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Tag: Botany and Horticulture Library

Salad Days (and Months) in Rare Books

My salad days, when I was green in judgement

This common, if well-worn, phrase first appeared in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra of 1606. At the end of Act One of the play, recalling a youthful affair with Julius Caesar, Cleopatra refers to a time of innocence, silliness or indiscretions. Since May is National Salad Month, let us celebrate the greens by looking at the work of another Englishman, John Evelyn (1620-1706). His Acetaria: a discourse of sallets, printed in London in 1699, was the first book devoted to salads.

 

Seeking the Ferns of Southern Mexico: on Oliver Sacks neurologist, bestselling author, and botanist

This post was written by Robin Everly, librarian in the Botany and Horticulture Library, with Spencer Goyette, contractor in the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Botany.

Working in the Botany and Horticulture library, I’m still surprised by the books I come across that I haven’t heard about. So when I came across Oaxaca Journal what caught my eye was the author’s name on the book’s spine- Oliver Sacks. Immediately, I wondered if it was the same Oliver Sacks, neurologist and bestselling author of books such as Awakenings, The Island of the Colorblind, and The Man who Mistook his wife for a Hat. Dr. Sacks, who died on August 30, 2015, of metastatic cancer, had the ability to communicate complex scientific concepts to the general public by providing well written prose as well as insightful and strange stories about the human mind. And yes, he, the same Dr. Sacks, wrote Oaxaca Journal, which is the personal journal he kept during a fern collecting trip to southern Mexico with the American Fern Society 15 years ago.

Celebrating floral design in the Botany-Horticulture Library

This post was written by Robin Everly, Botany-Horticulture Library.

Did you know that Saturday, February 28 is Floral Design Day and the day itself has been around for 20 years?

The day was created to celebrate a special birthday of Carl Rittner, who founded the Rittners School of Floral Design in Boston, Massachusetts and was a leader in floral art education.  Fittingly, it was enacted by official proclamation by then Governor William F. Weld of Massachusetts in 1995.

Researching Floras for the Botany – Horticulture Library

The Flora of China

This post was written by Alice Doolittle, a 2011 summer intern on the Botany-Horticulture Library. Interested in working with us this summer? Now is the time to apply! Visit our internship webpage. Applications close April 30th. 

For a biologist who is also an aspiring librarian, what could be better than to spend the summer in the stacks within the National Museum of Natural History? During the summer of 2011, I spent several weeks at the Botany – Horticulture Library as a Professional Development Intern for Smithsonian Institution Libraries.