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1715), an accomplished gardener and botanist in her own right. She sought solace in “natural learning” and tending plants, some cultivated in what she referred to as her “infirmary.” As detailed in landscape historian and conservator Mark Laird’s splendid A Natural History of English Gardening (2015), her gardening activities were a refuge from bouts of depression. She remarked in a letter of her cataloging: “When I get into storys of plants I know not how to get out.” Laird’s chapter on Mary Somerset, and other recent scholarly investigations, examine her work and help elevate her role in the history of science. Rather than simply a diversion from melancholia, she was dedicated in her studies, blossoming late in her life.

This post originally appeared on the Smithsonian Libraries blog and has been republished at the permission of the author, Julia Blakely.

As a commemoration of the Imperial collection of shells in Vienna, the printed folio of Testacea Musei Caesarei Vindobonensis of 1780, is splendid. The eighteen engraved plates, carefully colored by hand, render individual specimens in the Habsburgs’ K.K. Hof-naturalien-Cabinet as if pieces of jewelry, casting shadows on a plain background of the thick, hand-made paper. Dedicated to the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa (1717-1780), this production was also a work of science, as the task of arranging the shells in the Cabinet and describing them for publication was given to one of the leading scientists of the day, Ignaz Edler von Born (1742-1791).

The provenance of a botanical specimen was recently presented to a world-wide audience, even if they did not quite realize it. One detail of the Royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had commentators confidently offering up the history of the sprig of myrtle used in the bride’s bouquet. This was commonly reported to be from the plant nurtured from the flower used in the marriage ceremony of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Every bride in Royal nuptials after Victoria carried on the ritual. If not quite true, it made for a nice, simplified story line.

It is a small book, palm-size, with pages of less-than-fine paper, the well-worn letters of the type sometimes carelessly inked. The sparse woodcut illustrations are child-like in their simplicity and straight-forwardness. Yet John Josselyn’s New-Englands rarities discovered, printed in London in 1672, drew me in as I went about cataloging the work. Intrigued by the title and the early date of publication, I found myself reading an account of the landscape of my past, from Boston, “down east” (that is, up the coast as represented in the above illustration) to my place of birth, and points all around.