Fiction about plants/trees/botany/gardens
November 6, 2022 11:58 AM Subscribe
Have you read a great fiction book that has a focus on plants or trees or botany? Please tell me about it.
Adult as well as kid's fiction. Doesn't have to be a recent book.
The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert. It's been a long time since I've read it, but the narrator is left a book with that title by her dead cousin, and she's trying to understand him more through reading that book.
posted by FencingGal at 12:11 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by FencingGal at 12:11 PM on November 6, 2022
Does The Secret Garden go without saying?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:12 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:12 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Also, the short story Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is about a botanist who has cultivated a garden of poisonous plants. In tending the plants, his daughter becomes immune to the poisons. I won't spoil the rest of it.
posted by FencingGal at 12:13 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by FencingGal at 12:13 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver's extensive education in biology is on display in this book, laden with ecological concepts and biological facts. Her writing also exhibits her knowledge of rural Virginia, where she grew up. In the acknowledgments Kingsolver thanks her Virginia friends and neighbors, as well as Fred Herbard of the American Chestnut Foundation.Eucalyptus by Murray Bail
Murray Bail's unusual novel, set in his native Australia, does, to a large extent revolve around eucalypti, a tree that grows in a bewildering variety. Set mainly on a large property in the outback it centers around Holland and his daughter Ellen. Holland has planted eucalyptus trees of every sort all across his property. When his daughter is of marriageable age he sets a condition for her suitors: she will wed only a man who is able to identify every type of eucalyptus on the property.posted by Thella at 12:31 PM on November 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng covers 20th-century Malaysian history but also explores Japanese garden design and Sakuteiki. The titular garden is created by a Japanese gardener in Malaysia.
posted by boudicca at 12:40 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by boudicca at 12:40 PM on November 6, 2022
Elizabeth's Gilbert The Signature of All Things is primarily about a 19th century botanist.
posted by minervous at 12:48 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by minervous at 12:48 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Brother Cadfael is an herbalist and gardener, so plants/lore play into most of them at least a little bit.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:52 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:52 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Oranges, John McPhee. Chefs kiss perfect book.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:03 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by kevinbelt at 1:03 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Garden Variety by Christy Wilhelmi is set at a community garden in California. Not a lot happens really, there is a bit of a romance and a crisis about the garden possibly closing, but really it is kind of a "cozy" book, with talk about gardening and spending some time with the characters.
posted by gudrun at 1:23 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by gudrun at 1:23 PM on November 6, 2022
Response by poster: Please remember that I’m looking for fiction.
posted by sciencegeek at 1:33 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by sciencegeek at 1:33 PM on November 6, 2022
It's been a very long time since I've read it, so no idea if it holds up, but The Ancient One by T.A. Barron sticks in my mind as kind of the YA fantasy predecessor of The Overstory.
posted by sigmagalator at 1:38 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by sigmagalator at 1:38 PM on November 6, 2022
One of my favorites as a kid, The Plant Sitter by Gene Zion, of “Harry the Dirty Dog” fame.
posted by Melismata at 2:00 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Melismata at 2:00 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Elizabeth Von Arnim's The Enchanted April (free on gutenberg.org) is a really charming 1922 bestseller about four women who try to get away from horrible rainy London and their variably unpleasant lives by going on holiday in a castle in Italy. They just hang out for the whole book in the extremely pleasant garden there.
Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes is from a few years later. A woman who loves flowers and whose relatives are always making her feel bad about spending money on them (the family is oppressive in other ways too, but it manifests most clearly in the flowers) moves to the countryside to escape and hang out around trees. Not quite as consistently about a garden as The Enchanted April but very much driven by a love for being among plants. I'm trying to avoid spoilers but it's not exactly realist.
L. M. Montgomery (of the Anne of Green Gables series) wrote some romance for adults, including The Blue Castle (also free on gutenberg.org); it's also from 1926, and is uhh also about a woman who abandons her oppressive family to go and live in nature, and for bonus plant points there's a fictional nature writer whose books she's always quoting.
Logically there must also be some plant novels I like that aren't about 1920s women fleeing social constraints to hang out near trees, but I can't think of any offhand!
posted by severalbees at 2:01 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes is from a few years later. A woman who loves flowers and whose relatives are always making her feel bad about spending money on them (the family is oppressive in other ways too, but it manifests most clearly in the flowers) moves to the countryside to escape and hang out around trees. Not quite as consistently about a garden as The Enchanted April but very much driven by a love for being among plants. I'm trying to avoid spoilers but it's not exactly realist.
L. M. Montgomery (of the Anne of Green Gables series) wrote some romance for adults, including The Blue Castle (also free on gutenberg.org); it's also from 1926, and is uhh also about a woman who abandons her oppressive family to go and live in nature, and for bonus plant points there's a fictional nature writer whose books she's always quoting.
Logically there must also be some plant novels I like that aren't about 1920s women fleeing social constraints to hang out near trees, but I can't think of any offhand!
posted by severalbees at 2:01 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Naomi Novik's Uprooted also has the advantage of being one of the greatest fantasy novels of this century, IMO.
posted by jamjam at 2:35 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 2:35 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
In Brian Aldiss' Hothouse plants completely dominate Earth in the far future.
posted by jamjam at 3:01 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by jamjam at 3:01 PM on November 6, 2022
A large section of Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad takes place in a giant forest. I loved it when I read it in college (shortly after it came out), but not sure how it holds up.
posted by Gorgik at 3:05 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by Gorgik at 3:05 PM on November 6, 2022
Came in to suggest Uprooted. One of my all-time favorite books.
posted by sevensnowflakes at 3:12 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by sevensnowflakes at 3:12 PM on November 6, 2022
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, a very fun adventure novel with depth about a 19th century slave who becomes a botanist’s assistant.
posted by veery at 3:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by veery at 3:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Maybe Barbara Michaels's Vanish with the Rose and The Dancing Floor. AS Byatt, Angels and Insects. Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things. Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost (some of her novels are extremely and overtly racist; I cannot remember whether this one is). The Botanist's Daughter, by Kayte Nunn. Helen Humphries, The Lost Garden. I know I have read at least one novel about a plant collector, but cannot bring it to mind. There is a Philippa Gregory novel about John Tradescant, Earthly Joys, but I haven't read it. Carol Shields, Larry's Party. Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden (may be a bit of a Marmite book, I couldn't get on with it at all, but got some good reviews). Nora Roberts, In The Garden trilogy starting with Blue Dahlia. Susan Wittig Albert has a cosy mystery series about herbs, starting with Thyme of Death. Maybe Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea. There is a good garden scene in Mansfield Park. And I'm sure there are other children's books in which gardens are important, but can't remember any at the moment.
posted by paduasoy at 3:28 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by paduasoy at 3:28 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
And I thought of one as soon as I posted, of course. Tom's Midnight Garden, Philippa Pearce, timeslip children's book.
posted by paduasoy at 3:32 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by paduasoy at 3:32 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
This Poisoned Heart is a fun YA book (trilogy) that focuses on the protagonist’s magical botanical powers.
posted by raccoon409 at 4:34 PM on November 6, 2022
posted by raccoon409 at 4:34 PM on November 6, 2022
The Orchid Thief is about an obsessive collector of super rare fossils who shifts his attention to super rare orchids. It's based on a true story but is so absolutely insane that it reads like fiction.
posted by ananci at 5:54 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by ananci at 5:54 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
The Martian! The main character is a botanist.
posted by emd3737 at 7:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by emd3737 at 7:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Mandy by Julie Andrews is a children’s book about an orphan girl who finds an abandoned cottage/garden and makes it her own special place.
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a big emphasis on gardening (particularly roses, as you might imagine).
posted by tan_coul at 10:38 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a big emphasis on gardening (particularly roses, as you might imagine).
posted by tan_coul at 10:38 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Semiosis, by Sue Burke has sentient plants! Lots of different kinds of sentient plants!
"Sue Burke’s Day Job is in translation, and her impressive debut novel is focused on communication, telling a planetary colonization story with a twist. As the Earth nears environmental collapse, a colony ship is launched in a desperate bid to ensure humanity’s survival. The ship is forced to land on an unexpected planet, which the colonists name Pax—and which is populated by sentient plants and other life. Each chapter is told by a member of a subsequent generation of the humans, who forge a symbiotic bond with Pax’s native life. But that relationship isn’t always comforting; unlike on Earth, on Pax, humanity isn’t sitting on top of the food chain, and communicating with plants is a complex art"
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:05 AM on November 7, 2022
"Sue Burke’s Day Job is in translation, and her impressive debut novel is focused on communication, telling a planetary colonization story with a twist. As the Earth nears environmental collapse, a colony ship is launched in a desperate bid to ensure humanity’s survival. The ship is forced to land on an unexpected planet, which the colonists name Pax—and which is populated by sentient plants and other life. Each chapter is told by a member of a subsequent generation of the humans, who forge a symbiotic bond with Pax’s native life. But that relationship isn’t always comforting; unlike on Earth, on Pax, humanity isn’t sitting on top of the food chain, and communicating with plants is a complex art"
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:05 AM on November 7, 2022
I adored Michael Christie’s Greenwood. It’s about a lot of things but trees are ever present throughout, and important to the story.
It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests.posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:19 AM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.
It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.
And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.
A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.
In the Heart of the Garden by Helene Wiggin follows a garden, and the women who shape it, through the centuries.
At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier is set in 19th-century America, and trees and seeds (apples, redwoods, sequoias) feature heavily.
And a book from my childhood: The Bongleweed by Helen Cresswell. "At first, the Bongleweed seems just an overgrown weed, until it starts growing at an arm's length a day, sprouting exotic flowers and invading other people's gardens."
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:14 AM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier is set in 19th-century America, and trees and seeds (apples, redwoods, sequoias) feature heavily.
And a book from my childhood: The Bongleweed by Helen Cresswell. "At first, the Bongleweed seems just an overgrown weed, until it starts growing at an arm's length a day, sprouting exotic flowers and invading other people's gardens."
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:14 AM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
It’s a graphic novel, but LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor revolves around some plants.
posted by eviemath at 4:28 AM on November 7, 2022
posted by eviemath at 4:28 AM on November 7, 2022
Mythago Wood is a fantasy set in 20th century rural england near a small forest. As the narrator explores the woods, weirdness abounds.
posted by schyler523 at 6:38 AM on November 7, 2022
posted by schyler523 at 6:38 AM on November 7, 2022
I read your question and immediately thought of The Overstory, but it's right there in your question. And honestly, everything I can think of pales next to it.
But definitely +1 to Prodigal Summer and The Secret Garden.
I'll add Ann Patchett's State of Wonder
posted by Mchelly at 8:48 AM on November 7, 2022
But definitely +1 to Prodigal Summer and The Secret Garden.
I'll add Ann Patchett's State of Wonder
posted by Mchelly at 8:48 AM on November 7, 2022
Speaking of Barbara Kingsolver: Unsheltered is also excellent and follows a woman botanist at a time when that was unusual and unacceptable.
posted by lydhre at 4:06 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by lydhre at 4:06 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I can't vouch for the novelizations, as I haven't read them, but I immediately wondered if the British TV show Rosemary & Thyme was based on books. Wikipedia led me to this information:
Three novelizations, credited to series creator Brian Eastman and ghostwritten by crime writer Rebecca Tope, were published in Britain by Allison and Busby and in Australia by Hardie Grant Books:
And No Birds Sing (published in 2004, based on the pilot episode)
The Tree of Death (published in 2005, based on the final episode of Series 1)
Memory of Water (published in 2006, based on the feature-length opening episode of Series 2)
posted by poppunkcat at 5:35 AM on November 8, 2022
Three novelizations, credited to series creator Brian Eastman and ghostwritten by crime writer Rebecca Tope, were published in Britain by Allison and Busby and in Australia by Hardie Grant Books:
And No Birds Sing (published in 2004, based on the pilot episode)
The Tree of Death (published in 2005, based on the final episode of Series 1)
Memory of Water (published in 2006, based on the feature-length opening episode of Series 2)
posted by poppunkcat at 5:35 AM on November 8, 2022
Perhaps Ursula K. Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest?
posted by vers at 7:25 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by vers at 7:25 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
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The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau is an allegory written in 1899 but it still has the power to chill and horrify (the torture in the title is graphically described), so read with caution if you're of a delicate disposition. Wonderful extended descriptions of beautiful gardens and the plants therein though, and they form a central part of the comparison of and discussion about civilisation, colonialism, and hypocrisy.
posted by underclocked at 12:11 PM on November 6, 2022