Human Flower Project
Science
Rome, ITALY
London, ENGLAND
Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Just What the Doctor Should Order
Appendectomy? Two horticulture researchers document how flowers and foliage can hasten your recovery.
White cyclamen and cards at a hospital patient’s bedside, Louisville, Kentucky
Photo: Human Flower Project
“Get me outta here!” – the battle cry of hospital patients around the world.
Seong-Hyun Park and Richard Mattson, horticulturists at Kansas State University, have a new paper out that sheds light—and relief—on this ancient predicament. They found that having flowering and foliage plants in the room significantly improved patients’ comfort, health, and attitudes while recovering from surgery.
The researchers studied 90 patients who had appendectomies—a fairly routine surgical procedure—in a suburban Korean hospital. In half the patients’ rooms, the researchers placed twelve plants:
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Eating Off Flora Danica
Royal botanical porcelain would make a nice gift—for somebody else. (Just don’t put it through the dishwasher.)
Scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis Arvensis) teacup
Flora Danica porcelain
Photo: Flora Danica Online
The best gifts are free or longed for – that’s our view, anyway – so please to take us off your to-do list this season.
In the “longed for” category, along with the Arabian horse we craved from ages 8 to 11, we now include eight place settings of Flora Danica porcelain. Better to want than to have.
The first Flora Danica china was to be a gift from Christian VII, King of Denmark, to Empress Catherine of Russia (“the Great” describing, among other attributes, her appetite for porcelain). If only Catherine had known this gift was in the works, she might have hung on a few more years, but in fact she died before the set had been completed.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Plant Size and Longevity
Plant life-span is a function of size, a research finding that, the EarthScholars say, can help restore whole plant communities. Thank you, Jim and Renee!
Chinese character wan, meaning 10,000
Image: About.com
By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group
In East Asia, the slogan “Ten thousand years!” occurs in multiple languages. It originated in ancient China as an expression used to wish a person long life. (Ten thousand is considered a special number— as it’s the biggest discrete counting unit in Chinese.)
In Poland, the song “Sto Lat!” is typically sung on someone’s birthday to wish them longevity.
A hundred years, a hundred years,
May he (she) live for us.
A hundred years, a hundred years,
May he live for us.
Once again, once again, may he live, live for us,
May he live for us!
While not so optimistic as the ancient Chinese, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a controversial gerontologist at Cambridge University, thinks that “The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today…. Whether they realize it or not, barring accidents or suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries.”
Sunday, November 23, 2008
When Cotton Was King
Can botany equal destiny? In the U.S., the fate of the Old South was bound up with one plant. The EarthScholars and a Memphis museum explain.
U.S. cotton field ready to harvest
Photo: Fahey Byrum III
By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group
The year was 1858. Cotton had surpassed tobacco as a cash crop in the Deep South after the introduction of the cotton gin. Southern plantations were producing 75% of the world’s cotton supply.
US cotton’s world supremacy led Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina to make a famous boast: “Cotton is king.” He was actually echoing the title of an influential pro-slavery book of the time written by David Christy in 1855. By 1860, cotton ruled the South. Cotton was unquestionably vital to the US economy, and it was a major US export to Europe.