Human Flower Project
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Sed Qualis Illa Latine?
“But what is it in Latin?” With new international rules, plants will no longer have to be described in Latin.
The former Aster oblongifolius (now Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) has a complete description in Latin.
Photo: Illinois Wildflowers
Horticulturists, at least those fluent in English, just got a bye from the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN). As of January 1, 2012, plant scientists will no longer have to provide a Latin description of newly identified species in order to get these plants on the books, as it were. Now, such descriptions can be made in either Latin or English, and for the most part, the reaction among botanists has been very favorable.
By expanding the ways in which new species can be introduced, most experts say, discoveries in the plant kingdom can be more swiftly catalogued, speeding up research. Most critically, speeding up the international system of identification, many say, will make it possible to protect more endangered plants sooner, before they face extinction.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Floral Demonstrations Grow Thorns
There’s a new spirit abroad in floral protests, not just “in your face” but “on your case.”
Striking junior doctors marched in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh Jan. 16 with “sympathy” flowers for the chief minister who has yet to meet their demands.
Photo: Raju. V
Are flowers the new pink slip?
Since 2004, we’ve been reporting on how flowers feature in protest across the world, from the pink gladioli brandished by Cuba’s Damas de Blanco, to bouquets laid outside Shanghai’s Google headquarters—when the government threatened to suspend the company’s operations in China.
In these demonstrations, flowers proudly identify the bearers (the pink gladiolus has become the emblem of the Cuban civil rights marchers) or they express solidarity with the recipient (for example, the Internet giant).
But increasingly, we see floral protests taking another form: rather than standing FOR an organization or being presented TO someone, they’re delivered AGAINST.
The most recent example comes from Andhra Pradesh, India. Last week, junior doctors (known in the U.S. as medical students, interns and residents) took flowers to the Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy along with placards reading “Get well soon CM.”
The show of mock-sympathy was an early demonstration in the junior physicians’ strike, now in its 9th day. “The junior doctors have been boycotting elective duties since January 14, demanding regular payment and a hike of stipends, reduction of rural service, health insurance and improvement of emergency infrastructure.” (Interesting to note that Indian doctors don’t have health insurance!)
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Domestication, Under This Tree
The old trees of Cambridge and Oxford are riddled with association. How do you elude history and fall into the nature of nature?
Jesus Green
Essay and photos by John Levett
I spent my career in primary education. I don’t miss what it became. I left teaching in 2003 and haven’t set foot into a school since.
If I were asked what I think of the changes that have taken place over the last decade I couldn’t give a coherent answer, no longer following beyond the headlines.
My dissociation with primary education came to me a few months back when I was passing by Park Street School in Cambridge. It’s a long-established church-aided school close by Jesus Green. In good weather the children use the Green as their playground. What took my ear as I walked past was the singing from the school hall.
Under the spreading chestnut tree,
Where I knelt upon my knee,
We were as happy as could be,
Under the spreading chestnut tree.
For those of my generation and before, the song will be familiar, not for its words but for the actions that go with it—the replacement of the word by the action (spread, chest, nut, tree). There’s a film of King George VI (he of the voice) doing the business at a scout camp. I recall it always dissolving into a confusion of arms, hands and elbows.
What made me pause that day was the surprise that ‘singing’ as nothing beyond its appreciation and fun still had a place within a primary school. I’d assumed that anything that didn’t make an instrumental contribution to capitalist accumulation had been stricken from the curriculum.
Art & Media • Culture & Society • Gardening & Landscape • Permalink
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Havel’s Flower Cortege
For the Czech Republic, the loss of Vaclav Havel is reminiscent of the mourning for Lincoln in the U.S.
Floral tributes for former Czech president Havel cover the funeral boat in Decin, 1/1/12
Photo: CTK
To honor Abraham Lincoln, there was the famous funeral train that carried his body for two weeks from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, in the spring of 1865. The outpouring of flowers along the route changed, among other things, floristry for decades to come, as the American public now had an impressive model of how to mourn.
Vaclav Havel was assuredly the same sort of heroic leader in the Czech Republic, and at his death December 18, 2011, the floral tributes overflowed.