Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From yesterday, in the posting “nostalgie du ciel’, from an exchange with Hana Filip about nostalgia, with a reference to (from my father, long ago): 

guidebooks [to Alpine flowers], including a Swiss one with gorgeous color plates. Which are now inestimable sources of delight but also symbols of great loss. As you say, nostalgia.

Now, an inventory of my postings about the one with those marvelous illustrations.

— from 7/6/11, the posting “Flora” on two wildflower books:

Taschenflora des Alpen-Wanderers : 207 colorirte und 10 schwarze Abbildungen von verbreiteten Alpenpflanzen (by Ludwig Schröter, 1899) (link from the Biodiversity Heritage Library internet archive, where it can be viewed)

and Wilhem Troll’s Taschenbuch der Alpenpflanzen (1928)

The Schröter … was brought back from my dad’s Swiss visit, during which he not only climbed (modest) mountains and clowned around with his Swiss cousins, but also collected wildflowers, preserving them in a flower press that he brought back to the States and eventually passed on to me.

… The Schröter seems to be precious, much sought after. It is, in fact, gorgeous. (It’s also a guide to plants from a hundred years ago and more.)

I went through it, page by page, many times as a child. (Eventually I grew some Edelweiss in my Columbus garden, though the environment wasn’t hospitable. It was a sentimental gesture towards Swissness.)

[here there are Edelweiss and gentian plates]

…Back when my dad did his Swiss thing, he collected plants, and put them in that flower press, a pair of handsome wooden lattices with sturdy absorbent paper interleavings in between. I added my own collected flowers to his, and eventually my dad helped me get a second press, which I filled with plants from our neighborhood.

— from 6/1/17,  the posting “Trailers”, on trailing plants, with the note:

then I remembered Polemonium caeruleum from Ludwig Schröter’s 19th-century handbook Alpen-Flora. The relevant plate (“Tall Alpine Herbs”, with P. coeruleum (so spelled) …

— from 6/16/17, the posting “Father and grandfather”, with:

plates [two on plants in the ranunculus, or buttercup, family, one on plants in a subfamily of legumes, embracing trefoils and clovers] from the 19th-century botanical handbook Alpen-Flora (which my dad picked up on a visit to Switzerland in his 20s).

— from 7/16/17, the posting “A blue period”, about blue-flowered plants, and then:

Time now to go to my 19th-century Swiss handbook Alpen-Flora (mentioned here several times already… [Including a plate] with bellflowers (Glockenblumen) and rampions (Rapunzeln)

(I know, I know, to English-speakers’ ears, Glockenblumen and Rapunzeln sound like mock-German jokes.)

This entry was posted on July 17, 2026 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Art, Books, German, Language and plants, My life, Switzerland and Swiss things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.