As a boy, Charles Darwin grew up around gardens. Moreover, his early observations of nature were numerous: walks through the countryside as a youngster, explorations later at the seaside when a student at Edinburgh, around Cambridge as an undergraduate, his global voyage on the Beagle, and finally when settled at his home in Downe, Kent. At Cambridge, the Reverend John Stevens Henslow included Darwin on botany excursions. This outdoor education prepared young Charles for his Beagle passage as a naturalist, and though animals and fossils seem paramount in accounts of his journey, he was eager to collect plants. In fact, in the research journal of his Beagle tour, Darwin says that the botany of South America is as interesting as the zoology.

James Costa and Bobbi Angell have compiled a volume packed with selections from Darwin’s books and other writings on plants, their explanations, and many beautiful color illustrations. The authors are not without a few glimmers of humor knowing that the study of plants can be daunting. By Darwin’s own admission, some of his writings are dense and dull, but this book provides a refreshing antidote as a comprehensive sampler of those words well edited and artistically presented. Even so, Darwin’s sentences are exacting and detailed, proceeding slowly and carefully like the prose in a thoughtful Victorian novel. In addition to introductory material, there are notes, a bibliography, and an index. Supplements on the botanical art from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA, where readers can browse books and art catalogues online (https://www.osgf.org/) are also included.

Joseph Hooker of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was the recipient and cataloguer of Darwin’s plants from the Beagle voyage. Hooker also became an early supporter of Darwin’s ideas on natural selection. After his nearly five-year Beagle journey around the world and finally ensconced at his country house in the 1850s before the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin conducted all types of botanical experiments. After the publication of Origin of Species, Darwin focused on orchids. In his words, Origin of Species was an abstract, so in the years following publication a number of papers and books demonstrating the validity of natural selection appeared. Similarly, before the publication of Origin of Species Darwin spent about eight years and produced books on barnacles in order to understand variation and inheritance. Orchids present curious examples of cross-pollination supporting the theory of descent with modification to evolve survival mechanisms and successful reproduction. There is no single, simple orchid design in nature, or regarding other species for that matter.

Plant biology was a major concern with attention to movement, fertilization, species varieties, and insectivorous eating adaptations. Regarding the insectivorous plant Butterwort, there are small roots since it finds nourishment from insects, seeds, pollen, etc. caught by its sticky leaves covered with digestive enzymes. Darwin was convinced that there was an ancestor common to plants and other species. By observing artificial selection in the breeding of animals and the cultivation of plants, Darwin realized how nature, too, selects favorable traits or fitness factors as heritable characteristics of an individual to foster survival and reproduction. Darwin found that structural variations permit different adaptations among plant groups, as in climbing plants that have tactile ability or the capacity to spot sunlight. In these functional faculties Darwin controversially saw an evolutionary link between plants and animals. This connection is magnified in carnivorous plants, some of which are included in the book. As with his zoological study of barnacles, Darwin closely examined all parts of a plant, from root and stem to leaves thus anticipating, according to the authors, work decades later on growth hormone signals among cells. Much of the hands-on plant work was done with his son Francis.

As with other home-grown experiments before the institutionalization of biology, Darwin received help from correspondents not just in England but from across the globe, whether in the form of specimens, data, or observational information. This correspondence was fueled not only by Darwin’s insatiable curiosity but also by England’s expanding railway and postal systems. Letters and specimens could be moved quickly. He studied hundreds of plants as well as fruits and vegetables. The Costa and Angell book covers forty-five plants, each with its own chapter and color illustration, including enlargements of some plant parts. In these plants Darwin slowly began to see, according to the authors, “evolutionary history” and not special creation. That comment is important since while a student at Cambridge studying for the career of a clergyman after he abandoned medical studies at Edinburgh, Darwin was schooled in books like William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802), which argues for God as the designer of all in nature. Nonetheless, at Edinburgh, Darwin was introduced to early ideas about evolution from one of his teachers, Robert Grant; and his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin with whose writings Darwin was familiar, was an early proponent of species development.

This book, with lavish illustrations, would have been a departure for Darwin who preferred woodcuts even though botanical publications of his time used color plates. The authors note how their volume remedies this omission by drawing on the art collection of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Maybe as a naturalist and not an artist Darwin was less concerned with the aesthetic beauty of plants and more with their form and function. Besides, botanical art books were plentiful as countries since the seventeenth century were exploring, bringing back specimens, and commissioning artists to document findings. Consider, for instance, John James Audubon’s Birds of Nature that also records in colorful detail the flora of specific habitats.

Since so many plants are outlined in the book, one can include only a few examples. Take the Comet Orchid of Madagascar as an example of coevolution: Sphinx moths with a very long proboscis adapted to a plant whose pollen was buried deep within a long spur. Flowers evolved for pollen removal as an insect’s proboscis adapted to reach and gather pollen. There’s a cycle of mutual cooperation where, for instance, honeybees cross-pollinate plants and get nectar. The Bucket Orchid coevolved with orchid bees, the males of which use aromatic liquid from the plant to attract females. These buckets also catch bees who become full of pollen as they climb out, an evolutionary marvel. A curious form of reproduction is seen in Cyclamen. After pollination the stem circles toward the ground to deposit seeds. This movement is not gravitational but deliberate by the plant to reward ants who mutually benefit by eating part of the seeds while dispersing them. Some plants, like the Peanut, grow their fruit underground, another adaptation of curious movement toward the soil to protect and plant seeds. One species of clover engages in geocarpy with geotropic movement to bury its own seeds.

Darwin’s experiments helped others understand how cross-pollination is more beneficial and, therefore, an evolutionary advantage; cross-pollinated plants are taller, stronger, and flower better. As he noticed with Toad Flax, there are not many seeds from self-fertilization in comparison with those cross-pollinated. He concluded that some plants, like the Bee Orchid, evolved self-fertilization as a means of survival when pollinators are infrequent. Flax is a good example, Darwin realized, of sexual dimorphism in plants to prevent weakness from self-fertilization. There’s also bisexuality among plants in, for instance, Ladies Tresses where though initially male, the lower part in maturation is female and the upper male. In orchids, he saw an endless variety of design via natural selection toward plant fertilization. For example, against self-fertilization in orchids insect pollination evolved as mutually advantageous; pollen is embedded, so time spent in the flower to retrieve nectar necessitates brushing with pollen. Experiments with fertilization led Darwin to see how plants differ in structure and even color depending on whether they are pollinated by insects or wind. Because of a wet and cold 1860 season, Darwin was able to observe the effect of weather on plants and especially on pollinating insects.

Clematis fascinated Darwin because it climbed by its petioles twisting and clasping onto supports as if possessing a responsive nervous system. One plant Darwin studied for many years, covering pollination, seedlings, sensitivity, and movement is the Fava Bean, on which he gave a root-brain hypothesis via radicle tips. There is a growing and contentious field of plant neurobiology today. Darwin surmised that climbers adapted to avoid lateral light, which would impede their upward motion. He was also interested in how quickly some plants move, like the Cup and Saucer Vine, climbing in a complete rotation of one hour and fifteen minutes as it winds around a support. Darwin studied over one hundred climbing plants and believed the continual movement of the climbers evinced animal-like intention. Anthropomorphizing plants because of the evolutionary connection he saw with them to animals, Darwin would refer to a tendril as the bending toe of a bud. Some tendrils come from flower stems, as in the passionflower, whose movement can be so quick that it is visible with the aid of a lens; other tendrils emerge from leaves or flowers.

For those interested in the work of Darwin, this book is highly recommended since it beautifully coordinates the art of botany with the naturalist’s words in an excellently edited volume. The book helps sensitize readers to the importance of plants: they are primary to all life in many ways. While people always associate Darwin’s name with “evolution,” it is important to understand how he approached nature and came to his theory of natural selection and descent with modification by studying everything from rocks to beetles. Sandra Herbert, for instance, is the author of Charles Darwin: Geologist (2005). Rebecca Stott has a wonderful book called Darwin and the Barnacle (2003). In this trajectory of expanding our vision of Darwin the naturalist we now have a telling focus of his botanical work in Darwin and the Art of Botany.