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@taluswalker

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Mostly plants. Mostly western Massachusetts.

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Posted is page 16 from Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, which features the violet wood-sorrel, Oxalis violacea, as its most prominent specimen.

“This is an extremely rare species in the Holyoke Range of Massachusetts. This is the plant that brought Emily Dickinson alive for me, immediately placing her not just on the landscape but in a very specific place and habitat, one of the most special habitats in New England which has many rare species and continues to yield new discoveries into the present day!”

- Peter Grima, Botanist and Emily Dickinson Scholar

There is a second rare plant on this same herbarium page, the purple clematis, Clematis occidentalis, which is also very rare and particularly well-represented in the Holyoke Range (though still rare). The photo of was taken by @taluswalker from Mt. Toby just to the north of Amherst, another place Dickinson likely visited.

Listen to episode 33 of The WildStory podcast to learn more about Emily Dickinson as a botanist from expert Peter Grima.

Photo of the Emily Dickinson herbarium page “courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University”

Photos of violet wood-sorrel, Oxalis violacea and purple clematis, Clematis occidentalis by Peter Grima

Photo of violet wood-sorrel, Oxalis violacea by Peter Grima

Photo of purple clematis, Clematis occidentalis by Peter Grima

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The last two weeks were spent immersed in art and nature at @hambidgecenter in the North Georgia mountains. Here is a little photo mix of my time:
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1. Immersed in the good vibes left by other artists who’ve lived and worked in the Fisher studio at Hambidge.
2. Obligatory selfie with my new shirt and the Hambidge entrance.
3. The path I tread every day to and from my studio.
4. A view of Fisher studio from my loft bedroom. Oh how I loved all the natural light. Those windows!!
5. I went feral and grew a tail.
6. Looking at work. Plushie blood drops in the corner.
7. A feather I hiked past daily on my trek to and from Lucindas Rock House for dinner.
8. A new form inspired by Hambidge.
9. Made time to look for treasures at local antique dives and I found this sweet quilt.
10. I read ‘The Art of Is’ by Stephen Nachmanovitch during my stay.
11. Early morning selfie on the porch where I read, drank coffee, wrote, and napped in that orange hammock behind me.
12. What is left of the blankets hanging off said porch after cutting out all the plushie blood drops.
13. So. Many. Flowers. Including this Trillium Vaseyi shown by @taluswalker
14. Richard, a volunteer at the Hambidge water mill gave my cohort and I a tour and explained all the inner workings of this fascinating machine. Brought home some fresh ground corn and grits!
15. Art all over the grounds and the Rock House including this stunning ceramic work by @rachelkgarceau
16. Blood drops and the latest grouping of Fiber Fetishes exploring the connection between the body and nature and all their varied reproductive forms.
17. Painting is dead. Jk.
18. A little photo play with my blood drops…errrr carrots?
19. A tightly packed car for the return to Louisiana. A red snake snuck in the back?
20. Until next time Hambidge.
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A shout out to my new friends—I could not have asked for a better cohort of residents. Y’all are the best! And, a huge thanks to the Hambidge staff and community for this gift of time and space to make art!
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#hambidge #hambidgecenter #suzannascott

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New work for AIPAD 🤩🎉

Amanda and I have been hard at work prepping for the launch of our new project "Understory". 💫 🌲

Come visit us at AIPAD Booth C13-Park Avenue Armory. We will be giving a talk Saturday April 25th at 3:30 at our booth.

You are warmly invited to a preview of Understory: Misses Griffiths and the NYBG, a new body of work by Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey, presented by Rick Wester Fine Art at the AIPAD Photography Show April 22-26th.
Building on their project this "Earthen Door", "Understory" explores the intersections of botanical archives, women’s labor, and ecological change through materially driven photographic processes. Drawing from the archives of the New York Botanical Garden, the artists re-engage the work of early twentieth-century photographer Fleda Griffith, reanimating historical materials—negatives, prints, and lantern slides—using pigments derived from flowers.
Alongside this archival work, Marchand and Sobsey have created new images in the NYBG Thain Family Forest in the Bronx, incorporating plant-based pigments gathered from both the forest and their own neighborhoods. The resulting works reflect on time, fragility, and the shifting relationship between urban environments and old-growth ecosystems. @amandabethmarchand @rwfa_nyc @aipadphoto @nybg

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We are excited to share the individuals selected for our 2026 Residency, Fellowship, and Sabbatical programs! One of our favorite parts of these programs is that they bring together practitioners from many different disciplines – artists, biologists, conservationists, historians, and more – to share time, space, and their shared interests in the natural world. Each year we welcome groups of Interdisciplinary Residents, Fellows, Botanical Artists in Residence, and Sabbatical Awardees, who visit Oak Spring in batches from early spring through the fall, and we name these cohorts after flowers beginning with a common letter.

For 2026, our cohorts will be named for flowers beginning with ‘C’! Scroll to see who will be joining us for a program this year, and you can learn more about each individual awardee by clicking the link in our bio.

- Chamomile (pic 1): Comprised mostly of 2-week Interdisciplinary Residents, this cohort will also be joined by two of our three-week Botanical Artists in Residence
- Cosmos (pic 2): Comprised mostly of 2-week Interdisciplinary Residents, this cohort will also be joined by two of our three-week Botanical Artists in Residence
- Corydalis (pic 3): Comprised mostly of 5-week Interdisciplinary Residents, this cohort will also be joined by one of our Stacy Lloyd Fellows for Bibliographic Studies
- Coneflower (pic 4): Comprised mostly of 5-week Interdisciplinary Residents, this cohort will also be joined by one of our Sabbatical Awardees
- Coreopsis (pic 5): This cohort will be comprised of 5-week Interdisciplinary Residents
- Chrysanthemums (pic 6): This cohort will contain two 5-week Interdisciplinary Residents, two Eliza Moore Fellows for Artistic Excellence, two Plant Conservation Biology Fellows, and one Plant Science Research Fellow

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TAIPEI!! 🇹🇼 ❤️ Leah and I are thrilled to be presenting and giving a workshop - as well as participating in a group exhibition - with “DICKINSON AND ECOLOGIES,” this year’s International Emily Dickinson Society Conference at the National Chengchi University in Taipei! We have been talking about this for 2 years and can’t believe we are really here.

Wonderful to be reunited with the brilliant @marta_mcdowell - but dearly missing our favorite botanist @taluswalker 💕✨

⭐️ Thank you to the #canadacouncil for awarding me a grant that brought me here. ✨🙏🏼✨

#canadacouncilfortheartsfunded #canadacouncilgrant #emilydickinsoninternationalsociety #this_earthen_door @leahsobsey @2025wenshanedisofficial

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A perfect union of my 3 disparate accounts - botany, woodworking & Emily Dickinson! I will try to do a collab post to all 3, but bear with me 🥴. In gratitude for picking my botanical brain, my brilliant friends @leahsobsey & @amandabethmarchand gifted me a print from their project “This Earthen Door” which is focused on Emily Dickinson’s famous Herbarium of 424 plant specimens. The print is of the 66th and final page, created using an anthotype photo process by exposing plant juices to sunlight - in this case, the rubbed juices of the ghost-pipe, Monotropa uniflora - Emily’s “preferred flower of life!” Now I couldn’t just put this in any old frame. So I dug out an old chunk of chestnut lumber that a friend gave me, having torn it from his wall during renovations, and set to planing, resawing, jointing, mitering, sanding, gluing and finishing the frame in a labor of creation that aspired to be worthy of the object it would house. So here it is, all aglow with tung oil and lacquer, fit to be hung! I’ve included the original herbarium page for reference, and some in-process woodworking moments. Couldn’t be more pleased with this gift and how perfect the frame turned out, the amber hue of the chestnut tying in nicely with the lighter browns of the ghost-pipe juices.
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#this_earthen_door #thisearthendoor #emilydickinsonherbarium #anthotype #chestnutlumber #preferredfloweroflife #homemadepictureframe #diypictureframe #watcotungoil

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The genus Rhexia contains 13 species of melastomes almost entirely restricted to eastern North America. While Melastomataceae is mostly a tropical plant family, one species of Rhexia, R. virginica, reaches southern Ontario and Nova Scotia. In June of 2019, @taluswalker observed five species of Rhexia in one day in Croatan National Forest, NC. The IDs are listed below:

• @taluswalker It was a 5-Rhexia kind of day yesterday in Croatan.
1. Rhexia nashii- note the stipulate glands on the petals of the flower bud!
2. R. petiolata - my all-time favorite
3. R. alifanus - savanna meadow-beauty, also a favorite.
4. R. lutea - one I hoped to see on this trip; not common, evidently.
5. R. mariana - ranges up to Massachusetts, where it is very rare.
#melastomataceae #rhexianashii #rhexiapetiolata #rhexiaalifanus #rhexialutea #rhexiamariana

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Ready to get HAUNTED? 👻 At long last, the second half of my parasitic plant research is now published. It's about the mycoheterotrophs: plants that parasitize fungi. I love these little weirdos!
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This project started with a big gamble: applying for a New England Botanical Club grant that I thought it was due in 3 weeks, checked the deadline...nope, 2 days! It's been haunting me since 2019 and to say a lot has happened since then is a major understatement. This time last year I thought it'd never see the light of day, but, in the depths of burnout, endless heartache, and joyless toil I got an invitation to submit to the Parasitic Flowering Plants in Forests special theme issue of Botany and that changed everything. Now it's here and you can read it! The bonus photo is from field work in 2019, Summer on the endless road.
#landusehistory #mycoheterotroph #monotropauniflora #hypopitysmonotropa #monotropahypopitys #ericaceae

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This weekend - CLASP, HEMISPHERES AND HOMES, with the Emily Dickinson International Society! 🌟
We are headed to Emily Dickinson country this weekend to present our project!! Repost from @amandabethmarchand
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This weekend - CLASP, HEMISPHERES AND HOMES, with the Emily Dickinson International Society! 🌟

We will be presenting our WIP, color saturated photo project #this_earthen_door 🌸 with Peter Grima @taluswalker, one of the botanists collaborating with us on the science portion of this interdisciplinary work — and writer, Marta McDowell , whose book “Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life” was a little bit our project bible when we began working. Thank you Peter for organizing! We are so excited to be a part of this exciting weekend. Emily Dickinson fan club meeting at the homestead - here we come! 🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️ July 21-23. Here’s a sneak peek of our work in progress. #emilydickinson #emilydickinsonmuseum #emilydickinsonsociety #herbarium #dickinsonherbarium #anthotypephotography @leahsobsey

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Edited to include this brilliant write-up by @taluswalker: Pyrola asarifolia is a rather showy species of shinleaf that occurs in cool forested wetlands in the temperate and boreal zones of the northern hemisphere. Although collected from 2 Berkshire County locations in the early 80's, both from small vegetative populations, the species hasn't been seen since that time and was presumed lost from the Massachusetts flora. However, just last month, NEBS member Pete Grima (@taluswalker) stumbled into a large population in a calcareous forested wetland on private property, while visiting the swamp with the landowner. He returned the next week with state botanist (and NEBS Treasurer), Bob Wernerehl, @heritagebotanist , to survey the population where they tallied 65 flowering plants and estimated thousands of vegetative rosettes, among other botanical novelties. #newenglandflora #NEBS #StillHere

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Successful first full field day botanizing the Drangoons #AZflora #botanicalforray #dragoonmountains

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Yesterday we went on a botany ID walk with DCR forester Pete Grima and learned all about the various flora that grows in western Mass! Big thanks to Pete for leading this hike and supplying us with all the facts on golden rod, aster, the American chestnut, orchids, and more🌿 Stay tuned for our next event coming up in a few weeks! #umasssaf #forestry #botany #westernmass

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