Field Guides: Artful and Surreal

Wednesday, April 20th
by Editor, Soiled and Seeded

If you are looking to enhance your plant identification skills and are searching for accompanying literature for leisurely strolls and nature trails, here are a couple of creative options to inspire wild forays within and out of city limits.

Artist Leanne Shapton has revived the Canadian classic the Native Trees of Canada. Initially published as a government volume in 1969, Shapton paints her way through the Canadian forest with wonderfully colourful and vivid paintings. This book is reason enough to get reacquainted with our forests and knowing all the trees that grow.

As for the brilliance of florals A Field Guide to Surreal Botany is a charming collection of 48 newly discovered and completely imagined plant species. Each entry is written by a different author with an accompanying illustration. Organized by region, there are profiles of immortal plants, those visible only in the dark, another that grows within a computer, as well as screaming and singing botanicals. Discoveries include the Kvetching Aspen, sister to the Quivering Aspen, the Ozymandias Plant, the Wild Homilywort, the Nabakov and Stag-Eye Nettle. This one will easily stave off any lingering winter angst.

Source: Drawn and Quaterly, Leanne Shapton and Two Cranes Press

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