mostly words

My win­ter pile of plant and seed cat­a­logs con­tains one that doesn’t fit the usual model. Instead of page after page of gor­geous soft-core porno­graphic pho­tos and draw­ings of plants in brawny full leaf and buxom full bloom, the J.L. Hud­son Seeds­man cat­a­log takes the form of a tight 95 pages of black-on-white text and only twenty-five small line draw­ings for illustrations.

jlhudsoncatalogpage1

This is a cat­a­log all about words. It could well change your expec­ta­tions of what a seed cat­a­log should be. It’s listed as an “eth­nob­otan­i­cal cat­a­log of seeds,” and you can sit down with it and read it like a novel. Most of the seeds descrip­tions come with a sen­tence or two of cul­tural trivia about the plant, mostly about how one of the world’s soci­eties uses that plant. I’ve been find­ing that this is the cat­a­log that I’ve been spend­ing the most time with this year.

jlhudsoncatalogpage2

In addi­tion to the inter­est­ing cat­a­log copy, you start to notice that the text itself is gor­geous in the way it sits on the page. I was try­ing to place the spe­cial qual­ity it has when I finally noticed on the last page an inter­est­ing state­ment: “This pub­li­ca­tion was type­set entirely with­out the use of computers.”

No com­put­ers? In 2009? So retro it’s avant-garde, like albums released on vinyl. But worry not. They also have an online pres­ence.

This is def­i­nitely a cat­a­log with atti­tude. It’s also a cat­a­log with a pur­pose, a pur­pose that’s well doc­u­mented in a state­ment on their web­site, a pur­pose that’s in line with their self-description as a “pub­lic access seed bank.” You can also start to under­stand the pur­pose when you look at the titles of the brief selec­tion of books offered in the back of the catalog.

One of the works, Inva­sion Biol­ogy: Cri­tique of a Pseu­do­science, has a writeup that includes the state­ment, “We have all heard the breath­less tales of the dan­gers of ‘inva­sive alien species,’ but what does sci­ence say about them? …In all cases… intro­duced species have increased bio­log­i­cal diversity.”

Another title, Eco­fas­cism: Lessons from the Ger­man Expe­ri­ence, gets a long writeup that includes the impas­sioned lines, “Most U.S. envi­ron­men­tal­ists are com­pletely opposed to the aims of fas­cism, but reac­tionary forces have begun to bend eco­log­i­cal themes towards these very ends. Only through knowl­edge may we pre­vent this per­ver­sion of environmentalism.”

Once you under­stand where the cat­a­log is com­ing from, you’ll start to under­stand the almost will­ful atti­tude that would drive them to offer seed of black mus­tard, one of the plants that has taken over much of the local ecosys­tem and has few friends among the plant peo­ple I know. And one of the recent online cat­a­log sup­ple­ments had seed for Arundo donax, a plant that has taken over some impor­tant local ripar­ian habi­tats. Why don’t you just dump plu­to­nium in your gar­den? Hmmmm…Does that make me an ecofascist?

You don’t have to agree with every­thing you see in the cat­a­log, and you don’t have to buy any­thing out of it. But this is one pub­li­ca­tion that’s a must read if you’d like to get your­self think­ing instead of all hot and both­ered over the usual pretty pictures!

January 24 2009 07:53 am | Categories: gardening • rambles | Tags: • • • • • •

7 Responses to “mostly words”

  1. Philip on 24 Jan 2009 at 11:16 am #

    Hi James,
    I will have to get this cat­a­log. I am also impressed by the type­set­ting. It reminds me of some of the old books I have like Culpepper’s Herbal­ist. This is a seed cat­a­log that is cer­tainly old school, and as you say there is a place for every­thing, even if one does hope inva­sive plants are not spread around!
    It would be so inter­est­ing to see if there was a way that a blog could be done with the look of this. Print­ing press in the pot­ting shed?
    What an inter­est­ing cat­a­log. When look­ing up a plant I like to go to var­i­ous sources to get a com­plete idea of it. I could see that this would be a use­ful ref­er­ence.
    Best regards,
    Philip

  2. Steve on 24 Jan 2009 at 11:41 am #

    Wow, James.….…what a cool book. Inci­den­tally, you can see their severe inde­pen­dence in that gor­geous quote about ‘Envi­ron­men­tal Fas­cism’ — some­thing we should all bear in mind. We are all Green, whether we admit it or not. Even the most craven of us — out­side some cor­po­ra­tions — accept some stew­ard­ship of this planet, from either side of the aisle.

    Pol­i­tics aside, I love this blog. Please keep it up!

  3. Helen/patientgardener on 24 Jan 2009 at 11:59 am #

    Hi James — I receive a cou­ple of photo less seed cat­a­logues here in the UK and I find them more infor­ma­tive than the usual com­mer­cial ones. I find myself being swayed by a blowsy bloom and then being dis­ap­pointed by the over­all plant. Christo­pher Lloyd wrote once about how you should look at the whole plant when choos­ing it to see how the flower fits within the whole. I also think that words alone give a greater sense of anticipation

  4. lostlandscape on 24 Jan 2009 at 9:55 pm #

    Helen, I like Christo­pher Lloyd’s com­ment. It’s sim­i­lar to com­ments from the likes of Piet Oudolf who talk about what the plant does all year, of look­ing at the struc­ture of the plant, not just the flowers.

    Steve, thanks for the com­ments. The world lives on our gar­dens, don’t you think?

    Philip, stop by Mon­day if you can. I’ll have some­thing on old style blog­ging typography…some fun with text… I’ve found some some old seed cat­a­logs online that are fas­ci­nat­ing to look through. Sur­pris­ingly, many of them have more illus­tra­tions than this one issued in 2009!

  5. out of doors on 25 Jan 2009 at 9:05 am #

    This is the sec­ond time the J.L.Hudson cat­a­log has come to my attention…must inves­ti­gate fur­ther. Thanks for the quotes. I’ve won­dered why there aren’t more projects that take advan­tage of our inva­sive species. Tiki huts framed and thatched in giant reed, anyone?

  6. lostlandscape on 25 Jan 2009 at 10:04 am #

    Out of doors, some of my wood­wind musi­cian friends swear by Arundo donax to make reeds for their instru­ments. I have this con­spir­acy the­ory that all the patches of giant reed started out life in the back yards of bas­soon­ists… Tiki huts would go through the arundo tim­ber a lot faster, though!

  7. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » blog typography on 26 Jan 2009 at 7:55 am #

    […] response to my post on the inter­est­ing typog­ra­phy of the J.L. Hud­son seed cat­a­log, Philip won­dered whether it would be pos­si­ble to design a blog so that it would look like an older […]

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