This herbarium was born out of our fascination with the world of plants and the works of Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz. Although descriptions of nature are not what one automatically associates with his writing, the discerning reader is sure to notice his botanical erudition. Besides, the author himself wrote in one of his letters from South America:

… – I amazed my comrades with my erudition in the field of botany, but I told them, after all, that I was “a gardener from a little town near Warsaw” and throughout the occupation I had a gardening card….

Reading Iwaszkiewicz’s texts, we found descriptions of more than 100 species of plants, from very popular ones – like daisies or forget-me-nots – to little-known ones, like the ombu tree or asfodels. There are certainly many more in his entire oeuvre. However, it is not the descriptions of plants themselves, but their connection to the human condition and life that is most fascinating. The search for references to the world of plants in Iwaszkiewicz’s books seems legitimate to us also because he himself, in one of his short stories – Gardens, put his life in a kind of composition of landscapes, people, conversations, events, placed in the topography of the gardens of his life.

Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (1894 – 1980), was a Polish writer, poet, essayist, dramatist and translator. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.