Betsy Moyer, photography

Like a Sunday afternoon ramble

through the country with

kinfolk, Paul Green’s Plant

Book: An Alphabet of Flowers

& Folklore gently guides the

reader back to a time when a farmer’s

intimate connection to the land produced

an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge

regarding plant usage — an era when

herbalists used jimsonweed to treat

asthma, young girls rouged their cheeks

with the velvety leaves of the mullein

plant, and the appearance of Quaker

ladies in the spring indicated it was time

for young boys to go barefoot.

But unlike a stroll through fields and

forests, the vibrant photography,

descriptions, and fascinating folktales on

the pages of Paul Green’s Plant Book,

with photographs by his daughter, Betsy

Green Moyer, allow the reader an

up-close and often awe-inspiring view of

several hundred species of flowers, vines,

shrubs, trees, and yes, weeds found in

North Carolina.

Although it was Moyer’s lifetime of

experiences that provided the collective

impetus for the book, it was a small

series of framed photographs of

wildflowers that hang in the Paul Green

cabin on the grounds of the North

Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel

Hill that ultimately inspired her to begin

a three-year journey to assemble her

father’s writings on plants into a book

with her own photography. Even then,

the idea lingered in the back of her mind

for several years.

“I love Dad’s last work, Paul Green’s

Wordbook: An Alphabet of

Reminiscence, and when I saw the

modest display of photographs of

wildflowers combined with his text

about those plants, something clicked,

and I thought, ‘Now, I can do that,’ ”

says Moyer. “Make a whole book of it.”

Blending text and photos

Moyer says for as long as she can

remember, her father, a North Carolina

native and Pulitzer Prize-winning author

for the Broadway play In Abraham’s

Bosom in 1927, kept in his pocket 3-by-

5-inch cards on which he jotted down

words and phrases he had heard or

remembered from his youthful days

among Harnett County neighbors and

acquaintances.

These cards were filed in alphabetical

order, stored in shoe boxes, and

eventually 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. The

book was published posthumously in

1990 after his death in 1981.

For this one, however, only the entries

pertaining to plants would be included.

“As I gained more experience as a

photographer of wildflowers, this idea

became more of a goal,” says Moyer.

She has won numerous awards for her

macrophotography of flowers and

plants and is the co-founder of the

Sudbury Valley Nature Photographers

in Wayland, Massachusetts, where she

lives with her husband, Bill. “To go

forward with the project, I would need

to work with a botanist who could tell

me where I could find these flowers to

photograph — and could make sure I

was photographing the right plant,”

says Moyer. “Wildflowers can be

very confusing.”

Enter Ken Moore. After a

serendipitous call to the North Carolina

Botanical Garden asking about possible

interest in the project, Moyer discovered

that Moore, the former assistant director

of the garden, was an English major in

college and a great admirer of Paul

Green. She says his knowledge and

enthusiasm encouraged her to set forth

on the project.

Moore, described by a fellow botanist

as “the only botanist I know who can

identify a plant while driving down a dirt

road at 50 miles an hour,” agreed to

assist Moyer in preparing the book with

taxonomy and botanical notes, and he

became her co-editor for the project.