"And it still surprises me the number of longtime Northwesterners who have never heard of this plant."

Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory
By Laurie Ricou
Reviewed by Christian Martin


Human beings have evolved in concert with the natural world for tens of thousands of years. Our complex relationships with the plant world have been particularly crucial in the development of our cultures. These interconnections between people and the varied green world are rich places for examination and mediation; one can learn more about ourselves by studying the plant life that surrounds us. Gary Paul Nabhan comes to mind as a leading thinker in these thickets, and Michael Pollan was fruitful in this realm of exploration with his best-selling book The Botany of Desire.

Laurie Ricou, a literature professor at the University of British Columbia, is the latest writer to look at the human-plant alliance, and his exploration is especially rewarding for local readers because he has chosen to take a deep, long look at salal and the corresponding cultures, both indigenous and modern, of the Pacific Northwest.

His new book Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory is a sustained cogitation on this one common native species. It brings together a wide variety of disciplines including natural history, sociology, global economics, poetry, botany, biogeography and forest ecology. The multi-layered prose features a rich panoply of voices that Ricou gathers together from field interviews, excerpts from other authors and poets, native myths, historical archives and elsewhere, so that Ricou serves as a conductor of voices from across the ages, everybody with their own take on this ubiquitous, glossy-green shrub.

Ricou is a playful writer not afraid to bend the rules of writing, to take risks with language and look for illumination in surprising juxtapositions. He has an exhaustive sense of curiosity as well, and a voluminous familiarity with the literature of our region. All of these gifts were on display in his last book The Arbutus/Madrone Files: Reading the Pacific Northwest, a thought-provoking survey of Pacific Northwest literature from both sides of the border.

I recently had a chance to converse with Ricou about his interest in all-things-salal and what he learned in the process of writing this book.

Q: Why write a book about salal?

Laurie Ricou: The book began with my asking my literature students to do little projects on the region's flora and fauna. They loved the discoveries they were making. Then, one of my students told me I should really contemplate salal--because it was a gorgeous plant, with an important connection to the female economy--women could make a modest independent living harvesting it.

Q: How is your book different from a botanic field guide?

LR: Well, it is maybe a very ample field guide, but to just one species, and the "fields" are much wider, more varied, than in the usual guide--extending from gardens and nurseries to painting and poetry and symphonic music.

Q: What surprised you in your salal research?

LR: The most surprising thing is the sheer volume and dollar value of salal that is "harvested" entirely in the wild and shipped around the world (for use in floral displays). And it still surprises me the number of longtime Northwesterners who have never heard of this plant.

Q: What can one learn about a culture by studying a plant?

LR: That it is continually growing and endlessly interconnecting.

Q: You write, "What if I tried to listen to 'the animate earth'? To the ways in which salal speaks? What would I hear?" Well, what did you hear?

LR: I held my breath and heard small creatures rustle under the salal. I think it speaks sea rhythms.

Q: What larger truths are possible to discover by focusing in and drilling down on the often-mundane particulars?

LR: I suppose that we need to pay attention to what we don't pay attention to....

Q: Does salal serve as a metaphor for the Pacific Northwest?

LR: By the time you finish my book, you will be tempted to think so.

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