My Botanical Library

   Some of you having expressed a desire to see my 'botanical library', I finally decided to do a post about it! 😊 Humble as it is, I am very excited about it right now, because I have just made a few very exciting additions in the last week! I recently discovered the Antique & Collectible Books section on Ebay and nearly let the fire go out in the stove as I eagerly browsed page after page of old botany and flower books! I finally managed to narrow my wish list down to just four - for now! 😁 The first to arrive was Gray's Structural and Systematic Botany, otherwise known as The Botanical Textbook printed in 1858. (As you can see, it came on the same day as my seeds)! It is in excellent condition, and I am filled with wonder every time I think that this very book existed during the Civil War! 

​   And these are today's arrivals. Poetry of the Vegetable World (1853), and Ye Flower-Lover's Booke (1911). Both of them promise to be very interesting and I'm sure you will be getting some peeks into them in future blog posts. 😊 And yes, that's a cat! 

Front page of Poetry of the Vegetable World...

   These are my most treasured books right now. Reprints are wonderful, but there is just something so special about owning the originals! I'm expecting one more in the next few days, Wonders of the Vegetable World, by William Henry Davenport Adams (originally published in 1867, but I think the edition I'm getting was printed in 1890). 

   My full botanical library: My Garden, by Louise Beebe Wilder (1916), Flowers and Flower Lore, by Hilderic Friend (1884), A Modern Herbal in 2 volumes, by Mrs. Grieve, (1931), Flora Domestica (1823), Flowers: Their Moral, Language, and Poetry, by H. G. Adams (1844), Picciola, by X. B. Saintine (1839), Gray's Structural and Systematic Botany (1858) Gray's Manual of Botany, Gray's School and Field Botany, (all by Prof. Asa Gray), Poetry of the Vegetable World, by Prof. M. J. Schleiden (1853), and Ye Flower-Lover's Booke, by G. Clarke Nuttal (1911).

   So there's my library! 😊 It may be small now, but I hope to gradually accumulate more of these old books. In fact, my biggest problem has been that every time I read one of these, I find more interesting titles in the notes and bibliographies that I simply must read, and I doubt if a whole lifetime would be enough to read them all!