Human Flower Project

Florists

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Flower Electioneering: You Be the Judge

Did $11 arrangements break Oregon elections law? We plead the case of one judicial candidate.

Mr. F.E. Smith, lawyer
Could you buy his vote
with one pink rose?
Drawing: Vanity Fair/SPY
via Antique Maps and Prints

Flower power is very real - and chancy, working less like a strategic missile than a heap of gunpowder. BOOM, sometimes. But more often you get kablooey!

So discovered Doug McGeary, a lawyer in southern Oregon, who “deployed” $11 arrangements in his campaign to be Jackson County Circuit Court Judge.

In Oregon, the state bar association polls local attorneys on their preferences among judicial candidates, then makes those preferences public before election day. McGeary’s campaign advisor recommended that he send flowers to 25 law firms in the area as “modest floral reminders” intended to “get out the vote.” McGeary won the April poll of lawyers, by the way; according to reporter Sanne Specht, he pulled in 110 votes, many more than either of his two opponents (71 and 23 votes apiece).

But since learning of the floral gifts, one of McGeary’s opponents is calling the lawyers’ poll “tainted.” The flower strategy that first looked like a political bull’s eye now is careening like a wild pitch. The state of Oregon, like most others, prohibits any gift giving that could smack of vote-buying. What, exactly, smacks like that? According to a state election official, “Frisbees, hats and postage stamps” are out of bounds, but “balloons, bookmarks and pens are allowed.” What about nail files or cigars? What about bubble gum cigars, then? And what about flowers? Oregon law, it appears, is silent on any of them.

Doug McGeary and family (and flowers)
Photo: Doug4Judge

We aren’t eligible to vote in Oregon, but we would like to speak up on Doug McGeary’s behalf. Foremost, he seems to be someone who sincerely likes flowers. Check out this photo from his campaign website showing McGeary and the family, a bunch of placards flung around, and a folding table with a vase of flowers. Nice touch, Doug!

Second, Oregon election officials should note that in both Texas and Florida, flowers get a bye, at least on the opening day of the legislature. See our story on Florida here.

An arrangement priced at $18.50
delivery cost not included
Image: Flower Magik

And third, consider for a moment what sort of arrangement $11 will buy. We actually couldn’t even find one that, uh, “inexpensive” on any online florist’s site. The closest was this $18.50 selection: three pink (or lavender) roses, and bit of greenery in a glass cylinder. That price doesn’t include the delivery fee, by the way. Reasonably, we’d guess that for $11 a pop, Doug might have been able to send one rose or a couple of sprigs of alstromeria to each of these 25 law firms.

Now, think about the last time you were in a law office...and think about the lawyers you know. How big an impact could a floral arrangement on this scale have in one of those wood-paneled caverns? And when was the last time your lawyer friends were impressed, by ANYTHING?

Your Honor: the defense rests.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Proto-Peony Pilgrim, at Ashland

Too early for the flower show, but just in time for a zillion blinking buds.

Cyndy Clark overlooks the heavily budded peony bed
at Ashland, the Henry Clay home, Lexington, KY
Photo: Human Flower Project

Religious pilgrims go in certainty; they know the saint’s fingerbone, kept in a golden box since the second century, will be there at the cathedral, whenever they arrive. It’s floral pilgrims who need faith or, short of that, an open-mind. The forsythia’s over, and so are the weeping cherries, but you had forgotten about lilacs. The peonies aren’t in their glory, but the buds are.

With friend and gardener Cyndy Clark, we made our pilgrimage to the big peony garden at Ashland, a historic home in Lexington, Kentucky, one week ago. Only five or six beautiful clumps were flowering; most of the garden was leafy and covered with huge plump buds.

Bud with juice, and bloom, Ashland, Lexington, KY
Photo: Human Flower Project

The Garden Club of Lexington installed the bricklined peony beds in 1986. “Dozens of Saunders hybrid peonies were donated by Bobbi Van Meter in honor of her mother, Alice McIlvain Prewitt, owner of Walmac Farm.” Mrs. Prewitt had been a longtime member of the club, which maintains the walled garden at Ashland, too.

A.P. Sauders was an early peony hybridizer from Canada.  We wish we could tell you names of these particular cultivars, in bud and in bloom, but we found no tags anywhere (it really wouldn’t be in keeping with Lexington style, you know).

Now about those buds…Some, tight and green, looked like brussell sprouts – has anyone ever eaten one and can account for how they taste? Others buds were blinking, “tears” at the edge of chartreuse, pink, and wine-purple eyes. A few more had cracked like eggs, with pink, cupped feathers lifting open.

True peony lovers know that different varieties open at different times through the season (generally early May through early July). For the peony gluttons out there (count us in!) here’s a website that purports to offer a seven week cycle of flowers, with varieties grouped by their bloom dates. Florists are intensely interested in the habits of peony buds, too, as these prized cut-flowers ship at bud stage.

The most curious feature of the Ashland peony garden is what’s NOT there – ants – even though many hundreds of buds were secreting shiny syrup.

Our mother’s peonies in Louisville have always had ants circumnavigating the buds. We’d thought that ants were somehow good for these flowers. (Peony buds attract wasps, too.)

Ants aplenty on Anne Ardery’s peonies, in Louisville, Kentucky
Photo: Human Flower Project

“The garden myth is that peonies need ants on them in order for the buds to open properly,” wrote Hanna at This Garden is Illegal, in May 2006. “This is not true. A peony bud will open just as well with or without the ants.” She goes on to write that the ants do prey on other insects that can be harmful to peonies. So perhaps it’s “mythological” in the best sense: true, but not widely understood.

One of the early Saunders peonies at Ashland, April 27, 2008
Photo: Human Flower Project

Today we imagine that Ashland’s garden is in full blowsy flower, swarming with people. Henry Clay, the Kentucky politician who once lived here, is famous for telling his fellow U.S. Senators: “I had rather be right than president.”

REALLY, Henry? Well, you got at least half your wish. Loving the garden in bud, we can’t go so far as preference. We had rather found the peonies in bloom.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Mullickghat Rises from Its Ashes

Sandy Ao takes us to Kolkata’s huge flower market, destroyed by fire Friday night, back in business by Saturday.

The shops of more than two hundred flower sellers
burned Friday night in Kolkata, India
Photo: Sandy Ao

Fire broke out Friday night, April 11, at the immense Mullickghat flower market in Kolkata, India.  Eighteen fire engines were called to the scene along the Hoogly River, as blazes swept down Strand Road, charring more than 200 – nearly all – of the market’s flowers stalls.

The fire destroyed the 125-year Mullickghat just before the Bengali New Year, a huge floral occasion. For decades the largest flower market in all Asia (though now surpassed by the sales center in Delhi ), Mullickghat both served local customers in this city of 13 million people and exported the region’s tuberoses, marigolds, gladioli and scores more varieties to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Boys survey the remains of the market on April 12
Photo: Sandy Ao

Merinews reported Saturday, “About 2,000 flower growers from the districts visited the market daily to sell their produce”—a number that doubled around major festivals and during India’s wedding season, which is now beginning.  “The livelihood of 25,000 people has been affected.”

The Thai Indian interviewed Ramesh Kundu, a flower seller whose place of business was wiped out. “Each one of us has suffered a loss of minimum Rs.80,000 (roughly $2000 USD). With Bengali New Year on April 14 we had stocked four times more flowers than usual. Now this fire has turned us into beggars.”

Sandy Ao, who alerted us to the tragedy, has posted an amazing album of her photographs and a moving account of many experiences in the market on her weblog. She also generously shared many photographs and thoughts with us.

“The fire was around the Lady’s bathing ghat,” Sandy writes. “One cannot stop imagining that it is a case of arson; that’s what I heard people in the market hissing about.” Newspaper accounts confirm that many in Kolkata suspect the fire was set intentionally. The Statesman reports charges that the ruling party may have arranged to have Mullickghat destroyed to make way for an immense, modern (and expensive) structure that’s been on the drawing board for years.

Sudhangshu Sil, the local member of Parliament, was quick to announce: “The greatest consolation is (that) in February the Calcutta Municipal Corporation sanctioned the plan for a three-storey building with basement here, which will rehabilitate the 5,000 flower traders and be India’s first flower auction centre.”

Flower vendors make do after Friday’s fire in Kolkata
Photo: Sandy Ao

Sandy Ao says that arson fires tend to be Kolkata’s prelude to “improvement” projects; considering the horrors undertaken in the U.S., the razing of whole downtown neighborhoods, in the name of “urban renewal,” why should we be surprised?

Planners of the new flower complex say that it will include cold storage, facilities for sorting, grading and packaging flowers, laboratories for extracting flower oil, and lodgings. As proposed, the air-conditioned complex would be a far cry from the century-old street market. Centered around the Lady Ghat near the river’s Howrah Bridge, Mullickghat has been a traditional open-air venue. Before the fire there were more than two hundred small structures for vendors, but according to Sandy, many hundreds more flower sellers strung garlands and sold their calotropis and roses from bags and baskets below the bridge, along Strand Road and all around the edges.

“The official report was that Mullickghat had been completely gutted,” Sandy writes.  “Actually there are 265 odd shops/stalls as recorded in the Mullickghat Society book, each paying Rs.130/-per month as rent to be recorded as legal flower dealers here,
 whereas the other groups of flower dealers who do not own any stalls/shops pay Rs.7/- each per day to the society. 
And these groups are the backbone of Mullickghat.
 I should say 95% of the thousand flower sellers are made up of these groups.”

Is affection for the old open-air market and grief at the idea its replacement by modern facilities all stupid romanticism? It’s easy to relish the excitement of this place at a remove, through Sandy’s images, but what about withstanding the rainy season here, or enduring summer days, as roses wilt through the afternoon? Maybe the new flower complex would be better for everyone.

One of the Mullickghat flower shop owners who lost his business in the fire
Photo: Sandy Ao


“I got some feedback from some of the young Kolkatans,” Sandy writes, “They too express their skepticism about this new modern flower market in Mullickghat. You know, we have had so many such plans and projects. All took off the ground with grandeur, but all resulted in flop projects. In our point of view, this has become a golden opportunity for the greedy officials/politicians to dig their fingers into this goldmine.” She asks, 
“Who will rent the shops in this new facility?  Who will need such facility?
 Who will manage it?”

Even if public funds really are all diverted to the new building, Sandy offers some reasons why it isn’t needed – or even wanted – here.

“Most of the flowers they deal in at this market are related to some religious purposes.
 (Remember, each of the gods/goddesses has no less than 108 names!  In fact, with only 365 days a year, it’s hard to hold all the pujas and the rituals!) The flowers required for all these gods/goddesses are local products. Who will need cold storage for marigolds, tuberoses, tulsi, hibiscus, bael leaves, roses, sunflowers, cockscomb, daisies, jasmine, magnolia, lotus… all of which are hardy?” she asks. “Besides, most of these flowers get sold off within 24 hours!”

Doling out marigold and jasmine flowers after the fire
Photo: Sandy Ao

Exports from Mullickghat have been suspended for the next week, but there does appear to be a heavy trade in exported flowers, in addition to the strong local market Sandy describes. Perhaps it’s this more international end of the Kolkata flower trade that the new building is designed to serve.

Sandy raises questions about the operation of such a facility, if plans move ahead. “How will it be managed? as we are incapable of managing anything where strict discipline is required!
 We must remember, the Bengalis believe they are the image of Lord Shiva, who is the creator and the destroyer… But never the preserver!!!

 We have had many projects which ended being some monsters/eye-sores of Kolkata.”

If it is ultimately built, will the new market be a success? Our friend doubts it.

“At this moment we are having daily power-cuts —that, too, in 38.8C weather conditions. The real summer is yet to come. Where will the electricity come from to facilitate the cold storage?
 Nuclear energy? Not a chance, for our Left Party is not going to accept the Central Government’s signing the Nuclear Treaty.
 I can already see how this modern flower market is going to take shape in this summer heat: Then we’ll see the magic of Mullickghat’s flower power!”


The morning after the fire, Sandy took her camera to the market she’s photographed many times before. 
“A few of the stall owners simply sat there speechless. One of them, the supplier, told me his loss is unaccountable. Above all they lost the good season to do business within these two days; for Monday is the Bengali New Year. I too became speechless. I smelled burnt wood in the midst of the roses. I guess this smell will stay with me for a long time.

“Nothing seemed to be right, for the weather was very humid, dull and hot. 
But I was having hope in my heart that Mullickghat is not completely destroyed.
 And when I saw the crowd near the footbridge, my spirit lifted up!” Sandy said there were even more shoppers than on an ordinary Saturday. 
”I told myself ‘Good!  Mullickghat is still standing strong. I guess we Indian are the survivors.’”

Back in the business of lotus buds and marigolds, April 12, 2008
Photo: Sandy Ao

The Kolkata newspaper also reported that by Saturday, scores of the vendors were doing buisiness, their fresh marigolds and tuberoses arrayed on the ashes.

“People of this country have seen how many civilizations come and go,” Sandy writes. “Everything has its present, future and its past. In due course, Mullickghat will have a modern building for selling flowers, but the people will still put up their usual stalls around the building and sell their fresh marigolds, roses, calotropis, tuberoses, magnolia, bael leaves...like what they have been doing for the last 125 years.
 Those who want to rent a shop in the modern market can go ahead and rent a shop there. The other 95% of flower sellers will carry on doing their flower business in the normal way that they are doing now. It may not be exactly same like before, but it will not vanish either. If the government tries to stop them, they will use the mass-power to fight for their right. After all, in Kolkata we are very much aware of the effects of the mass-power! Otherwise Kolkata would not be known as the city of bandhs/strikes!!”


Religious observances go on Saturday, April 12, in Kolkata
with floral offerings to Shiva at the temple by the Mullickghat market
Photo: Sandy Ao


The city’s forensic experts have concluded that Mullickghat’s fire began when a fuel canister ignited at the Lady Ghat. Local officials say that the flower sellers – those with shops, anyway --will be compensated for their losses, and promise that the modern Mullickghat building, long delayed, will proceed.

But Sandy writes about the present:
”I see devotees still crowding the nearby temple offering the flowers to the gods with the same faith in their faces....And today I saw how they made beautiful calotropis garlands for Shiva to welcome the New Year.”


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.”

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Poodle Dog & Other ‘Biting’ Flowers

You know better than to eat just any flower (right?). With spring coming into bloom, check the picking impulse, too. Some blossoms will punish you for it.

Poodle dog bush (Turricula parryi) in flower—
It’s a tempting year for California hikers
Photo (detail): Arnie (fractalv)

In our continuing effort to keep looking beyond “just pretty” where flowers are concerned, we were thrilled—wincingly—to come upon Eugene Fields’s ominous story of ”poodle dog bush.” Sounds like man’s best friend. But Fields reports that the lavender flowers of Turricula parryi will bite.

The plant is blooming heartily now through the Santiago and Modjeska canyons of California. It’s an especially good year for the plant, as last October’s wildfires cleared the way for its resurgence. Hikers will encounter the tall blooming stalks now and may be tempted to break off a stem or two or three. Better leave that poodle be. The flowers produce an allergic skin reaction similar to poison oak.  “Symptoms range from itching to a rash or blisters lasting as long as two weeks. George Ewan with the Orange County Fire Authority said the pain is reminiscent to coming in contact with stinging nettles. ‘It’s like that that except it doesn’t wear off,’ Ewan said. ‘It goes for quite a while.’”

Unless you’re into scourges, pass on by (Info on newfangled styles of penance available upon request).

Many thanks to Arnie for supplying us with the beautiful photo of poodle dog bush in bloom (above). He writes that this specimen of Turricula parry was “found at about 5200’ elevation in the San Bernardino National Forest near Lake Arrowhead, CA. Bush was about 6 feet round and flowers towered over my head, the flowers being about 1” across.”

Another biting flower, from the Catalpa tree (Catalpa speciosa)
Photo: Missouri State Univ.

The poodle dog led us down a trail in search of other flowers toxic to human skin. The Ag Extension folks in Connecticut provide this good list of plants that cause dermatitis. Sometimes it’s the leaves, bark, roots, or sap that irritate skin, but flowers, even “pretty” ones, can cause outbreaks too. To use Cesar Milan’s terminology, ”Red Zone Dogs” of the flower world include Catalpa speciosa, Anthemis arvensis, and Ailanthus altissima (Tree of Heaven). The latter is often considered a “trash tree,” one with some fight in it. Ohio State botanists warn, “Gardeners who fell the tree may suffer rashes.”

Hickey? Nope. A blister caused by Giant Hogweed
Photo: Canadian Weed Science Society

Nobody should tangle with Zigadenus paniculatus flowers, which go by the name ”Death lily” for a reason. And we’ve written here before about the perils of Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). In case you forgot, the photo at right shows what its blooms can do.

Just a drop more toxicity-- Florists have learned the hard way that some of our favorite flowers can injure the skin. No...not tulips? ‘Fraid so.

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.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Wedding Flowers for Two Grooms

When the couple about to be married are both men, will there be bouquets? Maybe. But consider a cascade.

Andrew Solomon and John Habich at their wedding dinner
Northampton, England, June 30, 2007
Photo: Jonathan Player, for the New York Times

It was a June wedding. Last summer, writer Andrew Solomon and editor John Habich celebrated their civil union before about 300 guests. The two men were married in England (Solomon has dual US/UK citizenship) where, as of 2005, civil unions between same-sex couples have been legal.

The New York Times published a gorgeous set of photographs by Jonathan Player. What an event! The ceremony took place on a broad staircase at Althorp, the estate of the Spencer family, below portraits of the late Princess Diana and her ancestors. At the reception and party afterwards, the newlyweds radiated happiness. Guests sat down to dinner in a “marquee” on the Althorp grounds, decorated in black and white, with lots of mirrored tabletops and waves of pink roses.

Solomon and Habich exchange vows amid floral drifts and tapestries
Photo: Jonathan Player, for the New York Times

But what about flowers at the service? Do grooms carry bouquets? No reason they shouldn’t. But Solomon and Habich chose not to. Instead wide swaths of hydrangeas stepped all the way down the staircase. And roses (we think that’s what these blooms are) hung from the upstairs balustrade, like fluffy pink tapestries. (Habich also wore a small pink flower on his lapel.)

Erin and Chloe
at their civil union in Vermont
September 2000
Photo: Erin and Chloe

From what we’ve seen and learned, lesbian weddings tend to double up with bouquets. Sometimes both brides wear floral head crowns as well. (Yet another reason to legalize same-sex marriage, we say!)

Several years back, we ran a piece about Flowers from the Heartland. This 2004 film documented a small movement of Midwesterners who sent flowers to the weddings of gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. as tokens of solidarity. Same-sex marriage is still controversial here. Twenty-six states (most of them in the Heartland) have passed laws against it. Only in Massachusetts is same-sex marriage legal; New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire permit civil unions. Most recently, New Jersey’s governor has indicated he will sign a bill legalizing same sex marriage (after the November elections); California’s state Supreme Court will be taking up the matter next month.

What about the rest of the world? The map below, from wiki, offers about as vivid a picture of cultural differences as one could imagine. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa (in dark green) same sex marriage is now legal. In Iran, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Mauritania homosexuality (not same-sex marriage, just being homosexual) is punishable by death.

Map of the World’s laws on homosexuality, via Wiki

Two bouquets? One world? We’ve got a long way to go.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Lick an Ambassador: Floral Stamps

Can’t afford to send flowers? Give your postal carrier a thrill and leave your correspondents panting for more.

We wandered into a philateletic Eden yesterday and now return with tongue hanging out – ready to lick and send flying hundreds of floral stamps from around the world. Who cares what’s in the envelope? This Congolese acanthus bloom could take the sting out of an eviction notice, don’t you think?

A Polish website for stamp collectors offers thousands of familiar and exotic blooms. Every nation on earth, it seems, has issued floral stamps of some type. And in every case, we see how flowers serve as ambassadors to humankind.

Most commonplace are stamp series that show off spectacular native flora. We found this set of Zimbabwe’s desert plants especially striking, but there are scores more. Look around!

There are some very elaborate presentations, like this example from Lesotho: a native orchid sits (with perforations around it) below a waterfall. Just one stamp, but you feel as if you’re getting a whole landscape, a smart way to show a local plant in its habitat and, one would assume, boost sales.

For shaped stamps, Mongolia has gone to great lengths, scrunching flower images into triangles and leaning parallelograms. (To its credit, Mongolia is also the only nation we’ve seen that honors the dandelion with a stamp.) But Bulgaria’s set of flowers and honeybees is the most witty and elegantly shapely design, a cone dweller’s view with six sides.

Liechtenstein: Cornflower and Cattails

Flower stamps necessarily put local aesthetics on display. We were especially taken with two art nouveau sets of stamps from Liechtenstein, proof that good things come in small principalities. These are the most stylish of the many hundreds of flower stamps we surveyed. (And you may note that among all this website’s topical stamps, there are three times as many floral varieties as cats or sports or anything else.) From Scandinavia are many fine muted duotones. This Swedish set is especially lovely. And for some reason, this group from Finland, with their looming red crosses (signifying a tuberculosis charity) was delightfully eerie.

Cambodia

In stupendous contrast to the Nordic designs are candy-colored sets like these from Nicaragua. Other rainbow-robbing flower stamps have been issued by Zimbabwe, Surinam, and these beauties at right, from Cambodia. Planning to write a Dear John letter? Well, at least have the wherewithal to hunt down cheerful postage.

Some countries have not only living flowers but floral art to boast of in the mail. The most gorgeous examples we spotted were these from Germany, with details from illuminated manuscripts in Deutschland collections. Would somebody please mail us a letter with one of these affixed? Paraguay also has issued several floral stamp sets featuring international works of art.

Monaco: Concours International
de Bouquets (1974)
commemorative stamp

All you florists out there need to start lobbying your national postal services to keep up with the Joneses in Monaco, Malaysia and Romania. Each of these countries has issued special stamps featuring flower arranging. Monaco appears to have hosted the Concours International de Bouquets several years running, and on each occasion has issued a set of stamps showing a range of fine floral designs.

Our tongue’s getting dry...too much to mention. The photographic flower stamps of Cyprus (other examples from Turkey and Tanzania) don’t strike our fancy but may appeal to shutterbugs. Micronesia may have produced the most educational Human Flower Project stamp set – showing four native flowers and how each one is used in traditional leis and crowns.

North Korea:
Homage to Kimjongilia

But remembering that stamp designs are always chosen by someone in government – to reflect the administration’s interests, even in such a marginal matter as national floral imagery— we must end with a bow to blatantly political, gummed ambassadors. These flower stamps from Yemen are tiny collages of plants and national emblems, both overseen by someone important looking (We’re not sure, but would guess this to be longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh in his younger days).

Most stamps from the United Kingdom, even these without one letter of type, still include the silhouette of QE2. And North Korea, of course, offers Kimjongilia, the red begonia named for Kim Jong Il; the North Korean issue includes quite a lot of supporting material, including what appears to be a musical score, for those ardent types who sing about dictators and flowers as they mail.

The most wonderful political stamp set we’ve seen yet is this collection from Cuba (much in the news this week, with Fidel Castro’s announcement that he’ll be stepping down). In colors as vibrant as the Mexican loteria, each stamp shows a hero of Latin American history with a tropical blossom – as charming a human flower postal project as we’ve discovered on any envelope. (Make sure to see the entire set for full loteria effect.)

Cuba: Historia Latinoamericana

There are many hundreds more interesting examples on the site, ahem...so dear Cuban readers, and all others within licking distance of floral stamps, we aren’t too proud to beg. Please write.

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.’”

Monday, January 21, 2008

Kahu: Leis for the March from Selma

On the holiday to remember Martin Luther King, we honor a Hawaiian civil rights leader, too, and his floral gift to the historic march on Montgomery.

Martin Luther King and marchers
March ‘65, on the way
to Montgomery, AL
Photo: via Hoover

In late February 1965 Jimmy Lee Jackson, a teenager in Perry County, Alabama, was shot and killed by a state trooper during a peaceful demonstration in the courthouse square. The black community there came together in outrage and dedication; they decided to take their grievances over segregation and police violence to the statehouse in Montgomery. When Gov. George Wallace forbade their demonstration, Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Washington, D.C., appealing to President Lyndon Johnson for support. Meanwhile, the activists began their march out of Selma…

“When the marchers reached the city line, they found a posse of state troopers waiting for them. As the demonstrators crossed the bridge leading out of Selma, they were ordered to disperse, but the troopers did not wait for their warning to be heeded. They immediately attacked the crowd of people who had bowed their heads in prayer. Using tear gas and batons, the troopers chased the demonstrators to a black housing project, where they continued to beat the demonstrators as well as residents of the project who had not been at the march.”

Bloody Sunday, March 7, drew the nation’s attention like never before to the civil rights struggle. Returning to Alabama, King led a symbolic march to the bridge two days later. And on March 25th, a third march began. King and some 3200 others walked east out of Selma, twelve miles a day, sleeping in fields. They arrived in Montgomery five days later, and before a crowd of 25,000, King spoke:

I know you are asking today, ‘“How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” ...How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?  I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.” How long? Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.”

Muddy fields and tear gas, aching feet and billy clubs, what part do flowers have in the brave Selma marches?

We found startling pictures yesterday of King and others somewhere along the route from Selma to Montgomery. They’re festooned with glorious white leis!

Rev. Abraham Akaka
receives a kiss on his 75th birthday from Danny Kaleikini (1992)
Photo: Star Bulletin

These were gifts from Reverend Dr. Abraham Akaka, better known in his native Hawaii as ‘Kahu’ (shepherd). Akaka was the pastor of Kawaiahao Church, the ‘Mother Church’ of Hawaii, for nearly 30 years. He was also the state’s first commissioner for civil rights. When King came to the islands in 1964 to celebrate Civil Rights Week, they met at the University of Hawaii, beginning what was to become a close friendship. That following spring, Kahu lent his support to the courageous marchers out of Selma by adorning them with flowers.

Though we had never heard of him, Rev. Akaka was a giant in his homeland, “the most influential and widely known Hawaiian since Kamehameha the Great. Newsweek once described him as having the ‘charm of a beachboy and the force of a Billy Graham.’” In 1962, both Hawaii’s candidates for governor asked “Kahu” to run with them, for lieutenant governor. He turned them both down. “I’m a bridge between the Republicans and Democrats,” Akaka said. No doubt the clash at Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday incited him and inspired this gift.

We don’t pretend to fathom the meaning of the lei in Hawaiian culture. Meanings is more like it, since there are ceremonial garlands of many kinds, each with flowers, seeds, feathers, and shells selected for their special beauty and spirit-power. We hope that lei experts will be able to decode for us the symbolism of these particular objects. And we would be MOST interested to learn if a local Selma florist had the fortitude to make them! How did they get here and around the necks of the marchers?

Selma Civil Rights March: March 21, 1965.  From left: U.S. Representative John Lewis (D-GA), an unidentified nun; Ralph Abernathy; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Ralph Bunche, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth wearing leis sent by Abraham Akaka.
Photo: Susannah Heschel

We can be fairly certain that Kahu’s leis were to bring the civil rights marchers protection and honor. Further, leis carry with them a spirit of peace: They “were given to ali’i (royalty) as a sign of affection and when two warring chiefs settled their differences, they wove a lei which meant an end to the hostilities.” Did Rev. Akaka send a lei to Wallace, too?

In a society that fixates on individual personality and prowess, we in the U.S. mark “Martin Luther King Day.” But one pedestrian doesn’t make a march, or one flower a lei. Many thousands of others, like Jimmy Lee Jackson and Reverend Akaka have led, followed, flowered, and died in this struggle. With respectful thanks, we celebrate them all.