CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/12/2022

Spring blossoms bring summer fruit in 'An Illustrated Catalog of American Fruits & Nuts'

Featured spreads are from An Illustrated Catalog of American Fruits & Nuts, Atelier Éditions’ stupendous 356-page collection of pomological watercolors commissioned by The U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1886–1942. Culled from almost 7,500 botanical illustrations, the 300 exquisite examples selected here are accompanied by anecdotes and observations from the fields of archaeology and anthropology, horticulture and literature, ancient representation and contemporary visual art, alongside texts by Jacqueline Landy, John McPhee, Michael Pollan and Marina Vitaglione. In the chapter introducing Apples, or Pomes, Henry David Thoreau is quoted: “I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber, I find it unexpectedly crude, — sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream. [...] The out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles the bare boughs.”