Seven Flowers: And How They Shaped Our World

For Potter (The Rose), the seven flowers in this book share “a complex and contrary history,” from the tulip, used as a tool for financial speculation, to the sunflower, whose stature put it out of favor with gardeners even while inspiring artists and writers. Potter takes each flower in turn, starting with a detailed history from ancient times. For example, the lily’s story starts with “spectacular lily frescoes found in the Cretan palace complex of Knossos.” Like jungles of lotus in China, Potter’s flowers take on further abundant and tangled associations in the early Christian world, the medieval period, and the new world. From there, the flowers make their symbolic presence felt most strongly in Western art and literature—from van Gogh’s sunflowers to Gertrude Stein’s famous “rose is a rose is a rose.” Not a traditional botanical guide by any measure, Potter’s book is for the armchair florist, the orchid-obsessed, and the history reader with a green thumb. The flowers are an excuse to arrange a bouquet of interesting vignettes, such as the origins of the fleur-de-lis or the introduction of laudanum, made from opium poppies, in Western medicine. If Potter’s source list is any indication, she has distilled a massive amount of information into an erudite book with an entertaining conceit. Agent: Caroline Dawnay, United Agents. (Mar.)