Human Flower Project

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Muguets for May Day

France celebrates May Day with anarchy and fragrance from a better world.

Image: French Gardening

Baisers to our French readers and to Francophiles everywhere. (Incroyable, there are even some of us in Texas.)

Along with protests of globalization and worker holiday parades, May 1st brings an outpouring of floral traditions across Europe. My favorite, ever since teachers Josette Kearns, Bernadette Brown, and Nicole Neukirch informed me, is the French custom of selling, giving and wearing muguet des bois, lilies of the valley.

French Gardening tells us:

“Lily of the valley is referred to as a porte-bonheur --literally, bringer of happiness or perhaps what we would call a good luck charm.

“A few days before May Day, you begin to see vendors popping up on every corner selling lily of the valley.  Although at all other times of the year, selling any kind of flowers or anything else on the street requires paying for a permit, merry May Day is exempted from this evil tax, and anyone can sell the blossoms anywhere without being tithed by the city.  And of course, every florist has pots and bouquets of lily of the valley dominating their outdoor displays… Even the Metro is perfumed.”

Lily of the valley happens to grow wonderfully well where I grew up, and to bloom around May first. So I’d always assumed this was a very old custom, dating to pre-Marxist, pre-capitalist, pre-Christian France. But it appears I was wrong.

While Convallaria majalis L., liliaceae family, grows wild in much of Europe and has been regarded as bringing good luck since the Renaissance, its specific association with May Day came much later, from popular and commercial culture rather than folk tradition.

Felix Mayol

According to this terrific little essay, “On May Day 1895, (Felix) Mayol, the cabaret singer, was greeted by his girlfriend Jenny Cook with some lily-of-the-valley and that evening he wore lily-of-the-valley in his buttonhole instead of the more usual Camellia.” Long before Billie Holliday pinned a gardenia in her hair, Mayol was wearing a cluster of muguets des bois—fragrant enough to to reach the last seat in the balcony.

Given this boost of celebrity, the lily of the valley then became an up-market promotion: “The great fashion houses gave sprigs of lily-of-the-valley to their customers and apprentices on May Day.”

Muguet seller, Brittany
Photo: Bretagne Air

This same source declares 1976 as the year lily-of-the-valley was thoroughly associated with May Day. If my French teachers can be trusted, and they can, I’d say 1976 is a bit late. The muguet meant May Day in France by at least 1965. As always, we welcome your experiences, learning, observations.

Our thoughts are with you, nos amis francais, who manage to balance anarchy with elan. For those who find the deconstruction of lovely floral customs disenchanting, we say, tant pis. Deconstruction, too, is French. Pin on your muguets des bois and head on down to the anti-globalization march.

Friday, April 29, 2005

The Duchenne Smile

Four psychologists put flowers to the test, and find blossoms induce “powerful positive emotions.”

A true smile
from Mrs. Enoeda
Photo: Karate Union of Great Britain

Are flowers trying to get in good with us humans in order to survive?

That’s one premise coming out of an interesting new study led by Rutgers University psychologist Jeanette Haviland-Jones, now published in Evolutionary Psychology.

Haviland-Jones and her team performed three experiments to test the impact of flowers on emotion and memory. (By the way, the study was partly funded by the Society of American Florists.)

In their first study, they tested short and longer term mood shifts of women who were given a “mixed flower bouquet (including roses, lilies and stocks).” Other research subjects, poor dears, received, “a fruit and sweets basket” or “a large multi-wicked (?) candle.” Researchers were first looking for “The Duchene Smile,” that smile that scrunches not just the cheeks but the eyes, and represents, for experimental psychologists, “a reliable indicator of happiness.”

While all the gifts elicited smiles—as, we learn, will most any surprise that’s not a stick in the eye— 100% of the women who received bouquets came through with the “Duchenne smile” and showed “longer term increase in positive mood,” too.

Of equal interest to us, the researchers also found that flower-getters were more likely to situate their gifts “in communal spaces” – suggesting, as we believe, that flowers are socially charged, rather than just personal pleasures.

King Gustaf V of Sweden
receiving flowers on his 85th birthday
Photo: World Roots

In the second experiment, people were handed a Gerber daisy or a pen or nothing in an elevator. Both men and women who received flowers “were more likely to smile, to stand at a social distance rather than at an impersonal distance and to initiate conversation.” When was the last time you cozied up to someone who handed you a pen?

An intriguing part of this experiment, given short shrift in the article, was that some research subjects simply rode the elevator with a person carrying flowers but weren’t offered a blossom. Much to their credit, two of these folks ogled the flowers, got off the elevator, then got back on and asked if they could have flowers. To heck with the Duchenne Smile. How about the “Buster Clutch”? Get this pair back to the lab for further study!

Sister Concepta with flowers
Photo: Notre Dame High School, Sheffield

Study three tested whether receiving flowers might improve the memories and sociability of elderly people. It found “participants who received...flowers had higher scores” on a memory task. This experiment, while interesting, seemed least convincing to me.  As the great Marcel Mauss taught us long ago, there’s no such thing as a “free gift.” Receiving a gift sets up an obligation.

In other words, research subjects who had gotten flowers would feel more inclined to play along with the study, exerting themselves in the researchers’ rather tedious tests of memory. Those who hadn’t been cajoled with flowers very reasonably might have dissed the experiment.

It’s not possible to do justice to this interesting study in such a short summary, so check it out in full. Fans of Michael Pollen’s book The Botany of Desire will especially enjoy Dr. Haviland-Jones’s research, as it tries to extend some of Pollen’s fascinating ideas of plant-animal co-evolution—in an elevator, no less.

Psychedelic Mountains

A day-glo landscape from California. Thanks to our Santa Maria, CA, correspondent for forwarding this miracle on.

“Carrizo Plain (between Bakersfield and Paso Robles)”
Photo: Frankie Kee

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Kent Queasy over Yellow Blooms

An English town council has gone aflutter over the political implication of daffodils.

A non-controversial daffodil bouquet, in Kentucky
Photo (detail):

Devotion to flowers is the saving grace of the English (just our tacky American opinion). But even in this respect our friends across the Atlantic can be a mite bit CONTROLLING.

The Scotsman must have enjoyed publishing this story: of a Tory-dominated town council forbidding daffodils.

“Valerie Jewess was stunned when told the bright yellow flowers had to go as they were the same colour associated with Liberal Democrats.” Ms. Jewess had brought the narcissus to thank employees at the Medway Council Archive Centre, Strood, Kent, “for helping her research her family tree.”

The Medway council later made a public apology and said the flowers could stay. “In guidelines issued to managers reference was made to the colour of floral displays but, of course, we did not mean a bunch of daffodils.”

So, what exactly did you mean?

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Let It Grow

The new union of Colombian flower workers faces a new obstacle.

Sintrasplendor is an independent union of workers at Dole’s Splendor Flowers plantation in Colombia. The group, numbering 700 members now, filed papers with the Labor Ministry last month to gain official recognition and all the rights that come with that.

Flower worker’s hands

Mother’s Day project
photos taken in 2004
by flower workers in
Colombia and Ecuador

According to the International Labor Rights Fund, the company has now filed objections to the union, meanwhile setting up a worker organization under its own control.

The ILRF urges everyone to protest this union busting and support the legitimate and independent worker group: Sintrasplendor. See the INLF site for detailed explanations of the credentialing process and Splendor Flowers’ action. The site makes it simple to alert Colombian authorities.

Right to assemble? Collective bargaining? Safe working conditions, anyone?

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Legendary Dogwood

Across the Southeast U.S., the dogwoods are in bloom, pink, white, heavy with Christian lore.

Dogwoods, April 17
Louisville, Kentucky

Flowering dogwoods (Cornus florida Linnaeus) alone recommend taking up residence in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia—at least for the months of April and May. As spring settles in, their ethereal understory—pink or white or pink-and-white—floats below black branches or electric green leaves of taller neighbors.

Before getting too mystical, let it be said that I first met dogwoods not in an Appalachian glade but a suburban subdivision of Louisville; developers in the 1950s flocked to them for instant beauty in neighborhoods still smelling of sawdust. My friend Caroline Joyes up the street knew all about flowers and trees. She even had some silver dogwood jewelry. I think it was from Caroline I first learned the legend of the dogwood.

I came across this version of the dogwood legend yesterday. Like so much on the web, the source has been omitted:

“At the time of Jesus Christ’s Crucifixion the dogwood was the size of the oak and other forest trees. So firm and strong was the tree that it was chosen as the timber for the cross. To be used thus for such a cruel purpose greatly distressed the tree, and Jesus, nailed upon it, sensed this, and in his suffering said to it: Because of your regret and pity for My suffering, never again shall the dogwood tree grow large enough to be used as a cross. Henceforth it shall be slender and bent and twisted and its blossoms shall be in the form of a cross...two long and two short petals. And in the center of the outer edge of each petal there will be nail prints, brown with rust and stained with red, and in the center of the flower will be a crown of thorns, and all who see it will remember.”

To look close up at a dogwood flower (actually a bract, not a flower) can be a religious experience; the tips of the petals ARE rusty on one side and brown-red on the other.

A site that sells dogwood jewelry claims that dogwoods were part of old May Day customs:  “Couples would go ‘a-Maying’ after midnight, taking branches from trees and decorating them with garlands of flowers. Upon returning home soon after sunrise, the garlands would be placed over doors and windows. According to American frontier folklore, a young girl who wears a white dogwood blossom on this morning will learn the Christian name of her future husband when she meets the first man wearing a white hat that day.”

“Hoss,” unfortunately, springs to mind.

There are some fine sites about dogwood trees, some with dreadful muzak too. One source says that Native Americans fashioned arrows from dogwood. Another website reports that “Atlantic creoles” used the bark—quite effectively—to whiten their teeth. Anglo-American pioneers made all sorts of implements out of dogwood: “hay forks and mallets, cogwheels and pegs for grain mills, pulleys and wheel hubs, knitting needles....” The Killer-Plants etymologist says that the name dogwood comes from “a dag or dagge (from the Celtic/Old Gaelic, daga, a pointed tool).”

The flowering dogwood has “a natural range from Ontario to Mexico, east to Florida and north to Massachusetts.” There used to be fine dogwood stands in the northern U.S., but Dogwood Anthracnose, which was first discovered in Seattle, Washington, circa 1976, migrated eastward; “Between 1978 and 1987, the disease devastated dogwood populations in the northeast.”

On Basswood Lane, Louisville, Ky.

Remembering the flowers of childhood, I’m often nagged by loss. The bluebonnets used to be thicker. The roses were sweeter. Ou sont les neiges d’antan? This trip back to Kentucky broke the mold.

Belated happy birthday, Caroline. You’ll be glad to know the dogwoods in Rolling Fields and down Mockingbird Valley Road are more beautiful than ever.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Sluggo’s Garden

From “Nancy”:  the Logos of container gardening.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Rites of Tsvetnitsa

Bulgaria celebrates the Orthodox faith’s Palm Sunday today, with willow branches and floral wreaths.

Only late in the day did we learn that this is Bulgaria’s biggest floral occasion, Tsvetnitsa-Vrabnitsa: Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church. An ebullient holiday of spring, it combines remembrance of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem with much older celebrations of Bulgarian maidens and the burgeoning countryside itself.

Lazarki, and rites of Palm Sunday in Bulgaria
Photo: Okitokibg

The festivities actually began on Saturday, with Lazarovden, or St. Lazar’s Day, “a festival devoted to young girls, pastures, fields and woods.” It all sounds like something out of Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough or a Joseph Campbell pipedream:

“The young girls called ‘lazarki’ form groups of 10 to 20 members and as they go from house to house, they sing special songs and perform traditional dances. Two of the maidens carry a basket, in which they put the eggs, collected from the housewives. Another couple sings and dances while all the others clap their hands and sing in accompaniment. The songs, containing love and bridal elements, are directed to all members of the family. The heads of the girls bear wreaths of spring flowers. The young ‘lazarki’ wear colorful sleeveless dresses and bright stockings as a symbol of the awakening nature. It is believed that a young girl is not ready for marriage until she performs dances and songs for ‘Lazarovden.’”

On the morning of Palm Sunday itself (celebrated April 24th this year among Bulgaria’s Orthodox Christians), “the ‘lazarki’ go to the river. After finding a place where the waters are calm, they put pieces of traditional breads called ‘kukli’ (dolls) on willow barks and let them go into the river simultaneously. The girl whose bark outsails those of the others is pronounced ‘kumitsata.’”

We assume that’s a good thing. Bulgarian readers, please advise.

“Once the ritual is performed, they go to the house of the ‘kumitsata,’ where they sit down to table, on which ritual pieces of bread, hominy and mashed nettle are served.”

Floral headpieces are an insignia of maidenhood, or at least feminine sexuality, in many cultures --from Olympia and Billie Holliday to ‘here comes the bride’; Tsvetnitsa headgear is especially splendid. But this festival’s Human Flower Project extends way beyond costumes. It’s also the name day for every Roza, Lilia and Violeta in the land. Name days are more important than birthdays in Bulgaria, and Palm Sunday—Tsvetnitsa—celebrates every person who’s named for a flower or tree.

Can all this be? We are very eager to learn if these are living customs or simply “local color” dribbled on a travel website—Bulgaria’s version of maypole dancing.

In any case, good wishes to all Tsvetelinas, Yavors, Kamelias, and our dear Roses of North America too.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Narcissus-ism

Wet winters, dry summers and good soils of the American Midwest translate each spring into daffodils.

Larry Force’s ‘American Dream’
Gold Ribbon Winner
American Daffodil Society, 2005
Photo: Tom Stettner

Daffodil exhibitions cropped up across Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri this April, shows of both the roadside and the indoor, ribbon-granting kind. Recent competitive gatherings have taken place in both Louisville and Cincinnati (these were people-contests since flowers, so far as we know, lack ambition). The American Daffodil Society held its national convention in St. Louis, where, Post-Dispatch reporter Becky Homan wrote, “250 national and international experts were expected.”

Beth Holbrooke of the St. Louis daffodil club informs us by e-mail: “58 entrants displayed 750 exhibits that totalled at least 1775 blooms. We had entrants from around the country and Northern Ireland, with attendees from New Zealand, Australia, Northern Ireland, The Netherlands.”

According to event chairman Jason Delaney, of the Missouri Botanical Garden, “The competition is fierce…not to prove which are the better garden cultivars but which is the most aesthetically pleasing - and perfect - daffodil in a cut-flower show. There’s a whole day of people grooming these flowers, straightening their petals and cleaning them.”

Tom Stettner of the ADS has a terrific photo-site of winning blooms from this event and many others. Larry Force’s golden and Gold-ribbon-winning American Dream, Kathy Welsh’s collection of 12 miniatures, all pose before a black drape – the better to show off their shapes and colors.

Stettner writes that for him the convention is more reunion then competition: He was especially happy to see “those who haven’t been with us for a few years… a hybridizer from Australia and a couple from New Zealand. The show was wonderful, as expected.”

At the Midwest Regional Daffodil Show, held the prior weekend in Louisville, Kentucky, I had the pleasure to meet Helen Trueblood, an 87 year old daffodil grower from Scottsburg, Indiana. Mrs. Trueblood, who was raised on a dairy farm, says daffodils originated in the mountains of Italy and Spain. They “moved through England” and were brought by pioneer settlers in Southern Indiana. When years ago, her grandfather Richey plowed up “two big strips” to plant fescue for his calves, he managed to spread out an old line of daffodil bulbs so successfully they called his farm Easter Hill.

Helen Trueblood, at the Midwest Regional Daffodil Show
April 2, 2005, Louisville, Kentucky
Photo: Carolyn Courtney

The Kentucky Daffodil society presents the Helen Trueblood Green Rosette Award for “the best bloom or collection” of “intermediates” (one of a zillion classes of narcissus, or daffodil). Mrs. Trueblood says her personal favorite is the pseudo-narcissus, with its “twisty petals.”

The American Daffodil Society provides friendly instructions about how to grow daffodils, with essays from narcissus-ists from New England to New Mexico. Around Louisville, Hilda Dunaway says, you plant bulbs in the fall “when the dogwood foliage turns red.” Or just plow an old fenceline.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Pollenatrix

Botanical Discipline, Daily

Blogger Pollenatrix
and her sloth friend Velcro

Whether you’re into clematis bondage or not, check out Pollenatrix, a compendium of eco-wise weirdness.

Recent posts link to stories about plants that eat dentists and the rescue of a giant catfish (as well as kindly mention of HFP’s piece on the royal wedding bouquet). She also offers instruction on how to run from Siberian iris.

Here’s the only blogger we know with her chin in a live-sloth sling.