CHASING LEWIS'S MONKEYFLOWER

Digging into the history of famous flora.

The mysterious fate of hundreds of plants gathered during the groundbreaking expedition of Lewis and Clark into the American West forms the backbone of this book, which reveals some remarkably suspicious behavior by botanists in the U.S. and abroad. Adelman, a first-time author and longtime owner of a nursery devoted to heirloom plants, became “compulsive at first, then obsessive” about following the previously untold story of these plants. She starts with a nearly day-by-day account of the early-19th-century expedition during which Meriwether Lewis, no botanist, was tasked by Thomas Jefferson with collecting and describing as many new plants as possible, and did so diligently despite the many hazards of the journey. Back home, he was supposed to write a book about the discoveries, but hadn’t even started when the explorer died, possibly by suicide. And that’s when, by Adelman’s account, things get interesting. Some of the samples were purloined for private collections, others sold to public institutions. German botanist Frederick Pursh absconded with some from the United States to Great Britain, where he planned to make a name for himself by claiming to have discovered them. And, as Adelman points out, the story isn’t over yet. As recently as 2005, one of Lewis’ samples was found miscataloged in England, and nearly two dozen other plants, including the elusive monkeyflower of the title, have yet to be located. Adelman’s prose style can be pedestrian, with one simple declarative sentence trudging after the next, and the amount of detail may overwhelm the casual reader, but the author’s enthusiasm is undeniable. A delightful epilogue covers expedition plants the home gardener might consider planting and why, and an appendix lists all the plants discovered. Thorough and often diverting footnotes support the author’s findings.

A botanical detective story rooted in the fruitful ground of human misbehavior.