Human Flower Project

Secular Customs

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Faith, Realism, Enterprise: All in a Mustard Seed

A talisman from the 1960s reaches back two centuries and forward, to this very spring in California.

Sunset on mustard-covered hills, Tepusquet Canyon, California
Photo: Caroline Joyes Woods

“It is so completely covering our hills right now,” writes Caroline Joyes Woods, “that you can smell its honey-with-a-dash-of-fetid (the fetid being just a tiny after-smell) fragrance in the morning when you first come out and the air is still and the moisture still in the air...nice!”

“It” is mustard, and “our hills” are Tepusquet Canyon, near Santa Maria, California, where Caroline and her husband have been ranching for many years. “Nice” and a lot more than that is Caroline herself, a childhood friend, apple tree climber, and moss garden maker.

We contacted her this spring having dimly remembered a human flower project from back in the early 1960s. When we were still in elementary school, Caroline used to wear around her neck a silver chain and glass amulet with a mustard seed encased inside. We went treasure hunting and were thrilled to find one several weeks ago at Uncommon Objects here in Austin. But aside from, now, being souvenirs of childhood, what were these charms all about?

Caroline reminded us that Christ told his disciples “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed-nothing shall be impossible unto you.” (Matthew 17:20) In several of the gospels Jesus also compares the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed “which a man took, and sowed in his field:
 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.” (Matthew 13:31-2)

Mustard seed “Remembrancer” and prairie phlox (Phlox pilosa)
Photo: Human Flower Project

Someone turned the parable into a trinket that caught on. A few clicks through ebay (and the trip to Uncommon Objects, too) proved how popular these items once were—though somehow we can’t imagine preteens of today much going for them. It turns out they were manufactured by the Flint Company, a mom and pop operation in Kansas City.  In Richard Weiss’s book The American Myth of Success, we learn about Maurice and Alice Flint, a Missouri couple who had fallen on hard times after World War II. They consulted Norman Vincent Peale, a leading pop-religious figure of the time (Dr. Phil, Billy Graham, and Donald Trump rolled into one).

Weiss writes that it was Peale “who advised them to repeat the following New Testament injunction whenever they felt despondent: ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed…nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ Flint asked his wife for a mustard seed to carry as a reminder, and she obliged with one from the family pickle jar. One day, feeling low, he reached into his pocket for the seed, but it was gone.” He then struck on the idea of capturing a mustard seed in a protective container and started making costume jewelry. “The Remembrancer,” as he dubbed it, “was advertised a ‘Symbol of faith – a genuine mustard seed enclosed in sparkling glass, makes a bracelet with real meaning.’”

Remembrancer pin and cards from the Flint Co.
Photo: Collectible Jewels

The Flints opened a charm factory and did very well, it appears; according to Peale, “These articles sold like hot cakes.") “The Remembrancer” was being marketed at least by 1951, and Caroline was wearing hers in 1964. A good streak.

The mustard seed also makes an appearance in Buddhist legend, and, as you might guess, conveys a very different message.

A woman named Kisa Gotami was wandering in grief, after the death of her only child. “Her sorrow was so great that many thought she had already lost her mind.” Pleading for help, she went to the Buddha, who promised to bring her son back to life—if she could gather “white mustard seeds from a family where no-one had died. She desperately went from house to house, but to her disappointment, every house had someone who had died. Finally the realization struck her that there is no house free from death.” She was renewed, and comforted, and continued on the path toward enlightenment. (We don’t know if the Remembrancer ever caught on among Buddhists.)

Are these the same story or contradictory stories? Can “When you wish upon a star” be the same as “Wake up and smell the mustard”? We’re not sure, but Caroline seems to have found faith and truth in bloom together—“honey-with-a-dash-of-fetid.” Nice going, old friend!

Friday, April 18, 2008

In Iris Society, ‘It’s What You Like’

Dishwater blondes, clowns and upturned beards, the American Iris Society has seen it all.

Members of the American Iris Society, in Austin, Texas
for their annual meeting, toured the mammoth iris bed
at the Natural Gardener on April 17, 2008
Photo: Human Flower Project

Peachy, icy, frilly – and then there’s the one that looks like a grimy t-shirt.

Iris fanciers must be the most broadminded of all floral enthusiasts, because there’s a greater range among the flowers they breed, grow and travel cross country to see than any flower–type we know.

You orchid people may take issue. But who has seen a two-tone brown orchid? Who’s bred one the color of rag and named it “Ugly Duckling”? We saw Ugly Duckling and many fairer species with our own eyes yesterday, tagging along with the experts as the American Iris Society descended on Austin for its annual weeklong convention.

Miracles of azure, crystal puffs and mongrels in several shades of tinkle-yellow…what a range of color! Shapes too. We saw iris blooms delicate as meringues and others like smashed pinwheels, enough to make a small child cry. Much to their credit, the iris people seem to enjoy them all. Here was one the color of a puddle. “You either like it or you don’t,” Jim Morris of St. Louis told me. “I like it.”

Jim Morris of St. Louis, an iris grower since childhood and veteran of many meetings—thus the badges—took notes on the flowers Thursday; the year’s winning iris will be announced Sunday, April 20
Photo: Human Flower Project

There have been lectures, judges training sessions, and classes for the 430 participants, but the highlight, as at every iris convention, has been the garden visits, seven in all. Thursday, April 17, the group bussed west of the city to the Natural Gardener, one of Austin’s premier nurseries, to check out the 800-plus varieties that have been grown in the big full-sun bed made just for them.

Convention locales are decided at least two years in advance. That way, breeders can send their rhizomes ahead to be planted and get established so that by meeting time, if all goes well, they’ll be in full, healthy flower.

Some of the irises had “bloomed out” before the AIS members arrived. Other plants were still a just few green blades, but scores more were performing well. Jim Morris, who’s raised irises since childhood, was taking careful notes, as were many others. On Sunday evening, all the convention-goers will cast ballots for the best flowers they’ve seen this week.

Augustine, a bearded iris (non-space age) bred by O. Schick, 2005
Photo: Human Flower Project

Barbara Sautner, president of the Iris Society of Minnesota, explained that judges look for “branching, bud count, and growth.” (To our surprise and chagrin, fragrance doesn’t matter.) Sautner, and many others, too, lingered by an unnamed seedling, AM0010550-3, bred by Anton Mego of Slovakia. These are new varieties that have yet to be introduced to the market. “They want to see if we like it,” said Patricia Wurtele, of Ramona, California. From all the eye-bugging and finger-pointing, Mego’s tall purple, yellow and red iris is a winner, and for a $15 registration fee, will get a name. Since this lilting three-tone iris had thrived here in Texas, how about “Jimmie Dale Gilmore”?

A successful seedling, as yet unnamed, from Slovakian hybridizer Anton Mego
Photo: Human Flower Project

Sautner said that several of the nation’s biggest iris companies are located near Portland; Schreiner is in Oregon today, though it began in the 1920s in Minnesota. “They started bringing in iris from France and the Mediterranean that couldn’t survive our winters,” she explained. So the big hybridizers eventually moved west.

We’d never thought of Central Texas as iris land (not like back in Kentucky). Skimpy white “flags” are among the earliest flowers here in Austin, often blooming in mid-February and spent a week later. We have some pretty, but also frail, passalong purples that flower in March. And our neighbors David and Wendy Todd have many tall Louisiana iris, bright yellow, now blooming around their pond.

But the huge bearded hybrids these iris experts most admire are Bouvier des Flandres compared with our local fidos. There are double scoops of sorbet – like the aptly named Trinotostare. And the iris socialites appear to be especially taken with “space age” varieties. These irises, Richard Wurtele told us, were introduced over the past ten years and bred with weird beards. Rather than hanging down, a little bristle down the center of the iris “fall,” these beards are flexed into “horns, spoons and flounces.”

Hybridizer Jack Worel talks to Jean Morris and Barbara Sautner about
his Silver Creek iris, which has taken to Central Texas beautifully
Photo: Human Flower Project

Jack Worel, from Osseo, Minnesota, said that hybridizing iris is fairly easy (Note: Jack may be at a genetic advantage—his great aunt Elsie Peterson was one of the first iris judges in the U.S.). On Thursday his Silver Creek, a white iris with a deep orange beard, drew a crowd. “Wow, what a clump!” exclaimed Jean Morris of Baldwin, Missouri, as she scribbled in a notebook. Jack said that Silver Creek is the offspring of Michelle Taylor, another white iris, and Shirley M, pink with a blue beard. Loaded with cigar like buds and rippling blooms, it seems to like it here in Austin.

A “space age” iris with upturned beard and plicata (speckles)
Photo: Human Flower Project

After encountering Worel’s beautiful white iris, as well as Hurry Up Sun, Augustine, and Full Figured, we will have to give bearded iris a try. Patricia Wurtele says these spectacular hybrids aren’t hard to grow, so long as they’re shallowly planted and receive a half day of sun. They do like water (a problem here) and good drainage. “And they’re hungry flowers,” she says, recommending alfalfa pellets to enrich the soil.

But just because a hybridizer can concoct an iris with a red, spoon-shaped beard that sticks two inches in the air, does anyone want one? Apparently so. “It’s what you like,“ Jim Morris says serenely. We like Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Kim Il Sung: Orchids & Embalming

Nothing’s too good for the former leader of North Korea, or his corpse.

Magenta orchids fill Pyongyang, North Korea,
for Kim Il Sung’s birthday and the new year, April 15
Photo: Gao Haorong, for Xinhua

Given the hostile silence between the U.S. and North Korea, it only makes sense that April 15th—the dreaded filing deadline for taxes here—is the jolliest day of the year there.

It’s the birthday of Kim Il Sung, who was North Korea’s leader from 1948 until 1994. Nearly half a century long, his reign (a more fitting word than “administration") includes what’s known on this side of the Pacific as The Korean War, which we understand has never formally been declared over by the U.S. We assume this diplo-lunacy is observed in North Korea, too.

Kim Il Sung’s birthday has been called “the North Korean equivalent of Christmas Day,” but it’s also New Year’s Day. His son and successor, Kim Jong Il, had the calendar changed to honor his father and start the year off April 15th.

The 2007 celebration of Kim Il Sung’s birthday, Pyongyang
Photo: Marc in North Korea

In Pyongyang, the capitol, official celebration has been ongoing for about a week. You can tell because magenta orchids have been amassed in the city’s public spaces. There are indoor hillocks of them, and pots filed in rows before giant paintings of the former leader, depicted lolling on the grass in suit and tie as smiling throngs surround him.

The holiday flower is a species of dendrobium orchid named for Kim Il Sung in 1965, on a visit to Indonesia. President Sukarno was showing the North Korean leader around Bogor Botanical Garden, when Kim admired this garish bloom. It was a new orchid, as yet unnamed, bred by one of the garden botanists (still unnamed). The story goes that Sukarno spontaneously honored the North Korean Leader by naming the purple flower for him.

Ever since, ”Kimilsungia," as the orchid is known, has symbolized the president. And with huge displays in April, it’s as if his ghost drapes Pyongyang like a heavy purple robe. We’ve never seen these New Year’s displays in person, but the photographs are intriguing. We see a huge outline of the North Korean nation, right down to the 38th parallel, packed with orchids. Many displays combine propagandist landscape paintings—the grinning Kim Il Sung flanked by 2-D flowers—and masses of live blossoming plants, creating diorama effects that are, in our view, quite marvelous.

Live orchids and painted ones honoring Kim Il Sung, 2007
Photo: Marc in North Korea

We understand that this year’s festivities had to be scaled back a bit due to the sorry state of the North Korean economy (our two nations do share a few things), though apparently, the cultivation of KimIlsungia remains a top national priority even in hard times. ”Despite the shortage of electricity, the greenhouses of Kimilsungia are always well taken of. During the famine and energy crisis of the late 1990’s, KCNA carried reports about how patriotic citizens asked the state energy bureaus to shut down their home heating systems during winter so that there is enough electric power for the glories of Kimilsungia.”

In the U.S. expenditure on flowers is routinely flouted as evidence of wastefulness. Politicians who spend freely on flowers or on their personal adornment are held up for ridicule.  But the North Koreans see things from a different angle. To mark the new year, the NK News Agency has announced with pride that $800,000 (USD) is being spent annually to preserve Kim Il Sung’s body, “the 9th eternally-preserved corpse among the former socialist countries’ leaders.” See for yourself, at the Mt. Keumsoo Memorial Palace; year round, there must surely be purple orchids near the mummy case. Kim Il Sung has been dead 14 years.

And to think John Edwards was shamed for a $300 haircut!

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Copycat Gardening with China Roses

Many dead rose bushes along in gardening, brute imitation looks like a better and better approach, whether it’s “sincere” or not.

Archduke Charles, China rose that survives in Austin, TX
Photo: Human Flower Project

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” we’ve been told, a maxim we have always detested for trying to take copycats off the hook. As if “flattery” were a good thing!  We’re not even all that keen on “sincerity.”

When it comes to Central Texas gardening, though, we now embrace copycatting with both freckled arms. This has nothing to do with flattery or virtue - it’s the distinct pleasure of survival. Lime soil and 112 degree summer days make lily of the valley, peonies, bearded iris, and camellias (the list goes on…) experiments in hubris, and after a decade in Austin, we’ve failed enough of those tests. Now melted into submission (a.k.a. imitation), we have a few blooming plants to show for it.

Some of the finest are China roses. Thanks to Lynnette for this succinct description: “Introduction of roses from China started the continual flowering of modern roses. These Chinas are slender, open shrubs that bear large clusters of small flowers throughout the summer months. They do need a sunny and protected site to grow well in.”

Rouletii after a rainshower, with Mutabilis behind it
Photo: Human Flower Project

This spring seems to have been exceptionally cool and fresh. There was a whale of a rain in early March that set the roses off magnificently, and as M. Sinclair Stevens noted at Zanthan Gardens, the drop-down worms are either late or mysteriously absent this year. Consequently, our China roses – and those all across the city—are putting on a prolonged show – timely for the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling. (Kudos to Melissa and Pam Penick, Diana Kirby and Bonnie Martin for divine intuition as well as crack planning!)

Before moving to Austin, we’d never heard of China roses and, honestly, they took some getting used to. Compared to hybrid teas, the plants tend to be bushy, sprawling,—shapeless, really. The flowers are smaller than most later rose varieties, and some of the colors are strident. Off putting? Indeed. It took several years of killing, first, Bourbon roses (Coquette des Blanches and Mme. Issac Perriere), and then early hybrid teas (Sombreuil, Mrs. Oakley Fisher and Lafter) for us to quit daring and start copy-catting.

Copycattable rose Ducher, with loads of blooms this spring
Photo: Human Flower Project

Looking around, we spotted Scott Thurman’s white China rose Ducher blooming intermittently nearly half the year. In a locale with as many microclimates as Austin (also the confluence of several soil zones), it’s best to imitate immediate neighbors.  With Scott just two doors down, Ducher was the first China rose we tried. It’s having a super spring, and we plan to buy another one or two this fall—the best time to plant anything here.

Morton King first put us on to Archduke Charles (known as the “Sam Houston Rose” where he lives, Georgetown, Texas). When we spotted several healthy bushes of it blooming like mad four blocks away, we bought a couple of these shrubs, too. Like a number of Chinas, they are multicolored roses, blooming pale pink and darkening to deep crimson as the flowers age.

Mutabilis: a big, shaggy, multi-colored survivor in Austin
Photo: Human Flower Project

One of the most popular roses around Austin is Mutabilis, a China rose that grows to be about the size of a Prius. We first noticed Mutabilis in Gretchen Heber’s yard, amazed that it was a rose at all. The buds are melon orange, the blooms are golden yellow, and then turn pink. In full bloom, a Mutabilis shrub looks like it’s covered with ribbons.

Rouletti is a more compact China rosebush, with smaller flowers too, a slightly purply shade of pink. Dick Stanley and Debra Davis, who no longer live in the ‘hood, bequeathed a fine rouletti hedge to Travis Heights that blooms faithfully each spring.

Rico Shay, Dinah, Bill and Old Blush, April 2, 2008
Photo: Human Flower Project

Certainly the best known of the Chinas is Old Blush. Many rosarians say that it was among the first Chinas (Rosa chinensis) to come to European gardens in the 18th Century, the ancestor of many a Portland, Bourbon, and Noisette. (For loads more on the genealogy of China roses look here and here. And you might also like this article on the wild roses of Southern China, where it all began.)

Pam Puryear, whose rose gardening so many other Texans have copy-catted, called this her favorite. Her friend, horticulturist and author William Welch writes, “”My own interest in old roses began when I was a child, back in the mid-1940 as I watched my aunt Edna carefully planting a hedge of the China rose ‘Old Blush’ (which she called “The Fisher Rose” in honor of the dear friends and neighbors who had given it to her) with bridal wreath spiraea, to create a living wall that enclosed two sides of her garden.” One of the founders of the Antique Rose Emporium in Independence, Texas, Welch got hot on the trail of a climbing variety of Old Blush – a story he tells in The Southern Heirloom Garden, co-authored with Greg Grant. If you live in the South and have few gardening neighbors to imitate, this book is a good alternative.

Martha Gonzales, a China rose Pam Puryear first collected in Navasota, blooms
outside the stage door at St. Edwards U. as a theatre student paints a piano stool
Photo: Human Flower Project

Another survivor is a small red China rose called “Martha Gonzales,” named for the Navasota gardener who grew it and shared it with early rose rustlers. Our friend Lisa Orr, who fears not red, has a beauty in her front yard. And we could have sworn that the space around the front of the Main Building of St. Edwards University here in South Austin was once landscaped with scores of these rose bushes, their red blooms in keeping with the distinctive red roofs of the old campus buildings. When we drove up there the other day, there was only lawn. Was it all a dream?

Not necessarily. Somewhere along the line there was definitely a Martha Gonzales admirer at work up here. We found a few plants flowering behind the Main Building, despite too much shade. And next to the stage door of the college’s Mary Moody Northern theatre were two healthy shrubs hamming it up—as if this were Act II of How to Succeed in Texas Gardening Without Really Trying.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Why Callas Must Moan: Jay Yan

With callas that sigh, a California artist combines digital media and fresh flowers with his art world savvy to entice an international audience.

A gallery goer bends down to attend Jay Yan’s Whisper
Photo: Jay Yan

A few fundamentals. Flowers contain the sex organs of plants—it’s true. And yes, art is a form of exhibitionism.

A delightful young artist from Los Angeles, Jiacong (Jay) Yan, has turned these basics into interactive works designed to allure and startle. In these times, artists who allure only tend to be dismissed as frivolous. (A shame, we say. How many Watteaus have turned to truck driving?)

What drew us to Jay were the flowers in his piece Whisper. In a dark room, nine white calla lilies stand illuminated from above, and as you approach them, you hear each flower moaning tenderly. If there’s an auditory equivalent of “voyeurism,” here it is, sighing in a public gallery. Since it’s just flowers, not a writhing woman, listening is socially acceptable, sort of; but calling it “art” is the real kiss of guilt-freedom.

Jay, born 1983 in Shanghai, moved to the U.S. in 1990 and now lives in Los Angeles. “I am born Chinese, raised American, and now because Chinese art is so hot, Chinese once more,” he states in an online bio. We enjoy how Jay both plays along with many rules of the art world and breaks the big one—disclosing that there ARE rules everyone plays by. He very generously wrote to us about the evolution of Whisper, an intriguing story, we think, as it illustrates some of the pressures—social, conceptual, financial, political—that are molding contemporary artists and what they make.

Jay Yan

”Whisper came to me when I was kicking a ball around with a friend. Like anything worth making, it came inexplicably,” Jay writes. “I said to myself, ‘If flowers could talk, what would they say?’ We explored romantic notions, agricultural notions, environmental complaints, and then realized, ‘Wait, all these notions are placed on flowers by society.’ Like my professor Jennifer Steinkamp once said, ‘Flowers are innocent. Flowers do not represent love, charity, sorrow, friendship —if society was not around. What do flowers do if we really abstract it enough?’ Well, that’s obvious, right? sex.”

All the classroom philosophizing, considerations of social constructedness and the like, land back at square one. Nonetheless, most “serious” contemporary artists feel obligated to engage in such a conceptual workout.

Back to Jay: “Again, idea of sex and flowers—not new. Georgia O’Keefe explored it extensively through her paintings, and Robert Mapplethorpe did through his photography. I wanted to reference both in Whisper. (Also, I found a company in Japan that makes flowers talk! Too bad they’re out of business now, haha. The talking flower didn’t prove to be that popular; I think I was their only customer).” We wrote a bit about that product, Jay, right here. Good to hear from one person—as you say, maybe the only one—who bought it.

He goes on: “So the piece consists of 9 flowers, each of them calla lilies. Calla lilies being not only the best flower for talking but also Georgia O’Keefe and Mapplethorpe both used it extensively in their works. The sexualization of calla lilies is quite explored in art history. I included a very strong spot light from above the piece to give it the shadows Mapplethorpe uses so well.”

Exploring the precedents for his subject, Jay fulfills another another artistic obligation. The point is not to imitate what’s come before but to advance past it somehow—either slaying your forebears or, more benignly, standing on their shoulders. Noting that many an art historian has written about human sexuality and callas, Jay mentions only art celebrities of the recent past—O’Keefe and Mapplethorpe— maybe because their popularity serves as a kind of cultural shorthand.

Jay Yan’s Whisper during its exhibition in Shanghai
Callas must not have been available; these look like Easter lilies (Lilium longiflorum)
Photo: Jay Yan

“The flowers each moan softly like during intimacy, and it’s a female voice,” Jay writes. “I know, sounds very sexist. Let me tell you another story....

“So at first, I had each flower whisper prepared text by my friends who all gave me their favorite lines they like to whisper to someone’s ear during intimacy. Then I recorded both male and female voice actor tracks. Oh boy, was that hard. First off, I auditioned 120 people. Here is one typical result from an actor:

“The funny part was, his girlfriend was next to him, so I gave her a quick glance like, ‘Does he talk to you like this normally?’

“Then I got criticized by a curator at the Getty about the choice of words (well ‘criticized’ is a strong word— more like, he was interested in buying it, then he asked about the text, and when I told him, he stopped becoming interested). This coupled with each flower having a different voice proved not that interesting after a while, and the electronics for making each flower having a different voice becoming expensive and hard to find. I decided they should all be the same.” Maybe if a few gladioli, pansies and snapdragons had been mixed in, different “texts” would have been warranted.

But, Jay, how rare it is for artists to admit that the wrinkled nose of a museum official or gallery owner or some other arbiter changed their creative course! As heliotropic flowers turn their faces to the sun, artists intent on growing their careers do heed the responses of authorities. It happens all the time!  And of course there are feasibilities to consider. Media artists can dream beyond their technical capacities, and their finances. Let’s be real.

“The reduction of audible words to a moan came about because Art is international these days. Hell, 100% of all my shows are all overseas in non-English speaking countries. How can they understand the sexualities of the piece if they don’t speak English? So to the dismay of many of my female friends, but support of all my female friends that make art (funny how making art changed your opinions) I auditioned for moans.”

What used to be called art’s “universality” is now a feature of art world globalism. And Jay neatly avoided what might have been a linguistic barrier, by nixing words.

Listening with happiness to Whisper
Photo: Jay Yan

“That was another 60 horrible auditions. But I finally came up with one that was great. I liked her because just listening to her can invoke the feeling of eroticism instantly in any language. I like the idea of people at an art museum or gallery in public and putting their ear to the piece and hearing it and getting turned on because it’s such a socially inappropriate thing, thus taboo. And taboo is the basis of eroticism (so it’s like a loop!).” See above.

Though Whisper’s blooms and sighs both travel easily across international boundaries, Jay points out how variously the piece has been received.

“In China, since sex in art is taboo enough to get you banned, I had a show and when the censors came to inspect the show, I unplugged the work so they just thought it was a nice looking sculpture. During the opening, a famous curator commented that he was amazed I got away with such a piece in China. The censors came back the next day apparently, but I think a janitor accidentally unplugged the piece! haha.

“In Asia, men love the piece. Many women like it, but are apprehensive about it. I suspect it could be like a Confucius thing (like how it is only appropriate for Chinese women to associate with men in church). This might be a bias, but it’s my observation from hanging around Chinese churches at a young age. Sex is still soooooo taboo in China.

“The opposite is found in, say, Europe where women all love the piece. They openly tell me and some have offered me drugs because they appreciated the experience with the piece so much.” Not exactly “fame, money, and beautiful lovers,” but, hey, there’s a recession going on.

“As opposed to men in Europe, who are very restrained about their contact with the piece. An observer said to me at a show, ‘The piece is so sensual, it’s surprising a man made it.’ I think this is the interesting part, I think the sensuality turns men off in Europe because they might fear losing their manhood in public by being near the piece. They loved the giant robot hand that was next to my piece!

“Oh, and Germans generally dislike the piece. I still haven’t figured out why.” General Germans, please let us hear from you.

Congratulations and nine breathy thanks to Jay for his account of a provocative Human Flower Project, its creation and reception. In case you don’t have the opportunity to see and hear Whisper in person, Jay has supplied a video on his website.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Hallmark Quits the Flower Business

The first name in U.S. greeting cards—and PG-rated TV dramas—has not done so well selling flowers.

“When you care enough to send the very best….” To the breast-beating motto of the Hallmark card company, we now add: “When you know enough to get out of flower retailing....”

Hallmark has done just that. The company announced that it will stop “its direct-to-consumer flowers and gifts business by the end of April.”
 
Hallmark Flowers began as a pilot retailing program in 1999, launching in 2001 and mailing out its first catalogue in 2005. The company marketed flowers and other gifts through both the catalogue and a website. Jennifer Mann, reporting for Hallmark’s hometown paper the Kansas City Star, quotes company spokesperson Julie O’Dell: ““Basically, we have taken a close, thorough look at the current competitive marketplace — particularly for flowers — and our business model and have determined that the investments we needed to make to keep those businesses running and profitable simply couldn’t guarantee the results we needed.”

Does that mean margins were too low, postal rates too high (Hallmark Flowers mailed a whopping eight catalogues to customers last year), or flower sales are declining? Or could it be that the greeting card giant never understood flowers as gifts?

We have no inside scoop, but we do know that buying greeting cards and buying flowers are very different. And while Hallmark knows a thing or ten thousand about the former, that knowledge might have botched their efforts with the latter.

When we shop for a greeting card (being too lazy to make one ourselves), we know we’ll have to settle for something generic – “Sympathy” “Uncle Birthday” “Baby Shower” or, preferably, “Blank.” It’s our lucky day if we find one card that doesn’t resort to a joke about farting or a photo of porpoises. And if it’s not our lucky day, well, it’s the thought that counts.

But with flowers, generic will not do. We’re always looking for something fresh and explicitly personal. We’ll try the patience of any florist insisting on shasta daisies over gerberas, blue delphinium not purple, sweetheart roses rather than the long stemmed kind….

Online flower sellers and catalogues aren’t evil, they just have no way to offer nuance or serendipity. Also, when the catalogue goes to press, in January, there’s no way to know whether the white larkspur available March 27th will be raggedy or heavenly, or not white at all but pink.

Hallmark had built a “state of the art” flower-handling facility near Memphis, where ProFlowers and 1-800-Flowers also have distribution centers. Now, unfortunately, 100 people there in Southaven, Tennessee, and in Kansas City will lose their jobs.  We wish them something better. Otherwise we consider the demise of Hallmark Flowers to be good news and good business. Ease up on the farting jokes, people, and keep on doing what you do “very best.”

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Easter Nests & Flower Magic

As Texas springs into bloom, a DeWitt County family reunites and savors a custom from the Old Country.

An Easter nest made at the Ideus family’s gathering
April 2003
Photo: Bill Bishop

On the Saturday before Easter, the grown up children, their own children and grandkids, cousins from San Antonio and Austin, and a few welcome stragglers converge on the Ideus farm near Meyersville, Texas. Merton and Marjorie Ideus, who milked cattle for 46 years, don’t believe in leaving things to chance. The Easter bunny needs – and deserves—coaxing.  So if you’re expecting chocolates and pink eggs, it’s time to get busy and make an Easter nest.

Especially when Easter comes late, DeWitt County is lush this time of year. The land is a living kaleidoscope, sparkling with coreopsis, Indian paintbrush, poppies and bluebonnets.

“De Witt County is known for having the best wildflowers in the state,” says Bob Orr, Marjorie’s cousin. In fact he says that several times. And having been there in the spring of 2003, we wouldn’t contradict him. That year, Marjorie and Merton generously invited us to come on down from Austin and take part in their family Easter tradition, a human flower project reaching back many generations.

Picking wildflowers on the Ideus farm, Meyersville, TX
Photo: Bill Bishop

Along with about 20 Ideuses and Orr cousins, we loaded into the beds of a couple of pickups and bumped along through cool grassy pastures to the back of the farm. What a banner year for wildflowers! Piling out, we fanned apart and began to pick our fill, engrossed in the life beneath our feet. Airy purple Texas vervrain, winecups, and Indian blanket ... for once, to have an Easter-bunny’s-eye-view of the world.

With baskets, hats, pails, and coffee cans full of blooms, we rumbled back to the house, where Marjorie set out paper plates on picnic tables in the breezeway. The fresh wildflowers were strewn in the center, as young, old, and middling began fashioning the ultimate Easter bunny come-on. All kinds— geometric designs like gemstones, tufts of color, weaves, and heavenly pile-ons in the spirit of banana splits.

Marjorie and Merton play Easter bunny while unsuspecting relatives enjoy lunch inside
Photo: Bill Bishop

Marjorie and Merton explained that this was an old world custom their German ancestors had brought with them to Central Texas. Their Duderstadt, Diebel, Schewitz, and Egg—yes, truly!—forebears are buried in the cemetery of St. John Lutheran Church close by. Marjorie recalls that in her youth the Easter nests were laid on the ground, made of Spanish moss decorated with wildflowers. But in recent times moss hasn’t been so plentiful as it once was in DeWitt County. For several years she’s opted for paper plates and thus far the Easter bunny hasn’t turned up his nose.

With stalks and crushed flowers swept away, each finished nest was beautiful; all together they were magic, enough to lure distant cousins and the more elusive genie of spring, hopping or otherwise. (For a bunch more photos of the Ideauses’ Easter-nest-making, check out the slideshow on Daily Yonder.) Marjorie called us inside for a delicious supper, featuring sausage made with Merton’s time-honored recipe (“40 pounds of meat, 1 pound of salt, ½ pound of black pepper”). Scalloped potatoes, jello with oranges, pineapple and cottage cheese, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, lettuce and tomato salad, and a 7-up cake with coconut— as everyone, almost, settled in to this wonderful meal, who noticed that Marjorie and Merton had vanished from the scene?

Roy Harris, from Austin, proudly shows his first Easter nest
Photo: Bill Bishop

After dessert we trailed outside and found that, silently, the Easter bunny had arrived. On top of our nests of flowers there were colored eggs and homemade cookies, pinwheels, stuffed rabbits, and chocolates!

“We’re trying to build memories,” Marjorie said, as her great granddaughters, with wildflowers over both ears, spun their green and silver pinwheels.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Today’s Hawaiian Lei (Kiss Not Included)

Competition from Asian growers and airport security are stifling Hawaii’s famed floral greeting.

Mr. and Mrs. Mainland Get a Blast of Aloha
Image: art.com

In the late 1800s, visiting Hawaii meant sloshing over hundreds of ocean miles: The Boat Days, they call it in the islands. To be greeted with a lei after braving the seas (or before, if one were headed back to the mainland) seems to have caught on quickly, an indelible tourist experience that swiftly became part of travelers’ expectations and tour guides’ provisions. Lore grew around the lei custom, too:

“It was said if a departing visitor tossed their lei into the ocean and it floated back to the beach, it meant that the person would someday return to the islands. Hundreds of leis could be seen floating in the crystal waters off of Diamond Head as a ship steamed away.” (Anyone who finds this too sentimental, please break a brick with your head!)

Lei Vendors in Honolulu
Photo: via art.com

The University of Hawaii has posted a brief history of the lei tradition based around interviews with Honolulu lei vendors. It notes, “By the turn of the (20th) century, the lei industry was well established in Honolulu. Hawaiian lei sellers — generally women — were visible on the sidewalks of downtown Honolulu in the area of Hotel, Maunakea, and Kekaulike streets.” Travel to the islands swelled in the late 1920s, as Matson Navigation Company began luxury liner service between California and Honolulu.  The lei sellers, picking flowers from their own yards and local farms, strung garlands and brought them to the waterfront on steamer days (usually twice monthly). With the beginnings of air travel in the 1940s, some moved to the airport, selling their flowers from the backs of trucks.

“(We) had all these jalopies. We just build a stand on. No more electricity over there. Just a dark road and don’t even have street lights. What we have is gas lanterns. We hang it onto the stand. This is how it started,” said seller Harriet Kauwe.

And today? Hawaiian tourists have come to expect the lei greeting. And it’s still provided though the circumstances, the vendors and the flowers themselves are changing fast. Most of the lei sellers on Maunakea Street today are Filipino women, not Hawaiians. Nearly all lei greetings take place not at the shining waterfront or even the airport gate. Instead, airport regulations require “greeting companies” to station representatives in the baggage area holding out signs with passengers’ names (limousine-service style). One company explains: “After deplaning, clients should recognize their name sign. In the traditional way of saying Aloha, a lei, specially selected from one of our four service categories, will then be presented” (we’re not sure if a kiss comes with that).

Shirley Magaoay, a lei vendor born in the Philippines
at her shop on Maunakea St., Honolulu
Photo: Olivier Koning

Also, it’s likely that the flowers looped around your neck will not be Hawaiian. The state’s annual summary of the flower and nursery business found that Hawaii-grown lei flowers had been steeply declining for several years. Production of plumeria, creamy yellow and highly favored for leis, was down by half from 2002. Cultivation of pikake (Jasminum sambac), a pearly and more traditional lei flower in the islands, was down even more. “In 2002, nine growers sold 81,000 (pikake) blossoms valued at $242,000. In 2006, five growers sold 23,000 flowers worth $60,000.” Carnation and tuberose production in Hawaii has sunk also.

What’s happened? As on the mainland, U.S. flower farmers can’t beat the cheap labor costs in Latin America. And Hawaiian growers find themselves in added competition with farms in Japan and Thailand. Not only were total blooms and revenues down between 2002 and 2006, so was the acreage dedicated to lei flower production. (You can find the whole report here.) We’d suppose that as in much of the rest of the U.S., flower growing simply doesn’t look like the most lucrative use of land, especially so in Hawaii where there’s not much of it and demand for a piece of paradise is high.

The one exception in this decline of locally grown lei flowers seems to be the orchid Miss Joaquim Vanda, a splashy purple and white blossom hugely popular in the 1930s that’s making a comeback. This flower doesn’t travel well, so Hawaiian blooms can still dominate the market.  “To make a vanda lei requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 flowers,” said Richard Criley, horticulturist at University of Hawaii. “Of course, the old-style lei, the flat one, which uses only the principal lip petals, requires many, many more flowers. That would account for the increase right there.”

But Criley also believes that lei sales generally have fallen off. Perhaps Hawaii, more accessible now than ever, is also less exotic, and a fresh garland has a whiff of absurdity. All the new rules at U.S. airports have made greetings clumsy, too. “There used to be a whole slew of people waiting by the gates with lei in hand. Now, you have to wait at the baggage area, which isn’t as easy,” he says. No matter how much slack guitar music they pipe in, blinking alarms, Hertz and drug hounds, moving walkways and conveyor belts are mighty low in Aloha.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Sheep, Sex, Shipping: Valentine’s ‘08

Consumer frenzy, love policing, and labor rights hug the headlines February 14th.

A shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, sets the mood for sweethearts
Photo: Chaiwat Subprasom, for Reuters

Hallmark holiday? We prefer to think of Valentine’s as comic, an invitation to lighten up on everybody and see the redbud on bare February branches.
Here’s some floral news confetti.

NEW ZEALAND: Tessa Laird writes that a florist in Wellington is boycotting red roses this Valentine’s Day. Jeanie McCafferty, owner of Next Stop Earth, contends that demand for red roses in February drives prices six times higher than normal—or even tolerable. On an average day in Wellington, a dozen red roses sells for about $10, but with demand so high at Valentine’s, they go for about $65. “You can get a fantastic bunch of flowers from us for that price,” McCafferty says. McCafferty also refuses to deliver flowers to workplaces on Valentines “as it put pressure on her staff and couriers.” She recommends that everybody postpone their flower-buying till March.

Tessa’s reaction: “I like it!” But Tessa, Jeanie, we don’t understand. Without excess, without irrationality, without “stress,” where’s the magic juju? We and hundreds of frantic florists will be interested to hear how Next Stop Earth fares.

At Maridadi flower company in Naivasha, Kenya, a worker loads red
roses from a greenhouse, February 9
Photo: Simon Maina, for AFP

KENYA: Widespread violence after national elections here disrupted flower production—and a whole lot more. In Naivasha, where most of the Kenya’s flower farms are concentrated, homes were burned and people were massacred last month. The “flower farms were relatively untouched but no one showed up to pick the roses and hypericum at Wildfire Flowers the next day, or the day after.” Flower companies hustled to get back in operation, phoning workers to reassure them that the factories were safe, then sending “runners out to homes” to convince workers to return. It appears that long days of flower production and shipping resumed in time to meet heavy demand in Europe. Kenyan companies “have flown flowers to Nairobi or directly to Europe rather than risk impromptu roadblocks. Those that go by road move in daily truck convoys protected by police.”

Sting Ray, be mine!
A special Valentine’s treat at Tokyo’s Sunshine Aquarium
Photo: Itsuo Inouye, for AP

JAPAN: The Sunshine International Aquarium celebrates Valentines all month long. Throughout February, there are special events with a Valentine’s theme.  At left, an aquarium staffer brings an underwater yummy to a ray on February 2 (maybe Ground Hog Day needs renaming).

COLOMBIA: Some 60% of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported from Colombia. Just two days ago, eleven religious leaders from the U.S. signed and sent a letter to the president of Dole Fresh Flowers, the largest flower company in Colombia, asking that the corporation permit workers to unionize.

“These workers report that they organized independent unions in order to address concerns about low wages, long hours, high productivity quotas, humiliation by management, and health problems associated with repetitive motion and over-exposure to pesticides,” reads in part the letter to David DeLorenzo, Dole Flowers’ CEO. The religious leaders, brought together by U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project, urge Dole to permit the latest union effort at its La Fragancia plantation to move forward (Dole closed its Splendor operation last year, where flower workers had been successful in building a union).

INDIA: Fundamentalists, both Hindu and Muslim, have tried to suppress romantic tokens at Valentine’s Day here, but in Bangalore, street vendors of roses have been doing brisk business. A flower seller in Raipur, though, says sales of flowers and cards, too, are just one quarter of what they were in 2007. Religious ethics aren’t to blame.  “Today’s youth, armed with a high disposable income, is buying the most expensive cards and gifts in addition to spending it on eating out,” said an executive of Archies, a card and gift company.

TAIWAN: A survey of women in Taipei, published this week, showed that 70% of Taiwanese men thought their lady friends wanted flowers for Valentine’s Day. However, 92%of the women surveyed “said they would prefer other gifts, such as chocolates or even a marriage proposal.” The research was conducted by an environmental group called Green Sense, which urges the public to buy potted plants instead of cut flowers (marriage offers being out of most people’s price range.)

Sheep nosh on red carnations, flowers that an Israeli embargo
prevented from leaving Gaza
Photo: Reuters

PALESTINE: Flower growers in Gaza have resorted to feeding their carnations to livestock. An Israeli “lockdown” in the area ruled by Hamas has meant that farmers have been stuck with their harvest, unable to export this Valentine’s season. “I apologise to the lovers on the day of their love because I cannot bring flowers to them,” Ziad Hejazi says. “Our flowers have become food for the sheep.”

THAILAND: A poll in Thailand revealed that 1 in four teenagers celebrates Valentine’s Day by having sex (without indicating what rates on an ordinary Thursday might be.) “Police plan to swoop on motels, malls and parks to ensure youths behave themselves on the ‘Day of Love.’”

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Miami’s Big ‘Oh’:  A World of Orchids

Orchid-fans, you shoulda been there, but if you weren’t, Greg Allikas offers a fine show-and-tell of the 19th World Orchid Conference in Miami. Thank you, Greg!

Lc. Mona Pink ‘Hiromi,’ one star of the recent world orchid show in Miami, Florida
Photo: Greg Allikas

By Greg Allikas

True orchid devotees try to attend at least one World Orchid Conference in their lifetimes. A very few have attended most or all of them! Since 1954 these events—bringing together the global human-orchid community—have taken place in a different country every three years. The last one was held in Dijon, France, and the next will be in Singapore. But this year it was Miami, Florida’s turn, a dazzling orchid spectacular for South Floridians and their guests from around the world.

In five days, January 23-27, the 19th World Orchid Conference delighted and educated thousands of visitors. Two of South Florida’s most vital orchid societies—The South Florida Orchid Society of Miami, and the Fort Lauderdale Orchid Society—co-hosted the event. (Robert Fuchs, the current WOC president, and Ken Kone served as co-chairs). Both groups have held their own annual orchid shows, which are among the finest and largest in the U.S. so there was an ample pool of experienced talent to draw on for this major undertaking. Volunteers from all of South Florida and many local orchid societies pitched in with crews before and during the event.

Walking through the doors, visitors were face to face with the mountainous Grand Champion exhibit by R.F Orchids of Homestead, Florida.  This wall of flowering orchid plants featured purple Vanda hybrids on one side and white Phalaenopsis on the other. Its antique props a 150-year old cart at front and a Burmese offering temple at back, featured special orchids.

Reserve Champion Exhibit by Kruss-Smith Orchids, Apopka, Florida
Photo: Greg Allikas

The Reserve Champion exhibit was created by Krull-Smith Orchids of Apopka, Florida. This 1000 sq. ft. Japanese-inspired garden featured a Phalaenopsis “cherry tree” and bridge over a “river” of scarlet Phragmipedium besseae flowers. Frank Smith’s superb culture of slipper orchids was evident throughout the exhibit and won the Grand Champion plant award for Paphiopedilum Michael Koopowitz ‘Krull-Smith’ AM/AOS.

Directly behind Krull-Smith was Singapore Botanic Gardens’ stunning exhibit. Created mostly with cut flowers, a silk-draped tea house served as a focal point. The exhibit from South Africa featured plants that were all Disa species or hybrids—a beautiful genus of scarlet, pink or yellow flowers not often seen in the U.S.  Their culture is difficult and requires constant moisture supplied by cool water. A beautiful and inspiring exhibit of diverse soecies was presented by Andy’s Orchids from California, Many exhibits provided creative ideas for displaying orchids, but overall, the flowers were the stars here!

The logistics of shipping orchid plants and flowers halfway across the world for five days of display can be complicated. Take, for example, the participants from Ecuador. Their exhibit was beautifully conceived: against 20’ tall photographic banners of the country’s two main habitats, the orchid plants were to be set in small trees and mossy banks. But because of paperwork difficulties getting the plants out of Ecuador, the orchids sat in boxes for two extra days in less than ideal conditions. When they arrived in Miami, more than half of the orchid flowers had faded. Dispirited but undaunted, the group salvaged what they could and borrowed unused plants from other exhibitors. They did what they came to do…create a beautiful orchid exhibit!

Paphiopedilum Michael Koopowitz, Grand Champion Orchid Plant, 19th WOC
Photo: Greg Allikas

A World Orchid Conference offers the best opportunities for buying new and unusual orchid plants, and the 19th WOC was no exception. Whether you were just shopping for a few plants to decorate your home or for a recently discovered species from distant jungles, you could probably find them at the 19th World Orchid Conference. Fabric wares, crystal, jewelry, glasswork, photography, painting and arts & crafts could be purchased in the second level mart area, where the art and photography contests were also on display.

Billed as the largest orchid show in the U.S., rivaled only by shows in Tokyo and Taiwan, the Miami event featured over 100 exhibits of orchids and orchid-related arts, crafts and supplies. This was the first time a WOC had been held in the U.S. since the 11th show—in 1984, also in Miami.  The attraction for locals was mainly the orchid show itself, but many orchidists, some who traveled across the globe, came for the educational opportunities. Four days of concurrent lectures offered topics to appeal to the scientist or the casual orchid hobbyist. These triennial events provide a forum for the leading experts and orchid researchers to exchange information and compare notes. For some of them, the show itself is just a venue to meet and network.

From all who attended the 19th World Orchid Conference, there were few complaints, many comments of high praise, and too many special moments to mention. (The official 19th WOC Proceedings, available this summer, will include photos of the trophy and medal winners, social events including the Tropical Night Gala, Preview Party and show, and abstracts of all the presented lectures. The proceedings can be ordered online at the 19th WOC website.) As beautiful and compelling as our favorite flowers can be, what makes the worldwide orchid community so satisfying is the people. Make plans to attend the 20th World Orchid Conference in Singapore in 2011 and experience the beauty of orchids and the warmth of our gracious hosts!