1939 Collection of Weeds

I’ve had this old scrapbook in my old papers collection for a few years, its pages showing all kinds of great textures and nuances for collage art. Each page is labelled with the name of a plant, and here are traces of tape where my great aunt’s weed collection was once displayed. I found references to this project in two of the 1939 letters home from Normal School. The first was on September 21, 1939, where she requests her mom send her one of the plants:

“You might get me a nice plant of purslane, that waxy plant like portulaca. A fairly good sized one to fit on a page 10” square. Press it with the root too. I can’t find a very big one here.”

And in this week’s letter, from November 3, 1939:

“I handed my weed collection in to-day.”