Plant Person H^kerbergís Inventive Watercolors Based on Linnaeus Flora by Gary Tischler Who knew about celsia blattaria alba, a.k.a. verbascum? Who would have figured that rudbeckia could be so glorious? And who would have guessed that sparmannia africana and thunbergia grandiflora could have such interesting back stories? Most of us wouldnít know about these various plants, but botanists, horticulturalists and naturalists know about them, and artist Annika Silander H^kerberg certainly knows as well. H^kerberg, a gifted and award-winning Swedish artist, chose to do a series of watercolors around a unique theme: She painted the plants and flowers named after followers of the great Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, hence the exhibition ìMen Around Linnaeus,î a surprisingly inventive and provocative collection of watercolors now on display at the Embassy of Sweden. This is, as H^kerberg readily concedes, something of a departure from her previous project, for which she won a Royal Horticultural Society award called ìSeven Flowers and a Lemon.î This particular exhibition , and the book that accompanies it, is full of surprises and, despite its relatively modest size, manages to say a lot about Linnaeus, who remains famous as a world-class classifier of flowers and fauna. In Sweden, Linnaeus is a national giant, hero and super-scientist. If Newton was the god of gravity, Linnaeus was the god of plants. But in Sweden, he was more than merely a scientist because he gave 18th-century Swedes a sense of their own country through his many travel writings. Acting on his research and intuition, Linnaeus sent his followers all over the world to find and identify new plants. These men risked a lot for Linnaeus and for science, but itís also clear they had their share of thrills and spills amid their devotion to the task and to the man. And Linnaeus in return rewarded his men by naming the plants and flowers they found after them. H^kerberg has painstakingly rendered these plants and flowers in her watercolors. Reminiscent of naturalist drawings and paintings from Europe, these works are more than just genre-specific watercolors to be left within the confines of naturalist renderings. They are works of art and thus bring honor and beauty to their subjects and, indirectly, to the ìMen Around Linnaeus.î Consider for a moment afzelia africana, which H^kerberg has rendered as a peas-in-a-pod seedling in a dark and mysterious painting. The plant is named for Adam Afzelius, who, as one of Linnaeusís last students, visited Freetown, Liberia, where he started the trial cultivation of economic plants, of which afzelia africana was one. Freetown, founded as a home for freed slaves, was eventually sacked and burned. Then there is Pehr Kalm, a Finnish self-promoting botanist who ended up on one of the first scientific voyages to North America, where he had meetings with Native Americans and Benjamin Franklin. He was originally searching for the red mulberry tree but found the kalmia latifolia, otherwise known as the mountain laurel, which H^kerberg captures as a beautiful, ladylike blush of pink over green. Or how about the black-eyed susan, otherwise known as thunbergia alata, part of 100 species of annuals, evergreen perennials, climbers and shrubs growing in tropical and Southern Africa and Asia. H^kerberg sees these plantsónamed after naturalist and adventurer Carl Peter Thunbergóclearly and beautifully. In a way, this is a quirky exhibition full of surprising turns, not the least of which is the strange beauty and individuality found in H^kerbergís watercolors. The fauna on display here are not just pretty to look at but they are also mysterious, while the men theyíre named after have the aura of being apostles and explorers, venturing to North America, China, South Africa and Japan. The yellow-flowered Solandra maxima, for instance, was named after Daniel Solander, who circumnavigated the globe with the intrepid and ill-fated explorer Capt. James Cook. There is a kind of disorder to these disciples and followers spreading out all over the world in search of plantsóa disorder thatís full of quirky anecdotes. And in the end, Linnaeus was the man who brought order to this chaotic world of botany by classifying everything that could be classified. ìMen Around Linnaeusî runs through May 16 on the 9th floor of the Embassy of Sweden, 1501 M St., NW. For more information, please call (202) 467-2600 or visit www.swedish-embassy.org. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.