Parallel Botany chronicles a world of plants that do not exist. Framed with the language of scientific taxonomy, the book introduces readers to a hidden flora invisible to conventional botany—plants that stretch the boundary between the real and the imagined.
Originally published in 1976, Parallel Botany reads like a surreal natural history text, where plants exhibit strange morphologies, elusive behaviors, and metaphysical properties. Lionni’s work invites readers to question the epistemologies of knowledge itself: how we decide what’s real, what’s recognized, and what lies just outside scientific reach.
The book remains a quiet cult classic, resonating with artists, ecologists, and speculative thinkers drawn to the potential of nonhuman worldbuilding and alternate natures.
Images from Ariel S. Winter.
