botanist

The book came from the family library of Hubert Priestley who was a famous botanist in the 1930s and brother to the Antarctic explorer and geologist, Sir Raymond Edward Priestley.

“This is the zoo lab. This would be the botanist’s room on the Beagle,” he said.

In the 19th and early 20th Centuries Swedish explorers, ethnographers and botanists would pay to travel on British ships to Cape Town and then make their way inland by rail and foot.

Calling squash a fruit wears me out a little, but, okay botanists, with your genus-species-variety nomenclature, I concede: by definition, squash is indeed a fruit.

At the grocery store, I linger in the produce section with the reverence of a botanist on sabbatical, basket brimming with romaine, iceberg, butter — anything leafy and remotely flirty.