Native Plants on the Parkway: A Botany of Nations Garden

Staghorn sumac grows in a curb strip on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and the Academy's plant guide says its red fruit is soaked in cold water for "sumac lemonade". Beds edged with curving coir logs, coconut-fibre rolls normally used for erosion control, have replaced brick and concrete outside the museum.

This is the outdoor half of Botany of Nations, the Lewis and Clark show inside. The expedition's plants came from the Plains and the Pacific Coast; these are Northeastern natives, from hackberry to cardinal flower. Rough goldenrod is here too, and the guide clears it of hay fever: insects carry its pollen, so your autumn sneezing needs another culprit.

You stand on the sidewalk with two PDFs from the Academy's site on your phone: a map tagging every plant, and ethnobotanist Linda Black Elk's guide to 25 of them, with their Lakota, Ojibwe or Lenape names and uses. No critic has reviewed it, and the season decides what you see.