Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday.
Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), took the art of Surrealism and the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, combined them with childhood memories of early cars and machinery in New England and then the flora of his adult home in southern California, and created the famous illustrations for his over sixty books. (His Green Eggs and Ham is the fourth best-selling English-language children’s book of all time.)
His strange plants and landscapes — tops of mops, spikes, and feathers; elongated, twisty trunks; improbable angles, odd hills and rocks — form a visual vocabulary that we all understand and use routinely. These are just a few of the many, many snapshots I found by typing in “Dr. Seuss” and searching Flickr.com.
A 2010 article from the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, has a list of plants that also look Seuss-y, here. Among others, they recommend weeping sequoia, Nootka cypress, and contorted hazelnut.
If you want to visit a Dr. Seuss-style landscape, the blog SPOTCOOLSTUFF has 10 “Places That Look Dr Seuss-ish” around the world, here.
ADDENDUM: Today is also the NEA’s Read Across America Day, here. And The Washington Post is calling for Seuss-inspired verse about current events, here.
enclos*ure 
Thanks for the reference to PlayGroundology in your post. That carved log in Cornwall, England really is beautiful in its simplicity. You might also be interested in Kinderspielkunst – http://bit.ly/yNsprs.
Many years ago, I lived in Sénégal for 5 months as part of an international youth exchange. I still treasure that brief time spent in Africa.
Cheers, Alex
My pleasure. Really wonderful playgrounds are so important.
Love the Dr. We’ll be playing with Dr. Seuss and The Lorax fabric at work today, brings back such great memories of sitting and reading with the kids!:)
Who wouldn’t want a Dr. Seuss bush in their yard?:)
I think we all have one, and sometimes that means you love it and sometimes it means the saw.
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loved this post (and lots of your blog) and it inspired me to take some photos today and prepare “Seussical Succulents”: http://lightswimming.com/2012/03/04/seussical-succulents/
Cindy, I didn’t discover Dr. Seuss books until I was a teenager reading them to my (much) younger sister. I had never thought about the botanical origins of some of his creations; this was fun.
The fact that a few generations now have absorbed the images of Dr. Seuss must be fueling the current succulent rage.