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Editor's Note: Long-awaited botanical treasure
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When a package arrives in the mail from a publishing house, I’m generally skeptical of its usefulness. It’s typically a copy of a new book with no particular ties to Del Norte County, and thus an ambitious but off-target attempt to gain publicity.
That’s why it was so cool to open a parcel the other day and find an advance copy of a book so highly anticipated that The Triplicate has already written quite a bit about it. “A Rare Botanical Legacy: The Contributions of Ruby and Arthur Van Deventer” is no doubt destined for many a local coffee table. The book celebrates the work of Ruby Van Deventer, a Smith River native who made a monumental contribution to California botany by trekking across the Klamath-Siskiyou region to catalogue some 4,000 species of plant life, and her husband Arthur, a talented self-taught artist who painted almost 500 extraordinary watercolors of Del Norte flora. This is first and foremost a picture book, featuring well over a hundred of Arthur’s colorful, meticulously detailed portraits of some of this region’s mind-boggling assortment of rare wildflowers. Assistant Editor Matthew Durkee wrote the story last year about how about 475 of the watercolors were found in the attic of the Van Deventers’ North Bank home two and a half years ago and ultimately preserved digitally with the help of the Del Norte Historical Society and the College of the Redwoods.
The book also provides a good introduction to Ruby’s collaboration
with noted botanist Willis Linn Jepson, which led to her tireless
exploration and documentation. This comes out in prefaces by editors
Rick Bennett and Susan Calla and an essay by author David Rains Wallace.
The book should be available for sale at least by October, with the Historical Society selling it at the museum and distributing it to various venues (bookstores, visitors’ centers). A book-signing featuring Bennett, Calla and Wallace will be held from 3:30 to 7 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Historical Society. A lot on summer agenda Seems like every weekend brings big events this summer. Last Sunday it was the Klamath Salmon Festival and before that the Del Norte County Fair, which we haven’t really finished covering since there is still a long list of winners that we’re publishing in installments as space allows. This Saturday, there’s the Smith River Days celebration. This week we’re putting the finishing touches on our fall-winter vacation guide that will be published Sept. 5, and we’re about to start shooting photos of Del Norte High athletes for a special section previewing fall sports to be published Sept. 11, the date of the Warriors’ football season-opener. Other coverage topics coming up include tuna season, new businesses opening up, and a look at that sewage plant laboratory that has a certain City Council member so hot and bothered. |
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