From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 1, January 2022.
Humanistic Botany (1977), an undergraduate textbook co-authored by Bill Stern (1926-2021), was illustrated by Alice Tangerini. Among her illustrations is a drawing of eel grass, Vallisneria spiralis, chosen for its unusual reproduction process. Tangerini was recently able to match a photocopy of the plant habit that she used to a specimen dated 1880, ex herb. G. Genevier s.n. For the flowers, she used details from an old engraving, source not defined. The unusual composition was made to wrap around the description. The book includes a passage from the essay, "The Intelligence of Flowers," by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), poet, dramatist, and Nobel Laureate in literature:
Vallisneria is a rather insignificant herb, possessing none of the strange grace of the Water-lily or of certain submersed verdant tresses. But it would seem as though nature had delighted in imbuing it with a beautiful idea. Its whole existence is spent at the bottom of the water, in a sort of half-slumber, until dawns the wedding-hour, when it aspires to a new life. Then the female plant slowly uncoils its long peduncular spiral, rises, emerges and floats and blossoms on the surface of the pond. From a neighbouring stem, the male flowers, which see it through the sunlit water, rise in their turn, full of hope, towards the one that rocks, that awaits them, that calls them to a fairer world. But, when they have come half-way, they feel themselves suddenly held back: their stalk, the very source of their life, is too short; they will never reach the abode of light, the only spot in which the union of the stamens and the pistil can be achieved!