Emily Carr: Wild Flowers

Wild Flowers is a collection of Emily Carr's delightfully evocative impressions of native flowers and shrubs. She wrote these short pieces later in life and they rekindled in her strong childhood memories and associations. She delights in the brightness of buttercups that "let Spring's secret out," muses over the hardiness of stonecrop ("How any plant can grow on bare rock and be so fleshy leafed and fat is a marvel.") and declares that "botanical science has un-skunked the skunk cabbage." Carr's playful words often bring a smile to readers. About catnip, she writes: "I did think it was kind of God to make a special flower for cats."

In a brief Foreword and Afterword, archivist and historian Kathryn Bridge gives context to Wild Flowers within the body of Carr's previously published writings. Wild Flowers is illustrated with beautiful watercolours of wild plants by Emily Henrietta Woods, one of Carr's childhood drawing teachers in Victoria. The originals of Carr's manuscript and Woods' botanical illustrations reside in collections of the BC Archives; neither have been published until now.

"Woods' paintings fit so well with Carr's text. It's serendipity that Woods taught Carr and that we have her art and Carr's manuscript in the Archives' collection, and that neither have been published before now." - Kathryn Bridge