Emily Dickinson: Herbarium
Emily Dickinson is part of our Plant Lady studies, due to her use of
nature in poetry, but also her Herbarium; growing, collecting, pressing
and classifying plants. Victorian women could use art as a in to study
the sciences. Clever!
We started with a nature hike to collect a few early Spring blooms.
We noticed most of the early blooms are white (trillium) or yellow (dandelions).
Dandelions are considered the bees first food after a long period of hibernation, so we left those bee (!).
Trillium are Ontario's provincial flower and most provinces discourage picking.
This is due to the fact that it takes fourteen years to grow from seed and seven years to re-flower once plucked. We just admired those from afar.
Once we pressed our specimen and folded a paper concertina-style, we glued them each on a separate page before identifying the ones we were unfamiliar with.
