Cherie Foster Colburn

Texas author and landscape designer Cherie Foster Colburn and artist Joy Fisher Hein join forces in this lovely collection of pourquoi stories, which explore how seven popular wildflowers from their home state came to be. Taken from Native American, Euro-American and Mexican-American traditions, these stories offer a magical explanation for real-world wonder and beauty, and include:

Bushy Fox's Tail, in which a hungry and desperate vulpine father, thwarted once too often by the farmer's vigilant sons in his quest for eggs, visits King Reynard for advice. This fox ruler consults the fairies, who suggest that Bushy Fox use the flowers of a specific plant to pad his paws, thereby allowing him to slip past his enemies, and obtain his quarry. With its use of fairy lore and the Reynard figure, this tale clearly owes a debt to western European folk traditions. The idea that foxglove flowers were given by the fairies to foxes, in order to help them evade their adversaries, can be found in the folklore of Scandinavia, and is also mentioned in Ruth Binney's Plant Lore and Legend: The Wisdom and Wonder of Plants and Flowers Revealed

Starry Dreams follows Mesha, a young Native American chief's son who is visited in his dreams by Young Star, a lonely celestial being who longs to live on Earth. After choosing a number of unsuitable locations - a remote mountaintop, a busy meadow - she settles onto the surface of a lake. Ridiculed at first, when he relates his dream, Mesha is vindicated when a gorgeous star-like water lily appears on the lake, the following day. I am not sure which Texas tribe this story comes from - no mention of specific nation is given, in the text - but the celestial origins of the water lily also feature in the traditional folklore of the Ojibwe people, who hail from the northern midwestern United States, and Canada. Patricia Robins' Star Maiden: An Ojibwa Legend of the First Water Lily and Barbara Juster Esbensen's The Star Maiden: An Ojibway Tale offer picture-book retellings of this tale.

El Paisano Meets Señor Rattlesnake, in which El Paisano (the roadrunner) defeats his traditional enemy, the rattlesnake, by hemming him in with the thorny flowers of the prickly pear cactus. Unable to move without injuring himself, the rattlesnake must promise to leave the baby animals around him alone - a promise he has difficulty keeping. Stories about the conflict between roadrunner and rattlesnake are not uncommon in the American Southwest, but the source of this particular tale (as with all the other selections in this collection) is not given. The tale of how the two first came into conflict can be found in Florence Stratton's 1936 collection, When the Storm God Rides: Tejas and Other Indian Legends; while another story of conflict between the two is retold in Rudlfo Anaya's 2000 picture-book, Roadrunner's Dance.

Frolicking Fairies sees a group of fairy children disregarding their mother's instructions, and heading to the nearby creek when they get dirty. Here they wash their clothing, and hang it out to dry on a nearby plant. Frightened away by the croaking of a toad, they return the next day to discover that the fairy girls' skirts have been incorporated into the plant, now known as a morning glory.

Finding Firefly follows a young Native American girl as she wanders away from camp one day, chasing a beautiful butterfly. When the girl eventually realizes that she needs to return home, she discovers that she is lost, and cannot find the way back. Cold and alone, she is protected in the night by a blanket of flowers, sent by the Great Spirit to keep her warm. These fire-tipped pinwheel flowers have been given many names, amongst them: Indian Blanket, Firewheel and Sundance. There are apparently a number of different stories explaining how they came to have their gorgeous coloring. This particular one can also be found in Elizabeth Silverthorne's Legends and Lore of Texas Wildflowers.

Magic Walking Stick, in which an old woman, growing tired as she makes her way through the forest, is rudely rejected by two different trees, when she asks them for a small branch to use as a walking stick. Eventually, after half collapsing in exhaustion, the woman find a knobby old stick that is eager to help, and the two hobble out of the woods. Here the woman is revealed as a fairy, and the old stick's wish - to be beloved of children - is granted, as he is transformed into a goldenrod.

Finally, When Feathers Bloomed follows a destitute farming family as they flee a terrible prairie fire, seeking refuge in a nearby stone fort. When the conflagration passes, the family heads home, together with their neighbors, and the children are all given bluejay feathers to plant in the blackened earth. From this unusual "seed" grows the bluebonnet flower, which resembles a cap or tam-o-shanter, also colloquially known as a "blue bonnet." There are many different Texas tales about the origins of this flower, including the Comanche story of a young girl who sacrificed her prized possession in order to save her people, retold in Tomie DePaola's The Legend of the Bluebonnet. There is also the legend of "The Lady in Blue," concerning the miraculous Texas appearances of a blue-clad nun (then living in Spain) who taught the native people rudimentary Christianity, and whose presence was said to have coincided with the appearance of bluebonnet flowers. A version of this story has been retold in Eric A. Kimmel's The Lady in the Blue Cloak: Legends from the Texas Missions, although Kimmel's version makes no mention of the flowers that accompanied the lady's appearances.

I sought out Bloomin' Tales: Legends of Seven Favorite Texas Wildflowers after enjoying the work of illustrator Joy Fisher Hein in the picture-book biography, Miss Lady Bird's Wildflowers: How a First Lady Changed America, and wanting to see more of it. As someone interested in folklore, I was also intrigued by the book's subject matter, and eager to pick it up. With one exception, I found it outstanding. The stories themselves were engaging, and the artwork was beautiful. I liked the mixture of stories here, and how they incorporated the diverse cultural backgrounds of the people of Texas. I also like the back matter, which included more information about each of the seven wildflowers, and an author's note addressing the importance of the folkloric approach to botany, and the general cultural origins of each story. The back endpapers even include a map of Texas, divided by topographical/ecological region, and a discussion of each plant's habitat. The book's only failing - and it is a significant one, in a work of folklore - is that no source materials were provided, and no list of further reading was included. None of the tales with a Native American cultural background specified the tribal culture from which they came. None of the Euro-American tales provided any additional information. These are not original stories (one presumes), but folktales, and I would have liked to known where Cherie Foster Colburn originally found them. I would have liked to track down those sources, in order to read more. As it was, I was able to piece together some information on my own, by combing through various databases and finding other titles, but it doesn't follow that the books I found were the ones Colburn used. This would have been a four-star book for me, but I subtracted a half star because of this issue. Leaving this issue aside, I would still recommend this one - to young folklore enthusiasts, to wildflower lovers, and to readers interested in the great state of Texas.… (mehr)