Human Flower Project

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Climate Change Gets Mai Attention

Bad news for Year of the Pig: The beloved flower of southern Vietnam is blooming three months ahead of schedule.

Blooming Hoa Mai
in Saigon, Tet 2005
Photo: Tom Legg, The Daai Tou Laam Diary

Tet is still months away; lunar new year, the biggest holiday in Vietnam and much of the rest of Asia, won’t arrive till February 18, 2007.

But Vietnam Net reports that the traditional good luck flower of the south—bong mai—a shrub carefully pruned and coddled to bloom for the occasion, has already flowered. This is bad news all around for Year of the Pig.

“It is estimated that a half of the apricot flowers will not be marketable as they have blossomed sooner than expected. Households that grow apricots for sale are unhappy as they will not be able to sell apricots to earn money for Tet. Moreover, they fear that the early blossoming will bring bad luck in the next year.”

Called “apricot,” the traditional mai flower is actually fruitless. It refers to several varieties of ochna, most of them with radiant yellow flowers. The oldest species has five petals, but breeders have developed fluffier varieties: Sa Dec has nine petals, My Tho 24 petals, Go Den 48 petals, and Ben Tre 120. Tricking a mai plant to bloom precisely at the new year requires experience, persistent attention, and skill. Even so, the weather must cooperate.

“Hoang Trong, who plans to sell 5,000 apricot ornamental trees on the market, said that he tried to apply many measures to hold back the blossoming,” but failed.  Temperatures were too high for too long a stretch.

In Ben Tre province, where most of the mai nurseries are concentrated, a district business official predicts losses of several billion VND.  The effects may ripple throughout Vietnam, though, since bare mai plants signal a poor year.

The early mai flowers provide yet more anecdotal evidence of climate change. In the UK, there are several ongoing efforts to pull together the findings from botanists and gardeners about changing behaviors of plants and animals. In our own locale, M. Sinclair Stevens has been faithfully carrying on a one-person study. Zanthan Gardens, as far as we know, is the primordial garden blog and celebrates its fifth anniversary today. We need more “anecdotal evidence.”

Thanks to neighbor Katie for lending us An Inconvenient Truth, with two hours of scientific evidence!

In a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, several states are asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency to restrict carbon dioxide emissions, a primary cause of global warming. Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Gregory Garre (speaking for federal leaders and their friends in the auto industry) told the court yesterday, “Now is not the time to exercise such authority, in light of the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding global climate change.”

But Mr. Solicitor there IS no such uncertainty, scientific or anecdotal. Get off the phone with the auto manufacturers and talk to a scientist. Or spend a day with the mai growers of southern Vietnam.
“Year of the Pig” is about right.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Jacaranda: The Lilac Emigre’

The streets of Buenos Aires succumb to purple haze.

Jacarandas and spring sky, November in Buenos Aires
Photo: Mary Ann Roser and Ted Thomas

Travel to the capital of Argentina is advised March to May, September to November, especially the latter, since that’s when the city’s jacaranda trees are in full flower.

There are 39 species, but the queen of Buenos Aires appears to be Jacaranda mimosifolia, frothing above the Recoleta like the bubbles of grape soda. Aloft, the blossoms make a regal canopy for strollers and picnickers. By December, the blooms turn to a surf of amethyst.

This beauty, native to Argentina and Brazil, loves riversides. It’s been spread now over much of the subtropical world. Botanist Kate Sessions introduced to tree to hospitable San Diego. Pretoria, South Africa, calls itself “Jacaranda City,” and Grafton, Australia, hosts a two week jacaranda festival in late October-early November. In Queensland, according to the UBC Botanical experts, the trees have done well enough to become a nuisance, though Geoff Clark’s tale of his mom’s 30 year struggle to grow one of these purple glories suggests conditions might be a bit tougher in New South Wales.

Under the Jacaranda by R. Godfrey Rivers (1903)
Queensland Heritage

If you’d like to try growing a jacaranda, this good site describes a number of tree varieties, the conditions they tend to like, and other particularities, which include “interesting leathery seedpods.”

Ross McKinnon of Brisbane Botanic Gardens writes that Walter Hill collected the first jacaranda to be planted in Australia, 1864. Artist R. Godfrey Rivers painted this very tree in full bloom in 1903, a work that’s still one of the most popular pieces in the Queensland Art Gallery collection. The tree flourished here until 1979 “when it was blown over during a cyclone ― part of the trunk is now located at the offices of the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.”

Mil gracias to Mary Ann Roser and Ted Thomas, recently back from a jacaranda-strewn visit to Buenos Aires, llenos de inspiracion.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Shush!

As flowers pipe up, tranquility recedes.

Communication Flower (earplugs not included)
Photo: via engadget

The fan’s whirring, a neighbor’s dog barks, a plane grumbles overhead, and up the street, a dozer intermittently is beeping its back-up warning to traffic. This is at home, on a quiet-ish corner.

Now the world has gotten louder. An ancient bearer of tranquility has been wired for sound. Just in time for holiday shopping orgiastics, we have Communication Flower, a gizmo that “will randomly belt out ‘200 words and phrases’ whenever you speak to or touch the connected bouquet.’” Looks like it sells for about $35—the gift for the person who has everything, except peace of mind.

Tatsu-nami
Photo: Chrysanthemums of Japan

We’re thinking this item was made in Japan. What a long way from the silence of Haiku. One early enthusiast noted “a good dog or boyfriend (or girlfriend) can do pretty much the same, but the advantage here is that you can turn the Communication Flower off when it bores you..!”

We’re dumbfounded. First fragrance was bred out of flowers. Must we lose their silence, too?

For those enchanted by the thought of yakking or yodeling blossoms, we offer this ditty, kindly forwarded by our friend Renessa in Canada.

To the rest of you, we send Oshima Ryota (1718-1787):

mono iwazu
kyaku to teishu to
shiragiku to

No one spoke,
The host, the guest,
The white chrysanthemums.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Perishable and Exact: Rebecka Sexton

With paint, pencil and 85,000 daisy petals, a Chicago artist maps a new world.

Red Camouflage: Long Time Back, by Rebecka Sexton
at the Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, TX
Photo: Julie Ardery

Rounding our way through the Flatbed Press building in East Austin, we stumbled into an odd laboratory. Here were singing silhouettes, oil drums, plants under grow-lights, and along one wall a immense map (or was it a musical score?) radiating away from a huge yellow disc.

We’d just crossed over into The Creative Research Laboratory, an outpost of the University of Texas Fine Art Department. The current show reunites students and former students, instructors and former faculty, pointing up some of their shared themes, media and techniques. But it was the red “lettering” along the wall that drew us close; on inspection we saw this wasn’t script but petals, thousands of them assiduously pinned into the wall and each crowned with a tiny tufted seed.

Red Camouflage by Rebecka Sexton (detail)
Photo: Julie Ardery

This marvelous combination of the natural and the schematic is the work of artist Rebecka Sexton. She earned an MFA at University of Texas in 1995 and was an instructor here in Austin before moving north to Chicago, her home now.

We first saw her artwork, a show called “Pink,” in 1997 at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky. It included a variety of flowers impaled like wilting butterflies to a white wall. In the years since, she’s created many installations with flowers, harnessing the fragility of blooms to steely artistic intention. We found the new work, titled “Red Camouflage: Long Time Back,” especially strong.

Gerberas awaiting installation
Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, TX
Photo: Rebecka Sexton

Sexton writes that for this piece she had a nurseryman “patron.” She contacted Doug Dobecki of B & H Flowers, gerbera specialty growers in Carpinteria, California.  “I described the nature of the art exhibit and the emphasis on mentoring,” Sexton says, “and Doug offered to donate the flowers,” all 2500 of them.

From a distance, the piece looks like a red planet flayed into two dimensions and orbiting the sun. “The yellow circle,” Sexton writes, “is the size and height of a body. It is supposed to engulf the viewer, to act as a visual tool to bring them to that part of the wall and reflect onto them.” Up close, each petal hangs like a tiny tongue, desirous and tender.

For lots more on Red Camouflage and the process of its creation, here’s an interview with the artist.

In the past several years, Sexton has been using gerberas because of the petals’ shape, their profusion on each bloom, and their durability: “They don’t disintegrate for a long period of time - years actually.”

But the current show won’t last that long. If you’re anywhere near Austin, catch it before December 2. The Creative Research Laboratory, at 2832 East Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., is open noon-5 pm, Tuesday - Saturday.  (512) 322.2099

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Drinking Chrysanthemum

For the meek, the prejudiced and the overheated...

A cuppa chrys in Shanghai, 2005
Photo: No Such Thing as a Clear Blue Sky

Flower plans are being laid now for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and once more chrysanthemums are embroiled in controversy.

Roses and mums, both emblems of this city, have already been chosen as key flowers for the games, though “in recent years, a debate has arisen over the suitability of the Chrysanthemum as one of Beijing’s signature flowers due to its widespread use as a funeral flower in the West,” China Daily reports.

“Supporters of the flower argue that it received high praise in ancient Chinese literature and if you gave someone a single Chrysanthemum, it meant you viewed the person as honest. Even so, Chinese diplomatic officials now no longer consider a gift of a Chrysanthemum appropriate for visiting foreign guests.”

In our view, “foreign guests” everywhere should cede to the flower customs of the lands they visit, and if that rule can mean shedding chrysanthemum bigotry, all the better.

The chrysanthemum is not just enjoyed but honored and frequently imbibed in China and Taiwan. Ag scientists say of Chinese wines “there are six different kinds...that are said to have healthful properties”; among them, chrysanthemum is considered beneficial for everyone, especially those who are a bit on the timid side:  “the chrysanthemum drink aims to increase brazenness” (but so will muscatel...).

Chrysanthemum in the can, a picker-upper
Photo: CT Food

Chrysanthemum tea is a favorite, too, both hot and cold. This blogger reports that, during a recent bout of illness, two friends delivered chrysanthemum tea to speed recovery. Which came first, the art or the medicine? In any case, chrysanthemum has a long literary history in China. Those who think flowers are girly (and who think that’s undesireable) should note that “rarely is the chrysanthemum compared with women - it is more often associated with independent, proud, noble, willful and tough men, such as Qu Yuan and Tao Yuanming.”

In a film called Chrysanthemum Tea (2000) the beverage begets love between a railroad worker and a teacher. “Brazenness”? Maybe it’s just anti-inhibitive and, on some, that looks brazen.

Lest this all sound esoteric, our correspondent Mesh Wu from Taipei writes otherwise. “In Taiwan, every (24-hour) convenience store sells this drink.” Instead of a Diet Dr. Pepper (doink), coulda had a Chrysanthemum tea! In Chinese medicine it’s considered cooling, just the thing for a sore throat or the end of a rancorous day.

For those who maintain a dislike for chrysanthemums (and who recognize that’s undesireable), we pass a cup and suggest working from the inside out.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Chypre by the Dozen

Francois Coty’s concoction endures on a million pulse points.

Two intimate friends from the same fragrance family
Photo: Julie Ardery

The first perfume we remember was Ma Griffe ("My Signature"), our mother’s favorite through the late ‘50s and ‘60s. It was green and a little bit sharp, less like dreaming on a couch stuffed with rose petals than walking in an olive grove and biting down on a sliver of lemon rind. Our own first perfume (not counting Ambush, the herd-fragrance of junior high school) was Dioressence. It too delivered a bite, but spicier. When Dioressence disappeared from the shelves for several years and came back as a dud, we switched to Miss Dior. Our new favorite is an old Guerlain: Mitsouko. Again, there’s that pungent, wake up and wonder feeling, slightly musty and not-so-sweet.

All these fragrances, we’ve since learned, are classified as chypres, “based on oakmoss, ciste-labdanum, patchouli and bergamot.” The name is French for Cyprus, and one delight of these perfumes is that they are reminiscent of the herbs and wild plants of a Mediterranean island, tingly and dry.

Francois Coty, who created the original Chypre
Photo: Histoire de Francois Coty

Chypre was also the name of the perfume Francois Coty created in 1917 from this combination of scents. When the public fell in love with his perfume, other houses scrambled to concoct something similar. Mitsouko, from 1919, is sometimes classed a fruity-chypre, and contains peach, rose and, we think, a dash of pepper. Others, like Miss Dior, with jasmine and gardenia, are more flowery.

Cistus Ladanifer, an ingredient in many chypre perfumes
Photo: Paghat’s Garden

According to the the International Perfume Museum in Grasse, these sharper, mossier scents began a new era. Here was a change not just of style but of sociology: “While perfumes remain elitist and limited in distribution right up to the First World War, Coty’s ‘Chypre’ breaks with tradition in 1917 by proposing the first perfume for the masses which will encounter an exceptional public reception.” This family of fragrances dominated perfumes until about 1950, when new synthentic ingredients (think Chanel No. 5) swerved the industry in yet another new direction.

Fondness for particular scents or types of scents is mysterious—one of the last experiences on earth that cannot be captured on a cell-phone camera. This piece from the Observer (UK) is entertaining and instructive too. It makes clear why in sampling perfumes one has to be patient, spritzing a little on, then waiting a half hour or more to let the middle and base notes assert themselves. This site gives a good basic explanation of fragrance families, and this one is downright encyclopedic. It classifies 149 perfumes as chypres.

Femme, Fendi, Ysatis...so many fragrances, so little time!

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Cops & Flowers

Stories from Greece, South Africa, and the U.S. suggest that flowers and law enforcement don’t mix.

Image: Government
of Thailand

Billy clubs, safety whistles, mace, and holsters, yes. But flowers, no—they don’t come to mind when we think of policing.

And three recent stories indicate that boys (and girls) with shiny badges had best stay clear of anything floral while on the job. In Cape Town, a couple has rebuffed a bouquet—the peace offering from local police. Allegedly, police came banging on the door in the middle of the night, were given entry, and then proceeded to harass the couple, demanding the whereabouts of “Bernard.”

“I told them two men by the name of Bernard had lived there before we became the new homeowners,” said one of the residents. “But they would not understand. They were rude and forced us to put our hands on a machine,” apparently a “Morphe Touche” machine, used to collect fingerprints.

Police offered an apology, R2 000 (to repair damaged burglar bars), and flowers, but the couple refused to make-up. In South Africa, as in many other places, giving and accepting flowers indicate that a hostile social relation is simmering down, and this pair (rather understandably) prefers to stay on Hot St.. They’ve filed a formal complaint against the department.

In Portland, Oregon, a sheriff’s deputy has resigned and pled guilty to a charge of harassment. He allegedly stopped several women drivers, then asked them to “lift up their shirts, unzip their pants and unhook their bras so he could look for a flower tattoo,” claiming he was looking for a tattooed suspect. One of the women pressed charges. When did we stop id-ing by names, drivers’ license numbers and photos? “Officer, my face is a flower. Does it look like your suspect?”

And in Thessaloniki, Greece, police are blaming a political protestor’s injuries on a flower pot. Last Friday, students marched in the city to mark the 33rd anniversary of a bloody uprising against Greece’s then-dictatorship. Something sent Avgoustinos Dimitriou to the hospital. Several faculty members of the local university say undercover police beat Dimitriou; “The police said that the 24-year-old Cypriot national sustained his injuries when he tripped and fell against a scooter and a large flower pot.”

An editorial by Pantelis Boukalas in today’s Kathimerini notes: “There has always been a problem with flower pots in this country, particularly in Thessaloniki: They tend to take on a life of their own and do not obey rules set by those who place them on sidewalks or balconies.... Let it be said that a hostile motorcycle parked nearby came to the flower pot’s aid in tripping up the hapless student.” Boukalas points out that video footage (shades of Rodney King) has vindicated the flower pot.

Perhaps our friends in law enforcement would do well to refrain from human flower projects till after hours.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Two Miles of Brush Flowers

Young people in Romania set a new record with a floral mural.

Strolling among panels of painted flowers
in Bucharest, Romania, November 18
Photo:  Bogdan Cristel, for Reuters

Students of Nicolae Tonitza High School in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, bore down with paint brushes yesterday at Baneasa Airport, putting 200 meters’ worth of final touches on an immense mural. The finished painting measured 3,464 meters long (two miles and then some) and qualifies as “the longest painting painted by children,” according to the Guinness World Record keepers. The title had been held by a children’s group from the United Arab Emirates.

The Romanian mural is floral, the theme selected by UNICEF official Wajidha Haris. “I chose flowers since they are an international symbol of children,” said Haris. Are they? We hadn’t realized this.

They certainly seem to be so in Romania. We’ve been reading about Casa Florilor—Flower House—in Lazu. Set up in association with the medical center of Baylor University, it’s a residence for children with HIV/AIDS.

And there’s an interesting reference in this 19th century essay about country life, written by Carmen Sylvia—the pen name of Romanian Queen Elizabeth. Describing customs of folk decoration, she wrote that peasant women “dip their hands in colors, red and blue, and stamp them on the window and door casings, the five fingers thus taking the place of the acanthus leaf.... When there is in the house a marriageable girl, flowers are painted on the wall, but should the maid have made a misstep, the lads go and blot the flowers out.”

Here, as in many wedding ceremonies, flowers represent childhood’s virginity, but as for flowers being a universal expression of children, we haven’t seen much evidence of that. Perhaps our readers will weigh in with help on this topic. ARE flowers “an international symbol” of children, or of peace, or of something else?

Friday, November 17, 2006

China’s Oil Seed and Oil Seed Painter

A major exporter of rapeseed, China has developed new oil rich strains, and an artist discovers its “Yellow Magic” around the globe.

Tourists photograph a field of rape
near Qinghai Lake, China, August 2006
Photo: People’s Daily

What’s more versatile than egg yolk, and just as yellow?

Brassica napus Linnaeus, or rapeseed, a mustard relative with the color to prove it. When it blooms around China’s Qinghai Lake, the tourists and the bees are out in force.

Richard Restell’s piece in That’s Beijing describes the buzz and bustle in western China when the rapeseed fields flower. “In the doorway an elderly lady is busy removing royal jelly from the cells of a comb, while several yards away Zhang Chen busily inspects the hives, removing the trays one by one and glancing over them with a professional eye. ‘I have been coming here for ten years and each year business improves,’ he says, ‘but competition is increasing and the lakeshore area is becoming quite crowded.’ Glancing along the highway it is clear that Zhang is right, the hives of other beekeepers are discernable in the distance, row upon row of industrious activity, the sky a multitude of little zipping black dots above a sea of yellow.”

Rapeseed isn’t widely cultivated in the U.S., but neighbor Canada grows about 4 million acres. The pressed oil makes an ingredient of margarine and shortening, and “rape produces nectar sufficiently to be considered a better honey plant than white or red clover (Hammer 1966). The nectar can be seen glistening in the bottom of the flower all day, and a colony of honey bees may store 15 to 33 pounds of honey per day (Palmer 1959). “ The plant has fed livestock for many centuries, too.

China, India, Canada and Europe are the world’s biggest producers, with China stretching its lead. In September, the Ministry of Agriculture announced its ag scientists had developed a new strain of rapeseed with the highest oil content ever: 54.72%. This comes as welcome news for the biodiesel business and its supporters. Next year’s International Rapeseed Congress, the 12th such gathering, will take place in Wuhan, China, March 26-30. Sounds like prime flower time.

“Yellow Palace”: Jiulongpu, Quijing
Painting:  Daniel Chieh

A very different kind of Human Flower Project involving rapeseed is the work of Daniel Chieh, who traveled to ten countries painting rapeseed in bloom. Chieh has found and captured the yellow fields in the U.S. (Arkansas), Ireland, Canada and throughout China, including Qinghai. Chieh was once a big omlet of high-tech industry but gave it up to travel and pursue his art.

“What is success?” he—like Allen Toussaint—asks. “When I’m young, I always think that success is being rich, owning a large house, having a stable job and so on. However, after experiencing hardships, now I have begun to realize that success is a kind of proficiency, a kind of capacity to grasp the good in the ordinary things of life, the imperceptible, and the capacity to feel appreciation.”

After his “yellow” year painting rapeseed (2002-2003), Chieh went on to investigate white (cranes), black-green (rivers) and purple-blue (the sky). In 2007, he’ll explore red (old towns). Daniel, may we recommend Smithville, Texas, preferably in April: no rapeseed here that we know of but lots of sweet old red brick buildings on Main St. and, if we’re all lucky, bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, primrose, winecups, and prickly poppy all around the edges of town.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Girl Gangs and Gardening

A group of Austin women breaks bread and ground.

Carole Goltze’s “Secret Garden” cake
served to the Divas of the Dirt
September 2006, Austin, TX
Photo: Shelley Wood, Austin American-Statesman

We admit to a certain squeamishness about women’s groups. Is this self-hatred?  Probably.

There are other considerations, though: an aversion to high-pitched voices (Renee Fleming not included), growing up with brothers only, thirteen years in an all-girls’ school....

But truth is when it comes time to ask for human help, we lean on other women. Why? Because they come through and usually don’t hold it over your head (or some other anatomical part) for eternity.

Julie Bonnin’s story in today’s Austin American-Statesman features a gang of mutual leaners who garden and socialize together under the name Divas of the Dirt. They meet monthly to tackle a gardening project for one of their seven members, meanwhile catching up on each other’s lives and enjoying the lucky garden-owner’s hospitality: i.e. breakfast and lunch.

Divas of the Dirt, Austin, Texas: from left, Diane Goode, Sue Boatman, Macky Barrow, Ellen Grimmett, Carole Goltze, (kneeling) Shanda Sansing and Kathy Kloba
Photo: Amber Novak, Austin American-Statesman

“The focus of our group isn’t on achieving specific results,” says “Diva” Kathy Kloba (a.k.a. The Transplantable Rose). “We’re not just free labor for each other. We want the fun and companionship as much as we want the gardening help.”

At a women’s only gathering last weekend, we took part in a “volunteer swap” and offered gardening assistance to someone we met there. We’ll see if she takes us up on the offer and, if she does, how “fun” that turns out to be.

Forty years ago, women tended to gather in ”garden clubs” with a different air about them: more leisurely noblesse, less grunt. Gradually, these established groups, too, have been changing their focus from “beautification” (which today has non-feminist overtones of triviality) to “serious” endeavors like conservation. The same social currents have eroded the old day lily, orchid and daffodil societies. Instead of “African violet fanciers” we have the can-do brassiness of Divas—the cult of “loveliness” supplanted by “attitude.” Below changing styles, though, one can see the simple act of mutual help—a necessity—running like the root of bamboo. That’s worth a crock-pot of social discomfort.

Kloba says that Dirt-Divadom is “like hanging out with the cool kids. It’s like I’m on the cheerleading squad.” Oh Kathy, we wish you hadn’t said that....shades of the Louisville Collegiate School for Girls. And we never did master the splits.