The lush world of the botanical garden forms the backdrop of this extended meditation on birds and plants and their often oblique relation to the names we give them. Written in short prose blocks, and often tongue-in-cheek, the book takes many points of view: bird’s-eye and plant’s-eye as well as the human. The form and tone of this work are indebted to the muwashshah, a medieval Arabic song form practiced in Andalusia, while much of its information is gleaned from several centuries of works on botany and ornithology. Originally written in Japanese and French, the text constitutes a cultural hybrid that reveals Sekiguchi’s rich and unique view of the world.

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