Ed. note: Getting a heads-up from the folks in the LuEsther T. Mertz library is always a treat, if only because we never know what kind of surprise they’re going to pass along. Often it’s an interesting bit of history in the form of an old landscaping book, or a quirky tome on classical botany. This time around, however, the history in question is far more visual. Library Director Susan Fraser was kind enough to explain the how and when of the colorful collection that recently fell into their laps.

The Mertz Library recently received a collection of research material from the estate of J. Louise Mastrantonio, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon and California from 1961 through 1986. After retiring, she began researching the history of the American nursery industry and compiled a collection of artifacts from the late 19th and early 20th century. In time, she began writing a book about the nursery trade, though she died before completing it.

This collection came to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library as a bequest from Mastrantonio’s estate, and includes nursery and seed trade catalogs, seed packets, postcards, advertising art, and wooden seed display boxes (known as commission boxes). Among the literature included are books, agriculture newspapers, and photographs–including 10 stereoscope images.
read more »

Mia D’Avanza is a Reference Librarian for The LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

Because the Mertz Library is open to the public, we serve a wide variety of patrons, from second graders learning the many parts of a flower, to NYBG scientists conducting rigorous botanical research. Field Guide to the Street Trees of New York City lands squarely in the middle of that spectrum. Serving as a focused complement to Leslie Day’s previous work, Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City, this beautifully illustrated and photo-heavy book is full of helpful information for anyone who has ever wondered what kinds of trees shade the city.

As a thorough guide, the book even provides the addresses of places in each of the five boroughs where you can view a live example of each profiled tree. I grabbed it off of the shelf with the idea of identifying a large tree I’d seen at the top of Marcus Garvey Park, near the historic Fire Tower; I was quickly able to identify the tree I’d seen as the London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia), NYC’s most common tree and a regular at the NYBG. You’ll know it by its large, spiked “seed balls” and almost mottled bark.
read more »

While the NYBG‘s Library is home to a wealth of rare botanical texts, we occasionally come into possession of something which explores taxonomy on a much broader level. Loosely translated from Latin, The New History of Plants, Animals and Minerals of Mexico is one such example, diving into seventeenth-century zoological studies with a certain flair.

There are many inexplicable species drawings in Francisco Hernández’s pre-Linnaean work Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium Mexicanorum historia (1651), which was digitized at The New York Botanical Garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library as part of its multiyear Global Plants Initiative project, generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In fact, in some cases, the animals depicted seem more inspired fantasy than scientific discovery. Take Dracunculus Monoceros:

read more »

Happy Flag Day, everyone! Today marks the 235th anniversary of our star-spangled banner’s adoption, recognized each year on the 14th of June with a quiet “hurrah!” before the Fourth of July fireworks. And nearly a century ago, this was a momentous day at the Garden.

Our own flags were first raised on a sunny Saturday in 1917, and while it was during the height of World War I, Bronx residents still took the time to gather in celebration. In the midst of so much grim news from Europe, NYBG staff had pulled together to keep spirits high; the raising of three flag poles gifted to us on June 16 of that year (it’s easier on the weekend) gave the Garden an excuse to party–with parades, poetry, and at least a few swords.

It’s not often that something so simple as a flag raising gets its own marching band treatment these days, but hey, John Philip Sousa was a much bigger deal back then. The gifts–from one Edward D. Adams, NYBG board member–were met with a crowd of several hundred local school children, three separate Boy Scout troops (and their band), then Bronx Borough President Douglas Mathewson, and many more.
read more »

Not many can recall the Liverpool Botanic Gardens. Though its glasshouse and extensive collection of orchids saw thousands of visitors pass through in the early decades of their existence, the middle years of the twentieth century were not kind. After over a century of high regard, the 1930s and ’40s brought the second World War, along with an errant German bomb that destroyed much of the botanic glasshouse and its contents. A decade-long effort to rebuild the architecture on a post-war budget proved shoddy, and within 15 years the replacement structure had fallen into disrepair. By the rapid decline of the 1970s, the glasshouse’s rotting wooden framework and broken glass panes had become emblematic of Liverpool’s floundering economy.

The Gardens closed without ceremony in 1984. With an unresolved labor dispute muddying the ground between the city council and the botanical workforce, Liverpool’s decision to shutter the space was labeled an act of political spite. What remained of the LBG’s extensive plant collection–now orphaned–was moved off-grounds. And, to some, the untold beauty and presence of a world-renowned paradise of exotic plants was lost to time.
read more »

The LuEsther T. Mertz Library is revered as a center for research in the fields of botany, horticulture, and landscape. However, it is also home to many interesting special collections which are less well-known, such as its 1,600 volume children’s collection. This collection contains books which were written for children and young adults, and its content ranges in date from the 1880s to the present. Some of these publications are great rarities, while others are illustrated by famous artists, or explain scientific, natural, or ecological principles; some pieces of the collection are story books, others are picture books, but each is made to be read and admired by children of any age.
read more »

Not long ago we introduced you to a new Plant Talk series we’re calling “Past in Focus,” in which we unearth historical photographs from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library archives and attempt to recapture the scenes as they appear today. A century-old landscape undergoes any number of changes at the hands of time, weather, and ambition, leaving us drawn in by details large and small that remain untouched. You can look at these photographs and–even if only just–make out the origins of the design beneath the carefully-tended aesthetic.

In 1916, the tract surrounding the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden was a plane of graded soil following an idea on paper:

Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden -- November 16, 1916

read more »

Our historical archives are something of a treasure chest for history buffs, stuffed with 100-year-old photographs of a Garden in transition. I sometimes find myself digging through them just for contrast and comparison (and the fashion sense of our forebears; I really want to bring back flat-brimmed straw hats). My latest dig yielded some interesting results, not to mention a new series we hope to keep up with in the future.

More specifically, it produced a Library Building (better known then as the Museum Building) and its surroundings at the turn of the century:

The Museum Building -- November 15, 1901

Thomas Alva Edison died on October 18, 1931–eighty years ago today.

In the late 1920s, Edison was deeply engaged in plant research. His goal was to discover a domestic source of rubber,  a plant that might produce better material than what was available at the time. (The plant turned out to be goldenrod.)

This effort was spearheaded by the Edison Botanical Corporation and funded by Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. Research was done by the corporation and by Edison himself at The New York Botanical Garden as well as at Edison’s labs in West Orange, N.J. and Fort Myers, Florida. The great inventor spent several years periodically working at the Garden and its Library, along with assistants John Kunkel Small, Barukh Jonas, William H. Meadowcroft, and others.

Learn more about Thomas A. Edison’s research at the Garden below.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library Flickr photostream contains several digital image collections, including Flowering Plants, Algae, Ferns, Fungi & Mosses, and BHL Books.

Featured in the BHL Books collection is the atlas from Jean Gourdon and Philibert Naudin’s 1871 work Nouvelle iconographie fourragère: histoire botanique, économique et agricole des plantes fourragères et des plantes nuisibles qui se rencontrent dans les prairies et les paturages : avec planches gravées sur cuivre et coloriées / par J. Gourdon, P. Naudin. This item was digitized in 2009 by The New York Botanical Garden’s Mertz Library.

The atlas includes an illustration of a coquelicot, or corn poppy:

Also available on the photostream are detailed and thumbnail views of other illustrations in the book.

(Side note: also in the 1870s, in Argenteuil, France, Claude Monet painted his famous Coquelicots (Poppies), which today resides at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.)

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a consortium of twelve natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.”

The LuEsther T. Mertz Library is a BHL partner.