Flowers of the Sea by Karla Stover

 

https://bookswelove.net/stover-karla/

I was at a big junk hunt last month and saw a small dress made from cloth flour sacks. My Aunt Doris was raised during the Depression and for Christmas she often gave me flour sack kitchen towels which she’d embroidered. They’re very large and don’t dry well but it’s a good sturdy cloth and I wouldn’t get rid of them for the world. And one still has a flour odor imbedded in the fibers. I didn’t buy it; what I came home with was two antique handbags to add to my collection and an old lantern. The handbags I frame and hang on the bedroom wall and we have been Hanging old lanterns on the patio roof beams. Over the years, I’ve bought old hatpins, old books, a very peculiar hat, a necklace containing braided human hair, and this year an alabaster elephant. Having said this, what I’d really like to have but they’re way out of my budget is a Victorian seaweed album.

I only just learned about this supposedly popular occupation for young ladies, described as “a romantic and safely-domesticated way for them to explore the natural world” because they certainly weren’t expected to study science for science’s sake. Of course, being women creating a well-thought-out album was merely an artistic accomplishment. 

Victorians were fascinated by all-things-nature. What do General George Armstrong Custer, President Theodore Roosevelt, and Queen Victoria have in common? A love of taxidermy. The general tried his hand at it; the president had the animals he killed stuffed, and the queen collected stuffed birds. My Aunt Doris shot and tanned a ring-necked pheasant and gifted the skin to my husband.

The Victorians also created a language of flowers and sent messages using only floral pictures, and developed a love of terrariums. However, along about the same time they began collecting seaweed.

In 1863, a children’s book author names Margaret Gatty wrote British Sea-weeds, a handbook for amateurs. The book introduced readers to some of the species’ varieties, and offered suggestions for the proper attire when collecting (no petticoats below the ankle) and she strongly suggested taking along a male companion. Her illustrations showing some of the different varieties were to help with the correct identification of samples obtained.

Eighteen years later, a man named Alpheus Baker Hervey wrote the book, Sea Mosses: a collector’s guide, and an introduction to the study of marine algae. The tools he suggested were a pair of pliers to handle the specimens, scissors to cut away what he called “superfluous branches,” a stick with a needle on the end to be used to move the seaweed around so as to reveal its finer points, at least two wash bowls to clean it, paper such as a botanist’s drying paper or blotting paper using multiple sheets to dry it between, cotton cloth, and cards on which to mount the specimens.

I googled looking for the numbers of seaweed a.k.a algae, available for an album and it ranges between seven and twelve thousand types, generally comes in red, green or brown, and ranges in appearance from delicate, lacy fronds to leafy blades to the enormous growths in a kelp forest.

May, 2, 2025 The News Tribune

In late April, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Police announced that they had issued a citation to a group for harvesting seaweed near Sekiu on the Olympic Peninsula.

              I grew up on Commencement Bay and things have really changed. The beaches are no longer covered in shells. My mom, Aunt Elizabeth and I used to collect tiny shells which may or may not have been screw shells. We dug geoducks; mussels clung to every piling. We had as many oysters as we wanted and Mom once found a pearl. Now, when I want their shell remains, the beaches are bare. And we have two new food sources, squid and seaweed. In summer we’ve seen members of our Asian population raking in seaweed from the bay and draping it over driftwood to dry.  In mid-winter, they jig for squid off the peers. With so many people wanting to supplement their food supplies, the state had to create strict laws and require licenses. Bur, I digress.

              I almost never meet a hobby I don’t like. My latest are making pine needle baskets and creating little pictures with sea glass, also very hard to find. I’m not sure if I want to try a seaweed album, though. But if I do, one thing is for sure; it will certainly wig-out my poor husband.