Human Flower Project

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Narantsetseg - Mongolia’s Sunflower

One of the most sparsely populated countries in the world enjoys bountiful wildflowers, but don’t blink. You’ll miss them.

Wildflowers, east of Ulaanbaatar, July 2003
Photo: Escapade in Mongolie

We lost power last night—for about two hours—after receiving a thin coat of sleet. School’s been cancelled. The streets are empty. And it’s all of 28 degrees outside.

If we weren’t a bit chilly still, we’d doff our hats to the Human Flower Project’s most recent visitor, from Mongolia. Last we checked it was - 17F (-27C) in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongol capital. No wonder Genghis Khan commanded an empire. These people have grit!

They also have a love of flowers, and an abundance of them too in summer. This travelogue, written by an Australian, and this one by a visitor from Britain  both remark that the wildflowers are especially beautiful.

“We passed colourful meadows and river banks with Viper’s Bugloss and orange Globe Flowers coating the banks beside the road. As we progressed higher, the meadow flowers were replaced by alpine varieties and it became the turn of Alpine Asters, and, as a surprise to us, Edelweiss in prolific numbers. We also saw many butterflies on Knapweed.” But as they say, “You shoulda been here in July!”

Sunflowers in Ulaanbaatar, September 2005
Photo: Escapade in Mongolie

We discovered a site about Mongolian names: “Women may be named after flowers, like Narantsetseg, ‘sunflower’, Odval, ‘chrysanthemum’ or Khongordzol, ‘thistle.’” (We’ve known some “Thistles,” certainly.)

This blogger relates that “For more than 80 years, everyone in Mongolia was on a first-name basis (the Communists had banned family names). Within a few decades ancestral names were forgotten altogether and Mongolians used only a single given name. Nine thousand women ended up with the same name, Altantsetseg, meaning ‘golden flower.’” In the U.S., it’s been capitalism not Communism that’s done away with family names, giving us Madonna, Prince, Cher, and 50 Cent (or is that two names?).

Children carrying water, Ger District, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Photo: Escapade in Mongolie

After seeing photographs of Mongolia, we’ll never call Texas “Big Sky Country” again. To our visitors from Mongolia and other parts north, welcome and please keep in touch. It’s warmer that way.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Fauna Favoritism

Plants lose out in the contest for government protection.

Saskia as Flora (detail), 1634
Rembrandt van Rijn
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

With nearly 1300 species on the U.S. Endangered Species list, bats, onions, monkshoods, and mice are all witlessly campaigning for survival.

Eric Hand of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch laid bare the system’s zoo-chauvinism. Citing a 2003 report of all state and federal expenditures on at-risk creatures, Hand wrote, “Plants make up more than half of the 1,290 plant and animal species on the federal endangered or threatened list. But animals get 97 percent of the money.”

Animals inspire more and louder human advocacy. We were startled to note that even the National Resource Defense Council’s webpage on endangered species is zoo-centric. This science education feature from Yahoo includes photos and information about endangered animals, but no plants at all.

Nelson’s checker-mallow, (Sidalcea nelsoniana)
Threatened plant, native to Oregon’s Wilmette Valley
Photo: Center for Plant Conservation
Hand’s article refers to “plant blindness,” botanist James Wandersee’s term for the general neglect of leafy species. He writes that preference for fellow animals is partly evolutionary: “The human eye notices color, movement and danger — in short, animals.” People tend to see plants and flowers as “ground,” animals as “figures” heroically striding or comically skittering across a green backdrop. According to NatureServe, “there are 16,100 native plant species in the United States. Of those, 5,474 — more than one-third — are considered at risk,” especially so, since they’re existential “wallflowers.”

Truly, how does milk vetch hope to compete with flipper-swashing whales and trotting foxes? The squeaky wheel gets greased, and the cuddly species funded.

Perhaps contemporary artists, rather than churning out a thousand more still lifes of tulips, would be wiser to revive Flora, goddess of fertility and the vegetative world. As antidote to “plant blindness,” the ancient Romans honored flowers in the surest way they knew how—by making them a person.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Ova-tion for Stem Cell Research

South Korean women bring flowers and pledge their eggs to the research university where human stem cells have been cloned.

Cross section of a flower ovary
Photo: Ray Nelson

Less than two weeks ago, Korea’s brilliant star of science Hwang Woo-suk disappeared from the sky, resigning from the World Stem Cell Hub in Seoul amid claims he had improperly obtained human eggs.

Today over a hundred women pledged their own eggs toward further embryonic research and asked for Hwang’s return. In a symbolic gesture of self-sacrifice and support, each presented a flower to members of Seoul National University’s cloning research team, the blooms both real and artificial surrounding a framed photograph of the daring doctor.

Hwang and his lab succeeded in cloning human stem cells last year, and this year produced Snuppy,  the first cloned dog. There have been allegations that Hwang’s team paid for human eggs and obtained ova from junior researchers. Announcing his resignation, Hwang publicly apologized: “Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research,” he said.  The South Korean government stated he did nothing illegal.

Women carrying rose of Sharon flowers make symbolic donation of their eggs to Seoul National University’s stem cell research team
Photo: Lee Jae-Won, for Reuters.

Internet fan club, ‘I Love Hwang-woo-suk,’ organized today’s demonstration, a 21st Century human flower project of the first degree. For as well as being globally recognized gifts, flowers, of course, are the sex organs of plants.  Ovules (the plant equivalents of human ova) grow protectively deep inside blossoms and “contain a flowering plant’s female sex germs. When they are fertilized by male sex germs, they mature into seeds.”  This flower ceremony very literally conveyed the promise of female reproductive cells, ovule for egg.

With Hwang at the forefront of world stem cell science (a competition which for some weird reason is considered morally knottier than the arms race, though just as hot), the flower-for-egg pledge also brimmed with patriotism. Some women sang the Korean national anthem as they waited in line, and many carried not real flowers but facsimiles of Hibiscus syriacus, or Rose of Sharon, the South Korean national flower.

Hwang Woo-suk
Photo: Ki Ho Park, for Kistone

Hwang’s laboratory achievements, his resignation, and the de-flowering enactment today are revelations of cultural variation. Interviewed a year ago, Hwang observed that, whereas American women can sell their ova for up to $4000 apiece, “In Korea, they don’t sell their eggs. It’s not a law, but ethically women just wouldn’t trade off their eggs.” He added, “They donate for the reasons of religion. For example, in Buddhism, Buddhists would donate to help patients cure their illness.” In many parts of the world, Hwang allowed, this sort of “philanthropy” would seem strange.

Stranger than giving away a cluster of “sacrificed” plant sex organs (a.k.a. a bouquet) to one’s sweetheart?

Flower in hand, one participant in today’s demonstration avowed: “Hwang, who puts forth every ounce of his energy to help mankind, portrays the true image of Buddha.” She’s a 43-year old woman—so who knows how viable her eggs may be? She decided to become an ova donor when her younger brother was paralyzed in a car crash.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Etiquette Telegrams (STOP)

Mobile phones and e-mail sunder a Chinese flower custom.

Telegram of condolence
at the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama
Image:  China.org

After 12 years, China’s telegraph service and its associated floral telegraph delivery have ended. Known as etiquette telegrams, these were messages of greeting, condolence and congratulation.

“We started the public etiquette telegram service in February, 1988, and that was the golden time of telegraphy. The flower service was introduced in September, 1993,” said Li Bin of Hefei Telecom. “We had dozens of customers every month several years ago, now the number has dropped to one digit.”

I can remember receiving only one telegram in my life, from my brother Peter who sent birthday greetings from the other side of the world—each letter tapped out in purplish ink onto strips of ivory paper pasted onto a sheet from Western Union. It was miraculous, better than a message in a bottle.

Etiquette seems to undergird much of Chinese business life—check out this site from a promotions company called Perfect Smile. We’re not sure what part flowers have played in these social rituals of China, or will play now that flower telegraph service has been suspended. If you know, please send word, with a comment here or via (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).