The People Have the (Flower) Power

I am going to guess that it was in the spring or summer of 1970 that my brother and I went into the garage one morning and stuck “flower power” stickers all over our mother’s beige VW squareback. I would have been nearly 10 and my brother about eight.

The stylized daisy stickers had been a gift, but for reasons unfathomable to my brother and me, were for some reason not being affixed in a proper place. They were just kicking around the house, not being thrown out and not being applied to anything. We knew exactly where they should go and thought we would do our mom a favor and put the smaller ones on her hubcaps and the larger ones in prominent places on the back of

The original colors

the car.

Our thoughtfulness, to put it mildly, was not well received. We had seen literally hundreds of cars plastered with the bright-colored daisy stickers everywhere we’d been driven over the last year or so and we were feeling rather left out. Our family’s recent purchase of a VW ¬– which our father could literally not fit into ¬– was clear evidence to us that our mom had joined the counterculture.

In fact, she was doubly upset. Not only did she not want those hideous things on her new car but she was reluctant to have us get them off, since we would be sure to scrape the paint and chrome in the process of getting them off.

So they stayed there for a while until she must have convinced someone older than us – one of our babysitters, perhaps – to clean them off. My recollection is that the job was done rather incompletely and that we had at least the increasingly crummy looking adhesive smudges on the car for months.

The origin of the “flower power” stickers is, of course, in the hippie movement. Most sources attribute it to the Bay Area community, particularly the “People’s Park” episode in Berkeley where, in 1967 the University of California demolished a building and then proceeded to do nothing with the empty lot. In the spring of 1969 the local countercultural community began to plant the nearly three-acre parcel with, among other things, flowers.

When I visited Berkeley 14 years later the park was still there, but it had fallen into disrepair and was surrounded by a high chainlink fence. The fence had been installed after then-Governor Ronald Regan sent a small army of California highway patrolmen, Berkeley police officers and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies into the park where they violently cleared away protestors who were occupying the space. Several people were badly injured by shotgun pellets and James Rector, a college student, was killed.

In the aftermath the National Guard was sent in to occupy the city. They were stationed near all the vacant lots of Berkeley because a movement had begun with the city to plant all the neglected areas with flowers.

On May 30, 1969, 30,000 people marched past the barricade People’s Park in protest against the death of James Rector, the occupation of the city and the prohibition against making vacant lots into parks. Young people put flowers down the barrels of the National Guardmen’s rifles.

A year later, on May 4, 1970 the National Guard shot and killed four college students at Kent State University.

And yet the indomitable American urge to turn everything into commerce was already at work on the symbolism of the flower power of People’s Park. Brightly colored abstracted daisies that symbolized the “flower child” protests against the establishment were soon a decorative item available to all.

They have never really quite gone out of style, but a quick search of the Internet yields a landslide of flower power sticker and decal outlets. Now, however, a lot of them are removeable.

Traditional Allusions

The violet and the primrose too
Beneath a sheltering thorny bough
In bright and lively colours blow
And cast sweet fragrance round.
Where beds of thyme in clusters lay
The heath rose opens its eyes in May
And cowslips, too, their sweets display
Upon the heathy ground.

“Flowers of the Heath” is a traditional song of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. For the sheer number of different flowers mentioned in one verse, it is hard to beat. But flowers are a frequent image in folk songs of the United Kingdom and Ireland and also find their way into the names of plenty of tunes.

The Jacobite uprisings in Scotland used a white flower on a blue bonnet as a standard for their troops, which otherwise did not have uniforms. It isn’t clear where the symbol came from (although some attribute it to Bonnie Prince Charlie sticking a rose in his hat), but flowers were subsequently used as symbols of the Jacobite cause in many songs, such as “Blue Bells of Scotland”

Oh where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie dwell?
Oh where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie dwell?
He dwelt in Bonnie Scotland, where blooms the sweet blue bell
And it’s oh, in my heart I lo’ed my laddie well
Oh what, tell me what, does your Highland laddie wear?
Oh what, tell me what, does your Highland laddie wear?
A bonnet with a lofty plume, and on his breast a plaid
And it’s oh, in my heart I lo’ed my Highland lad

In a similar martial mode, the song “Flowers of the Forest” uses flowers to symbolize those who have fallen in combat:

Dool for the order sent our lads to the Border,
the English for ance by guile wan the day.
The flowers of the forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land lie cauld in the clay.

The words were written in the 18th century by Jean Elliot to commemorate the long years of struggle between England and Scotland, but the song is now played at memorial occasions to remember the dead of all wars fought by Scottish soldiers (and there have been a lot).

Robert Burns’ “My love is like a red, red rose” is perhaps the most forthright equation of feminine beauty with botanical beauty. But other writers have used the rose (in particular) as an emblem of beauty. “The Rose of Tralee” by C. Mordaunt Spencer and Charles W. Glover commemorates a virtuous woman of County Kerry:

She was lovely and fair
as the rose of the summer
yet ’twas not her beauty
alone the won me
Oh, no! ’twas the truth
in her eye ever dawning
that made me love Mary,
the Rose of Tralee

Sometimes flowers seem to serve as an example of synecdoche, where a part of something represents the whole. Flowers are mentioned to represent the beauty of the entire landscape as in “The Banks of Roses”:

And if ever I get married
‘Twill be in the month of May,
When the leaves they are green
And the meadows they are gay;
And I and my true love
Can sit and sport and play
On the lovely sweet Banks of the Roses.

In “Fine Flowers of the Valley,” a variant of “The Cruel Mother,” the beauty of the flowers is used as a counterpoint to the heinous act described, a mother killing her children:

She’s ta’en out her little penknife
Fine flowers in the valley
And twinned the sweet babe o’ its life
And the green leaves they grow rarely.

But most often flowers are used as straightforward symbols of love, passion and (frankly) sex. One of the more ardent examples is the Scottish song “Wild Mountain Thyme”:

Oh the summer time is coming,
And the leaves are sweetly blooming,
And the wild mountain thyme,
Grows around the blooming heather,
Will ye go,Lassie go.

The narrator builds a bower of flowers up in the hills and repeatedly tries to convince his love to go up there with him. You can tell that this is an old song (pre-Romantic) by the philosophical resolution of the narrator in the end:

If my true love she were gone,
Then I’d surely find another,
tae pluck wild mountain thyme,
All around the blooming heather,
Will ye go,lassie go.

Hanging With Your Mom

Mothers’ Day is the number one holiday for flower sales, easily beating out Easter and Christmas. For all the millions of cut flower bouquets and arrangements that are purchased, millions more go shopping with their mothers on Mothers’ Day weekend to buy plants. Some are going to buy flats of annuals, perennials or even vegetables, but what nurseries sell more off on that weekend than any other is hanging baskets.

George Sheldrake, owner of Early Bird Farms in Ithaca, New York, said that he sells half of all the baskets he makes for the year on that one weekend in May. In upstate New York, Mothers’ Day is a bit early to put many annuals and vegetable into the ground; there is still a danger of frost. According to Sheldrake, May 15 is the average day for the last frost, meaning that its after that about half of the time. This makes buying a hanging basket a good idea.

“No annuals should go in at Mothers’ Day,” said Sheldrake. “Plants like begonias and impatiens don’t even need frost to be affected. Several nights down in the 40s will stun them and they’ll pout.” These plants, he said, will not grow for a while and will always be behind plants that are put in later.

Sheldrake starts planting his baskets in March. He has 10-, 12- and 14-inch diameters and is able to put more variety into the larger ones. Early Bird sells the 14-inch baskets empty with enough potting soil to supplement a 10-inch basket. “We call it ‘super-sizing,’” Sheldrake joked. “It’s like goldfish. You get a bigger fish in a bigger bowl.”

“A lot of people talk about planting for symmetry, but I don’t go for that,” he said. He combines a variety of leaf textures, flower colors and plant habits to create a full and interesting living arrangement. He includes what he calls the “thriller,” the up-right plant with the striking blooms, the “spiller,” the cascading plant that covers the sides of the pot and hangs below it, and the “filler,” which holds it all together. Sheldrake may include seven or eight varieties in a single “combo” basket.

Hanging baskets are generally filled with annuals because these varieties bloom for months on end as long as they are deadheaded. It must be remembered that potted plants are closed systems and need fertilizing regularly. “It’s better to fertilize than to under-fertilize,” said Sheldrake. “Petunias, in particular, love nitrogen. Pansies and violas prefer a low pH ¬– about 5.8.”

Sheldrake inherited Early Bird Farms from his parents. His father was a Cornell horticulture professor and his mother was active in the running of the business until she passed away in 2002. He grew up on the farm and in the business, and is in the process of expanding it.

One thing that bothers him about the nursery business is the amount of plastic that is used. He has been testing alternatives to plastic for his hanging baskets and other pots. He first tried pots made from rice husks, but rejected them because they looked too much like plastic. He is now trying out pots made from compressed straw held together with a binder and some made from “coco-fiber,” which is made from coconut husks that were once discarded in process of collecting the meat.

Both alternatives are supposed to be biodegradable and also to allow roots to grow through them. So far, Sheldrake has not seen any roots poking out of his experimental pots. He doesn’t like to use peat pots, the traditional alternative to plastic, because they harbor insects, specifically shore flies and fungus gnats.
Mothers’ Day is the third busiest weekend of the year at Early Bird. The busiest weekend is the one before Memorial Day and Memorial Day weekend itself is second.

“The worst thing for Mothers’ Day is if it is really hot,” Sheldrake said. “We put out lemonade in that case.” It is generally a fun weekend for the nursery though. “Sometimes people are grumpy when they show up,” he said, “but they are happier when they leave.”

Your Basic Flower

There is something humble and cheerful about daisies. They are the flower that most children will draw when asked to draw a flower; they have a central disc from which long, simple petals radiate. People who do not know the name of any other flower will likely be able to identify a daisy.

They are members of the aster family (Asteraceae) and the individual blooms are actually composed of two types of the flowers. The disc flowers are small, radial cones crowded together on the center and the ray flowers are larger, bilateral symmetrical features that form each petal around the edge of the disc.

The name “daisy” is thought to be a corruption of “day’s eye,” which refers to their habit of closing up during the night and opening again each morning.

The “classic” daisies with the yellow disc flowers and the white ray flowers are European species, the oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and the lawn daisy (Bellis perennis). Both of them have been widely introduced in North America and are generally considered to be weeds. True to its name, the lawn daisy can be mowed repeated without any effect on its health whatsoever.

The aster family is the most diverse of the flowering plants and dozens of species in North America alone are referred to as “daisies.” The USDA Web site contains a rather complete list of these species, some of which are rare and local and others of which are found in nearly every state and province on the continent. Many of the latter are introduced, but some natives are also widely distributed.

One popular daisy-like North American native is the genus Echinacea (purple coneflower), which, in addition to being a popular perennial in gardens, is also frequently sold as a cut flower. Furthermore, Echinacea has also become popular as a stimulator of the immune system, although medical studies have yet to show that it is actually effective.

Perhaps the most popular daisy that is used as a cut flower is the Gerbera daisy, which is native to the subtropics of South America, Africa and Asia, but is widely cultivated and frequently hybridized to produce a dizzying array of vibrant colors. The popularity of the flower may be measured by the extent of the Web site (gerbera.org; based in South Africa) devoted to it.

James Lovelock, who conceived the Gaia hypothesis in the 1960s while working on preparations for the Viking mission to Mars, created “Daisyworld” in the 1980s to defend his hypothesis. Critics had questioned as to weather biota could produce a planetary homeostatic condition, so Lovelock and Andrew Watson developed a computer model to demonstrate the proposed phenomenon. Daisies (some white and some black) were used to represent all life on a planet.

That Lovelock would use a daisy to represent all life is a testament to their ubiquity and ordinariness. They are frequently grown in gardens because they require little care, will prosper in most soils and in either full sun or partial shade. If they are regularly divided at the roots and replanted, they will continue to send out numerous and larger blossoms year after year.

Outside of gardens introduced daisies may actually take over fields and ditches, leaving little room for other species. It is easy to see how they could become the default cut flower for wandering children and adults everywhere.

Who has not picked a daisy and picked up the petals one by one, intoning “She loves me … she loves me not.”

Who has not picked a handful of daisies and split their stems to insert another stem up to the flower, one after the other to make a daisy chain to put in your hair or where on around your wrist.

This habit grew into a symbol of the counterculture in the 1960s when John Phillips wrote “San Francisco”:
If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there

The Lungs of the City

The urban parks designed and built by Frederick Law Olmsted and his firm were described as the “lungs of the city” and as “public pleasure grounds.” Olmsted completed Central Park, his first project, in 1873, having begun it in 1857. One of his last park designs was Jackson Park in Chicago, which was constructed in 1893 for the Columbian Exposition. Although he began his landscape design career in the Victorian Era, he prefigured the Progressive Era through his concern for the welfare of the common man.

Because public transportation to rural areas was limited and because American cities of the increasingly industrial 19th century were dirty and crowded, it was difficult for urban dwellers to get to the countryside and experience the recuperative effects of being in the natural landscape. So Olmsted simulated natural landscapes in the city.

Olmsted’s first design, Central Park, is a mixture of formal and natural landscapes. Through his career Olmsted used fewer and fewer built structures in his designs and fewer formal features of any kind. In the latter part of this career he was essentially re-creating a pastoral landscape, a sort of Romantic vision of the countryside rather than an actual copy of Nature.

His trees were carefully spaced and his vistas carefully aimed. Each bend in a walking path or a road was intentional placed to created a series of new views for the pedestrian or carriage rider.

Olmsted used a mixture of native and exotic species to vegetate his landscapes. Some areas, like the Ramble in Central Park, are nearly all native species, but if he wished to get a particular effect with foliage color or texture, Olmsted would plant non-native species.

In the selection of plants … Olmsted generally called for “American trees of the stateliest character” and a liberal use of native shrubs. An examination of the lists he compiled for the [Central Park] commissioners, however, demonstrates a willingness to use whatever plant he thought would achieve a particular effect rather than plants suited to particular soil conditions or found together in natural associations. (Robert E. Grese, Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.)

Jensen was a popularizer of the so-called “prairie school” of landscape design, which was developed by O.C. Simonds in response to Frank Lloyd Wright’s invention of that school in architecture.

But his chief inspiration came from Frederick Law Olmsted, who with Calvert Vaux imported the English meadow garden style to New York in the 1850’s, creating Central Park, the first of the great urban natural areas.” (“Native Grounds,” Jim Robbins, New York Times, May 16, 2004).

While Olmsted, as he traveled more widely and experienced more ecosystems, incorporated more exotic plants into his designs as his career progressed, Jensen became increasing devoted to the use of native plants to the point where it began to cross over into a nativist ideology that was unpleasantly chauvinistic.

Olmsted, however, held to his original intention of broadening the lives of urban dwellers of modest means through the experience of landscape. In addition to being places to recreate and convalesce, Olmsted landscapes were places where the common man could appreciate the beauty, variety and even the majesty of plant life.

For generations of children right up to the present day Olmsted parks are their first experience of something like a natural setting. A century and a half after construction of Central Park began, it is still providing a place for New Yorkers to encounter life forms other than their own species and the odd pet. The urban forest of Central Park is home to over 200 species of birds (both resident and migratory) and a surprising number of mammals, including a couple of coyotes.

Diet of Flowers

Flowers are not just for looking at, or even just for smelling. You can eat them too. Culinary use of flowers experiences periodic revivals, but has been know since ancient times. The last surge in flower-as-ingredient was probably in the 1980s with the rise of nouvelle cuisine. At that time they were also used extensively as a garnish.

One of the more lampooned features of nouvelle cuisine during its initial phase was the enormous size of the plates and the relatively small portions. There were huge expanses of plates that positively cried out for decoration, at least to some. That period actually saw the bridging of two arts: flower arranging and cooking. The flowers were in the food and next to it too.

Before bringing flowers into the kitchen, though, some reading, even research is in order. There are many caveats to including flowers in cooking. One, flowers may include pollen (if they are male or “perfect” flowers) and many people are allergic to pollen. For example, ragweed is hay-fever-inducing whether it is eaten or inhaled.

If you consider yourself to be an allergy-prone person, then eating flowers may not be for you at all. A safe course for anyone may be to remove the anthers and other parts of the plant that may be heavily coated with pollen grains.

Two, some flowers are poisonous. These include some very attractive and very common flowers like those of rhododendrons, azaleas, daffodils, crocuses, foxglove, cardinal flower and clematis. There lists of poisonous flowers all over the Web. In some cases – rose, tulip, yucca and lavender – only the petals are edible.

One writer, Ann Lovejoy in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was startled to look through cooking magazines and see very toxic flowers placed as ornamentation on various dishes. These included Datura stramonium (devil’s trumpet), which is wildly hallucinogenic and will stop your heart if a sufficient quantity is consumed. The active ingredient is strychnine.

Three, some flowers are poisonous because they have been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides. Do not eat flowers purchased at florists or collected along the roadside. The decay periods for chemicals sprayed onto crops are well studied. Those for chemicals sprayed onto plants not usually thought of as food are not, so it isn’t safe to eat this vegetation regardless of how long ago it was sprayed.

The safest course of action is to grow your own flowers to eat. Sherry Rindels at the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State University recommends picking only fully open flowers, not those either still partially closed or past their prime and wilting. Also, she commends picking them during a cooler part of the day.

“After harvest, place long-stemmed flowers in water and then in a cool location,” counsels Rindels. “Short stemmed flowers should be placed between layers of damp paper toweling or in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Immediately before using, gently wash the flowers to remove dirt and check for insects.”

People around the world have been eating flowers for centuries. One of the more detailed articles about the historical dimension of the topic is by Lynn Smythe at Associated Content. In short it is one of those things that the Chinese and the Romans both did, introducing the idea to various other cultures during imperialist expansions.

According to Smythe, flowers were a popular addition to salads during the Victorian Era, but they were also pickled so that they could be used during the months when no flowers were available for harvest.

There are a number of sites with lists of edible plants, but all of them suggest that you learn your plants really well before including them in your diet.

Some sites with lengthy lists of edible (and inedible) plants:

What’s Cooking America

About.com

Colorado State University Extension

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service

The Garden Helper

And for recipes that use flowers: The Seeds of Knowledge

Beautiful and Invasive

If you have ever stopped to pick flowers along the roadside, taken them home, put them in a vase and when they died, thrown them out, then you might be helping to spread invasive species.

Roadsides are disturbed and stressed environments, the ideal spot for non-native species to take hold. Natives, coping as they are with the challenges of the many predators – macroscopic and microscopic – that impeded their growth and reproduction, are at a competitive disadvantage against introduced species. They have been placed in a new ecosystem where nothing recognizes them as food. If they can cope with the stresses of the physical environment, then they are off and running.

A very beautiful, pervasive and noxious example of an invasive plant is the purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). Purple loosestrife is native from Great Britain to Japan and south to northern India. It was introduced to the United States in the 19th century. It is still sold in many states as an ornamental, but Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois have prohibited its sale. It is found in every state except Florida.

The earliest introductions may have been through seeds in ships’ ballast and caught up in imported wool. It was noted in estuaries and canals of northeastern United States in the early 19th century, but was much written about in horticultural texts as a popular addition to ornamental gardens in both Europe and the United States.

Once it had a foothold along the east coast it penetrated inland along the canals that were being built during first half of the 19th century and also it followed the westward advance of the clearing that accompanied agriculture and European settlement.

In the early 20th century it was imported for use by beekeepers; it flowers profusely between June and September and is an excellent source of nectar.

Efforts to physically remove purple loosestrife have been largely unsuccessful. In some wildlife refuges where it has come to form monotypic stands, crowding out native species and providing substandard browse to herbivorous animals, volunteers efforts have been organized to physically remove the plants by simply digging them up or carting them away. It is, though, something like bailing out the ocean.

Cornell University is looking for natural predators to introduce that reduce the density of the species if not eradicate it. Bernd Blossey has found that the Galerucella beetle feeds on purple loosestrife foliage. It was introduced to rangeland in Washington state in 1995 and three years later had made serious inroads to the loosestrife population. It would take several years, however, to eradicate the plants because they are able to store energy in their roots and grow back through several years of defoliation.

Galerucella calmariensis and G. pusilla are native to Europe, where they feed only on purple loosestrife. They show no interest whatsoever in native loosestrife species and, when their introduction to North America is complete, are expected to reduced purple loosestrife by 90 percent over 90 percent of its range.

The lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) is another introduced plant that becomes invasive. At present there are no biological controls available to limit its numbers. Like purple loosestrife, it is attractive. Its chief detrimental effect is to prevent native spring wildflowers from emerging; it forms such an extensive and dense mat of vegetation that it actually blocks other plants from poking through.

This introduced plant forms a lush green mat of vegetation as early as March in the northeastern states. It flowers through late March and April. By May the foliage has died back, leaving large bare areas in lawns that it has invaded. It spreads vegetatively; just beneath the soil surface is a dense network of tubers. All of these must be removed in order to rid an area of the plant.

Lesser celandine was introduced as an ornamental and is still commercially available.

Many invasive plants are as attractive as purple loosestrife and lesser celandine and may prove tempting to add to a garden. Many non-native thistles are invasive, as are orange daylilies. And it is not only herbaceous plants that can be invasive; aquatic plants, vines, shrubs and even trees can move in and take over acreage.

Consult the following websites (and more) before bringing any species into your yard:

National Arboretum

Invasives.org

USDA National Invasive Species Information Center

Center for Invasive Plant Management

Insectivorous Plants

Carnivorous plants seem to attract their own breed of plant lover. Browsing through the many Web sites posted on this subject one is struck by the difference in tone between a site dedicated plants that eat insects versus, say, one devoted to roses. People devoted to roses emphasize their pedigree and elegance while those interested in carnivorous plants focus on their exotic behavior and the apparent ingeniousness of the insect-snaring mechanisms.

Although there seem to be many outlets for the sale of carnivorous plants, there are fewer sites that go into any detail about how to care for them. A sort of central clearinghouse for this kind of information is to be found at the site of the International Carnivorous Plant Society. One of the more detailed sites to be found is that of Michael Zenner, although it has not been updated since 1998.

One of the more complete references for carnivorous plant systematics can be found at the Web site of the Botanical Society of America. The strategy of carnivory (more strictly, insectivory) has evolved independently and differently in several phyletic groups (five different orders are listed here) within the kingdom Plantae.

The insectivorous plants are frequently divided into active and passive eaters. Members of the latter group simply have architecture that traps hapless trespassing insects, while members of the former group have moving parts that close on insects that trip triggers (usually hairs) on the plant.

Classic examples of the passive type are the “pitcher plants,” which also illustrate the polyphyletic development of similar forms. The pitchers of the eastern United States are members of the genus Sarracenia in the family Sarraceniaceae. Those of the western United States are members of the genus Darlingtonia in the same family. In the tropics the family Nepenthaceae includes the genus Nepenthes. All of these plants have reservoirs lined with downward pointing hairs that allow insects to crawl in, but not out. The insects are attracted by an odor and when unable to get out, slip into a pool of digestive enzymes at the base of the reservoir.

The best-known active insect eater is the Venus’ flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) a member of the family Droseraceae, which include the passive-strategy member, the sundew. The Venus’ flytrap has a series of sensitive hairs that must be either tripped successively or triggered more than once in order for the plant to react. The trap portion of the plant consists of semi-circular plates lined with tooth-like structures that are held open until triggered, whereupon the close with surprising rapidity. The mechanism is still not completely understood. The flytrap makes an airtight seal around its prey and secretes digestive enzymes. It takes five to 12 days to digest an insect.

All of the carnivorous plants have developed their insect “hunting” abilities in order to supplement a nitrogen-poor environment. Many live in bog environments, which are highly acidic. The acidity is due to the accumulation of minerals in the ambient water, which is a result of water leaving the ecosystem only by evaporation rather than run-off. Reactions necessary for nitrification – conversion of ammonia into nitrites and nitrates, nitrogen compounds usable by plants – do not go forward in low pH conditions. It is therefore necessary for the plants to harvest the nitrites and nitrates directly from the insect’s bodies.
Because they are adapted to somewhat extreme, marginal environments, these plants are often restricted to such places.

Unfortunately wetlands have been traditionally viewed with distaste. In the pre-“germ theory” era it was thought that the “vapors” rising out of wetlands brought sickness and they were filled or drained in the interest of public health. Because they are mosquito breeding grounds, even in the germ theory era they are viewed as sources of pestilence.

The eastern pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea et al.) are broadly distributed – found across Canada from the Rockies to the Maritime provinces and down the East Coast – but still largely confined to bogs and other marginal environments. By contrast, the natural habitat of the (much cultivated) Venus’ flytrap is a small region of coastal North and South Carolina.

Pet Banes

Since we are usually not inclined to start nibbling on the flowers – cut or potted – that we bring into our homes, we might not stop to consider the danger to pets from poisonous plants.

Some plants, like poinsettias, have been rumored to be dangerous, but have actually been shown to be more irritating than deadly. That is, your cat will throw up, but is not likely to die.

But there are long lists of plants that, if your cat or dog gets into them, will require an immediate trip to the veterinarian. A few of these plants are named in a helpful manner, such as “dogbane,” “wolfbane” (and even “henbane”), but mostly you would never know a plant was going to kill your pet until it was too late.

One of the groups to look out for is the lilies. These plants are abundantly available as either cut flowers (Asian varieties) or as potted plants (Easter lilies). The Cat Fanciers’ Web site is quite blunt about this:

Unfortunately, all parts of the lily plant are considered toxic to cats and consuming even small amounts can be life threatening. Within only a few hours of ingestion of the lily plant, a cat may vomit, become lethargic or develop a lack of appetite. These signs continue and worsen as kidney damage progresses. Without prompt and proper treatment by a veterinarian, the cat may develop kidney failure in 36 to 72 hours.

They suggest cat owners purchase “Easter cactus,” “Easter orchids,” or other “Easter” flowers rather than lilies.

However, another organization called Paws & Purrs lists cactuses in general as toxic to pets, so it is probably best to cross reference several different lists.

Bulbs are another class of dangerous vegetation. House pets will be exposed to them if you are forcing them in the late winter and they are just sitting out on beds of gravel in shallow containers. Amaryllis, daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths and tulips are all toxic to animals. Usually all parts of the plant – not just the bulbs – are poisonous.

As a counterpoint to these spring plants, some people might keep chrysanthemums inside during the fall months. It would probably be a better idea to leave on the front steps.

Some of the most ubiquitous houseplants turn out to be not the greatest idea to have around. Philodendron, that trusty die-hard for dwellers in light-deprived apartments, is poisonous. Ficus trees are another no-no. This is especially troubling because it seems like every time you move a Ficus they shed leaves in protest. All ferns are deadly too.

Even dried arrangements can get you in trouble: all eucalyptuses are toxic, which, given their oily odor, isn’t that surprising.

Keep your cats and dogs out of the kitchen when you are cooking too. This is not just for hygienic reasons, but because if drop some things on the floor during your preparations, there might be a problem. All of the members of the Solanaceae – tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes – are toxic to pets. This isn’t too surprising since other members of the family – nightshade and jimsonweed, for example – are toxic to humans. Rhubarb is also poisonous to cats and dogs.

The mention of jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) brings up the subject of recreational drugs. Simply put, they are all going to kill your pets. Marijuana, mescal (peyote) and even tobacco should not be left around if you want to keep body and soul together in your pet population.

The list of dangerous plants is rather long, but obviously not all plants are dangerous. The aforementioned Paws & Purrs site conveniently lists non-toxic plants instead of completely depressing you, which is what most other Web sites do.

A Green and Pleasant Place

As a child I was taken to Planting Fields, an arboretum that is now a state park, in Oyster Bay on Long Island. As an undergraduate I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland and as a graduate student I found myself wondering into the Rhododendron Gardens in Bremen, Germany during some free time in between shifts at the core repository.

Planting Fields was perhaps a refuge for my mother, a place where she could take her three small children and both they and she could enjoy themselves. The botanic gardens of European cities are inexpensive places for students to spend time; they provide a green and quiet respite from days and hours of train rides, cheap hotels and crowded cafés.

Botanic (or botanical) gardens tend to include greenhouses and more exotic plants, while arboreta may include exotic plants, but generally from the same climate. “Public gardens” are likely to be the most of-the-place oases in the sense that more (although almost certainly not all) of the plants, shrubs and trees present will be either native or at least from the same continent.

Because they are, in all cases, planted, and because they are often rife with exotic species, botanical gardens, arboreta and public gardens are excellent places to meet new species. The plants there have the added advantage of being labeled. If you wanted to add a specimen to your own landscape, buy a potted plant for your sun room or even add some interest to the next bouquet you purchase from the florist, these plant menageries are the right places to broaden your botanical palette.

The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh began its life as a physic garden, which is to say one devoted to growing medicinal plant. It was founded in 1670 and is the second oldest botanic garden in Britain. It moved to its present location in Inverleith in 1820, in order to escape the growing pollution that the Industrial Revolution brought to Edinburgh.

Many botanical gardens in the US and the UK are non-profit organizations, whether or not they are allied with a university. The Royal Botanic Garden has a full research staff, an education department that offers botanical instruction to the general public and is simply a public institution for its city, staging community events, art exhibits and other cultural undertakings.

Across the pond in the Bronx, Americans will find the New York Botanical Garden. Established in 1891, it is much less boastful about its venerable history than its Edinburgh counterpart. In fact, the NYBG’s Web site states that the founders, Columbia University botanist Nathan Lord Britton and his wife Elizabeth, were inspired by a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. They purchased the Bronx acreage from the Lorillard family, who were tobacco merchants. Its financiers were the usual gang of Gilded Age despots.

The NYBG’s public offerings are remarkably similar to those offered in Edinburgh: a mixture of educational and cultural programming for all ages. And like the Royal Botanic Garden, there is an extensive research staff. Both institutions are overtly devoted to plant conservation around the world.

Most major (and many minor) cities in the developed world have some form of botanical garden or public garden somewhere in their confines. Some of the ones that I have visited are listed here in no particular order:
Chicago Botanic Garden
San Francisco Botanical Garden
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Botanical Haven and Museum of the University of Copenhagen
Villa Borghese, Rome
Villa d’Esta (Tivoli Gardens), Rome
Thuja Garden, Northeast Harbor, Maine
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, Seal Harbor, Maine
Dundee Botanic Garden, University of Dundee, Scotland
Rhododendron Park and Botanic Garden of Bremen, Germany
Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens
Lamberton Conservatory in Highland Park, Rochester, New York
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
Cornell Plantations
Planting Fields, Oyster Bay, New York
Arnold Arboretum, Boston, Massachusetts

That’s a haphazard list of the ones that I can think of off the top of my head, but you get the picture: they are pretty much anywhere you go. When you need a break during a journey, a conference or a family visit, find a botanical garden.

A professional organization dedicated to public gardens, in general is the American Public Garden Association (formerly known as the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta).