Human Flower Project

Friday, June 29, 2007

T/F?: U.S Men Don’t Like Flowers

EarthScholars James Wandersee and Renee Clary are also mythbusters. They look at the social history that “feminized” flowers and then report some surprising facts, about soldiers, botanical gardens, and the plant-loving guys of Gen Y. Congratulations and many thanks, Jim and Renee!

By James H. Wandersee
and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group

CNN.com recently posted City Guides: Life on the Road, a feature suggesting things to do at the top ten US business trip destinations. A single “Great Escape” experience in each of the ten cities was recommended specifically for men, another ten escapes for women travelers. The guides directed women to visit a botanic garden in 20% of the cities but never mentioned gardens for men, anywhere. Here’s evidence again of a prevalent myth: that most US males do not like flowers.

Surprisingly, even women help to sustain this myth.

For me??!!
Defying convention with
a floral bouquet for a man
Photo: Kwiaty Dla Ciebe

Blogger Darren James wrote: “’My [female] friend has a real problem with men liking flowers. It’s just wrong for men to like flowers. It’s not masculine enough, it’s ok for men to like plants (and only just), but not flowers [emphasis added].” The problem with his female friend’s qualification about what is acceptable for men is that the majority of plant species are flowering plants!

Florist industry surveys indicate that about a third of US women who regularly send flowers have sent flowers to men. However, many florist and gift-giving websites caution readers that men may only respond positively IF they receive particular kinds of flowers, for example (a) a blooming cactus; (b) dark-colored flowers; (c) tall and sturdy flowers; or (d) flowers surrounded by strong, stiff, or spiky foliage—such as palm fronds, leatherleaf, cat-tails, or magnolia leaves on branches.

Manly presentation of mums, or simply beautiful?
Photo: Mary Hill Clayworks

Floral arrangements with a monochrome color palette are suggested for men, displayed in decidedly virile containers such as beer steins, fishing creels, wine carafes, and hollow ceramic NASCAR race cars or footballs.

We are warned never to give a man flowers that bespeak femininity. Nothing pink or pastel or delicate or lacy. Some information sources advise that sending the wrong kind of flowers to a man may threaten his masculinity or alienate him; and, if that man is your boss, these sources warn, you might actually damage your career! If uncertain about the recipients’ disposition, we are told that blooming pot plants are safe for all men, because they are “gender-neutral.”

Where did all these archaic rules originate? The answer is surely complex, and this brief article cannot possibly address the subject thoroughly. However, one factor must be the antecedents in history.

For example, the US may well have been influenced by early 18th-century English society, where, according to Ann B. Shteir, botany was the most socially sanctioned science that women could study and practice—it was seen as a valuable pursuit for both their amusement and improvement. “Botany came to be widely associated with women and was widely gender coded as feminine.” The Linnaean sexual system for naming and classifying plants by the reproductive parts of their flowers was simple, and was thus deemed compatible with women’s greater inherent knowledge of and interest in human reproduction.

In 1827, a biography about Linnaeus’s botanizing adventures in Lapland was published— written in the style of letters from a father to a son—in an attempt to make botany more attractive to boys. Between 1830 and 1860, as botany was being transformed into a modern and rigorous science, strong efforts were made to “defeminize” the subject, but the subject remained “gender-tagged” as feminine well into the 19th century.

Emanuel D. Rudolph wrote that a “surprising large number” of 19th-century American women identified themselves as being seriously interested in botany and these women “constituted an important overlooked constituency for the developing profession of botany.”

Patsy Ann Giese observes that when higher education was opened to American women in 1836 at Georgia Female College, and subsequently in other states, women such as botanist Almira Phelps greatly influenced future botanists. She had a notable teaching and publishing career across seven states and was only the second woman elected to membership in the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science. Giese writes, “By the end of the century, nearly 400,000 copies of her Familiar Lectures on Botany had been sold.” These and many other preceding events, phobias, and stereotypes are likely to have contributed to the current residual anti-male, floral mythology.

Almira Phelps
Image: Library Company

Is anyone doing unbiased, non-conflict-of-interest research that helps debunk the male myth? A 26-state US study on public understanding of plants that we conducted showed that Generation Y male teens (US babies born 1977 to 2002) pay significantly more attention to plants than Generation Y female teens, reversing a trend we identified in an earlier generation via a previous multi-state study. In the past, US men’s interest in plants has tended to start at a low level during the teen years and increase with age. This appears to be changing—but the myth lingers on.

A Texas A&M study found that the presence of flowers in the workplace improved men’s creative problem-solving skills. The men who participated in the 8-month study in a variety of office environments generated 15% more ideas (a measure of productivity) when they worked in a “florally enhanced environment.” The females in the study showed similar but smaller gains.

What about CNN.com’s stance regarding men and botanic gardens? The US has had fewer botanic gardens and arboretums and more zoos and aquariums per capita than comparable countries. Over the past decade, though, the number of US botanical gardens has quadrupled, from 100 to 430, approaching parity. Each of the ten US cities in the CNN list has a respectable botanic garden and/or arboretum. 

We uncovered no definitive evidence that men are under-represented as visitors at US botanic gardens.  In Australia, one study showed that the percentage of males over 18 who visited a botanic garden in 2002 was only 3.2% less than females—and this may be due, in part, to life expectancies. One official we consulted at a major US botanic garden admitted that its public programming rarely targeted men specifically—children, teens, women, couples, and seniors, yes; but not men. We were also told that most US botanic gardens’ visitor databases do not distinguish between male and female visitors, since admission fees are the same.

Although flowers have traditionally been associated with femininity and relegated to women in society, the rules have always been different when applied to war. For example, it was observed in military literature as early as the Napoleonic Wars that red poppies grew on the graves of dead soldiers in the battlefields of northern Europe. (Poppy seeds will lie dormant underground for years and bloom if they are plowed up.) In the spring of 1915, red poppies emerged in the fields of Belgium, covering the newly dug graves of WWI soldiers. On the battlefield, Canadian doctor and medical corpsman John McCrae wrote a little poem, “In Flanders Fields.” It became the most famous poem of WWI and is beloved by all US soldiers. It is a poem about men and flowers.

Poppy field in Belgium
Photo: Telenet

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Veterans poppy
Michigan History

Inspired by McCrae’s poem, American Moina Michael wore poppies to honor the war dead—representing Europe’s wild red corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas. She also began to sell poppies to raise money for disabled veterans. Her idea was a great success and spread to several countries. Today it’s impossible to defend the myth that US men don’t like flowers, or to argue that the red poppies (sold by war vets to aid disabled veterans on US Veteran’s Day) are not worn and appreciated by real men!

Readers, please do whatever you can to eliminate this myth.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

A Toast to the Churchill Arms

Only in England would a flower show have a prize for best bar, and only this English pub could deserve to win it.

The Churchill Arms, in Kensington, London
Photo: jpenglert

We used to spend a lot of time in bars. ‘Least wise they tell us we did!’

No, actually we do remember a number of these oases: in Louisville, KY—Joe’s Palm Room, the Outlook Inn, Dedden’s Highland Fling…; in Chapel Hill, N.C.—the Scoreboard, He’s Not Here, and Cat’s Cradle…; in South Chicago—the Cove, Jimmy’s, the Cornell Lounge.... These places we can remember because, having frequented them many dozens of times, we accumulated enough early evening minutes of clear consciousness to have survived the erasure of many more extended hours.

Bobby Ledford, singer of the house band at Joe’s Palm Room, occasionally wore a Hawaiian shirt, but besides that we don’t remember ever seeing a flower in any of these establishments, or for that matter, in any other joint. Were they there, just shoved down to the end of the bar on the far side of all those metal ashtrays? Truth be known, if there had been hyacinths in bloom—even “the wealth of glob’ed peonies”—the places we liked were too dark and smoky for anyone – anyone like us—to have noticed.

Which is why we were quite startled to learn of The Churchill Arms, recently awarded the Boozers in Bloom prize at the 2007 Chelsea Flower Show.

In the Kensington district of West London, The Churchill Arms “is decorated with 85 window boxes, 42 hanging baskets and ten tubs on the ground.” Oh dear. Those “tubs on the ground” can pose quite an unsavory convenience in a bar, especially as the evening wears on. We remember one night in San Antonio…let’s move on.

Only in England, of course, would a Boozers in Bloom award be offered or, we think, earned. Churchill Arms proprietor Gerry O’Brien told the Publican: “"It’s only about three years ago since we put the plants up and up the windows because we’ve got no back garden!” And his Chelsea recognition? “ I could not believe it,” O’Brien said.  “When I heard I could hardly sleep that night.”

The Churchill Arms is named for Sir Winston, soldier and prime minister. Also heavy drinker and, late in life, flower painter.

We know of a narcissus and a fuchsia named for him, also a sweet pea—only right, since he was a descendant of the Spencers. In the gardens of his estate at Chartwell, which sound lovely, a number of poignant inscriptions speak:

It does not do to wander Too far from sober men,
But there’s an island yonder, I think of it again.
from a poem by W.P. Ker

Inside the Churchill Arms, flowers and Churchill memorabilia
Photo: George deBaly

Among drinkers and their enablers, Churchill’s brilliant leadership during the Second World War is often marched out as evidence that alcohol, far from being deleterious, is actually a great blessing, not only to the drinker and his immediate circle, but to the nation, the world!

Churchill supposedly said, “I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me.” And many others, incapable of driving home much less leading a nation at war, have said so, too.

Congratulations to Gerry and the Churchill Arms on the award. If we’re ever in London, we hope to stop by if not drop in.

Oh, the Do Drop Inn in Louisville is another good tavern, highly recommended for dancers, as is The Concertina Bar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (its juke box features a version of “Strangers in the Night” played on a saw). Neither one has flowers.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Woodrose—A Lust for Dryness

Where the land and sky are lush, people hanker for the brown beauty of merremia pods.

Woodrose pods, eucalyptus, shells, and dried palm --
wall decoration for a soggy climate
Photo: Maui Dried Flowers

The restless human heart weighs down one end of a seesaw: angry, lusty, afraid or just lonely. On the other side, if we’re wise, we put flowers, choosing them carefully to balance each emotional circumstance.

For the wedding, white roses and stephanotis soothe the blushing, feverish bride. In times of bereavement, great flowering cascades on easels and lily fragrance fill the void.

Woodrose (Merrimia tuberosa)
at an Assam tea house, India
Photo: Sandy Ao

Thanks to Sandy Ao, our friend in Calcutta, we have learned of another compensatory bloom—the woodrose—beloved as a dried flower in some of the wettest corners of the world. Like Northeast India.  Sandy recently visited Assam. At a tea house there, she came upon woodrose pods. “People from the North Eastern part of India love these dried pods… like Pine, Lotus, woodrose and what ever. We have a lot of dried seed pods being used for decorations.”

The botanical name for woodrose is Merremia tuberosa. “It’s a creeper that grows in the climate of Assam,” Sandy writes, “a wild plant. I think it’s morning glory family.” And you think right, dear friend.  “No one cares for the flower, but the merchants collect the pods and sell them in the market for money,” 2 rupees apiece. Sandy adds, “the most horrible thing they usually do is painting these pods with silver paint or golden paint to suit the customers of Calcutta!!”

Adorned or unadorned, these rather stubby phallic shapes, mahogany brown, are not so attractive to a Central Texan. By the law of floral compensation, we who are nearly always fighting drought hanker for lilacs and peonies. But we can understand that in Assam, with its ‘Tropical Monsoon Rainforest Climate,’ odorlessness and the clacking of dried flower pods in a vase might be exotic—and a small source of relief. June is the peak of monsoon season in Assam. “Thunderstorms known as Bordoicila are frequent during the afternoons.” We imagine that dried woodroses are in great demand now!

Wayne Armstrong supplies more information about Merrimia tuberosa. The plant grows in hot, wet regions of the U.S. also—in Florida and parts of South Texas, California and Georgia. Though not botanically related, woodrose appears to be a sorority sister of kudzu, the sort of plant that can swallow small children and garages.

Merrimia tuberosa
engulfs a fenceline
Pukalani, Maui, Hawaii
Photo: Forest and Kim Starr

The yellow flowering morning glory also grows wild, some would say rampantly, in Hawaii—visible here. As in Assam, Hawaiian flower arrangers seem especially fond of woodrose pods, combing them with dried heliconia and lotus, brown palm fronds and even shells for decorative table arrangements and wall swags.

After a day of perspiring in the tropics, maybe you’ve had it up to here with pink plumeria and greenery. Time to put a dozen woodroses in a vase, think arid thoughts.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Hemerocallis Fulva: Let Jimi Take Over

Summer’s tiger lily opens visions of Hendrix, the “Wild Thing” at Monterey.

Tiger lilies (Hemerocallis Fulva) at the Summer Solstice
June 21, 2007, Austin, TX
Photo: Human Flower Project

Our friend Zelma Mason disparaged them as “railroad lilies.” We’ve since heard a bigger put down: ”ditch lily”—which is only slightly kinder than George Bush’s moniker for Karl Rove.

We grew up with Hemerocallis Fulva but never would have called them that. They were “tiger lilies,” and in June would begin reaching along the roadsides all over Kentucky. Moving to Texas, we figured they’d be a cinch to grow, since back east they seemed to carry on fine without anybody’s help, even with Zelma’s disdain.

Lilies for Jimi, Renton, WA
March 1989
Photo: David Meyer

But that hasn’t been true. We and the Austin chalk and weather ganged up and killed several plants over the years. So when this month—undoubtedly thanks to our wet spring—three tiger lilies bloomed, we were fired up! The photo above was taken just at 1:06 pm, the Summer Solstice, Central Daylight Time.

Tiger lilies also call to mind a marvelous trip we took in 1989, our one and only visit to the Great Northwest. In Seattle, we spent a splendid overcast day with David Meyer, a friend we hadn’t seen in over a decade. Being mutually reinforcing fans of wah-wah blues music, the two of us made a pilgrimage to Renton, a Seattle suburb, to pay our respects to James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix. On the way we stopped at a flower shop, and chose these orange lilies: “Let me Stand Next to Your Fire!”

Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop Festival June 18, 1967
Photo: via Jimi Hendrix Biography

Looking at these old photos again, we see that the blooms aren’t Hemerocallis Fulva exactly. They may even be true lilies, not daylilies, but the shape and color are reminiscent of the familiar ditch dwellers. They reminded us of the flames licking up from Jimi’s guitar in the climax of his performance at Monterey. It, too, blossomed nearly at the summer solstice: June 18, 1967. In Renton, we were gratified to discover that his gravestone, quite small for such a musical giant, is carved with a Stratocaster; laid there, our flowers looked fittingly incendiary.

David has gone on to do many things; most recently he’s written a book about another figure in our pop pantheon, Gram Parsons.

And Jimi, though he died September 18, 1970, has gone on too. Like the Hemerocallis Fulva some call invasive, his fire still crackles on a zillion fretboards across the world.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Jardín Etnobotanico de Oaxaca - Welcoming

Horticulturist, author, and landscape designer Jill Nokes has seen (and created) garden marvels across the world. Today she beckons us to a personal favorite in Oaxaca, Mexico, where cultural history reaches right out of the ground. We eagerly await Jill’s Yard Art and Handmade Places, due out in October. Mil gracias, Jill!

Some of the varieties of nopal bred by Native Mexicans
for food and cochineal production
Photo: Jill Nokes

By Jill Nokes

My friends in Oaxaca City tell me that things are slowly but steadily recovering from last summer’s chaotic political demonstrations.  Although that sad, destructive ordeal was but a blip on the region’s long and complex history, I grieved for a city where so many livelihoods depend on tourism.

And I still worry about how those disastrous events may have affected the most amazing and profound garden I have ever seen: the Jardín Etnobotanico de Oaxaca (The Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca).

Housed within the massive walled complex of the sixteenth century ex-convento Santo Domingo, this garden was designed by artists Luis Zarate and Francisco Toledo and ethnobiologist Alejandro de Avila. They sought to build not just a decorative garden but a plant collection that would tell the story of Oaxaca and its people. The founders’ hope was to celebrate the relationship between people and plants in their state and magnify the message of the cultural museum now housed in the enclosing cloister.

Francisco Toledo’s sculpture in the entry courtyard
Photo: Jill Nokes

This is a particularly rich story to tell, as Oaxaca, home to sixteen ethnic groups, has the greatest political and ethnic diversity in Mexico. Its geologic complexity has resulted in an exceptionally high rate of endemism and biological diversity. Here you find more species of cycads, plumerias, and oaks than anywhere else in the world. Oaxaca also contains every kind of ecotone that exists in the world: from deserts to cloud forests, from beaches to temperate woodlands. Current research has revealed that Oaxaca was where corn was first domesticated, and the wealth of colonial Oaxaca came from the sophisticated selection and breeding of the cochineal (a scale insect) and nopal (prickly pear), both actions which show the interdependence of plant and people. Though the contrast of plants, gravel, and sky is stunningly beautiful, the message the jardin hopes to impart is that there is a direct connection between ethnic diversity and biodiversity.

At the entrance, you are greeted with water, and you follow the water as you make your way through the garden.  Opposite the gate resides a sculpture made from four huge pieces of mica-clad Monteczuma cypress or ahuehuete (Taxodium mucronatum).  Mica, a mineral laminate, was used as a decorative cover on the floors of elite residences in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, and may have served ritual purposes as well. The cypress was associated with sacred ancestor gods. Within the sculpture is carved the “step-fret” zig-zag design, which some scholars believe refers to both Ehecatl, the wind god, and the nose of Cocijo, the god of rain.

Water dyed red with cochineal drips over the cypress block, symbolizing the source of the city’s wealth. It also signifies precious water commingled with the blood of the Indians, those who died after the Conquest and while laboring over 100 years to build the vast convent. Farther down the narrow courtyard looms the graceful beauty of the huaje tree (Leucaena esculenta), from which the city derives its name. The familiar name of the tree comes from the way its pods resemble the glossy dark red pods of the chile guajillo.

In the courtyard, there are fewer than five plants, but meanings and messages many times that number. In the main garden, there are a thousand plants and counting.

View of the garden’s “xeric” side from the ex-convento/regional museum
Photo: Jill Nokes

Last year’s fracaso, which kept many travelers from visiting Oaxaca, has subsided. My Mexican friends there say it’s safe and peaceful now—all is well. And visitors would be appreciated, even more than usual.  Thanks to Alejandro Avila, founding director, for providing important details to this story. He reports that members of the original team who created the Jardín Etnobotanico are back on hand to welcome travelers, scholars, and lovers of beauty, all who hope to learn more about this special place, its plants and its people.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Driven Amok on Lavender Tires

A European company wants drivers to spritz the skies.

A Kumho’s Ecsta tire smells like lavender for a year
Photo:  Ask Patty

The air may be poisonous but laying a patch in the parking lot never smelled better.

Delticom, “Europe’s leading online tyre dealer” is selling tires scented with lavender. “The Ultra High Performance (UHP) tires from Kumho’s Ecsta line disperses its fragrance at warm atmospheric conditions to a radius of around 10 metres,” we learn.  “The secret of the fragrant tires is heat resistant oils, which give off a pleasant aroma.”

So much for the free-market pep clubbers who keep claiming that invisible hands on a hard body will solve our environmental disaster. Fellas, the free market doesn’t curb air pollution. It develops lavender tires and sells them for $119, $125, or $138 apiece! (By the way, who’s purchasing tires online? And what must shipping and handling fees amount to on a rubber potpourri?)

Close-up of Kumho Ecsta tread
scented with lavender oil
Photo: via Tire Rack (dye job by HFP)

Kumho says its target buyers are “female consumers who drive such sedans as the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Subaru Outback, Chrysler Sebring and Ford Taurus.” What’s the reasoning? Perhaps that all those Glade and Miss Clairol loyalists have found it’s easier to cover up than change or just cope with reality. (Obliviousness, the tire dealers will be happy to discover, is also very manly.)

In case you didn’t already know, half of all air pollution comes from cars and trucks. Yes, it’s even barfed out by those nice Tauruses and Camrys (like ours). And folks’ dropping a thousand dollars on four tires “that will set their luxury coupes and sedans apart from everyone else’s...in addition to delivering an alluring aroma that replaces a tire’s normal ‘rubber’ smell” won’t help matters. Here are some measures that will.

Kumho’s lavender scented tires came on the U.S. market this year, and the company says it plans to roll out orange and jasmine models in the future.

Sunset over Fort Worth
on an ozone alert day
Photo: Milton Adams, for Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

We don’t know how the scented tires are selling. We do know, however, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may raise its standards on air quality as early as Monday of next week. The American Lung Association and other organizations have threatened to sue EPA, saying that the agency’s existing regulations don’t protect the public health. Here in Texas, urban air pollution is notoriously bad. In 2006, Tarrant and Dallas counties had, respectively, the 9th and 16th worst air quality in the nation. Last year the Dallas-Ft. Worth area exceeded EPA’s existing clean air standards for 31 days (that a month of hazardous breathing).

For the doubters, here are some Miss Clairol visuals. Check out those lavender skies!

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Steinberg: Flowering Question Mark

Saul Steinberg was born June 15, 1914 in Bucharest, Romania.

Double Still Life, 1979
Saul Steinberg
Photo: Adam Baumgold Gallery

Some lines stay with you. Hollyhock towers by the stucco house where we lived in Smithville, Texas. The slope—fine for sledding—of Perry’s Hill.  A newspaper obituary from 1999.

How grateful we are to find in full Sarah Boxer’s remembrance of the artist Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1915—May 12, 1999). Boxer’s article appeared in the New York Times May 13, eight years ago.

Crisp and amusing, the article does her subject justice. Boxer supplies the oddly zig-zag story of Steinberg’s life, coiling back throughout her article to the unmistakable drawings. “His visual language was a thin, sharp line that was always remarking on its own existence. ‘My line wants to remind constantly that it’s made of ink,’ Steinberg said. ‘I appeal to the complicity of my reader who will transform this line into meaning by using our common background of culture, history, poetry.’”

Complicity is all! “‘The doodle is the brooding of the hand.’”

Natural History, 1961
Saul Steinberg
Alice Lacht Zich Een Weblog

Too cerebral and “haughty” for the cartoonists, too humorous and trenchant for the art world, he could never be folded over and stuffed in any envelope. Boxer observed that Steinberg “was particularly attached to the question mark, which he drew hovering overhead, embraced in bunches or carried like a briefcase. He traced his obsession with punctuation and letters to his father’s printing business in Romania, in which condolences like ‘Crushed by Sorrow’ were printed in big wooden type.”

Drawing by Saul Steinberg
Image: Digestivo Cultural

Speaking of punctuation, her obituary quotes generously from the artist himself and a number of admirers. Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Steinberg, “His drawings are, in a sense, anthologies of art history. There are Cubist and rococo characters. Expressionist conversations, Renaissance objects. Gothic words and Pointillist emotions.” Still life, too. “There is a kind of primitivism in all this, an animism, for everything in Steinberg—even the most inanimate object or abstract thought—is teeming with feeling, aspiration, ambition and portents. Numbers are erotic, words are predatory or faltering, a coiffure may be cerebral, or a boot didactic. Steinberg sees experience itself as a parody of experience, with ‘style’ the only reliable clue to its mysterious gyrations.”

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Arthur Williams’ Vegetable Vixens

Aided and abetted by a friendly photographer and hair stylist, a Denver florist unleashes his inner couturier.

Sara Thorpe braves the Denver streets in anthuriums
styling by Arthur Williams and Tina McKeever
Photo: Beth Sanders

After our recent plea for people-centric flower photographs, the cyber clouds parted and nymphs tumbled out of Colorado. They were dazy-eyed, as nymphs have every reason to be, and flocked with gerberas and anthuriums. “I just so happen to have some ‘human garden’ photos,” wrote Arthur Williams. Indeed!

Arthur operates Babylon Floral, a company that earns its name with exotic plants and hanging gardens slung from the shoulders of Denver beauties. The 7th Wonder of the World? Maybe not, but definitely a sign of splendor in the Colorado capital.

“I started doing the floral fashion stuff about 4 years ago,” writes Arthur, “as an outlet for my crazy artsy side.” With a background in photography and sculpture as well as training in floral design, Williams is clearly not trying to crank out the same ten formulas to make a living. Westword, Denver’s alternative paper, covered a Babylon Floral event back in January 2005, featuring wall sconces full of “chocolate-scented orchids.” Kity Ironton described the proprietor: “Ear plugs, steel piercings and the brightly colored tattooed koi swimming through Hindu symbols that completely encircle his right arm make Arthur Williams a very unlikely looking florist.” A swirling koi himself, Arthur seems intent on making flowers move, jostling floral design from decoration to something more like theater.

Manivone Nonthaveth in floral “hat,” created by Arthur Williams and Tina McKeever
Photo (detail): Beth Sanders

Of course, if you want drama, other people need to be involved...."One of my first images caught the attention of Tina McKeever at Vain Salon,” Arthur writes, “and we’ve been working together ever since.” They’ve staged a number of floral fashion happenings and seem to be building a strong following of downtown style-mongers. “Every other month Tina has an art show at her salon and we have 2 models serving appetizers and drinks,” wearing Arthur’s designs. These gatherings attract “visual artists, D.J.s and tons of creative types, usually a few hundred people.” Recently they put together a “runway show” at 5 Degrees, a local nightclub that, in lieu of happy hour or line dancing, was hosting exhibitions on “global warming.” Williams says more spectacles are in the works.

Recently, Arthur and Tina met photographer Beth Sanders at a conference of “wedding professionals” and—just add media! —the circuit really started to flow. Thanks to Beth, Tina and Arthur for sending these marvels along. 

Our sense is that many florsists—how about most ?-- struggle to balance the service side of their work with self-expression. Arthur Williams chooses to put his flamboyant foot forward, trusting that the business foot will come along.  “Most of my customers order by price range and the general feeling they want to express, leaving me with complete artistic freedom,” he writes. “That always works out best. I truly believe that if you do what you love, it will take care of you.”

We’re fascinated to see how both Babylon Floral and Vain Salon make a point of linking—both on the web and in real life—with kindred enterprises in Denver. It’s like the old Rotary Club, but with piercings. Also tres 21st Century, Arthur’s business plan pipes-in philosophy. “I’m totally inspired by tribal cultures and Asian aesthetics,” he writes.

Manivone Nonthaveth before the runway show at 5 Degrees
with hair, hat and garb by Arthur Williams and Tina McKeever
Photo (detail): Beth Sanders

“I choose my florals by bold forms and ability to last without a water source for many hours,” Williams writes. “Of course that happens to coincide with my favorite flowers, cymbidiums, jamestorri dendrobium, flax to name a few. I really don’t change my design style or materials for the fashion stuff, but the ‘vessels’ ultimately dictate the finished work. As for the models, our wonderful friends really play along with our crazy ideas. Some of our headdresses aren’t built for comfort.”

Westword’s article quotes a price for one of Arthur’s floral gowns: $600 (mind you, those were 2005 dollars). But as with most contemporary installation and performance art, these pieces are made primarily to keep Arthur happy, for the sake of “fabulous....”

“I think it would be fabulous if people dressed in flowers all the time!” he says. You’ll notice that nymphs never sit down.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

My Garden & the Dismal Failure of the England Football Team

Critic, photographer, and our favorite sportswriter, John Levett brings his pepper-flavored insights back to the Human Flower Project. John lives in Cambridge, England, cycling and thinking all over the place. Roll on, John!

Geoff Hurst of England scores against Germany
World Cup Final, 1966
Photo: via Chelmsford Borough Council

By John Levett

Once upon a time in a land far, far away...or however it goes..actually round about half-past five on Saturday afternoon July 30th 1966, England won the World Cup. They’d never won anything before (memorably losing 1-0 to the USA in the 1950 event & how sad, pathetic, crass is that!) & they’ve never won anything since & the reason is that we’re crap at it—very highly paid & on the TV screen continuously, talking without ceasing & never allowing a cliché to die —but we don’t win stuff.

It’s not difficult to see why. I was sitting on Jesus Green two days ago looking at a bunch of kids kicking a ball around. It was as clear as a spot on your face under a neon bulb that they weren’t English. Reason? They were co-operating; joining together in a group endeavour to ensure collective success derived from an understanding of the tactical requirements of the task & possessing the necessary skills to accomplish each sub-task eg. kick ball to bloke with same coloured shirt. I walked past them on the way home; sure enough...Italian.

Our problem is that every kid on the street thinks he & she can play football—you’re English, it’s your birthright. Not. Go to any playground & watch English kids trying to shoot hoops. Lot’s of walking around bouncing the ball, little bit of jogging, do the hokey-cokey & turn around, sashay a bit, where’d the hoop go? No one learning the moves, the techniques; no body awareness, no team awareness, no court awareness; no hand-eye stuff; no day in-day out, 10 out of 10, 20 out of 20; no pursuit of excellence, no nous of what excellence is. Same with football—couldn’t fall down in a brewery! Wanna be Beckham but don’t wanna put in the hours; wanna do the free kicks but don’t wanna practice-til-I-drop & there’s something decent on TV.

Brits are excellent winning stuff where you have to sit on things—horses, boats, yachts, cycles. Reason: you have to learn the thing before you can move the thing & you’ve got to get some sort of spatial awareness & some knowledge of why the thing goes in a straight line & how to turn with it & why there are other people in the boat with you & why they want to go in the same direction as you. Football? What’s in that then? Got a ball, run, kick, score. Sorted!

Goldfinch
one of “the usual suspects”
Cambridge, England 2007
Photo: John Levett

So...what’s this got to do with my garden? Well very little really—I just like to get this football thing out my system every once in awhile. Except...think about this in the same way. I’m creating a garden, right? So I’m going to be thinking about...what? Size, soil, aspect, environment, location, climate; what’s going to work in the plot that I’ve got? Which plants work together; which need space to work in; which specimens can be given some freedom. Which are earning their keep; which need to be rooted out. Research work basically. Then I look to my own skills. What do I know about soil type, soil preparation? What do I need to learn about garden design? Am I getting the right advice? Any advice at all? Training, practice, refining, honing, collaboration, tactics?

Then I ask myself: is this me? Do I buy a software package, open the manual & start at page 1? Do I thump! I boot up the programme & play around until something that looks like what I want begins to emerge. (Got a ball, run, kick, score. Sorted!) At least it looks like I know what I’m doing. Some time in the future I won’t—then I go to the manual. Maybe.

Before I moved into my current home I knew that I wanted to go back to gardening; something that I’d abandoned some ten years before. And I knew that I wanted a rose garden; I’d always grown roses & all the family, close & distant, grew roses (this is England innit?) And didn’t I live for twenty-five years in Hitchin where Jack Harkness managed to get H. Persica to grow & raise seedlings & introduce hybrids? So I did the rounds of the rose gardens of East Anglia & beyond—went there in Spring, in high Summer, in Autumn—& knew that I wanted old-fashioned & even-older-fashioned. I finished with a list of, getting on for, two hundred roses—the climbers & ramblers, the species, albas & bourbons, damasks & centifolias, Ayrshires & hybrid musks, gallicas & mosses. I wanted them all. In a back garden squeezed in between the back wall of a carpet warehouse, the back-end of my home & the encroachments of adjoining neighbours’ rain forests. And leave room for the washing to dry. And sit in it.

Albertine below, Rambling Rector above
in John Levett’s Cambridge garden
Photo: John Levett

I had my unique logic to guide me. This could be my last shout at a garden. I could fall to footpads, cut-purses, rogues & villains. Disappear under a bus. Fail to adapt to global warming. Pop me clogs. Why wait? Build the garden. Defy centuries of horticultural practice not to mention common-sense, wise advice, what’s staring at you from Peter Beales’ Classic Roses...get ’em, plant ’em, sit amongst ’em. So I did. All the usual suspects—Blanc Double de Coubert, Chapeau de Napoleon, Fantin Latour, Felicite Perpetue; Gardenia & Goldfinch, Bobbie James & Rambling Rector; R. Virginiana & R. Moyesii Geranium; Souvenir de la Malmaison which a day of rain can ruin & Albertine for which George Orwell cycled from his cottage to Woolworth’s in Hitchin to buy…

Beneath Albertine (worth cycling for)
Photo: John Levett

I wanted R. Doncasterii because it was raised in a Cambridge nursery where old Jack Harkness did his apprenticeship; R. Dunwichensis because I was bird watching at Dunwich on the day Elvis died; hybrid musk Kathleen because it reminded my mum of the contralto Kathleen Ferrier; Old Yellow Scotch because it was my gran’s favourite; R. Cantabrigiensis because it was raised at the Botanic Gardens here in 1931; Canary Bird because I saw it at my first Edinburgh Festival in 1965; R. Virginiana because it was the first American rose to be brought to Europe. And so it went; picking the players ’cos my mum knew their mum & we both went to school together! I looked for all these reasons to have every one of them but in truth I needed no reason at all. It was the only garden I’d got, they’d all be in flower at the same time & most wouldn’t return for another year. So? I’d have the heps & the foliage & the textures of the leaves. And their history. And I could stick in some bulbs for Spring & late-flowering clematis for Autumn. And there’s just gotta be something else to do the business in Winter.

And so it grew (anarchically) & still does. No coaching, no pairing because these two work well together, no adapting to suit the conditions, no changing the game plan. I know where everything is & chat with each one individually. My deckchair follows the sun around & each Winter I visit the neighbours to prune their trees to let a little bit more sun through. The garden’s full so I’m colonising the walls. Next year there’ll be competition—I’m growing vegetables in pots. Every vegetable I’ve ever wanted to grow. What do I know about veg? Run, kick, score. Sorted!

Friday, June 08, 2007

Going to Any Lengths: Columbine

Plants and pollinators haven’t been sharing the workload, of evolution, anyway.

Hinckley’s columbine (Aquilegia Hinckleyana)
making adjustments for survival’s sake
Photo: Human Flower Project

Any couple that hopes to split things—childcare, housework, bread-winning, bread-baking—right down the middle has our good wishes. But we’ve never seen it quite work out in equal fractions. Same goes, it appears, for the chore of evolution.

A new study published in the latest issue of Nature bears evidence that flowering plants and their pollinators, previously thought to be paragons of equality, are like the rest of us. Plants are stretching, curling, bending over backward to make things work.

Charles Darwin noted that the strange shapes of some flowers were perfectly receptive to the nectar-gathering equipment of some equally strange birds and insects that pollinated them. He proposed that plants and their pollinators were in an evolutionary “race,” each upping the ante in accessibility. Over time both species, according to Darwin, would be at an evolutionary advantage (and mutually hung up, too). This seems to have been the prevailing view of co-evolution.

Assorted columbines, genus Aquilegia
(they try harder)
Photo: SA Hodges, MA Hodges, D Inouye
via Science Daily

But researchers Justen Whittall and Scott Hodges have found evidence that plants are actually playing evolutionary catch up, as the pollinators in their locality change. ”Whittall and Hodges found that evolution acts in a more one-sided fashion in many plants: the plants evolve nectar spurs to match the tongue-lengths of the pollinators. Then the process stops, and only starts again when there is a change in pollinators.” Call it “the trailing spouse.”

The biologists focused their attention on columbines, and found that these tubular flowers (or spurs) lengthened in stages, as pollinating bees were replaced by hummingbirds and hawkmoths, with longer nectar-sipping (and pollinating) apparatuses.

We’ve posted earlier pieces about symbiotic couples: the sunbird-dependent Babiana ringens and bat-pollinated chiropterophilous. But this new research strikes us as eminently believable. Columbines and their pollinators may not be equals in the work of evolution but they’re the equals of most other couples.