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Nature Writing
Plants & Gardens News | Volume 23, Number 1 | Spring 2008
by Steven Clemants
Nature Writing
There are countless ways of writing about the natural world and the creatures in it. Some authors take a strictly scientific route, depicting nature through classifications, measurements, systems, and the like; some choose to approach their subject, be it an aardvark or a zinnia, from a cultural and sociohistorical perspective; and other writers almost anthropomorphize nature by portraying it in stories relatable to humans.
Three books I read recently represent three of the more common forms of nature writing. Citrus: A History, by Pierre Laszlo, shows the cultural history of the genus, fitting into a category I'll call the "nature as culture" genre; this is a fairly recent literary development, with Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire perhaps the best known example. James Nardi's Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners is a scientific account of the world beneath our feet and exemplifies "nature as science." And The Nature Handbook: A Guide to Observing the Great Outdoors, by Ernest H. Williams Jr., presents hundreds of short explanations about natural phenomena and follows what I consider the style of "nature as story."
Nature as Culture
Pierre Laszlo's Citrus provides a cultural history of the genus Citrus, but is also in large part the author's autobiographical account of the fruit that has illuminated his life (Laszlo is particularly found of citrus fruits because, like him, they originated in the East and eventually flourished in the West). The book's subtitle, A History, is a bit misleading; Laszlo does not give nearly enough of the history of citrus in Asia, where the fruit originated. Instead, Laszlo's book is mostly interested in the economic and cultural—rather than historical—importance of citrus, as based on the author's admittedly unprovable assertion that "…nature carries culture with it. The seeds of a plant somehow ferry, in their genes, as it were, aspects of a civilization that deemed that particular plant important."
Laszlo jumps around a lot, making his narrative hard to follow. For instance, chapter four, "Nurturing Citriculture," begins by recounting two hard frosts in Florida in the 1890s, sidesteps to Louis XIV and the Orangerie at Versailles, and finally winds its way to Florida governor Jeb Bush's executive decision in 2002 to destroy over two million trees diseased with citrus canker. Nonetheless, in the course of reading Laszlo's book I found myself growing enthused by the author's love of the golden apple (as Laszlo points out, some scholars argue that the "golden apples" referred to in Greek myths such as the Judgment of Paris refer, in fact, to oranges).
While not a definitive book on the fruit, Citrus certainly provides an entertaining account of the culture surrounding this genus, and Laszlo does pack in a lot of information about the fruit and the citrus industry. A refreshing aspect of the book is the recipes the author includes throughout. As a chemist, Laszlo is in his element discussing the chemical makeup of citrus, but he is equally comfortable discussing the chemistry of cooking citrus. There are at least a dozen recipes, including ones for fried Valencia oranges, orange wine, and tarte au citron, several of which you can find at the University of Chicago Press website.
One botanical faux pas: Within the first 15 pages Dr. Laszlo writes, "Mormons, as they fled religious persecution in the eastern United States, brought samples of Populus tremulus [sic]—the present-day aspens—to the West on their pushcarts and wagons." He is undoubtedly referring to Populus tremuloides (Populus tremula being European), but the Mormons did not introduce it to the West, as suggested in this quote. The quaking aspen predates the coming of the Mormons to Utah by quite some time. Pando, the giant quaking aspen colony in south-central Utah, composed of 47,000 trees, is believed to be the heaviest living thing on earth. This colony is believed to be over 80,000 years old, and some people think that aspen groves may go back over one million years in the West.
Nature as Science
Delving only a few pages into Life in the Soil, one can tell that James Nardi is a dedicated scientist who loves his work. What's more, he's a very good writer: His book is equally textbook, reference, and good read.
Life in the Soil is organized in three sections: "The Marriage of the Mineral World and the Organic World"; "Members of the Soil Community"; and "Working in Partnership with Creatures of the Soil." The first section is a very good and useful introduction to soil science. I have recently begun to realize the tremendous importance of soil to understanding everything about plants and to becoming a successful gardener. Nardi's introduction to soil is one of the best I have read. It could usefully be reprinted as a stand-alone text.
The second section, which forms the bulk of the book, is devoted to a detailed catalog of the members of the soil community, be they fungi, plants, or animals. This catalog—or perhaps better, encyclopedia—covers critters from microscopic bacteria to the hefty woodchuck, and each entry depicts the creature's position in the classification of organisms and its place in the soil food web, and describes whether it is man's adversary or ally in the garden.
The last section is perhaps the most important one for the home gardener: Nardi gives a first-rate account of how one can work in partnership with creatures of the soil. Here Nardi discusses the problems of soil erosion, acid rain, and the excessive use of fertilizers. He also provides some solutions, such as composting and discouraging invasive plants that can chemically and biologically alter the soil.
Nardi's appendix chapter on collecting and observing life in the soil is an excellent primer for children, school groups, or science classes. Here you can learn how to use the Berlese and Baermann funnels, create observation chambers, and, best of all, how to attract toads, lizards, and snakes to your garden.
Nature as Story
The style that I believe is the future of nature writing, "nature as story," is epitomized by Ernest H. Williams Jr.'s The Nature Handbook. Based upon scientific observations in nature, Williams's encapsulated descriptions of over 200 natural phenomena are each but a few paragraphs long and illustrated with color photographs. In this age of the internet, blogs, and the 30-second attention span, Williams's stories offer easily digestible and highly delightful explanations of such puzzlers as why oak and beech trees retain their leaves through the winter, why geese honk when flying, why mudflats smell so horrible, and much more. (To discover the answers, take the pleasure of reading the book yourself!)
Many people may think that biologists, in their ivory tower or muddy mash, are studying rather mystifying yet mundane things. And certainly we do, but we do study things that can be easily communicated to the public, and we can also show them the joy we feel in studying nature. The Nature Handbook follows in the tradition of the Stokes Field Guides but makes nature and nature research come alive in ways I have seldom seen. The book, however, is not a guide to how you can observe nature so much as a guide to what others have observed. There could have been more on how to observe nature, as is found in Life in the Soil.
If you want to know more about the great outdoors or you want to know what research is telling us, you cannot do better than The Nature Handbook. And it has the added advantage that you can read it in 30-second increments.
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Steven Clemants is vice president of Science at BBG. He is the author of Wildflowers in the Field and Forest: A Field Guide to the Northeastern United States (Oxford University Press, 2006).