Human Flower Project

Monday, January 31, 2005

Water Hyacinth—Africa’s Not-So-Pretty Settler

A native of Brazil, the water hyacinth has become the worst aquatic weed in the world. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been fighting back against this greedy beauty across Africa for a decade, with help from a weevil.

Eichhornia crassipes
Photo: Ricardo Labrada

Too much of a good thing—way too much.

The water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes (Martius) Solms-Laubach) has made a pest of itself across much of the globe, especially in tropical Africa, where it’s grown into a flowering strangler. According to an FAO report by Ricardo Labrada of the Plant Protection Service, the water hyacinth advanced quickly due to its flowery good looks. “Its spread started with its deliberate introduction into North America from Brazil, in the late 19th century, as an ornamental in ponds and subsequently escaped cultivation.” Water hyacinth seems to have arrived in Africa in the 1980s.

Water hyacinth clog
Lake Victoria, Uganda
Photo: Ricardo Labrada

Here’s an example of how this lovely plant has become an invader. During the 1990s “dense mats” of water hyacinth had clogged big stretches of Lake Victoria in Uganda, choking off fishing and even transportation. The water hyacinth is not just a water dweller but a vaporizer, its lush leaves “sweating” so much moisture into the air that it “alters the water balance of entire regions.”

Water-hyacinth infestations can also slow the output of electrical power stations, imperil local agriculture, become breeding grounds for poisonous snakes, and bring disease.

The FAO’s weed controls in Africa have included many kinds of measures: surveillance, training, greater inter-country cooperation, and principally the introduction of a natural enemy—Cyrtobagous salviniae, a species of weevil. The FAO says that breeding and releasing this hyacinth-predator is preferable to fighting back with chemicals.

There’s a lot of fascinating information on the FAO site, including a slide show of the ongoing struggles again water hyacinth, water fern and other World Wide Weeds.

Thinking about sneaking a flowering plant back home from your trip to the tropics? Look what the water hyacinth has done, and reconsider.

(Note: Welcome to our recent visitors from Togo. Please let us hear from you about flowers, wanted and unwanted.)

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Iznik- A Garden in Quartz

A New York exhibition displays the glory of Turkish tiles, with pieces from Iznik’s 16th Century master craftsmen and examples of the city’s contemporary ceramics revival.

16th C. Iznik tile

Some of the most beautiful floral art of all time came from the Anatolian city of Iznik. Using methods no one yet quite understands, the ceramicists of this town in Western Turkey made radiant tiles decorated with hyacinths, tulips, and carnations to cover the interiors of imperial palaces and mosques.

Peter Hristoff of the School of the Visual Arts in New York has brought together 50 of these pieces, most of them on loan from the Metropolitan Museum, with works by Turkish artists of today. Iznik, Legendary Ceramics from Turkey: An Art Reborn is the first U.S. show of its kind.

In the 16th century, 300 ceramics workshops in the town made, painted and fired both tiles and dinnerware to supply the Ottoman Empire. The amazing works they produced, composed 80% of quartz, are still brilliant today. Hristoff, a native of Turkey, writes, “Not only does one sense the seamless transition of the outside (the enchanted, perfumed garden) into the indoors, but also the beauty and goodness of life and its transitory nature. All western preconceptions about ‘decorative arts’ fall away when one encounters an art that is hundreds of years old but still appears fresh and timeless.”

The Iznik Foundation, formed in 1993, has established “a sprawling compound of studios, laboratories, libraries and kilns,” as well as “a garden...planted with the flowers found on the tiles.” The group’s work to revive this magnificent crafts tradition has already borne results. In just 10 years, 35 ceramics studios have opened in the city; in conjunction with the Moon and Stars Project, the Iznik Foundation also contributed expertise and contemporary works to the current U.S. show.

There’s some good information about Iznik tiles available, describing how its decorative forms and colors evolved over several centuries. Oh, but we want to see these shining gardens for ourselves!

“The Eyüp Mosque and Türbe complex, the Piyale Pasha Mosque, the Topkapi Palace and the great Blue Mosque are all good places to start one’s Iznik education,” Peter Hristoff advises. For those of us on the western side of the Atlantic, there’s the School of the Visual Arts show, which runs through February 26.

(Thanks for the post card, Cyndy!)

Bummer, Cherie

It’s all over the papers in the U.K. The Primer Minister has “other ways” of being romantic.

Shadowed by reporter June Sarpong for 24 hours, Tony Blair obviously was worn out. Otherwise he never would have divulged what hit today’s papers like a cream pie: he’s never bought flowers for his wife, Cherie.

Prime Minister Blair discussed the Iraq War, university fees, and binge drinking, but today’s headlines all carry the same message:

“Blair admits faux pas over flowers”

“Blair: I Never Sent Flowers to Cherie”

“No flowers for Cherie, as Tony admits to past passion for princess” (that being Grace Kelley)

Blair insisits that he’s plenty “romantic” and that were he to send his wife flowers “she would get worried.”

Mr. Prime Minister, you’re the one who needs to be worried now.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Zhao Ziyang - Flowers Tell the Story

A funeral for China’s controversial former-leader took place today, with loaner-flowers only and plenty of police.

There’s been speculation ever since Zhao Ziyang’s death on January 17 about how obsequies for China’s former party chief would be carried out. Zhao was driven from command after he opposed the military’s crackdown on dissidents in the spring of 1989, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of demonstrators were killed over protests in Tiananmen Square. Zhao lived under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

A memorial to Zhao Ziyang, Jan. 21
Victoria Park, Hong Kong
Photo: Bobby Yip, for Reuters

At the news of his death, a huge memorial with floral wreaths and masses of yellow and white chrysanthemums was assembled in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. In Beijing, meanwhile, Chinese authorities clamped down on public expressions of grief. An AFP story of Jan. 27 reported: “Security has been stepped up, apparently for fear that mourning will spark large-scale protests. Dozens of people have been detained and some viciously beaten, witnesses said.

“They were among some 60 people who last week pinned white paper flowers to their clothes, a traditional Chinese symbol of mourning, said a bystander who took pictures of the beatings and posted them on overseas websites.”

We haven’t come across these photos. Have you?

Not so many days ago, it appeared that Zhao would be denied a “life assessment,” the party’s official record of a public person’s career. But today the Chinese government did release such a statement.

“‘He made beneficial contributions to the party and the people,’ the assessment said, before adding, ‘In the political turmoil of the spring and summer of 1989, Comrade Zhao Ziyang committed grave errors.’”

Police nearly outnumbered guests at the funeral itself, according to Agence France-Presse. Mourners were permitted by invitation only, and many who had come to pay their respects were driven away or detained.

Police led a man with a white mourning flower from the invitation-only funeral of Zhao Ziyang.
Photo: Reinhard Krause, for Reuters

Clearly, the right to bear flowers is a mark of political freedom, or in countries where such freedoms are denied, of power: “Floral arrangements were sent by former parliament chief Qiao Shi, former vice chairman of parliament Tian Jiyun and Yang Baibing, a People’s Liberation Army general and younger brother of the late Yang Shangkun, president during the 1989 crackdown.”

But Zhao Ziyang’s own friends and supporters were banned from such expression. Zhao’s nephew told AFP, “Guests could not even bring their own flowers. They had to use wreaths brought there by the government and they could not even write their own inscriptions on wreaths.”

Those permitted into the service “were given white paper flowers as they entered the funeral hall but guards demanded the flowers back as they left.”

A Chinese AIDS activist told the New York Times, “The main fear is that there would be marches and slogans - things they can’t control....Zhao’s fate symbolizes China’s over the past 15 years: the economy has become more diverse, but the political system remains inert and lifeless.”

Cactus Can Dance

Moses Pendleton crosses the boundaries among plant, bird, reptile and human lives with choreography.

from Opus Cactus
Photo: MOMIX

Moses Pendleton is more interested in spotted lizards than dying swans. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing his dance company perform, but from all I read, MOMIX, the troupe he founded in 1981, manages to bring the excitement and acrobatics of the circus to contemporary dance. One critic wrote that the company’s “inventiveness rises to the level of The Lion King and The Muppets.” Is that a compliment? I guess it depends on where you believe The Muppets set the bar, and how high or low your art-posture.

I’m intrigued by MOMIX’s Opus Cactus. Its backdrop is the Sonoran Desert, extending from south and west of Phoenix, Arizona, into Northern Mexico, and its dancers are the plants and animals of the region.  I associate cacti with stability—those green pads still and spiny, immune to a Mexican summer. Even on a breezy May morning, it’s hard to envision a cactus dancing. I guess that’s why MOMIX’s project intrigues me.

Opus Cactus, which debuted some three years ago, has been performed all over the world. For the next several weeks, it’s being staged in Richmond, Virginia, and several Florida venues, and in Sydney and Perth, Australia. There’s a complete schedule on the MOMIX website.

Friends and readers who attend, please write and tell us what you think.

Note: Many thanks to Bill Hopkins of prairie point for alerting us to recent technical problems in posting “Comments” here. Everything should be working smoothly now. We really do welcome submissions and comments!

Friday, January 28, 2005

Predatory bouquets

Stalking used to be called “ a crush” or “flattery,” and thought a nuisance. Today it’s taken very seriously, and flowers may be called into evidence.

When I first came upon a report of a stalker sending flowers, I brushed it aside as alarmist. How could sending flowers constitute harassment?

Now I’m convinced, after reading stories like this one from the Yorkshire Post:

The woman met a man at an office party, who asked her to dance. She declined his advances. The next day she received the first of hundreds of adoring letters, and then violent messages.

“‘When it first happened I just wanted him and it to go away and gave him every opportunity to stop without having to call in the police,’ she says. “In the back of my mind, I thought people might not see it as significant. If you tell people someone is sending you big bunches of flowers, there are some who will say, “Isn’t it nice to have an admirer?” or “It’s only a few letters, why are you getting so upset?“‘

“To outsiders, her stalker looked like an ordinary, middle-aged family man, but within a matter of weeks his behaviour had become increasingly threatening and alongside the flowers and chocolates came pornography and brochures for headstones and personal injury insurance.”

Stalking isn’t sentimental. Nor is it something vague. “Virtually any unwanted contact between a stalker and his/her victim which directly or indirectly communicates a threat or places the victim in fear” qualifies. 

According to Safe Place Ministries, The stalker may try “to woo the victim into a relationship by sending flowers, candy, and love letters..,. However, when the victim spurns the unwelcome advances, the stalker often turns to intimidation.”

Still in doubt? Then consider this story from the Nashville Tennessean, and this one from Bowling Green, Ohio. In both, the stalkers’ gifts of flowers are acts of aggression. Both stories end with murder.

Another recent report, startling for its naivete, comes from Queens, New York. A homeless man allegedly harassed a women for four months, calling in more than 20 false fire alarms to her home “just to piss (her) off.”

The newspaper piece goes on to say, “Although Charles was charged with harassment and stalking, (the fire marshal investigator) said the woman was probably never in danger of being physically harmed. In fact, Charles had placed flowers on her doorstep on more than one occasion.” Wake up, people!! 

Today in the U.S. alone, an estimated 200,000 people are being stalked. Here’s more information and advice for those who are being harassed. “When flowers are delivered, contact the flower shop immediately to ask who placed the order, how it was paid for and the description of the person making the purchase. Take pictures of the flowers and keep the card, if one is attached.”

The Human Flower Project intends to show the meaning and force of flowers in social life. A dozen roses can’t be dismissed. They intrude on us. The nature of that intrusion is ours to cultivate and understand.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Half Cowboy, Half Clerk

Riverfront Times (St. Louis, MO) profiles the bravely nerdy researchers of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Looking into the Missouri Botanical Garden website reminds me of the first and only time I went snorkeling, off Key Largo.

Wham! Here’s another universe.

Cadia flower [Fabaceae], Kenya
Photo: Missouri Botanical Garden

While you and I were changing the ink cartridge, the MBG, with 46 Ph.D. botanists on staff, has been documenting carnivorous flowers in northern Argentina, taking pictures of rhododendon in Northwestern China. In the time it takes to don your mask and snorkel, most of what they’ve done is yours to enjoy. Check out the research department’s photo essays. For those, like me, who are impressed with feats of archiving, the TROPICOS database dazzles the mind. Here are line drawings and photographs of plants from across the world, catalogued into their respective botanical families.

Conserving a species of journalism as endangered as the Alabama spiny pod, the Riverfront Times has devoted a 4000-word feature story to the botanical garden’s researchers. Kristen Hinman’s article extols the quirky, proud and dedicated botanists, the kind of people who roll their VW’s over rubbernecking at Kansas wildflowers or consent to a tribal rite of passage for the chance to see a rare plant in Madagascar.

All the Indiana Jones stuff gets bit tiresome, but, thankfully, Hinman’s story does look beyond the chest-thrusting of Ph.D.s. We learn that the Flora of North America project—to document all the plants on the continent—is starved for funds.  “We’re all stoked by the idea that there might have been one kind of bacteria on Mars, and we’re willing to spend a billion dollars on that,” one of the botanists complains; meanwhile, the effort to find fast-disappearing plants right here has a hard time attracting money. Nearly 900 scientists have been working on a vast encyclopedia, but Hinman writes, “Over the past decade, the federal government has shown little commitment to the project, chipping in less than $1 million.”

Hinman also uncovers intellectual history. The “elders” among her botanist-heroes all complain that the field has become over specialized, an indoor occupation. They see “a growing number of young botanists becoming far more enamored with high-tech molecular studies using computers than with microscopes and human hands.”

Ron Liesner, botanist
Photo: Jennifer Silverberg, Riverfront Times

Over 60 species have been names for Ron Liesner, one of the MBG’s leading scientists. He complains, “There’s so much sorting to be done, so many families that need to be determined. When I was younger, I’d wonder what family I’d specialize in when I finished the general work. It never happened.” Liesner stresses, “It takes a long time to become a generalist.... And I don’t see a young person who’s doing that.”

The MBG herbarium holds 5.5 million plant specimens (many viewable on the website). The research division also runs training programs in South America, (information in English y en Espanol).

Check out Kristen Hinman’s tale of valiant plant collectors. Then pull on your flippers, find the Missouri Botanical Gardens, and dive in.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Sanity & Sanitation

Several British papers ran front page stories today about Rochdale Infirmary’s decision to ban flowers on certain wards.

“I was gobsmacked when first told about it,” said a nurse on the children’s ward at an English hospital after hearing that flowers had been banned from some parts of the building.

Hospital directors have left to the ward managers’ discretion whether to permit flowers. Manchester’s online paper is trying to “stir the stink” (as our Aunt Dorothy used to say), urging readers to comment on the measure. Have at it! and please drop a comment here too, if you choose.

A hospital spokesperson explained, “"With medical advances, many patients are now connected to medical devices and there is an obvious risk if you have water in proximity to that. There is also a background of concerns about the bacteria that could be carried in the water.”

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the Rochdale facility and several others, presented new rules for hospital hygiene; they stop short of banning flowers altogether but do make several demands on patients and their visitors.

“The Patients’ Association today called on all NHS patients to provide their own soap and toiletries in hospital as part of the ten-point code on hygiene,” the Manchester paper reports. “The code says patients should arrange for relatives to wash their nightwear while they are in hospital.

“It also says that hospital visitors should go home and wash, and change their clothes, before coming to see a relative.” And while you’re at it, bring along a toilet brush, would you?

Maguey’s Finale

The Dominican Republic’s native agave (maguey) wins the botanical decathalon—this plant can do anything.

Maguey in bloom
Dominican Republic
Photos:

Blessed with mountains, rain forests, deserts and Caribbean coastline (all over a land area about twice the size of New Hampshire), the Dominican Republic is a botanical wonderland. Look closely at this photo of an indigenous maguey (agave) in flower, taken by Emile de Boyrie of Santo Domingo. You’ll see a hummingbird darting toward one of the puff-shaped blooms and another bird hanging out on a stem.

Most people associate the agave with Mexico. This basket of spikes comes in many varieties, including Mexico’s Weber blue, the source of tequila. Republica Dominicana has four agaves of its own, the most abundant, Agave brevispina.

The country’s indigenous Taino people discovered the medicinal value of maguey many centuries ago, and today in rural parts of the Dominican Republic the plant is still commonly used for “treatment against gall bladder cancer, ulcers, tumors, inflammations, high blood pressure, uterine fibroids, as well as an anti-tuberculotic agent.” Pharmaceutical companies got wise, and also use an extract of the plant in making steroids. (Here’s a Spanish language site about uses of maguey, courtesy of Dr. Boyrie.)

There’s majesty in the maguey, tragedy too. Most of the bigger agaves take ten, twenty, even fifty years to bloom, and once they do, the huge plants die. “When the plant is ready a quiote (stem or cane) grows, as high as thirty feet, and bears flowers carrying between three to five thousand fertile seeds.” Blossoms bright as mustard, thirty feet in the air—maguey makes the flower world’s grandest finale.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Lovers of St. Dwynwen’s Day

An obscure Welsh saint’s day has been revived in recent years, part retailing impatience, part regional pride.

January 25th is celebrated across much of Wales as the feast of St. Dwynwen, patroness of lovers. A good three weeks before St. Valentine gets his due, the Welsh people will be exchanging flowers and popping champagne corks. They’ll do it all over again February 14th.

Flower Shop in Llanrhystud, Wales

A British news story this week announces “Welsh Lovers Are Incurable Romantics.” According to one source, “The Welsh are probably the most misunderstood people in Britain but news that they are the most loved up and passionate should help present them in a new light.” That was a spokesperson for retailing dragon Tesco, which sells more Friday afternoon bouquets and bottles of champagne in Wales than in any of its other stores across Britain.

I hadn’t known that the Welsh people were “misunderstood,” but after reading a bit about their St. Dwynwen, I understand why someone might say that. Please read her story and tell me what you make of it.

She was one of 24 daughters of a 5th century king, Brychan of Brecknock. A prince named Maelon Dafodrill fell in love with her and wanted to marry her, but prefering to become a nun, she turned him down. In other versions of the tale, Dwynwen loved Dafodrill as well but the old king didn’t approve.  In yet another version, Dafodrill rapes her—enough to inspire the nun idea perhaps.

In any case, the bards agree Dwynwen ran off into the forest and drank something sweet because an angel promised it would put an end to her love problems; it worked, but when Dafodrill drank the potion, he turned to ice.

Now Dwynwen prays and is granted three wishes: that Maelon thaw out, that she never contemplate marriage again, and that “God should answer all requests made by her on behalf of lovers.”

Fulfilling wish number two, she founds a church on Llanddwyn Island, on the western coast of Anglesey. Lovers still come to a well there called Ffynnon Dwynwen to make wishes of their own. “According to tradition,” heartsick pilgrims can learn whether they love in vain “by watching the movement of an eel in the spring.”

Llanddwyn Island

Whichever way the eel swerves is good for the Welsh flower sellers: two big winter sales events.

But to my mind the most fascinating aspect of St. Dwynwen’s Day isn’t magic beverages and wishing wells but the holiday’s revival in just the past few years. Why would 21st century Welsh people so suddenly be celebrating a 5th century nun?

“When one looks at the cultural life of Wales,” wrote scholar Prys Morgan, “one is struck by a paradox; on the one hand the decay and demise of an ancient way of life, and on the other an unprecedented outburst of interest in things Welsh and highly self-conscious activity to preserve or develop them.”

Morgan was writing about Wales of the 18th and 19th century, but his paradox endures in today’s popular cult of St. Dwynwen. As local cultures wear away, especially in times of rapid social change, “traditions” are self-consciously cultivated; people mine the past for all that is most picturesque, and those costumes (kilts) or myths (St. Dwynwen) become precious and popular emblems of identity.

A recent study of the British revealed that “People born in Wales were far more likely to describe their national identity as Welsh (87 per cent) compared with those born in England (15 per cent), in other UK countries (17 per cent) or outside the UK (13 per cent).” And in Wales, romance on January 25 is a love affair with that identity.

St. Dwynden watches over florists, and all those smitten with Welshness.