| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.2 | The History Cooperative

*Botanical Companions: A Memoir of Plants and Place.* By Frieda E. Knobloch. Foreword by Wayne Franklin. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005. xii + 182 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography. $24.95.)
On her birthday in 1931, Ruth Elizabeth Ashton (1896–1987) married Aven Nelson (1859–1952), of Laramie, Wyoming. Their passion for botany blended with their lives as companions. Frieda Knobloch transcends boundaries in Botanical Companions, making creative use of her specialty (American Studies) in a captivating approach. What was it like, the author wonders, to live a life centered on botany, where work, nature, and companionship walked together?	1
Illustrating the theme of lives in transformation, Aven Nelson was hired at the University of Wyoming to teach English. Nelson fashioned a "unified field" in service, research, and personal experience as he shaped a professional life on the periphery of academe, became a botanist, and established the Rocky Mountain Herbarium (p. 32). Ruth Ashton originally sought out Nelson for assistance with her field guide to the plants of Rocky Mountain National Park, which he recognized as just the sort of "dual-purpose manual" that could reach the public (p. 74).	. . .

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