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Sunday, March 07, 2010
Botanical Gardens, It’s Time to Make Our Case for Plant Research
James Wandersee and Renee Clary see the economics of botanical science changing. For plant research programs to survive within botanical gardens, they may need to show profits and/or make the benefits of their discoveries better known.
A Louisiana first-grader studying leaf structure
Photo: Vermilion Parish Schools
By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group
A recent Human Flower Project article entitled “Mr. Bromeliad Heads for Singapore,” presented the story of a famous Florida botanical garden that is losing some of its acclaimed research scientists, as that institution trims its budget and juggles multiple priorities. Recently, two of the garden’s orchid experts were dismissed, and now “Mr. Bromeliad,” Harry Luther, has left for a new job in Singapore.
The back-story source hyperlinked in the essay suggests that the garden’s current board is not principally interested in botany and considers plant science research to be tangential to its newly emphasized garden focus of engaging the public with plants—in aesthetic and utilitarian ways.
From a different perspective, one of the fired scientists put it this way: “Science, I think, intimidates the board. They don’t understand it; they don’t like it; they have no interest in it.” Another said, “I don’t think they see any value in the [botanical] research.” (quoted in Levey-Baker, 2010). As a result, the garden may have lost its hard-won, international scientific reputation as an orchid and bromeliad research center.
Culture & Society • Gardening & Landscape • Science • (2) Comments • Permalink
Friday, March 05, 2010
The Flower Sellers of Badrian Street
Yet another big city tries to chase flower vendors out of downtown, this time with a ban on “wholesaling.”
Measuring out marigolds in Chennai’s downtown flower district
Photo: Bijoy Ghosh for Hindu Business Line
First the wholesale flower market moved to the western outskirts of Chennai (Madras), and now the city authorities are moving to displace the retailers from their spots along Badrian Street.
N. Ramakrishnan wrote a fine piece last August for the Hindu Business Line about the vendors of Chennai’s old “poo-k-kadai,” flower market. The author interviewed several sellers and discovered that many of those who have shops out in the big new Koyambedu center prefer to keep doing business downtown.
Thangam Peter said that “Badrian Street is more easily accessible…especially for those wanting at the most, 1 kg of flowers.” It’s especially convenient for the women who make small bouquets and hair adornments to sell throughout the city. “Badrian Street offers flowers, plastic bags to carry them and fibre of the banana plant that is used to knot the flowers into garlands. So, a woman who sells flowers on a street corner in, say, Mylapore can get all that she requires” in this part of St. George Town, a precinct well connected by bus to the rest of Chennai.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Down on the Digital-Dirt Divide
For plantsman Allen Bush, it all began by getting shooed out of the house. After digging holes to an imaginary China, he’s actually gone there, collecting rare species and befriending rarer horticulturalists from across the world.
A youth spent in the woods leads to self-esteem, and in some cases, to a career and schanpps, also
Photo: Jonathan Prescott
By Allen Bush
I wish children could experience the same simple pleasures I enjoyed over fifty years ago. They should try to dig a hole to China. My big adventure was slowed by summer heat and hard clay, but I finally busted through, on a plant hunting trip in 2001. Memories of abandoned, shallow craters from childhood expeditions in Louisville are nearly as good as Sichuan itself turned out to be.
Back in those early years, I imagined I could poke through by noon and be home by dark. But the only way kids are going to dig to China now is if they hack into Chinese cyberspace. American youngsters can’t be bothered with a spade. And they’re certainly not spending much time outside, unless you count a precious few minutes misspent with older brothers and sisters who stand shivering at the back door catching a smoke.
The digital-dirt divide worries me. Edward O. Wilson understands outdoor lessons: “The Secret Places of childhood, whether a product of instinct or not, at the very least predispose us to acquire certain preferences and undertake practices of later value in survival. The hideaways bond us with place and they nourish our individuality and self-esteem,” Wilson writes in The Future of Life. ”If played out in the natural environment, they also bring us close to the earth and nature in ways than can engender a lifelong love of both.”
Generation Z may learn again how to dirty their mitts and swing on a wild grape vine across a skinny creek, but it doesn’t look promising.
Among American children, ages eight to eighteen, more than seven and half hours are spent each day wired to smartphones, music/video devices, computers and televisions – sometimes multitasking several digital gizmos at once—according to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And there’s no “Thank God It’s Friday” for this demographic. Bleary eyes are focused 24/7 all week long—which amounts to a whopping fifty-three hours —barely seeing the light of day. Stop and smell the roses? Doubtful.
Culture & Society • Ecology • Gardening & Landscape • Science • Travel • Permalink
Saturday, February 20, 2010
A Feel for the Real and the Artificial
When are artificial flowers in order, and when will only real blossoms do? Sandy Ao comes upon floral irony in Kolkata’s New Market.
A shop of artificial flowers, the only one amid many
flower stalls at Kolkata’s New Market
Photo: Sandy Ao
How do you feel about artificial flowers? Maybe these other terms—“silk” “faux” “plastic” “handmade” “fake” – would color your answer.
A couple of weeks ago, we visited Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen, Texas, a beautiful Spanish style home and surrounding patios, gardens, and estate that are now an international gathering place for birders. On a sideboard in the livingroom stood a huge arrangement of lilies and what looked like proteas flowers. “Are these real!?” we yelped – and were told quietly, no.
There’s always a sheepish, sunken feeling then, at least for us. We tend to look away, as if after all there had been nothing to admire. What is that? Is it having been duped?