Human Flower Project

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Nose-Pros Travel to Isles of Scilly

As cut-flower production around the world gradually trades scent for show, English farmers invest in analysis of their famed narcissi.

The Isles of Scilly, sprinkled in the Atlantic Ocean 30 miles off southwesternmost England, are home to 25 varieties of narcissus, some of the most powerfully fragrant flowers in the world. Among the most delicately beautiful, too.

Flower farmers on the islands are hoping, in an age of increasingly scentless flowers, to learn more about their narcissi’s properties and so have invited three fragrance experts in to sniff and provide them with an “‘organoleptic’ description.”

Andrew May, representing the growers, said: “We thought it would give us a real edge if we were able to describe the unique scents of our flowers in much the same way as the bouquet of wine is often described.”

I’m relieved to hear the Scillian flower growers have brought in three noses, since even among my amateur-smeller friends there’s widespread disagreement about paperwhites, probably the most popular wintertime narcissus in the U.S. Some call its strong sweetness “heavenly.” I’ve heard others ask, “Do you have an electrical fire?”

Dead Phones Sprout Living Flowers

Facing a landscape littered with old cellphones, university scientists make a compostable device that doubles as a seed casing.

Verizon may soon be making a run at the Burpee Company, now that scientists at University of Warwick have devised a compostable, seed-bearing cellphone.

The portable yammer-tool has become one of the most quickly outmoded articles of daily life, but fast as customers trash these things and go looking for a newer model, yammer-holics “want to feel they are making an environmentally sensitive purchase.”

Dr. Kerry Kirwan
Photo: PhysOrg.com

So a team of University of Warwick engineers “led by Dr Kerry Kirwan, have worked with hi tech materials company PVAXX Research and Development Ltd and Motorola to create a mobile telephone case” that’s safe for your compost pile; “ just weeks later the case will begin to disintegrate and turn into a flower. “

Yes, they’ve embedded dwarf sunflower seeds in the mobile phones and are experimenting with other flower varieties too.

May we recommend to Motorola biodegradable beer cans studded with morning glory seed and disposable diapers laden with nasturtium. Presto! Littering becomes gardening. 

Monday, November 29, 2004

Here Come the 14,000 Brides

It’s wedding season in India, and a particularly auspicious astrological event inspired more than ten thousand couples to tie the knot yesterday in New Delhi alone.

New Delhi pundits (priests) and flowers were both in short supply yesterday as couples swarmed into the city to marry. “Businessmen made the most of the day with prices of even marigold flowers to decorate the wedding marquees shooting up to about Rs.400 per kg from just about Rs.25 per kg on normal days,” India Times reported.

According to renowned astrologer Ajay Gautam, “of the six auspicious days that fall this month,” Nov. 28 was the “most propitious.”

Leaping from news to fantasy (always appropriate where weddings are concerned), may I recommend the Indian film “Monsoon Wedding” (and thank Phil Ardery for suggesting it). It includes far and away the most wonderful proposal of marriage ever extended.

Vijay Raaz in “Monsoon Wedding”

(Please let us know your favorite floral movie scenes, matrimonial or otherwise.)

Is There Anything Neem Can’t Do?

In India, neem has been considered a “miracle tree” for centuries. U.S.  growers, now getting wise, predict it will be the next “aloe vera.”

Two business partners in Brandon, Florida, are hoping to make a smash success of growing and importing neem trees to the U.S.

Native to India, “neem is a member of the mahogany family and is one of the most widely used herbs in the world, though relatively unknown in the United States. It can grow to 60 feet tall, spreading like an oak.”

Neem flowers, sweet as jasmine, attract bees.

“In bloom neem has honey-scented white flowers like a locust tree. Fans are so loyal because every part of the neem tree - leaves, oil and bark - can be used for products including medicines, pesticides, soap and beauty products.”

What’s not to like about a tree that can kill head lice, cure diabetes, soften your hands...and survive you and your children? Some say neem trees live for two centuries.

Korea’s Modernist Master Dies

Kim Chun-su, who exemplified modern poetry in 20th Century Korea, has died at age 82.

Kim Chun-su

Korea’s most beloved poet died Monday after a three month hospitalization. Kim Chun-su was born in 1922 near Pusan. As a student in Tokyo, he was expelled for protesting Japanese colonial rule of his native country and jailed for seven months.

Returning to Korea, he began teaching and writing poetry.

“Kim’s most famous poem is ‘Flower,’ which was written in his early days and showed the influence of the Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and the philosophy of existentialism. The poem has been ranked as a favorite poem among South Koreans....

“Concerning ‘Flower,’ Kim once said: ‘Some people view it as a poem of romance. In truth, however, it is philosophy about language and existentialism.’ “

I found the translations of ‘Flower’ clunky. But here’s a lovely one, both floral and fit for today. 

Absence

Whenever the wind shook it,
the fence
raised sorrowful sounds. 

Cockscombs, lilies, balsams and the like
bloomed in season
and faded without a sound. 

Even in cold midwinter,
the lonely sunshine dozed
on the stepping stones
and was gone. 

Only time kept flowing listlessly;
people lived as in a dream
and passed away.

(Translated by Kim Jong-gil)

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Tucson Enjoys Fluttering Junket

The botanical gardens in Tucson, welcoming 400 chrysalides weekly through January, will be keeping these winged “internationals” under guard.

“Butterfly Magic at the Gardens” is featuring the emergence and short-life of more than 40 butterfly species from now through January 30th, with visitors from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Surinam and Thailand.

Blue Clearwing and Lantana Blossoms
Puerto Vicente, Ecuador
Photo: Hank and Priscilla Brodkin

It’s a post-9/11 climate, even for insects. “Vestibules at the entrance and exit of the exhibit are required by (U.S. Department of Agriculture) guidelines to guard against non-native butterflies escaping into the Sonoran Desert. Volunteers man each station to limit the number of visitors in the space at one time and to make sure the butterflies remain within.”

Of course, flowers are a big part of the show. Caterpillars feed on host plants like citrus trees and survive on the nectar of flowers. Lantana, passion-vine flowers and pentas are especially delicious to butterflies.

Here’s a terrific butterfly gardening site, with a chart showing which flowers attract which species.

And here’s a guide to native butterflies in all 50 United States. HFP visitors from outside the U.S., please send us your butterfly guides; USDA clearance NOT required.

A Double-Duty Bouquet

Ukraine’s parliament has refused to say “I do” to the results of the nation’s recent presidential election. In Lviv, a Ukrainian bride lodges her own protest, with a bouquet of orange roses—the color of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
Photo: Janek Skarzynski, AFP

Saturday, November 27, 2004

You See a Weed, They See World History

850 botanists are working for free to document The Flora of North America, a big job considering that just “The sunflower family has 2,438 species.”

Long feature stories are becoming rare as ginseng. So thanks to the L.A. Times for this in-depth report on a huge botanical research project, to record all the botanical species in North America.

Emily Green’s feature takes us all the way back to Swiss botanist Linnaeus, and probes the complexities of carrying out ambitious field work in, as they say, “the current economic climate.”
That climate—good for building Humvees, and for studying DNA and “solar space dust”—has not been kind to The Flora of North America endeavor, but the intrepid botanists whom Green profiles carry on.

Peter Stevens, a prickly Englishman who’s leading the decade-long expedition, described the fix that grant-poor botanists have found themselves in: “To me, to try and preserve things simply based on economic value is basically buying into the system that’s causing all the problems.”

To see how politics, economics, ecology, personality, and flowers bloom and wilt together, read this.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

A Memorable Centerpiece? Get Clipping

Pat Rubin urges you hostesses boldly to go where no florist has been before – your own neighborhood. You’ll find the makings of a one-of-a-kind arrangement.

One of the most memorable table decorations I ever saw was made of nothing but American Beautyberry branches, fresh picked, loaded with purple berries, and dropped in a vase on a picnic table one fine evening in Red Rock, Texas.

This piece from the Sacremento Bee says decorative glories like these are yours for the picking.

“Instead of buying roses surrounded by a polite amount of baby’s breath, …arrange the nutty brown seedpods of black-eyed Susan with red or yellow maple or liquidambar leaves. Try a vase of blue asters and yellow chrysanthemums accented with golden plumes of miscanthus or feather reed grass.”

Once upon a time there was no FTD. Think like a pilgrim (only prettier): Grateful for what you find.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Stop! Don’t Toss Those Turkey Bones

Youthful temerity meets forensic hygiene in bone flowers of a Scottish art student.

Ewan Manson, a third-year student at Dundee University, was searching for a statement about the superabundance of household waste when he hit on the idea of making flowers out of fish and chicken bones.

Sue Black, a forensic anthropologist at the university, pitched in at it were, showing Manson how chemically to make the bones “more visually attractive” and preserve them. Ars longa, vita brevis.

But why did Manson choose to make the bones into flowers, the most ephemeral, some would say “wasteful” objects around?

“After creating the first rose from tilapia and sardine bones I knew that I wanted to take the idea further and create decorative bouquets,” Manson said. “It is a challenging project and I am constantly on the lookout for oddly shaped bones to create petals and leaves. My shopping bill increases as I need greater quantities of meat and fish.”

Hey wait! I thought the point was to criticize wastefulness not indulge in it. We need an osteo-aesthete for a second opinion.