Human Flower Project

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Singapore: Beauty in Money

Singapore has a thing for orchids, and two new floral coins to prove it.

2007 Heritage Coin
“Dendrobium Singa Mas”
or Golden Lion
Photo: Singapore Mint

Having grown up in a country with grimy-looking greenbacks and copper pennies, the currency of places like Singapore doesn’t seem like it would spend. The island republic’s Monetary Authority has announced two new heritage coins featuring “Vanda Mimi Palmer” and “Dendrobium Singa Mas.” Not national pioneers, chieftains or generals, but orchids. The flashy $5 coins will go on sale June 25.

Singapore issued two other commemorative orchid coins—Vanda Tan Chay Yan and Aranda Majula—in 2006, and they sold out fast. What but beauty and rarity could get folks to shell out $138 for a $5 coin? Call it chump change? We think not. What a secret treat to have pockets jangling purple and yellow.

These exotic flowers, of course, are serious business in Singapore. The island supplies 15% of the world’s market for cut orchids “valued at $19.7 million in 2005.” The white orchids on tables at Charles and Diana’s 1981 wedding banquet were donated by the Singapore government. With ever-mounting competition from India, Thailand, and China, Singapore’s orchid growers circled the wagons and formed a business cluster in May 2003. Their goals were to spot threats to their market position, improve sales, investigate expansion overseas, and develop new “products.” The PR team seems to have been doing a crack job: in 2011 Singapore will host the World Orchid Conference for a second time.

$50 Singapore “orchid”
Photo: ebay

We found especially intriguing that from 1967—when Singapore was expelled from Malaysia—to 1976, the national currency was not the dollar, as it is now, but ”the orchid.” There were nine denominations of orchid bills (including a $10,000 note) each with a flower on the front.

Moving at last from commerce to botany and culture, we hope one day to visit the orchid collection at Singapore Botanic Gardens and also the Mandai Orchid Garden, which draws 200,000 visitors a year.

The Vintage Garden—Mandai Orchid Garden, Singapore
200 varieties grown
“the old-fashioned way”
Photo: Mandai Orchid Garden

Begun by grower and orchid aficionado John Laycock in 1951, Mandai features orchids grown the “old-fashioned way,” planted in the earth in open beds, in the full sun. Some of Laycock’s original collection lives on here, though many of the plants were lost during World War II.

And controversy being the hallmark of culture, we recall that Vanda Miss Joachim, Singapore’s national flower, generated more acrimonious debate here than has any other plant during the two and a half years of the Human Flower Project. (At risk of stoking the fire, we wonder if any new information has emerged in the case of Miss Agnes’s integrity.... Y’all keep it clean!)

History, beauty, business clusters, conflict—and money:  somehow they all drip from the tongues of these peculiar flowers, the pride of Singapore.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Garden History—Bookish

The Bookish Gardener has returned! Chan Stroman is back at her lyrical and literary blog, and generously has delivered this fine review to us. Thank you, Chan. Your readers have missed you.

Garden History:
Philosophy and Design
2000 BC – 2000 AD
by Tom Turner
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Spon Press, 2005

Reviewed by
Chan Stroman

The gardener peers into the locus of the open, recurved narcissus, eye to pheasant’s eye. Although brief moments like this sometimes imprint themselves in the gardener’s personal history, most quickly wash away with the rest of daily life’s ephemera. In this case, though, there’s other history bound up with this particular flower. It was originally grown in a garden that I’ve never seen, its bulb gathered, preserved and sent from the garden of a friend that I hope to meet one day really, not just virtually. I recall that history every spring as the poeticus blooms, although that history will ebb away some day too, as the gardener leaves the garden. The garden to me is intensely personal, in how it’s made, how it feels, what it expresses, and what it means. In the garden, my eye—and mind—zoom in.

Zoom out. — Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000 BC – 2000 AD, by Tom Turner, takes you up, and away, and way back, across the history of the idea of the garden in Western civilization over the past four thousand (yes, thousand) years. As an object, it’s a beautiful book. You’ll appreciate its handsome production values, from the sculpturally gnarled, sepia-toned, snow-dusted grand oak on the cover, to the luscious heft of the paper that make leafing through the pages a tactile pleasure. Despite the ambitious sweep of its title, the book keeps to a judicious limit on pages (less than 300), and is amply illustrated with photographs of excellent composition, a few academic tables, and whimsical sketches here and there.

Statues at Charlottenburg, Berlin
Photo: Tom Turner
from Garden History

Gorgeous, yes, but Garden History is no mere coffee-table tome of all style and no substance. The reader is given the chance to become an armchair traveler through space and time, to see how humans and their cultures here in the Western world have sought to enclose, tame and remake their natural surroundings. This book isn’t meant to and doesn’t cover horticultural techniques or functional garden design. Instead, it’s an exploration of how the idea of the garden seems to have become an inevitable element of how every culture comes to express itself.

Reading Garden History is like taking a tour of a world-class museum, personally guided by an erudite and engaging curator. Of necessity, much historical data is rendered in shorthand, leading to often amusing examples of what might be called “world history as elevator speech”:

Italy was dominated by Spanish influence during the reign of the Hapsburgs (1525-1700), although some areas, including Venice, the Papal States, Tuscany and Genoa, retained nominal independence. It was a period of relative economic decline as the focus of world trade and industry shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. But it was also the period when Rome recovered its ancient role as the hub of western civilisation: the place which every artist and every tourist felt compelled to visit.

As we start with earliest history in the cradle of civilization, the author looks to archeology and ancient texts to reconstruct the history of what might have been the earliest forms of the garden. We’re led to ponder: was the first garden a place (Eden)?—Or an idea: a line marked in the sand, joined end to end to form a boundary, distinguishing what’s “within” from what’s “without.” As civilizations advance and evolve, we’re shown the evolution of the many species of the idea of the garden: as property, sanctuary, worship site, memorial, status symbol, plant “zoo,” public commons. Famed gardens such as the Villa d’Este, Taj Mahal, Versailles and Sissinghurst are put in fresh perspective, as we’re stimulated to think about them as more than just pretty landscapes.

Garden designs through time (detail)
Drawings: Tom Turner
from Garden History

Despite the breadth of the subject matter, the book is more accessible than daunting. I think it’s best approached in the same way in which you might visit a museum. If you’ve got a particular interest in a certain historical era or civilization, the book’s index will point you to the chapters (museum exhibits) on which you’ll want to focus your attention …or you can browse through numerous chapters to get just a taste of it all (like a tourist given two hours off the bus to wander through the Tate)…or open a page at random (like an in-town visitor who can pop in regularly over the lunch hour). However you come to it, the book gives a great jumping-off point for delving further into cultures (and their gardens) that pique your interest.

(Although Garden History only covers gardens of the West, broadly defined to include West Asian and Islamic gardens, I’d love to see the same treatment given to the Far Eastern gardens and history of China, Korea and Japan. Their diversity of flora, dynastic histories, and the prominence of gardens in their literature and culture would make a fascinating journey.)

This stimulating book leaves me pondering: How will the idea of the garden in our times and in American culture be remembered centuries hence? Will anyone look back on and remember our lawns, community gardens, urban high-rise “green” rooftops, and preserves? And if they do, what will these things say about the way we were?

Monday, May 28, 2007

Memorial Day/The Iraq War

3682 U.S. soldiers and civilians have died in the Iraq War (May 26, 2007).  Soldiers from the U.K., Italy, S. Korea, and many thousands from Iraq have died in the fighting. In October 2006, a U.S. university research team estimated that 655,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed; that was seven months ago. They said the war kills 500 Iraqis every day.

Funeral of U.S. Army Sgt. Gary Brent Coleman, age 24
Nov. 30, 2003, Pikeville, KY
Photo: Shawn Poynter for AP

Funeral of paratrooper Jacob Fletcher, 28, November 19, 2003
Long Island National Cemetery, Pinelawn, N.Y
Doreen and Ray Kenny, Fletcher’s mother and stepfather, sit at left
Photo: Ed Betz, for AP

Memorial for Kim Sun-Il, who was executed in Iraq
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon pays his respects
6/23/04, Busan, South Korea
Photo: Reuters

Funeral in Kirkuk, Iraq, Jan. 30, 2006
for a boy killed in a bomb attack outside a church
Photo: Slahaldeen Rasheed, for Reuters

Funeral for Master Sgt. Kevin Morehead, September 21, 2003
Fredonia Cemetery, near Judsonia, Arkansas
Chaplain Marc Gauthier, presiding
Photos:  Janet Wilson, for the Daily Citizen

Funeral of Marine Paul Collins, May 2006, CTC Lympstone
Collins, of Britain’s Royal Navy, was killed in Basra
Photo: Royal Navy

Sabrina Dent, at the funeral of her son Spc. Darryl Dent, 21,
a member of the District of Columbia National Guard
Arlington National Cemetery, Sept. 8, 2003
Dent died while on convoy duty near the town of Arimadi, Iraq
Photo: Stephen J. Boitano, for AP

Funeral of Izzadine SaleemIraqi, May 2004, Baghdad
SaleemIraqi was chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council
Photo: Muhammed Muheisen, for AP

Funeral of DC3 Nathan Bruckenthal of the US Coast Guard
Arlington National Cemetery, May 7, 2004
Photo: PA2 Fa’iq El-Amin, for USCG

Funeral mass for 19 Italian soldiers who died in Iraq
November 18, 2003, Saint Paul’s Basilica, Rome

A child’s funeral in Iraq, February 2006
Photo: via Middle East News

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Basalt Daisy—Rock On!

A case of extreme botany, Erigeron basalticus is now in bloom, though you’ll have to brave rattlesnakes to see it.

Lavender basalt daisy (Erigeron basalticus)
blooming in the Selah Cliff preserve
Photo: Gilbert W. Arias, for Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Not everyone’s cut out for this: hanging in a crack on the face of a cliff. But for some reason Erigeron basalticus, a.k.a. the lavender basalt daisy, likes nothing better.  Thanks to Gordy Holt of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for alerting the rest of us to this rugged wildflower. The basalt daisy is endemic to a 10 by 2 mile spot in central Washington; according to the botanical experts, it’s known to grow only in this microclimate, in the basalt walls of the Selah Creek and Yakima River canyons.

Gordy describes his expeditions to track the rock-dwelling daisy. “We found them blooming on only our second trip,” he writes, “but blooming they were late last week and should continue well into June.”

Christian climbs Railway Avenue’s Never the Twain
in the Field Valley, Canada
Photo: Nicola Pelletier, via Field, British Columbia

This rare flower has, of course, been of interest to plant conservationists and hikers. It was also written up in a recent environmental impact study, as Bonneville Power Administration planned to stretch transmission lines through its habitat. (Anyone know how that controversy was resolved?)

It always strikes us as paradoxical, that plants rugged as these can be so vulnerable, too. Not so different, perhaps from the tough human rock climbers, likewise in peril.

If you’re far from the Yakima canyon, there’s information about the Basalt Daisy and other Washington wildlife available from the Washington Natural Heritage Program. And even if you’re there, looking up at the canyon walls, you may not detect the plant’s stiff, spreading hairs (the better to clutch with!).

Visitors to the canyons are urged to bring water and binoculars and “stay on the trail,” Gordy advises. “For those who don’t, there will be rattlesnakes to enforce the rule.”

Friday, May 25, 2007

Floral Fireworks for a Russian Flag

Vienna’s best go all out to welcome Vladimir Putin.

Flowers seemed to explode above Russian President
Vladimir Putin (left) and Austrian President Heinz Fischer
at the Hofburg palace, Vienna, 5/23/07.
Photo: Dragan Tatic, for Reuters

What do you do when your biggest gasoline supplier comes to town? Polish the chandeliers and pull out the stops.

The Austrians welcomed Russian president Vladimir Putin this week, and from the looks of the floral arrangement prepared for Wednesday’s gala dinner at the Hofburg palace in Vienna, they aimed high. An immense floral display in the colors of Russia’s flag – white, blue and red – performed an act of diplomacy.

“Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom supplies most of Austria’s gas and seeks deeper access to distribution,” according to Reuters. But Austria has plans to build an alternate pipeline route, from the Caspian Sea “to southern Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece.” Since pipeline disputes can cause indigestion, the arrangement gave palace diners a six foot sigh of relief.

We’ve been looking for information about Austrian schools of floral design but thus far found very little. Several years ago, Leonard Koren, a graphic designer from the U.S., published a book called The Flower Shop (we’ll try to get our hands on this). It appears to be pseudo ethnography —examining the day to day affairs of one supremely tasteful florist in Vienna. Still, we’ve not found anything than can account for a piece like Wednesday’s “diplomat.” The arrangement takes marvelous advantage of an ambiguity in the Russian flag – which is the right blue? Russian flags, we learn, waffle “from Argentine blue to British blue.” Here, what appear to be delphiniums manage to please everyone, and add purple.

Bauergarten mit Sonnenblumen (1905-06)
Farm Garden with Sunflower
Gustav Klimt
Vienna, Osterreichische Museum für Angewandte Kunst

Even more impressive, though, are the scale and form. This arrangement somehow becomes one flower, like a fireworks display. And all that white gives it a kind of claustrophopia-inducing radiance, shades of countryman Gustav Klimt.

Who knows how well negotiations on the pipelines, or other affairs of state, went this week in Austria? Not us, but we congratulate the powerhouse florists of Wien (Vienna). Instead of killing them with kindness, humble them with honorifics. This arrangement manages at once to trumpet the president of Russia’s arrival and cut him down to size.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Flower Scans --Creepy and/or Art

A Toledo art competition awards first prize to scanned flowers.

“Homage to de Heem”
by Glenn Osborn, Perrysburg, OH
Image: via Toledo Blade

Last month an electronic ripple ran through the gardening blogsphere, as Kathy Purdy tried her hand, eyes, office machinery, and snowdrops in a premiere floral scan. Purdy had been inspired by Katinka Matson, and her inspiration was contagious. Cultivated and May Dreams Garden and Mucknmire posted their experiments, too. “The scans look like old Dutch paintings to me,” wrote Ki. “I guess the limited amount of scanning light gives it the North window diffuse lighting artists like so much.”

Glenn Osborn of Perrysburg, Ohio, thought so too. His Homage to de Heem is a floral photo scan (CORRECTION: it’s a “digital photo collage”—see discussion and source in comments) after the renowned 17th Century Flemish/Netherlandish artist Jan Davidsz de Heem, whom some consider the greatest still life painter of all time.

As in de Heem’s works, Osborn brings flowers together with berries and insects. A fine striped caterpillar toiling its way up a stem makes the Osborne piece especially lively.

Craig of Ellis Hollow and Annie, the Transplantable Rose, also posted their scanned flowers, both with some misgivings. “I don’t think I like the effect,” wrote Annie— “actually- it’s kind of creeping me out.” We found especially intriguing Pam Penick’s online musings April 21 after scanning a pretty, natural knickknack: a bird’s nest and eggs glued together. “Even calling this image a photograph seems unnatural to me,” wrote Pam, whose Digging was recently chosen the best garden photography blog. “Is this a photograph?” she asks. “Is there any art in it? Of course, people asked those very same questions about photography when photographs were first produced.”

With Pam’s reflections in mind, we were intrigued to find that Glenn Osborn’s “Homage to de Heem” won Best in Show at the 89th Toledo Area Artists’ exhibition. His scan of flowers and bugs was chosen from 655 entries in many media; 107 of those works, including “Homage to de Heem,” will be on view in the Works on Paper Galleries, Toledo Museum of Art, through July 8.

Sea grape flowers, by Nicole
via A Caribbean Garden

What is it about floral scans that make them suspect? Too easy or fast? Too mechanized a process? Pre-photography, in the French Academy’s Hierarchy of Genres, still life was a low life, too, ranking above only landscape painting on the scale of snoot. But, as Pam makes note, we busted that old ladder of worthiness at least 150 years ago. Now we recognize this and this as art. Major museums have canonized also this, at which the hinge on our open-mind begins creaking backward....

We wonder if scanned flowers strike many folks as non-art or nearly art because no matter the scanners, human and electronic, the images usually wind up looking very much the same. The effect is like a card trick:  wondrous the first time you see it done, but then you learn it, and the magic leaks away.

A hankering after character draws us to the scans made nonchalantly, it seems, by Nicole, at A Caribbean Garden. On some, you can see flecks of dust shining from her scanner’s glass, but it doesn’t matter. Her vitex blooms and tiny sea grape flowers strike us as originals—so why not?—as ART.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Tuberose Tiaras for Brides and Gods

Sandy Ao finds Calcutta’s floral artisans at work on wedding crowns.

Making tuberose crowns at Mullickghat flower market
May 2007, Calcutta, India
All Photos: Sandy Ao

In May, Calcutta’s Mullickghat—one of the oldest and busiest outdoor flower markets in the world—sparkles. There’s romance in the air and, in nearly every stall, bushels of sweet white blossoms. Photographer Sandy Ao writes, “This season it’s more Tuberose and less of Marigold. The tuberose thrives well in the Indian summer heat, and it’s marriage season all over India.”

Weaving rajniganda
“fragrance of the night”
May 2007

Sandy spent a morning down by the Hoogly bridge two weeks ago. She found scores of men and boys stringing the flowers of tuberose (Rajniganda) into spectacular wedding accessories. These blooms, while not so large or shapely as other flowers, are gleaming white and renowned for holding their fragrance.  “The marrying couple exchange Tuberose garlands while giving vows during the marriage ceremony. Like the way others exchange rings,” Sandy explains. We’d seen pictures of the great tuberose garlands, thick as pythons, that wedding couples wear, but never these gorgeous tiaras!

“The crowns are for the Brides from the Eastern Region of India,” Sandy tells us. Typically, men teach crown-making to their young sons; working side by side, they thread the blossoms into pearly ornaments—exquisite pieces that sell, Sandy says, for Rs. 150 - 250 ($3.70 - $6.17 USD) apiece.

“I was informed most of the artisans are from the neighbouring state of Orissa,” just south of West Bengal, she writes. “They are traditional artists and able gardeners. Most of the florists who daily bring the flowers to the offices/shops/home,” in Calcutta, “are from Orissa.”

Tuberoses arrive from Orissa
Mullickghat market, Calcutta

Sandy wandered among the artisans as they wove and traded ... “with all these flower sellers and buyers busily bargaining the price, one tends to forget that we are living in modern times. Time just stands still… we don’t see any crooked person and face no danger of being robbed or mugged. I guess no one has the time for anything other than buying flowers or selling flowers. In between there are vendors selling country made ice cream or homemade soft drinks… and some fresh fruit sellers, and tea makers, and lunch makers… and the Barbers busily shaving or cutting hair!” Sandy writes, “After a few months when the monsoon sets in, the Marigold will take over the market scene.” But for now, tuberose presides --in its glory.

Crown fit for a bride
tuberoses, sunflowers and roses

Polianthes tuberosa is a welcome and omnipresent wedding guest, especially in Bengal. Bright and sweet, it appears in crowns and garlands, also in decorations for the couple’s getaway car and even the marriage bed (Phul Shajya). Rajniganda translates as “fragrance of the night.”

We hope someday to see a 1974 movie called Rajniganda (Tuberose) —you guessed it , a love story. In the film, a young woman is torn between her hometown sweetheart and go-getter she meets in Bombay. As she mind-wrestles to know which man is her soul mate, the gift of tuberoses—that fragrance!—brings an answer.

By the way, “Tuberose is known to improve one’s capacity for emotional depth. By opening the crown chakra it improves psychic powers.” How fitting that a bride would wear rajniganda on her head. “And these are for the God Lord Shiva,” Sandy writes. “Some of the flower sellers told me they can use these crowns for the God /Goddess and the brides. I guess all are pure and holy in the same manner!”

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Outing the Preakness ‘Black Eyed Susans’

Pimlico pulls a fast one with Maryland’s state flower.

Robby Albarado aboard Preakness winner Curlin
raises an ersatz Rudbeckia, 5/19/07
Photo: Al Behrman, for AP

A dear old friend of ours—a Virginian—once advised, “People from Maryland can’t be trusted.” My! At the time we thought that swipe was horribly unfair, but conduct after yesterday’s Preakness Stakes has given us pause.

People with nothing better to do saw a thrilling horserace Saturday; Curlin, ridden by Robby Albarado, beat Derby winner Street Sense by a head in a photo finish. Then as they do at Pimlico, the chestnut colt was led to the Winner’s Circle to wear his victory: the ceremonial blanket of black eyed susans.

1st class postage stamp from another era
with Maryland state bird and flower
Image: Perry’s perennial pages

Rudbeckia hirta is Maryland’s state flower, and has been since 1918. “Many farmers at the time considered the Black-eyed Susan and the Goldenrod,” Kentucky’s state flower, “to be weeds. Some even claimed that the Black Eyed Susan was not native to Maryland. This argument continued until 1960 when the Baltimore Sun published an article stating ‘Susan came to Maryland, not on the Ark or the Dove, but as a migrant from the Midwest mixed in clover and hayseed.’”

Choosing a non-native as one’s state flower is not all that uncommon (Indiana, in a real stretch, selected the peony), and it’s certainly no cause for mistrust. But the Preakness prize is another matter. “Colonel Edward R. Bradley’s Bimelech in 1940 was the first winner to wear the floral blanket of Black-Eyed Susans.” But Curlin draped in flowers deserved a double take. Those weren’t black eyed susans at all!! After a little snooping we’ve learned that Pimlico has substituted what it calls “Viking daisies,” 80 bunches of them, for Rudbeckia in the victory garland. More precisely, these appear to be a pompom chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum x morifolium.

Black Eyed Susans in July
St. Clement’s Island, Maryland
Photo: St. Mary’s County

Why would the Preakness forego the state’s true and only designated “weed” for a novelty cut flower? The track justifies the switch because, it claims, Black eyed susans “do not bloom until June in Maryland.” Oh really. How long have we been able to get tulips in February and orchids at Christmas? Twisting Jimmy Buffet a bit, isn’t it June somewhere?

Here you’ll find details of how the Preakness’s 90-inch garland is constructed. Read if you dare:  “Upon completion, the center of the daisies are daubed with black lacquer to recreate the appearance of a Black-Eyed Susan.”

Now, botany is not our strong suit, but even we could tell these black eyed susans were fakes. The tip off?  Black eyed susans have a “domed center of disc florets,” a dark brown button. And it sticks up. Chrysanthemums are ”innies” and black eyed susans are ”outies.”

To be fair, the Marylanders told on themselves and, more to the point, their attempt at floral counterfeiting was too lame to qualify as deceptive. Setting aside their trustworthiness for the moment, we know that the folks of Maryland are certainly well connected. How about if you guys call up some of your very important associates and get a few horticulturists (or if not that, importers) to work on supplying bona fides for the Preakness next year?

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Of Deadheading

Will the real workingman please stand up?

Workingman’s Dead, with spent gaillardia and daisies
Photos: Human Flower Project, Spring 2007

The life of leisure is so déclassé… In our social circles, anyway, nothing puts you on the outside faster than flashing a beach tan, eating bon-bons or bragging about your latest rubdown at a chi-chi spa. Tack-ey!

No—around here we’re all WORKING! Look at us sweat...How many hours did YOU put in last week, Sister? Oh-EE-Oh. Hear the shoulder-gristle pop as we toil.

Gardeners, of course, are labor extroverts. They love to chronicle every muscle pulled in a stump’s removal and poison ivy pustule, for, among gardeners, every tribulation is a badge of honor. Truth be known, there IS a lot of overcoming in the garden, from major undertakings—like digging trenches and war on bermuda-grass—to the tasks that are actually fun, like deadheading flowers.

Exhibitionists will make even this out to be laborious, and in rare cases, it can be. Last fall we spoke with Sylvain Piperno, who works full time at the Luxembourg Garden in Paris. He told us the very busiest time of the year is June, when the flower beds all flourish, and tidying up after spent blooms takes a big staff all day, every day. But in most home gardens, and certainly our own, deadheading is actually pleasurable. Here you are, wading out with the butterflies, soaking in the sight of things in blossom. And since the purpose of deadheading is to keep plants flowering, one might even say it’s a form of greed.

We can’t help but circle back to a pregardening phase, circa 1970, where the seed for this post was planted. That was the year the Grateful Dead released Workingman’s Dead. Our favorite band at the time, they shed the tie-dye shirts and portrayed themselves as tough blue-collar guys, switching train tracks, mining coal and ”chippin’ up rocks for the great highway.” Far out! All of us Deadheads loved that shtick. It implied that deep down we weren’t a bunch of students loafing around drinking wine, but hard-working stiffs with lunch buckets, living in the shadow of smokestacks and heading to the factory to earn an honest wage.

Deadheading in the garden is actually much simpler than being a Deadhead used to be, and just as enjoyable. But both, in our view, are mildly delusional.

Why Should Gardeners Deadhead Flowers?
“By deadheading the blooms, you trick the plant into believing that its reproductive task is not yet accomplished.”

And you call that work!

Friday, May 18, 2007

Blooms that Sting and Swim

Greet the Flower Hat Jelly (but don’t pull it on your head).

Olindas formosa—Flower Hat Sea Jelly
Monterey Bay Aquarium, California
Photo: Fred Hsu, via wiki

For just about anything appealing, colorful, sweet or nearly-round, we humans call up the word “Flower”—to wit, this marvelous sea dweller, native to the waters off Brazil, Argentina and Southern Japan.

Meet Olindas formosa, nicknamed the flower hat jelly. It certainly fits several of the “floral” criteria above—radially symmetrical as a rose, opulent as a peony, and dazzlingly colorful as, well, honestly we’ve never seen anything with quite such variegated and flashy beauty in the plant world. (If you have, please let us know!)

Despite its name, the flower hat sea jelly is not recommended as millinery.  Its shimmering “petals” (tentacles) contain complicated cells that sting. The effect, we understand, is ”nonlethal but painful.” Too bad! As its “pinstriped bell” grows to about six inches wide, this could make a really stunning cloche.

Flower Hat Jelly at the New York Aquarium, May 2, 2007
Photo:  Julie Larsen Maher
Wildlife Conservation society, via AP

More along floral lines, we understand that sea jellies sometimes convene in huge numbers called “blooms.” Marine biologists are still fairly mystified by these events, though many suspect that they occur in overfished waters. ”According to Claudia Mills of the University of Washington, the frequency of these blooms may be attributed to mankind’s impact on marine life. She says that the breeding jellyfish may merely be taking the place of already overfished creatures.”

If you would rather not try on a flower hat sea jelly but want to see a live one up close, check out the New York Aquarium’s ‘Aquatic Asia’ exhibit this weekend. The aquarium has at least one Olindas formosa in captivity, as does the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.