Nature In Focus

“They tell us that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable—soul-less. I think that is something that we know exactly nothing about.”

—John Muir
(1838-1914)
Journal, Autumn 1867 ...

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”

—Aristotle
(384–322 B.C.)

“The most microscopic portions of plants are beautiful in themselves, and these are beautiful combined.”

—John Muir
(1838–1914)

All of the plant species in these galleries are found ...

“Green, the color of growth, or surgent life, enwraps the land. New green, still as individual as the plants themselves. Cool green, which will merge as the weeks pass, the Summer comes, into a canopy of shade of busy chlorophyll.” ...

“Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we ...

“We say of the oak,
'How grand of girth!
Of the willow we say,
'How slender!'
And yet to the soft grass clothing the earth
How slight is the praise we render.” 

—Edgar Fawcett
...

“And in that hour,
The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the pain
That man inflicts ...

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

—Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)

“The Earth laughs in flowers.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)

“Doubtless botany has its value; but the flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them; they are apt to stop preaching, though, so soon as we begin to dissect and botanize them.”

...

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?’”

—Aldo Leopold
(1886-1948)
Round River

“Ye who would pass by and raise your hand against me, harken ere you harm me. I am the heat of your hearth on the cold winter nights; the friendly shade screening you from the summer sun; and my fruits are refreshing draughts ...

“Heaven and earth are threads of one loom.”

—June Sprigg
By Shaker Hands

“Flowers … are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803–1882)

A wildflower is not a botanical term, but exactly ...

“When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell.”

—John Muir
(1838-1914)