Human Flower Project
‘Rubra Plena’ It Is
Not one to overlook a mystery, HFP contributor and horticulturist Allen Bush kindly asked a friend at the Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry in Brno for help identifying this Czech peony. We posted several weeks back that this gorgeous flower was in blooming all over Southern Moravia and Southern Bohemia.
Markéta Kindlova writes:
Dear Allen,
...I sent the picture to Průhonice, where is the biggest
collection of paeonies in Czech republic (as far as I know) and Dr.
Blažek wrote me, that it is Paeonia officinalis ´Rubra Plena.´ It is
earlier (about 2 weeks) than P. lactiflora and in most of regions in
Czech it flowers about mid of May. It has also broader leaves than P.
lactiflora and is widely spread. He wrote, that in the cathedral windows
it should be also this Paeonia offcinalis Rubra Plena.
Yours sincerely,
Markéta Kindlova
Botanical Gardens and Arboretum
Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry Brno
Brno, Czech Republic
Many thanks, Allen and Markéta!
Paeonia officinalis ´Rubra Plena, in Třebíč, Czech Republic, May 2009
Photo: Human Flower Project
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You Wanted to Be It…
A wondrous and (fittingly) ghastly memorial to Michael Jackson was built shortly after news of the singer’s death reached the shores of India last Friday. Sudarshan Pattnaik built this sculpture on the beach in Puri, and embellished it with marigolds. Sand and flowers—what a pair to render fleeting time.
This week in 1970, “The Love You Save” was at the top of the charts. Michael was 12 then. Here, the Jackson 5 perform the song, our favorite of their repertoire, before an electrified hometown crowd at West Side High School, Gary, Indiana, 1971.
You better Stop, the love you save may be your own.
Darlin’ take it slow, or someday you’ll be all alone.
Sand sculpture honoring Michael Jackson, by Sudarshan Pattnaik
Puri, India.
Photo: Biswaranjan Rout, for AP
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Eight Wickets to Joy
Pakistanis are overjoyed by Sunday’s victory in the Twenty20 World Cup cricket championship. Pakistan’s team beat Sri Lanka in the final match by eight wickets.
Captain Imran Khan called it “a gift from us to the whole nation,” one especially beleaguered in recent months by terrorism and international suspicion. As recently as March, there was an attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore, and Pakistan was banned from hosting world cricket matches. the Twenty20 competition took place in London.
On Wednesday, fans at Allama Iqbal airport, Lahore, responded with gifts of their own – cheers and flower garlands (far preferable to slaps on the rump or dousings with icewater). Here, cricketer Abdul Razzaq is draped with roses and marigolds.
Pakistani cricket player Abdul Razzaq gets a hero’s welcome in Lahore, June 24.
Photo: K.M.Chaudary, for AP
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Meadow Manifesto
Ecological manifesto cum plant giveway cum art: This skip (that’s Brit for “dumpster”) was parked at the curb during the 2009 Chelsea Flower Show, stuffed with what appeared to be sod.
Stacy Sirk, our keen-eyed correspondent in the European floral trade, spotted it and sent on a couple of photos. She writes, “A man had this skip filled with chunks of this wild flower meadow, and then dropped the skip on one of the most expensive shopping streets in London (right outside Conran’s).”
Adopt a meadow: attention grabber near the Chelsea Flower Show
Photo: Stacy Sirk
In case you have difficulty reading the chalkboard, here’s what it says:
STOP LORTON MEADOWS
FROM DISAPPEARING COMPLETELY
Adopt a piece of 200 year old Dorset Meadow. Lorton Meadows is a site of special scientific interest and was owned by Dorset Wildlife Trust until it was forced into a compulsory purchase in 2007 by Dorset Council. The meadows are now being destroyed to make way for a new road. If you would like to keep a piece of this land alive please just take some and give it a good home. Edward Llewellyn (and we can’t make out his email address)
Edward Llewellyn and his installation
Photo: Dorset Echo
Llewellyn is a student at the Royal College of Art; how fitting he would arrange this interactive, botanical installation during the Royal Horticultural Society’s spring flower show. Instant audience.
Apparently, some passersby did take him up on the offer: Llewellyn told the Dorset Echo: “I think people wanted to take some of it because it is symbolic. They didn’t take it for what it is, they took it for what it represents.”
The young artist said that he initially had considered scooping up airport-expansion lands or some of the property being bulldozed to make way for London’s Olympics, “but I felt it was more powerful to talk about open countryside that is being destroyed.”
So did Stacy, “It is very unique and poignant, I think,” she wrote.
Edward Llewellyn’s meadow giveaway: during the RHS Flower Show, 2009
Photo: Stacy Sirk
So do we. Dropping this funeral but lovely mound of green earth in a swanky ultra-urban part of the capital makes for a sharp juxtaposition. (Image if you encountered this same plea along a country road.)
Thanks, Stacy, for passing this human flower project along. A three-fer!
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Shadbush Blooms: Drop a Line
Somewhat apologetically, John Merwin, a writer for Field & Stream, admits he’s become a flower fancier.
Though the tackle-box crowd, generally, shuns any hint of delicacy, Merwin spells out how the flowering of wild plants is one of his best indications that fish are biting. “When the shadbush is in blossom along northeastern trout streams,” we writes, “Hendrickson mayflies start emerging. So when I see that tree in flower, I know not only that it’s time to get on down to the river but also what fly patterns to take along.”
In Kentucky, shadbush is known as sarviceberry. Varieties of Amelanchier grow in every state of the US except Hawaii, go by many names, and likely draw out many varieties of fish in other regions.
Merwin adds that lilacs in bloom “mean that anadromous American shad are starting to stack up behind dams on the upper Connecticut River” and “apple blossoms here coincide with the first waves of migrating striped bass along south-coastal Massachusetts farther south.”
We wrote awhile back about Costa Rican fishing guide Peter Gorinsky and his flower-mimicking flies – cast to catch machaca fish. Angler-readers, how about a bibble? Please send along more floral cues as fishing season heats up.
Serviceberry/Shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis) in bloom, creekside
Photo: Ken Clark
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Pre-Emptive Bouquets at the Reichstag
German politicians and editorial writers (notably those on the left) are demanding investigation of Saturday’s re-election of president Horst Koehler.
“Traditionally, the election of the German president is a dignified and strictly choreographed event,” writes Kerstin Gehmlich for Reuters. But on Saturday, at least two members of Parliament twittered the results 15 minutes before the official announcement. Even more overtly, Koehler was receiving handsome bouquets of flowers after the first round of voting, and a brass band was at the ready, before the tally had been made official.
Sounds like a landslide. But no. Koehler won by just a single vote.
He represents Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the conservative Christian Democrats Union. Though Germany’s presidential office is largely symbolic, Saturday’s vote sets up Merkel nicely for her own re-election bid in September.
“It’s undignified for musicians and ushers to take away the result of the presidential election in advance,” complained parliamentarian Christian Lange. Plus, the prospect of a second-round of voting “seemed impossible to many observers… when musicians and staff with flower bouquets had already entered the assembly before Lammert announced the result.”
Julia Kloeckner, one of the pre-twittering MPs apologized for sending her online message too soon – well, she kind of apologized. She told the German newspaper Bild, “The timing was a bit early, even though the pictures told their own story.”
Which is to say, flowers leaked the story first.
German President Horst Koehler (center) was heaped with flowers by fellow CDP member Chancellor Angela Merkel and Guido Westerwelle of the liberal Free Democrats on Saturday. Flowers and a brass band made known Koehler’s victory (as did two Parliamentary twitterers) before it was officially announced. A triple no-no.
Photo: Reuters
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Let Charity Be Brazen
Put New York’s top fashion designers in collaboration with New York’s top floral designers and give them a worthy cause – the city’s Village Care, serving people with HIV/AIDS – and you get spectacle.
It’s called “Tulips & Pansies – the Headdress Affair.” This year’s fundraiser, the 8th, will be May 14 at the Edison Ballroom, 240 W. 47th St. This foam green platter, with an iris bed on top and pink rose accessories, was the team effort of Betsey Johnson and David Tutera last year. (Can’t tell if the model is letting out a sexy purr or just grimacing under all that weight.)
So far as we know, the “affair” that started headdress philanthropy was L.A.’s Las Floristas, a benefit for Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Center that began 70+ years ago.
This year’s collaborators for “Tulips & Pansies” include (on the fashion side) Tory Burch, Chado Ralph Rucci, Pamella Roland, Cynthia Steffe, Lilly Pulitzer, Alvin Valley, Thierry Mugler, Zang Toi, Michael Vollbracht, and b.michael— and on the floral side, Preston Bailey, L’Olivier, Ovando and Zezé, among others, will take part.
We have yet to see anything so ga-ga from this event as Las Floristas’ headdress highways (the East Coast is so tasteful, you know), but perhaps this year’s designers will surprise us. Scratch that. They’ll definitely surprise us, NYC-style.
Fashion designer Betsey Johnson and floral designer David
Tutera out-did each other and themselves and this model, all
for a good cause: last year’s Tulips & Pansies benefit.
Photo: Courtesy Village Care
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No Aphids on the iPod
Now the latest in human-flower disembodiment: An iPhone application that “plants,” “waters,” “cuts,” and “delivers” flowers.
Is this what we’ve come to?
According to this little summary (i.e. ad) of “Flower Garden”: “You can plant different types of seeds, water them and watch them bloom. Some flowers bloom immediately, while others may take some care over time.”
“Care,” so far as we can tell, means pressing a dot on the phone to commence virtual rain.
The developer of “Flower Garden,” Noel Lopsis, said that after years in the blow-em-up business of computer game programming, he wanted to make something different. He is especially pleased with the feature that allows “gardeners” to send “flowers” they’ve “grown.” This element, he says, adds a “viral” element to his application—each time an iPod user clicks and sends a virtual bouquet, another promotion for him and his company is launched into cyberspace. This is Noel’s way to avoid “getting stuck at the bottom of the app store.”
Memo to Noel and Noel’s publicity department: Wedge a little dirt under that fingernail, please. Or Photoshop it in.
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Happiness Implant
There’s a surge of children’s gardening going on. Here in the U.S., we’re emphasizing school-grown vegetables and herbs. In New Zealand, Marise Richards tells us, youngsters are taking on garden design, too.
The recent Festival of Flowers in Christchurch sponsored a contest to “show what Happiness looks like” in a garden. Ten year old Tawera Ataria-Ashby won. Richards reports, “Festival organisers were immediately drawn to the design Tawera sent in for its simplicity and great colours.” Not to be misinterpreted, Tawera “provided a key to colour choice with her design: green flowers = strength and support, yellow flowers = being honest, red flowers = we are all family.”
The winner and her classmates at Aorangi School were invited to Science Alive’s exhibition, Botanica: The Buzz on Butterflies, Bugs and Botanicals during the flower festival. And volunteer gardeners installed her design on the Court Theatre Lawn at The Arts Centre of Christchurch.
Tawera Ataria-Ashby’s Happiness Garden, Christchurch
Winner of the Festival of Flowers 2009 design competition
Photo: Rodney Love
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The Makings of an Easter Nest
Marjorie Egg Ideus gathered Indian paintbrush and other wildflowers at the back of the family’s dairy farm in Meyersville, Texas. The Ideaus, Egg and Orr families, all descendants of German settlers in DeWitt County, come together on the Saturday before Easter to make “nests” of spring wildflowers. As they enjoy lunch indoors, the Easter bunny leaves eggs, candy, cookies and other treats inside their beautiful arrays of flowers. Shown here, Marjorie was picking wildflowers in April of 2003. We hope the Easter nest custom is going strong.
Marjorie Ideas picks Indian paintbrush and other spring wildflowers that will be
turned into Easter nests by her great-grandchildren.
DeWitt County, Texas, April 2003
Photo: Bill Bishop