A Bucknell University couple has published a new edition of their field guide to the shrubs and woody vines of the region, a project that has been a true labor of love for over twenty years. Written by Professor Chris Martine, biology, “Shrubs and Vines of New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic States” covers roughly 120 species, many of which are coupled with pen-and-ink illustrations by Rachel Martine, artist relations and educational programs coordinator at Bucknell’s Weis Center for the Performing Arts.
C. Martine first started thinking about writing a shrub guide in the late 1990s when, while working as an outdoor educator with the New Jersey Forest Service, he authored the “Trees of New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic States” pocket guide as a tool for students and nature lovers to get to know their arborescent friends.
“The tree guide was an exciting project and a lot of people were happy to use the book,” says C. Martine, “but the one thing that I kept hearing was that there were plenty of guides to trees out there, but very few resources that people could use to identify the shrubs that they were also seeing.”
C. Martine—who earned his bachelor’s degree at Rutgers, where he had been teaching dendrology as a part-time instructor—made a proposal to John Kuser, a professor in their ecology, evolution and natural resources program, to do an illustrated field guide to shrubs as a master’s thesis.
When Professor Kuser asked who might do the illustrations, C. Martine had a quick answer: his wife, Rachel, an artist who was taking botanical drawing courses at the New York Botanical Garden. She had provided a handful of illustrations for the tree book, but this time, she’d draw everything.
For roughly two years, the Martines’ apartment was “shrub central” – with Chris out in the field collecting specimens during the day, and Rachel drawing what he brought back after she got home from her day job.
“We were only married for a couple of years at that point,” says R. Martine, “and I figured that if we could get through this project, we’d probably be okay for bigger ones later– like, you know, buying a house and raising children. This book was kind of our first baby.”
The first edition of “Shrubs and Vines of New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic States” was published out of New Jersey’s Forest Resource Education Center (FREC) in 2022. In combination, C. Martine says the shrub and tree guides have sold “tens of thousands” of copies; the tree guide is now in its seventh edition.
“About a year ago, I got an email from Christina Yuncza at the FREC saying that the second edition of the shrub guide had run out,” says C. Martine “and she asked if I was interested in revising the publication for a long-awaited third print run. I was like, twist my arm.”
C. Martine spent a few months updating nomenclature, analyzing suggestions from other field botanists, rewriting text and, because the original digital files had disappeared, re-scanning all of R. Martine’s original artwork. After several rounds of review by staff at the Forest Service, the new edition was printed in December. It’s a tribute to the couple’s partnership, as well as to the individuals who not only inspired the project when it began more than two decades ago, but first taught C. Martine some of the natural history that appears in the guide.
“We dedicated this edition to Dr. Jim Applegate, one of the best professors I had at Rutgers, who died last year,” says C. Martine. “I learned a lot about nature from Doc and I am sure there are things in the pages of this book that I first heard from him during class.”
C. Martine teaches students in a similar way during his Bucknell field botany course, which has been offered every fall since he first started at Bucknell in 2012. This past semester, the class visited eighteen field sites and the students learned to recognize around 130 plant species. C. Martine believes strongly in the value of courses that teach students to recognize the nature around them.
Life has changed a lot for Chris and Rachel since they first started working on the first edition of the book, but R. Martine continues to make art and has most recently dedicated hours to designing and leading the production of river-themed puppets as this year’s featured artist for the Handmade Parade preceding Lewisburg’s Polar Plunge on Feb. 8.
Ordering information for the third edition of “Shrubs and Vines of New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic States” can be found online at https://www.nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/forest/education/treebooks.html. The book is available locally at Mondragon Books in Lewisburg.