Ocean Flowers: Impressions from nature edited by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, Princeton University Press, $49.95/£32.50, ISBN 0691119481
MARY Matilda Howard had it right when she eulogised seaweed in her book Ocean Flowers and Their Teachings (1846):
“Oh! Call us not weeds, but flowers of the sea,
For lovely, and gay, and bright-tinted are we!
Our Blush is as deep as the rose of thy bowers,
Then call us not weeds, we are Ocean’s gay flowers.”
The title of Ocean Flowers is a tribute to Howard, and this book is an extraordinarily beautiful compendium of natural history illustration,…
