Q&A: Matt Ritter, author of "A Californian's Guide to the Trees Among Us"
Matt Ritter is a botany professor at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, director of university's plant conservatory, and author of a new field guide, A California's Guide to the Trees Among Us(Heydey Books,...
View ArticleArt+Botany: Shakespeare's Plants
Gallery Page Layout: Gallery A I was recently at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival, where I was not surprised to hear many references to plants in Shakespeare's plays—I was surprised to notice that the...
View ArticleArt + Botany: Japanese Panel Paintings at Kew
I'm always drawn to objects in which the human and the natural elevate one another. The exquisite 19th-century Japanese panel paintings from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, now on display in a show curated...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Welwitschia Mirabilis
Half-buried in the far flung sands of the Namib Desert, in southern Africa, the Welwitschia mirabilis is a patient exile, and beloved among botanists who seek the very old and the very strange. The...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Chêne Chappelle (Chapel Oak)
If you happen to be in the small French farming village of Allouville-Bellefosse this coming Monday, August 15th, you might see a devout procession climbing a spiral staircase and disappearing into an...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: The Immortal Underground Forest
In South Africa's coastal grasslands, to explore a forest is to walk along its canopy—indeed, it's the only way to observe an extraordinary group of so-called underground trees, where only the...
View ArticleArt + Botany: London's Traffic Light Tree
In the United States, it's a sycamore. Elsewhere, it's called a plane tree. But London has the only Traffic Light Tree. It is 26 feet tall, installed alongside two plane trees (Platanus × acerifolia),...
View ArticlePrefab Mirror Cube Treehotel
So I have been wanting to visit the Treehotel'sMirror Cube since I first saw a photo floating around the internet last year, but I've just discovered that the Treehotel has other tree house...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Extraordinary Christmas Trees
Here are a selection of extraordinary Christmas trees throughout the world—most are local traditions, many are breaking records, and one appears to break through a suburban roof. read more
View ArticleArt + Botany: Haute Holiday Trees
Designers around the world have crafted their own Christmas trees, inspired by lotus flowers, French macarons, and children's story books. read more
View ArticleBotanic Notables: The Lone Cypress
A forest of Monterey Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) trees once grew on California's Central Coast. Oddly enough, the tree grows better just about anywhere other than here, its native habitat—a coastal...
View ArticleLinks We Love, 2/14/2012
- Until February 19, Klara Lidén's art exhibit "Pretty Vacant" (above) is on display at Reena Spauldings Fine Art Gallery in New York. The artwork is made up of a room filled with discarded Christmas...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: The Cypress Guitar
Plucked or planted, our trees and flowers often speak for us when we cannot. A posy for the sweetheart, a laurel for the victor, a garland for the dead—they are quiet articulations of love, hope, and...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Moon Trees
In the name of science or sentimentality, astronauts have been sending various artifacts into orbit since the early days of the space race. Sputnik 2 had Laika, the first dog in space; Apollo 11...
View ArticleArt & Botany: Mysterious Tree Sculptures
In the art world, sometimes a little mystery is the perfect promotion. Such was the case earlier this year, when a series of carved trees suddenly appeared in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. The...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Return of the American Chestnut
In the late 1800s, when the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) reigned in Eastern forests, the tree was a symbol of national identity. Log cabins were built from its lumber, Christmas carols...
View ArticleMessage Tree
In an era when phones and the Internet allow us to send messages across continents and oceans in a matter of seconds, communication and correspondence have taken on a new dimension of possibility, even...
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