Jan 21, 2020
Today we celebrate a man known as “The Pathfinder” and the
birthday of a man who impoverished himself writing a book in
tribute to Carl Linnaeus.
We'll learn about the woman who was as passionate about botany as
she was assisting with the war effort and today’s National Day that
celebrates a garden creature. (Hint: it has a bushy tail)
Today’s Unearthed Words feature a riddle from an English-American
writer and poet.
We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book that helps us understand
the language of flowers.
I'll talk about a garden item that comes in handy if you grow
houseplants,
and then we’ll wrap things up with the birthday of a botanist who
had an incredible love story and wrote beautiful poetry.
But first, let's catch up on a few recent events.
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Curated Articles
A Winter Greenhouse: A
Productive Way To Harvest Vegetables All
Winter | @savvygardening
Have you ever dreamt of harvesting fresh vegetables
year-round?!
Get inspired by @savvygardening - a winter greenhouse is a project
worth thinking about...
AND, they share this great tip: Keep a heat-generating compost pile
INSIDE the greenhouse.
10 Unusual Vegetables For
Adventurous Gardeners | Mother Earth News |
@MotherEarthNews
The list includes Cardoon, Shiso Perilla ("SHE-so per-ILL-ah"), Oca
tubers, Celeriac ("sell-AIR-ee-ack"), Malabar Spinach, Kohlrabi,
Seakale, Amaranth, Winter Radish, and Salsify & Scorzonera
("score-zah-NEAR-ah").
Now, if you'd like to check out these curated articles for
yourself, you're in luck, because I share all of it
with the Listener Community in the
Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener
Community.
There’s no need to take notes or search for links - the next time
you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community and request
to join. I'd love to meet you in the group.
Important Events
1813 Today is the birthday of the
American explorer, soldier, and the first Presidential candidate of
the Republican Party, John Charles Frémont.
Frémont is remembered as “The Pathfinder” after helping many
Americans who were heading West by creating documents and maps of
his expeditions West. John and his wife, Jesse, created an entire
map of the Oregon Trail.
When Frémont saw Nebraska, he didn’t see merely an endless prairie;
he saw beauty. To Fremont, the entire state was one big garden,
accentuated with fertile soil, swaying grasses, and wildflowers as
far as the eye could see.
Fremont was one of the first explorers to write about cottonwood
trees. He discovered them near Pyramid Lake in Nevada on Jan 6,
1844. Years later, botanists would name the cottonwood in his
honor, calling it the "Populus fremontii."
Cottonwoods are the fastest growing trees in North America. After
all of the beautiful elm trees at my childhood home succumbed to
Dutch elm disease, my parents selected cottonwoods because
they knew they would grow quickly - Up to six feet or more
each year. They couldn't stand how naked the house looked without
the beautiful large elm trees.
In truth, there's no comparison between a cottonwood tree and an
elm tree, which is regarded as one of the most beautiful trees by
landscape painters. In addition, because the Cottonwood tree grows
so quickly, it often has weak wood that can easily be injured or
damaged.
Cottonwood trees are in the Poplar species. Only the female trees
produce the fluffy cotton seeds that float through the air and
collect in your garden and garage in June.
1837 Today is the anniversary of the
death of the English physician and botanical writer Robert John
Thornton.
Robert adored Carl Linnaeus. He was a huge fan. When Robert wrote
his book called “The Temple of Flora,” he dedicated it to Linnaeus.
Robert wanted his book to be the very best illustrated botanical
book ever made, and his goal was that it would be a memorialization
of Linnaeus’ work.
Robert’s idea was to have 70 large plates of exotic plants that
would be organized according to Linnaeus’s classification system.
Another unique aspect of Robert’s illustration concept was that the
plants would appear in their native environment. Unfortunately,
after working with the very best illustrators of his time, Robert
had to stop production on the Temple book after only twenty-eight
plant illustrations. He ran out of money, and the project stalled.
Yet, even in its unfinished state, it remains one of the most
excellent compilations of botanical illustrations that has ever
been created. Although Robert was overly ambitious with his goals
for the “Temple of Flora,” the work is still considered to be
arguably one of the loveliest botanically Illustrated books in the
world.
The most famous engraving in the book is of a night-blooming cereus
cactus plant. The bloom takes up almost the entire width of the
image, and in the background (in the dark), you can see the ruins
of a castle. The night-blooming cereus is known as "The Queen of
the Night."
The flowers of the night-blooming cereus don't last long, but they
are stunning. The night-blooming cereus is native to Arizona in the
Sonoran Desert. Most people would be surprised to know a cereus
cactus can get to be ten feet tall. Outside the Southwest, the
cereus is generally grown as a houseplant.
If you're waiting for your cereus plant to bloom, just know that it
won't start flowering until it's at least five years old.
Initially, you may only get one or two blooms for a few years. That
said, once you do get a flower, you will be in love because the
bloom is seven inches across, and the scent is heavenly.
1879 Today is the birthday of Dame
Helen Gwynne-Vaughan - a prominent English botanist and mycologist.
She died in 1967.
Gwynne-Vaughn also helped form the University of London's Suffrage
Society - where she was the first female professor. During #WWI,
she also helped establish the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Due to
her extraordinary wartime leadership, Gwynne-Vaughan was one of the
first women to receive a Military Commander of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire award.
Early on in her botanical career, Gwynn-Vaughan researched rust
fungi. Rust is a plant parasite that invades a plant and uses it as
a host for its survival. Rust actually invades the plant's cells,
and it steals nutrients from the plant. The plant treats the rust
like an infection. Sometimes the plants are able to fight off the
rust. Other times, the rust wins, and the plants succumb to the
Rust. Rust destroys 15 million tons of wheat each year.
The University of London recently released a lovely article about
Gywnne-Vaughan called "Fungi and the Forces," which revealed that
Gwynne-Vaughan was as accomplished in the armed forces as she was
in the theater of fungi. In fact, a handful of fungi are named for
her - like Palaeoendogone gwynne-vaughaniae and Pleurage
gwynne-vaughaniae.
2001Today is National Squirrel Appreciation Day,
which was founded in 2001 by Christy Hargrove, a wildlife
rehabilitator in Asheville, North Carolina. Christy created the
special day to acknowledge that food sources for squirrels are
scarce in mid-winter.
Gardeners are generally of two minds when it comes to squirrels.
They either don't mind them, or they really dislike them.
Squirrels can be a challenging pest in the garden because of their
tremendous athleticism. Squirrels have a 5-foot vertical.
Nowadays, their ability to leap is well-documented on
YouTube. And, squirrels are excellent sprinters and swimmers.
Squirrels are master zig-zaggers when they run - a skill that comes
in handy when they need to evade predators.
A squirrel nest is called a drey. Squirrels make their nests with
leaves, and the mother lines the inside of the drey with
grass.
Squirrels perform an essential job for trees. They help the forest
renew itself by caching seeds and burying them. The caching of
seeds by squirrels is vital for many tree species. As squirrels
bury acorns and other seeds, they either sometimes forget or simply
don't return to some of their buried food. Although squirrels have
tremendous ability to source buried food, they can smell an acorn
buried in the ground beneath a foot of snow.
Unearthed Words
Today’s poem is a winter riddle from James Parton. The answer is
snow:
"From Heaven I fall, though from earth I begin.
No lady alive can show such a skin.
I'm bright as an angel, and light as a feather,
But heavy and dark, when you squeeze me together.
Though candor and truth in my aspect I bear,
Yet many poor creatures I help to insnare.
Though so much of Heaven appears in my make,
The foulest impressions I easily take.
My parent and I produce one another,
The mother the daughter, the daughter the mother."
- James Parton, English-born American biographer, A Riddle
- On Snow
Grow That Garden Library
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa
Diffenbaugh
Today’s book is a fiction book. Vanessa weaves the Victorian
language of love into a love story: honeysuckle for devotion,
asters for patience, and red roses for love.
For the main character, Victoria Jones, flowers are more useful in
communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the
foster-care system, her only connection to the world is through
flowers and their meanings.
Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go,
Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the
flowers she chooses for them. An unexpected encounter with a
mysterious stranger forces her to confront a painful secret from
her past.
Brigitte Weeks of The Washington Post gave my favorite review of
this book:
“ I would like to hand Vanessa Diffenbaugh a bouquet of bouvardia
(enthusiasm), gladiolus (you pierce my heart) and lisianthus
(appreciation). . . . And there is one more sprig I should add to
her bouquet: a single pink carnation (I will never forget
you).”
This is a lovely fiction book for gardeners who are looking for
something light and fun to read over the winter. This book came out
in 2012.
You can get a used copy of The Language of Flowers by
Vanessa Diffenbaugh and support the show, using the Amazon Link in
today's Show Notes for under $1.
Great Gifts for Gardeners
Universal Products 10 Pack of 6 Inch Clear Plastic Plant
Saucers for Indoor and Outdoor Plants $9.49
Today’s Botanic Spark
1854 Today is the birthday of the
Washington DC-based USDA botanist Erwin Frink Smith.
Smith had attempted to solve the problem of the peach yellows.
Peach Yellows is a disease caused by a microorganism called a
phytoplasma that was affecting Peach Orchards. It became known as
the Peach Yellows disease because the main symptom begins with new
leaves that have a yellowish tint. Had Smith solved the
problem of the Peach Yellows, he would have become world-famous -
but he didn't. Years later, it was actually the botanist Louis Otto
Kunkel who discovered that a type of leafhopper was carrying the
disease.
Now Smith may not have solved the Peach Yellows problem, but he was
a peach of a guy. In researching Smith, I discovered a rare
combination of kindness and intellect. He developed a reputation
for hiring and promoting female botanists as his assistants at the
Bureau of plant industry in Washington DC. Smith gave these women
tasks based on their strengths instead of their job descriptions,
and in many cases, they were able to work on projects beyond the
scope of their job description.
Smith’s friend, Dr. Rodney True, revealed Smith’s unique
combination of strength in a tribute after he died. He wrote:
“Erwin developed a knowledge of French, German, and Italian
literature that opened to him worlds of intense pleasure… He read
his Bible in a copy of the Vulgate, and Dante was a favorite … in
Dante's own great language. Goethe was often quoted in the
original. Seldom have I known a man who brought such joy and
understanding to the works of great writers. His library was a sort
of map of his mind. In it were all manner of noble things. He was
quick, enthusiastic, and strangely appealed to by beauty in all its
forms.”
The happiest day in Smith’s life was no doubt when he married the
pretty Charlotte Mae Buffet on April 13, 1893. They shared an epic
love for each other and for reading and poetry. Tragically, after
twelve years of marriage, Charlotte was diagnosed with
endocarditis. She died eight months later on December 28, 1906.
Smith dealt with his grief by putting together a book of poetry,
stories, and a biography of Charlotte. The book is
called “For
Her Friends and Mine: A Book of Aspirations, Dreams, and
Memories.”Smith wrote,
"This book is a cycle of my life— seven lonely years are in it. The
long ode (on page 62) is a cry of pain." There are many touching
passages – too many to share here now.”
There's one passage from Smith describing Charlotte’s fantastic
ability to attune to the natural world, and I thought you'd find it
as touch as I did when I first read it:
“Charlotte’s visual powers were remarkable. They far exceeded my
own.
Out of doors, her keen eyes were always prying into the habits of
all sorts of living things: ants, spiders, bees, wasps, fish,
birds, cats, dogs.
Had she cared for classification, which she did not, and been
willing to make careful records, she might have become an expert
naturalist. Form in nature seemed to interest her little or at
least comparative studies of form.
What did interest her tremendously was the grade of intelligence
manifested in the lower forms of life. She would spend hours
watching the habits of birds and insects, and never without
discovering new and interesting things.
Whether she looked into the tops of the tallest trees, or the
bottom of a stream, or the grass at her feet, she was always
finding marvels of adaptation to wonder at and links binding the
world of life into a golden whole.
She made lists of all the birds that visited her neighborhood. She
knew most of them by their songs, and some times distinguished
individuals of the same species by little differences in their
notes, as once a song-sparrow at Woods Hole, which had two added
notes.
She knew when they nested and where, how they made their nests, and
what food they brought to their young.
In studying birds, she used an opera-glass, not a shotgun.
She was, however, a very good shot with the revolver.”