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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Toothache Trees, Possum Haws and Poor Man’s Weatherglass are just a few of the North Carolina wildflowers featured in the newly released Paul Green’s Plantbook: An Alphabet of Flowers and Folklore.
Published by the Botanical Garden Foundation, the 144-page book combines descriptions and folklore of North Carolina plants, as told by the late Paul Green, with stunning color prints of plants photographed by his daughter Betsy Green Moyer. The flowers, shrubs, and trees described in the book are not exclusively native to North Carolina, but in many cases are native throughout the Eastern United States. The book retails for $28.95 in hard cover and $19.95 in soft cover. It is available at local bookstores and on the Web site of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, www.ncbg.unc.edu.
Paul Green’s Plantbook: An Alphabet of Flowers and Folklore is the result of a three-year collaboration between Moyer and Ken Moore, former Assistant Director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, who provided taxonomy and botanical notes.
“Ken agreed to assist me in preparing this book,” Moyer said, “and accompanied me on no fewer than 10 photographic expeditions throughout the Cape Fear Valley of North Carolina. Ken knows where and when every flower blooms in the state of North Carolina. A fellow botanist has said of him, ‘He is the only botanist I know who can identify a plant – while driving down a dirt road at 50 miles an hour!’”
As long as Moyer can remember, her father, author Paul Green, kept in his pocket 3x5 cards on which he jotted down words and phrases he had heard or remembered from his Harnett County neighbors and acquaintances. The cards were filed in alphabetical order and stored in shoeboxes on shelves in his work cabin. These cards became the basis for Paul Green’s Wordbook: An Alphabet of Reminiscence, two volumes containing 1,241 pages of words, proverbs, anecdotes, remedies, games, expressions, superstitions, ballads and stories.
Among the entries were several hundred referring specifically to plants, shrubs and trees native to North Carolina, their folk names and, in many cases, remedies and stories associated with them. North Carolina-born photographer, Betsy Green Moyer, interested in the macrophotography of wildflowers, decided to give these plant references the attention they deserve. “When I saw framed photographs of wildflowers next to my dad’s words in a display at the Paul Green Cabin at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, I knew my idea had real possibilities,” she said.
Paul Green, who passed away in 1981, was one of the South’s most revered writers and one of the first playwrights from the South to gain national and international recognition. He received the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for drama for his Broadway play In Abraham’s Bosom. Green went to Hollywood in the 1930s where he worked on films for Clark Gable, Greer Garson, Bette Davis and Will Rogers, for whom he wrote the first version of State Fair. Cabin in the Cotton, written for Bette Davis, was her first major film and contained her favorite line: "I'd like to kiss you, but I just washed my hair."
Paul Green’s words, spirit, and quiet humor surround the pages of this new book of reminiscence. For more information about Paul Green, visit the Paul Green Foundation's Web site, www.ibiblio.org/paulgreen/foundation.html.