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Entangled: A Cabinet of Botanical Wonders
A Cabinet of Botanical Wonders
A Natural History of Medicinal Plants, Psychedelics, Poisonous Botanicals, and the Explorers Who Found Them
Behind every empire's rise, beneath every garden wall, and within every seed lies a story of entanglement older than civilization itself. From the spice routes that reshaped continents to the flowers that bankrupted nations, plants have always been humanity's strangest partners and most patient teachers.
Entangled explores this relationship through seven richly illustrated chapters spanning empires built on spices and stolen seeds, legendary gardens from Eden to Babylon's hanging terraces, carnivorous plants and the secret language of trees, medicinal discoveries from willow bark to deadly foxglove, obsessions that sparked tulip mania and orchid fever, the poisoner's cabinet of hemlock and nightshade, and sacred plants that dissolve the boundaries of consciousness.
From Aztec ceremonies to Victorian plant hunters, from Chinese tea smugglers to Mao's mango cult, each entry reveals how plants have shaped human civilization through medicine, empire, madness, murder, and mystical revelation.
Beautifully illustrated with Victorian-style botanical engravings
Over 35 plants and their stories across seven themed chaptersHistorical accounts from orchid hunters to tea thievesScientific discoveries from aspirin to alkaloidsExtensive bibliography of botanical and historical sourcesFor readers
Natural history and ethnobotanyMedicinal plants and psychoactive floraPlant exploration and historical obsessionsAnyone fascinated by the hidden power of the botanical worldFrom the Library Mirabilis series - Victorian-inspired volumes for naturalists, gardeners, historians, and all who sense that the green world holds stranger stories than we dare imagine.
For naturalists and dreamers, gardeners and wanderers alike, this is a journey into the hidden wonder of the botanical world and a reminder that the roots of our story may reach deeper, and stranger, than we ever imagined.
A Natural History of Medicinal Plants, Psychedelics, Poisonous Botanicals, and the Explorers Who Found Them
Behind every empire's rise, beneath every garden wall, and within every seed lies a story of entanglement older than civilization itself. From the spice routes that reshaped continents to the flowers that bankrupted nations, plants have always been humanity's strangest partners and most patient teachers.
Entangled explores this relationship through seven richly illustrated chapters spanning empires built on spices and stolen seeds, legendary gardens from Eden to Babylon's hanging terraces, carnivorous plants and the secret language of trees, medicinal discoveries from willow bark to deadly foxglove, obsessions that sparked tulip mania and orchid fever, the poisoner's cabinet of hemlock and nightshade, and sacred plants that dissolve the boundaries of consciousness.
From Aztec ceremonies to Victorian plant hunters, from Chinese tea smugglers to Mao's mango cult, each entry reveals how plants have shaped human civilization through medicine, empire, madness, murder, and mystical revelation.
Beautifully illustrated with Victorian-style botanical engravings
Over 35 plants and their stories across seven themed chaptersHistorical accounts from orchid hunters to tea thievesScientific discoveries from aspirin to alkaloidsExtensive bibliography of botanical and historical sourcesFor readers
Natural history and ethnobotanyMedicinal plants and psychoactive floraPlant exploration and historical obsessionsAnyone fascinated by the hidden power of the botanical worldFrom the Library Mirabilis series - Victorian-inspired volumes for naturalists, gardeners, historians, and all who sense that the green world holds stranger stories than we dare imagine.
For naturalists and dreamers, gardeners and wanderers alike, this is a journey into the hidden wonder of the botanical world and a reminder that the roots of our story may reach deeper, and stranger, than we ever imagined.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 25, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 7, 2025
You'll find yourself in awe of the power of plants
Filled with intriguing, and sometimes mind-bending, facts about the plants that surround us, Entangled: A Cabinet of Botanical Wonders will leave you marveling. Nearly every page found me saying "Wow" or "Cool" or "Really? I didn't know that."
As part of the Library Mirabilis collection, this standalone reference guides endeavors to open your eyes to everyday miracles and mysteries, with this edition centering upon the realm of botany. The writing is crisp and engaging, pulling the reader along an international journey of exploration, history, and discovery. You won't be able to enter your neighborhood park or backyard woodlands and view them the same way ever again. Open ypour eyes to the miracles, both those already known and yet to be discovered, growing all around you.
Again, this is a reference book, yet we are treated to short historical stories as strange and wonderful as any fiction.
Filled with intriguing, and sometimes mind-bending, facts about the plants that surround us, Entangled: A Cabinet of Botanical Wonders will leave you marveling. Nearly every page found me saying "Wow" or "Cool" or "Really? I didn't know that."
As part of the Library Mirabilis collection, this standalone reference guides endeavors to open your eyes to everyday miracles and mysteries, with this edition centering upon the realm of botany. The writing is crisp and engaging, pulling the reader along an international journey of exploration, history, and discovery. You won't be able to enter your neighborhood park or backyard woodlands and view them the same way ever again. Open ypour eyes to the miracles, both those already known and yet to be discovered, growing all around you.
Again, this is a reference book, yet we are treated to short historical stories as strange and wonderful as any fiction.
January 3, 2026
Wonderful book. The description says:
“Behind every empire's rise, beneath every garden wall, and within every seed lies a story of entanglement older than civilization itself. From the spice routes that reshaped continents to the flowers that bankrupted nations, plants have always been humanity's strangest partners and most patient teachers.
Entangled explores this relationship through seven richly illustrated chapters spanning empires built on spices and stolen seeds, legendary gardens from Eden to Babylon's hanging terraces, carnivorous plants and the secret language of trees, medicinal discoveries from willow bark to deadly foxglove, obsessions that sparked tulip mania and orchid fever, the poisoner's cabinet of hemlock and nightshade, and sacred plants that dissolve the boundaries of consciousness.”
This is organized in short, two to five page overviews of the chapter topics, and the examples subtopics. Within, you will find properties, claimed properties, histories - warts and all, unfortunately without hyperbole. For example, on cacao:
“The transformation from bitter Aztec drink to European luxury required not just sugar but colonial violence on an unprecedented scale.”
The warts are many, as precious plants and seeds prompted brutalities to control the market. Nutmeg, so common today, has a tragic history. When they couldn’t corner a monopoly through agreements, the Dutch, in typical European fashion, slaughtered nearly the entire population of the Banda Islands (eastern Indonesia), the only place where nutmeg grew wild.
“Today, Indonesia still produces most of the global supply of nutmeg, but the Banda
Islands remain largely empty, their original culture so thoroughly destroyed that anthropologists struggle to reconstruct basic facts about Bandanese society.”
On trees communicating in ways we did not know until recently, there are some fascinating discoveries. And, as seems to be the anathema when humans are involved, more tragedy:
“If trees could communicate, recognize kin, and share resources, traditional forestry practices needed complete reconsideration. Clear-cutting didn’t just remove trees; it destroyed information networks built over centuries.”
“[In 1716, Father Joseph-Françoise] Lafitau had discovered American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), separated from Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng) by oceans but maintaining nearly identical properties.” 1) Rather, he discovered that the Iroquois had discovered it. And, 2) I have read a bit about the Iroquois, early American botanicals, lived in Korea for seven years and had premium ginseng that the Chinese came over to Korea to get, and this is the first I have heard of American ginseng. Nice! I also didn’t know, “The ginseng rush transformed the American frontier. Daniel Boone, the legendary frontiersman and explorer, made more money from ginseng than all his other ventures combined.”
Another “wow”: The Venus Flytrap “can count, remember previous stimuli, and make decisions about what’s worth catching. […]
The plant has evolved to evaluate costs and benefits with no brain, no nervous
system, using mechanisms we still don’t fully understand.”
There are unfortunately no citations but there is a robust bibliography, grouped for each chapter. Absent citations, I would prefer that they be separated further for each subsection to make follow up easier. The ghosted citations are particularly needed in Chapter VII, The Verdant Mysteries, which has some interesting claims about psychoactive plants.
Still, a delightful book that might open a few eyes. I am going to curate that bibliography for future reads, one of which I found this week in a bookshop: The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe.
I received a review copy through LibraryThing from the author, and publisher, LibraryMirabilis, self-describing in the About section:
“For those who delight in curiosity, linger in museum halls, or lose themselves in old bookshops, or know someone who does, Library Mirabilis offers a place of quiet discovery. New volumes are always in development.”
“Behind every empire's rise, beneath every garden wall, and within every seed lies a story of entanglement older than civilization itself. From the spice routes that reshaped continents to the flowers that bankrupted nations, plants have always been humanity's strangest partners and most patient teachers.
Entangled explores this relationship through seven richly illustrated chapters spanning empires built on spices and stolen seeds, legendary gardens from Eden to Babylon's hanging terraces, carnivorous plants and the secret language of trees, medicinal discoveries from willow bark to deadly foxglove, obsessions that sparked tulip mania and orchid fever, the poisoner's cabinet of hemlock and nightshade, and sacred plants that dissolve the boundaries of consciousness.”
This is organized in short, two to five page overviews of the chapter topics, and the examples subtopics. Within, you will find properties, claimed properties, histories - warts and all, unfortunately without hyperbole. For example, on cacao:
“The transformation from bitter Aztec drink to European luxury required not just sugar but colonial violence on an unprecedented scale.”
The warts are many, as precious plants and seeds prompted brutalities to control the market. Nutmeg, so common today, has a tragic history. When they couldn’t corner a monopoly through agreements, the Dutch, in typical European fashion, slaughtered nearly the entire population of the Banda Islands (eastern Indonesia), the only place where nutmeg grew wild.
“Today, Indonesia still produces most of the global supply of nutmeg, but the Banda
Islands remain largely empty, their original culture so thoroughly destroyed that anthropologists struggle to reconstruct basic facts about Bandanese society.”
On trees communicating in ways we did not know until recently, there are some fascinating discoveries. And, as seems to be the anathema when humans are involved, more tragedy:
“If trees could communicate, recognize kin, and share resources, traditional forestry practices needed complete reconsideration. Clear-cutting didn’t just remove trees; it destroyed information networks built over centuries.”
“[In 1716, Father Joseph-Françoise] Lafitau had discovered American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), separated from Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng) by oceans but maintaining nearly identical properties.” 1) Rather, he discovered that the Iroquois had discovered it. And, 2) I have read a bit about the Iroquois, early American botanicals, lived in Korea for seven years and had premium ginseng that the Chinese came over to Korea to get, and this is the first I have heard of American ginseng. Nice! I also didn’t know, “The ginseng rush transformed the American frontier. Daniel Boone, the legendary frontiersman and explorer, made more money from ginseng than all his other ventures combined.”
Another “wow”: The Venus Flytrap “can count, remember previous stimuli, and make decisions about what’s worth catching. […]
The plant has evolved to evaluate costs and benefits with no brain, no nervous
system, using mechanisms we still don’t fully understand.”
There are unfortunately no citations but there is a robust bibliography, grouped for each chapter. Absent citations, I would prefer that they be separated further for each subsection to make follow up easier. The ghosted citations are particularly needed in Chapter VII, The Verdant Mysteries, which has some interesting claims about psychoactive plants.
Still, a delightful book that might open a few eyes. I am going to curate that bibliography for future reads, one of which I found this week in a bookshop: The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe.
I received a review copy through LibraryThing from the author, and publisher, LibraryMirabilis, self-describing in the About section:
“For those who delight in curiosity, linger in museum halls, or lose themselves in old bookshops, or know someone who does, Library Mirabilis offers a place of quiet discovery. New volumes are always in development.”
November 12, 2025
Entangled's foreword quickly sets the tone of what's to come, reminding us of history's obsessed explorers, risking their lives in search of legendary plants. I felt I was about to be drawn into a grand, history-spanning adventure. As a casual country herbologist myself, I was intrigued.
The cover art is dark and mysterious. The writing style is elegant, the fonts and typesetting are meticulously arranged. It feels like a book from an age gone by. Those touches help put the reader in the right mood to learn about our relationships (and our obsessions) with exotic plants. You'll probably know some of these facts, though I'm certain you will learn many things you've never heard of before.
The author certainly wanted to get our attention from the start. The first section, "The Seeds of Empire" leads with a substance we all know and most of us love. Chocolate. "The Feathered Serpent's Gift". But did you know it is so valued that it's been used as currency? You'll even learn a clever way to "counterfeit" that "money".
But that's just the tip of the iceberg for chocolate's essay. Author A.R. Wells takes you on a trip through history, highlighting chocolate's importance and explaining how it has changed our world, time and time again. The essay is highlighted by two dark, mysterious, detailed illustrations. There are many such illustrations throughout the book, which enhance that brooding-moody feeling.
Chocolate isn't the only topic to receive such attention to detail. Every essay is a strange, dark gem. Keep this book near your reading nook. If you read one essay a day, there's enough botanical information to keep you engrossed for over a month. The essays are the right length to be read while having a cup of tea. After all, tea itself is one of mankind's greatest obsessions.
The cover art is dark and mysterious. The writing style is elegant, the fonts and typesetting are meticulously arranged. It feels like a book from an age gone by. Those touches help put the reader in the right mood to learn about our relationships (and our obsessions) with exotic plants. You'll probably know some of these facts, though I'm certain you will learn many things you've never heard of before.
The author certainly wanted to get our attention from the start. The first section, "The Seeds of Empire" leads with a substance we all know and most of us love. Chocolate. "The Feathered Serpent's Gift". But did you know it is so valued that it's been used as currency? You'll even learn a clever way to "counterfeit" that "money".
But that's just the tip of the iceberg for chocolate's essay. Author A.R. Wells takes you on a trip through history, highlighting chocolate's importance and explaining how it has changed our world, time and time again. The essay is highlighted by two dark, mysterious, detailed illustrations. There are many such illustrations throughout the book, which enhance that brooding-moody feeling.
Chocolate isn't the only topic to receive such attention to detail. Every essay is a strange, dark gem. Keep this book near your reading nook. If you read one essay a day, there's enough botanical information to keep you engrossed for over a month. The essays are the right length to be read while having a cup of tea. After all, tea itself is one of mankind's greatest obsessions.
March 24, 2026
“Entangled: A Cabinet of Botanical Wonders (Library Mirabilis)” by A R Wells, is a fascinating collection of short essays and detailed illustrations that explore a myriad of flora, explaining their use and their history, and the partnership between plants and people. Wells relates the importance of certain plants, including cacao, which once served as currency, the spices held as precious, such as nutmeg and cloves, and the coveted pineapple, which once cost as much as a coach & horses. He further explores the origin of several mythical gardens and the uses of medicinal plants like willow bark and poisonous ones such as foxglove, hemlock, and strychnine. This is an informative and interesting read.
April 19, 2026
Thoroughly enjoyable and informative, illustrated guide to important plants and the journey of seeds in history. This guide explored seeds from the cocoa bean to cannabis and everything in between. I especially enjoyed the chapter on the cocoa bean and how it was used as currency for ancient Aztecs: "A single bean could purchase a tamale. Ten beans bought a rabbit ready for the pot. A hundred beans secured a turkey hen. Four hundred beans purchased a canoe." The long journey of tea leaves from China to India and the "...almost alchemical" modes of processing for the perfect cup. From Socrates, Ponce de León, Catherine de’ Medici and other historical figures who were linked to deadly poison. And how plants are the cornerstone of modern medicine.
November 30, 2025
This was an easy but indepth read into the history of plants and how they shape us. I especially found it funny how people used to rent pineapples to set on their tables as a display of wealth. This author always has amazing illustrations in their books and this one is no different. I love the style of it. Also the Bibliography is very extensive, a homeschooling parent could definitely use this as part of a curriculum.
December 13, 2025
Such an interesting book. I liked how it started, with a deep delve into several plants we know intimately, such as nutmeg and pineapple. However, each section I feel changed in its perspective and level of detail, which made it harder to want to read some sections more than others. Still, a good place to learn some interesting facts about plant history.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
March 24, 2026
A good history lesson!
I really enjoyed this book! It was fascinating learning about the history of certain flowers. I never imagined the depths of deceit some of these people conquered to posses the flowers or herbs they thought was gifts from the gods. I enjoyed the images that went along with some of the stories and was completely satisfied with the overall story.
I really enjoyed this book! It was fascinating learning about the history of certain flowers. I never imagined the depths of deceit some of these people conquered to posses the flowers or herbs they thought was gifts from the gods. I enjoyed the images that went along with some of the stories and was completely satisfied with the overall story.
January 7, 2026
This book is filled with interesting tidbits of history, myth, and science. It is entertaining in an informative way. Very enjoyable for anyone who is interested in the relationship between plants, insects, animals, and humans.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews