In the book, alongside paintings, drawings, and a prompt for “vegetal attunement,” readers will find a step-by-step guide to making watercolor paints from foraged plant parts, a color chart of the various “feral hues” the process produces, and four limited-edition Risograph printed postcards featuring Irons’s Transect Study paintings.

Growing out of a year of fieldwork in the post-industrial riverfront town of current-day Hudson, New York, the book also profiles seven weedy plants Irons encountered while working there. Ranging from Pokeweed (pocoon/pèkòn/Phytolacca Americana) to Japanese Knotweed (Hǔzhàng/虎杖/Reynoutria japonica) these plants–whether native or migrant–root on “manufactured land” lying in the Mahicanituck/Hudson River’s once and future flood plain. Short essays on the naturalcultural lives of each plant are accompanied by paint swatches, photographs, and identification and harvesting tips. -Publisher