Vintage Art Nouveau Forking Larkspur Journal

Look at that violet-blue spur. Consolida regalis. The Forking Larkspur. It’s an absolute stunner, captured here in a magnificent Art Nouveau aesthetic. But don't let the delicate, finely divided leaves fool you into thinking it's just another pretty wildflower. It’s a buttercup (Ranunculaceae), and like most of that family, it is heavily armed. Chemical warfare. Diterpenoid alkaloids, to be precise. If a cow wanders into a fallow field and munches on this, its nervous system shuts down. Spectacularly fatal. Cows usually know better. This makes it the perfect cover for your journal. Your ideas shouldn't be entirely safe, anyway. The spiral binding means it folds completely flat. You can jam it into a rucksack, pull it out in a gale, and write down your field observations without wrestling a stiff spine. Speaking of ink. Seventeenth-century apothecaries used to crush these exact flowers to manufacture a vibrant blue ink. Boiling down toxic weeds just to write a prescription or perhaps a threatening letter to a rival botanist. You only have to supply a modern pen.