Abstract
This is a fun book, full of interesting stories and facts, illustrated throughout by old woodcut illustrations that add to the flavor of the times discussed. This is a book you can set by your favorite reading chair, to dip into for several minutes or several hours: scholars, dilettantes, teachers—all will find something new or useful here. The writing is straightforward and easy to digest. References cited in the text can be found in the bibliography, which in and of itself is a valuable compilation of historical references. As an archaeologist specializing in paleoethnobotany, I couldn't help but note that Sumner relies on historical references rather than paleoethnobotanical analyses of archaeological plant assemblages. Thus, her early histories are as writers constructed them, rather than as peoples’ trash might reveal.
Sumner defines household botany as “the botany of plants used historically in homes, which combines economic botany and ethnobotany with an understanding of botanical form and function” (p. 9). The focus is on everyday plant use by Americans of European ancestry, mostly but not entirely in the East, presented as a history of how function and knowledge developed through time. Of course the major plant foods are addressed, such as grains (corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, rice), vegetable staples, fruits, and drinks. But more imaginatively, yeast and leavening, brewing, and distillation are covered, as are preservation of foods by pickling, bottling, and canning, the making of vinegar, and the practice of domestic medicine. One chapter considers wood, fibers, textiles, and dyestuffs. Another explores herbs, spices, and sweets. Sumner opens the book with a chapter appropriately entitled “The New World,” setting the scene with how newly transplanted Europeans borrowed from Native American botanical knowledge and traditions to first allow survival. The book draws to a close with a chapter of miscellany: the beginnings of botany as a subject of study in America, avocational botany in the nineteenth century, Christmas botany, and the botany of death.
Perhaps the chapter I found of most immediate interest was the one on domestic landscapes. It outlines how yards and gardens would have functioned and looked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Interesting trivia is packed into a number of concise, intertwining histories: of American naturalist gardeners; the English landscape gardening movement; plant exploration and collecting; seedsmen and nurserymen; the development of agricultural texts and household manuals on gardening; the Victorian mindset; a history of the introduction of trees, shrubs, and woody vines; a history of herbaceous garden plant favorites; indoor gardens; and invasive species. If the preceding list left you feeling a bit breathless, then I've successfully simulated the feeling one has as the text of American Household Botany whirls one artfully and engagingly from one interrelated topic to another, along the way imparting the flavor of each century. One is overwhelmed with how important the knowledge of practical household botany was in the everyday lives of early Americans. But even as some of the population became a bit removed from the immediate needs of everyday plant knowledge for basic living needs, plants remained pervasive in the psyche of Americans and their lives.