Review by Martha Quillen
Gardening – June 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Plants of the Lewis & Clark Expedition
by H. Wayne Phillips
published in 2003 by Mountain Press Publishing Company Missoula, Montana
ISBN 0-87842-477-6
THIS IS AN UNUSUAL combination of plant book and historical journal, with nice four-color photographs of plants like most plant guides — along with a few beautiful landscape shots — plus maps, individual plant profiles, and a glossary. But every plant’s description includes historic journal material, too. For example, there’s an entry for Chokecherry, which describes the overall bush, plus leaves, flowers, fruit, blossoming season, habitat, and:
“On June 11, 1805, Lewis was leading a small party searching for the ‘great falls of the Missouri,’ when he fell ill: ‘I was taken with such violent pain in the intestens that I was unable to partake of the feast of marrowbones….I directed a parsel of the small twigs [of chokecherry] to be geathered striped of their leaves, cut into pieces of about 2 Inches in length and boiled in water until a strong black decoction of an astringent bitter tast was produced; at sunset I took a point {pint} of this decoction and abut an hour after repeated the dze[.] by 10 in the evening I was entirely releived from pain and in fact every symptom of the disorder forsook me; my fever abated, a gentle perspiration was produced and I had a comfortable and refreshing nights rest.’ The next morning Lewis took another portion of the chokecherry decoction and hiked 27 miles up the Missouri….”
This expedition didn’t go through Colorado, so we’re not sure why the publisher sent this book our way, but some of the plants do grow here, and this is a rather interesting approach to history and plant identification.
(I especially enjoyed the journal’s erratic spelling, although I felt a little sorry for the proofreaders who must have had an interesting time trying to duplicate errors — but not allow extras.)
This book probably won’t appeal to a great many of our readers, but if you’re both a history buff with a special interest in Lewis and Clark and a plant aficionado, it may be just what you’re looking for.
It’s colorful and a mite eccentric; it could be a great companion on a trip along the expedition’s route.
–Martha Quillen
