Chasing Lewis's Monkeyflower: The Amazing Afterlife of the Lewis and Clark Expedition's Wild Plants

A look at the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the plant specimens the great explorers gathered on their way--and of their amazing afterlife.

Elizabeth Adelman's Chasing the Missing Monkeyflower is the two hundred-year saga of finding, losing, and finding the wild plants collected on America's first exploration west, the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Thomas Jefferson handpicked Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, gather notable specimens along the way, and then write the journals, with one volume to include science-worthy descriptions and classifications of the plants that Lewis collected and pressed to preserve. Not a botanist, Lewis needed help to write this part of the journals.

Ambition, deceit, theft, wealth, debt, alcoholism, loss, suicide, serendipity, and stubborn persistence cross the plants' paths in Philadelphia, New York, and London. This is the first work detailing the places, practices, and times of a cavalcade of people who touched the plants. A fascinating chronicle of an unexplored byway of the great American story.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 02/17/2026
ISBN: 9780374615024
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.38w x 1.00d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2025
Library Journal 12/01/2025 pg. 85