Chasing Lewis's Monkeyflower: The Amazing Afterlife of the Lewis and Clark Expedition's Wild Plants [Hardcover]

A look at the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the plant specimens the great explorers gathered on their wayand of their amazing afterlife.

Elizabeth AdelmansChasing the Missing Monkeyfloweris the two hundred-year saga of finding, losing, and finding the wild plants collected on Americas first exploration west, the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Thomas Jefferson handpicked Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, gather notable specimens along the way, and then write the journals, with one volume to include science-worthy descriptions and classifications of the plants that Lewis collected and pressed to preserve. Not a botanist, Lewis needed help to write this part of the journals.

Ambition, deceit, theft, wealth, debt, alcoholism, loss, suicide, serendipity, and stubborn persistence cross the plants paths in Philadelphia, New York, and London. This is the first work detailing the places, practices, and times of a cavalcade of people who touched the plants. A fascinating chronicle of an unexplored byway of the great American story.

Elizabeth Adelmangardened on weekends and summer evenings for many years while pursuing a career in law. Twenty-five years ago, she gave in and started Heritage Flower Farm, an award-winning nursery whose perennial flowers are featured in botanic gardens, historic sites, and backyard gardens around the country. About a decade ago, a friend introduced her to the plants collected on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and she was hooked. She lives outside Milwaukee.

Often lost among accounts of the dreadfulness of creating an empire by colonizing and subduing indigenous people is the fate of the vegetable kingdom on their land. InChasing Lewiss Monkeyflower, Elizabeth Adelman has made the plants the main characters in this drama. The Lewis and Clark Expedition, often portrayed as the adventures of two curious, brave young men, was an act of conquest in one of its more benign forms, but clã‹