Botany Blueprint is a collection of botanic photography, and a study of plant design, specifically the form and function of seed pods. Individually, each photograph is a portrait of a unique botanic specimen; as a series, the photographs become an inquiry into the evolution and diversity of plant design. The photographs are published in my column at Print magazine, where I write about the form and function of seed pods. Intended to advance botanic literacy and make plants relevant to a broad audience, the project will be compiled as a forthcoming book. Currently, the series is available for exhibition, and for purchase at my shop.

Art + Botany is my weekly column published in Garden Design magazine. I write about artistic works that are inspired by botanic forms or concepts; artists include photographers, illustrators, engravers, architects, writers, and sculptors. Botanic Notables is my weekly column, also published in Garden Design magazine, featuring profiles of plants that are interesting for their ubiquity, rarity, historic importance, superlative quality, or noteworthy life cycle. Topics include the plant’s economic value, pollinator relationships, cultural significance, and evolutionary behaviors.

Notes on images: Left: “Linnæus, Age 25, In His Lapland Dress”. In 1732, Carolus Linnæus embarked on his first naturalist expedition, to Lapland. He returned from the journey with herbarium sheets, an illustrated journal of native plants, and an appreciation for the Lapps’ lifestyle. Wearing a suit of Lapland clothing and bearing their signature magic drum, he would remark to his fellow Swedes “… nobody is happier than the Lapp.” An exultant botanist and pious taxonomist, his signature epithet was “Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit”, or “God creates, Linnaeus arranges”.The engraving is titled “Linnæus, age 25, in His Lapland Dress,” by Martin Hoffman, from Robert Thornton’s New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus (London, 1807).

Right: Many plants have a biological clock, which regulates the time of day that their flowers open and close. By making observations of the times when flowers open and close during the day, Linnaeus conceived the idea of arranging certain plants in an order of flowering, so that they constituted a kind of floral clock. This was described in Linnaeus’s Philosophia Botanica (1751) in which he referred to it as an horologium florae (floral clock). Apparently, Linnaeus was able to use his clock to determine the time accurately to within half an hour. Read more.