Pomegranate Juice Fights Cavities

So we know (or think we know) that pomegranate juice -- like acai from Brazil, and other superfruit juices -- helps with everything from lowering bad cholesterol to inhibiting prostate cancer and reducing some of the risks from diabetes.

Today word arrives that two young men from Flatbush have discovered that pomegranate juice can help fight cavities. Here's a bit more from Touro College contact Barbara Franklin about Zev Zelman and Elliot Lutz:

The students based their research on the knowledge that cavities are not caused by the consumption of sweets, but rather the bacteria that ferment the dietary carbohydrates to produce lactic acid, which eats away at tooth enamel. However, pomegranate juice, and to a lesser degree pomegranate tea, effectively deactivate the bacteria within 10 minutes of contact. Other beverages tested that were effective included grape juice, cranberry juice, and some wines. The other beverages tested in the research had slight or no effect on the bacteria.

Feedback, please. Do you or don't you want to see TP venturing this far from Eden?

1:04 AM ET | 05- 1-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

 

Doyenne of Dirt Comes Clean

Consider me humbled.

You may have noticed I'm not the hippest blogster in the bunch. In other words, if it's hot and happening in the blog world, you're NOT likely to read about it here.

Believe me, I'm not bragging. I get that my creds as a blogger are slightly pathetic, possibly even considered rude, if the standard of gentility is linking to others.

So consider me a plant in need of sunlight and nourishment and help me out here. What are the enlightening, surprising, irreverent and relevant plant-related blogs I need to read?

12:02 PM ET | 04-25-2008 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

 

Remind Me, Why Do We Hate Dandelions?

It's a banner year for dandelions around Portland, I don't ever remember them looking so fulsome and jaunty before. They're strewn like wildflowers along parking strips, lawns and empty lots (the few that are left here in Boomtown) and by and large, their arrangements are quite picturesque.

So what's the deal? Why do millions of Americans prefer using 2,4-D to kill them instead of making dandelion fritters and enjoying the show?

No doubt the answer dates back to the heyday of the British lawn, rhapsodized and defended by no less a plant lover than one of my favorite garden writers, Anna Pavord who wrote, "dandelions are bullies. They simply had to go". At least she had the good grace to feel guilty about buying a weedkiller, but buy it and publicize it she did.

Perhaps a later blog needs to throw open the debate on 2,4-D, still very much in ample supply on the garden shelf but so clearly deserving of more consumer dissuasion. But the focus here is on the dandelion itself.

It's been two decades since the New York Times reported on the "weirdo" Maine farmer who canned dandelion greens. Today, there are dandelion cookbooks, dandelion dinners (strictly upmarket), dandelion blogs and in honor of Passover, Jewish dandelion news:

Conveying the misery of the Israelites' slavery, bitter herbs vary from place to place and even from family to family. Ashkenazim favor freshly ground or sliced, fresh horseradish root, bottled horseradish, or romaine lettuce. Sephardim prefer bitter greens such as endive, escarole, chicory, sorrel, arugula, dandelion, or watercress.

Nearing holiness, let us not forget that dandelions make wishes come true. You just have to do is put your lips together and blow. But if you really can't bear them yet know better than to use herbicides (what, me, guilt you?) garden writer Anne Lovejoy suggests you love them to death.

6:51 PM ET | 04-17-2008 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

 

Landscape Under Glass Glows

Some breaking news from that blogger's best friend, NPR's Andy Carvin...

Conde Nast has just published its list of the seven wonders of the architectural world, and the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery is on it.

If you were around in February, you might have taken refuge with me there, DC's most-see glassed-in garden.

12:30 PM ET | 03-26-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

 

Tips from an Amazon Gardener

Dona Raimunda is a rock star. A meteor shower. A force of nature. It's amazing to me how that much personality can be contained in such a diminutive body.

She is the mother of farmer Rosario Costa Cabral, the Amazon farmer featured in these pages a few months back. Rosario has made a name for herself growing crops never before tried in her region of the Amazon flood plain, where she's encouraged other farmers to branch out.

However...
Whereas Rosario relies on observation and experimentation, her mother channels ancestral know-how.

Dona Raimunda is who-knows-what-generation caboclo, the Brazilian word for the ethnically mixed people who live in the Amazon. In my Weekend Edition Sunda radio piece about Dona Raimunda, I listed six tongue-in-cheek gardening tips I'd observed watching this caboclo gardener at work. My hunch is they'll make a whole lot more sense if you care to join me in her Amazon garden but in any case, here they are:

#1 Mind how you talk to your plants
#2 Cucumbers and cabbage are sworn enemies and cannot be grown together
#3 Chili peppers are stubbornly reluctantly to let go of their fruit
#4 Plants are no co-dependent; they don't care if you garden in a bad mood
#5 Ugly chives save lives (a reference to putting anti-evil eggs in the vegetable garden)
#6 Smokers are welcome in the garden

3:31 PM ET | 03-22-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

Amazon: A Reluctant Goodbye

Well, it's time to move on from our week in the Amazon. At least to the exclusion of the rest of the world. No doubt Rosario Costa Cabral and the planet's other inspirational farmers, gardeners and environmentalists will continue to be our guests on Talking Plants.

A few parting shots, if you will; not a whole lot to say, just some photos I have yet to share.

Admittedly, I didn't spend a great deal of time mastering the names and kinds of of Amazon flora (a good reason to go back). Little, in fact, was blooming but on our canoe trip, we did manage a small breakfast bouquet.

But there was no missing the dollop of green that came floating down the river like an emerald island (below). It was water lettuce, a staple of American water features coast to coast. This is a wonderful annual aquatic; seeing it was like running into an old friend.

Perhaps it's enough to know that the places, people and moments we've been visiting in the Amazon are real and possible.

8:15 AM ET | 02- 9-2008 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

 

Rosario's Jungle: a Brazilian Adventure

If I let go of my Amazon adventure, I might find myself in Washington, D.C. And you wouldn't wish that on anyone, right?

So here's to living in the moment ... just not this one. Instead, I've collected a few of my favorites -- some in sound, some in pictures, some in words -- and buoyed by the stunning skills of my digital media colleagues, I invite you to visit the Rosario family on the Mazagao River in nothern Brazil.

The trip's on me.

...CLICK TO PLAY..CLICK BOTTOM RIGHT SQUARE TO GROW..

4:16 PM ET | 02- 6-2008 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

 

Amazon Q&A

Just to catch you up, this week we're focusing on Rosario Costa Cabral, one of the world's more inspiring farmers.

Talking Plants community member Julian Blackwood recently asked a number of in-depth questions that were beyond the scope of the NPR Amazon story. I thought I'd post his q's (edited for clarity) with answers provided by Columbia U. ecologist Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, who is an expert in Amazonian biodiversity and has known Rosario for a decade.

Q: Since (Rosario farms on) tidal land, presumably the water is somewhat saline? Or is it backed-up fresh river water that floods her land twice a day?

A: The water is not saline. The fresh water of the Amazon actually extends far into the sea.

Q: If the flood-tolerant pepper plant anecdote was accurate, it raises the interesting question of how that particularly valuable gene combination for flood tolerance (if that's what it is) is maintained in a partly cross-pollinating crop.

A: Well, the flood threat (and natural selection) is constant as is the human selection process. So presumably if cross-pollination does occur, any non-tolerant plants that might result are quickly eliminated. But I also saw that Dona Raimunda (Rosario's mother) seems to do some hand pollination with some vegetables; she shakes the flower of onions onto other onions. She says that way she gets better bulbs. How and where she learned this I don't know.

Q: The reference to distributing cassava "seeds" (of her improved selection) presumably meant the usual stem cuttings used for clonal propagation - as cassava is cross-pollinated. But the really big question is exactly what land was she actually farming when you visited?

A: When Rosario and her family came to Mazagao they could not bring cuttings but rather seeds (although as you point out, reproduction by cuttings is the usual process). The family had been dispossessed from their farm and were not sure when and where they would plant again. Any cuttings would have probably died. She also apparently distributed seeds not cuttings; people try out the seeds on their own land, select on their own. On her own land she plants her own cuttings.

Q: I understand Rosario's farming on logged-over land. She is probably planting gaps in various glades, cropping them until soil fertility or pest build-up drives her to a new plot (similar to traditional "shifting" cultivation). Let's hope she changes plots regularly so that the soil is not exhausted to the point where only tertiary scrub can regenerate (her planting of local tree species was good news).

A: Rosario is indeed planting in gaps and she moves annuals and semi-perennials around every few years to other parts of her landholding. Of course many of her crops are actually perennials and are native trees. The problem with fertility loss in the floodplain is not nearly as great as you might have in an upland site. The twice-daily tides carry and deposit nutrients and the flooding (both tidal and seasonal) probably helps keep down some pests.

11:28 AM ET | 02- 6-2008 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

 

Amazon Animal Farm

I've got good and even better news for those of you expecting a slide show today. (Welcome to the Year of the Spin). The good news is that the slide show is so cool -- with music, birds, river splashing and narration -- that several of us are now up to our elbows in production and it's taking a tad longer than expected.

The even better news is that in hoping to mollify those of you who heard Rosario on the radio and want more, I've got animal pix from the Rosario family farm. Who could resist this face?

Being a lifelong vegetarian, I tried not to get attached to the little piggy (pictured below, and by the way she's going to be sold; the Rosario family wouldn't touch her), but I nearly fainted from cute overload when I first spied her with his little hoofs hooked over the barn door. Her massive mother, however, Boneca (Doll), is a cherished member of the Rosario family; it seems there are enough stories about her to fill a few childrens' books. My favorite is the story about how she collapsed after eating something clearly lethal, and was subsequently revived by several pots of strong black Brazilian coffee.

One of the reasons there are plank walkways around the entire Rosario house is because the ground floor belongs to a bunch of roosters, chickens, and ducks. The ducks and chickens are easy to live with, but those roosters! They start crowing at about 3am and until evening falls, they never seem to stop. Of course, that's only news to those of us who are more accustomed to car horns and pistols going off at night, not farm animals.

The ducks seems to have the most fun, alternating between dry, muddy and aquatic terrains. I particularly loved the way they paraded up and down the pier during low tide; this close to the mouth of the Amazon, the tides came and went twice a day. After spending a week bathing and swimming in this Amazon tributary, I am living proof the river is quite benign.

I wouldn't have guessed that all these free-range farm animals would get along so well -- true, the dog has been known to steal eggs -- but even the cats are (relatively) well-behaved. They're certainly not warm and fuzzy like my own Lulah, but unlike Pao Preto the dog, they're allowed in the kitchen. And I might add they are quite the beggars.

Come back tomorrow for the first Talking Plants slide show, when I will prove there is more to life than Super Tuesday...

3:04 AM ET | 02- 5-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

 

A Not-So Mythic Amazonian

She likes to be called Rosario. Her full family name is nearly a dozen syllables long.

She lives as simply as a human being could hope for and it isn't because she's lazy or unambitious. She is a woman born and bred in the Amazon, and whether it's fish from the river or fruit from the forest, she knows how to coax everything she needs out of the landscape. "The forest likes me," she says. "I look after its young."

Intrigued? You ain't heard nothing yet...

The permanent Rosario household includes her mischievous 82 year-old mother and her two 40-something brothers, but at any given time on any given hammock you'll find one or two of Rosario's stepchildren (the youngest is 20), near and distant relatives, and the odd ecologically-inclined academic.

Bar none (except perhaps his wife, Christine Padoch of the NYBG), the Rosario family favorite has got to be Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez of CERC, who often comes bearing gifts of California pistachio nuts.

The Rosario family has lived on this land now since 1991. Everybody works extremely hard and the results are obvious, including the new house they were able to build out of their own lumber a year ago. The house is very open with high, high ceilings and can accommodate an untold number of hammocks; each room has a door and a single light bulb, but otherwise the house is largely empty, a blessing in such stifling heat.

Not surprisingly, though, the center of life is in the old kitchen, connected to the new house by a covered walkway. The kitchen, for my money, has the best view of any -- into that jungle of a backyard.

So many pictures, so little time...which is why I invite you back tomorrow to enjoy the Amazon slide show we're busily putting together (how many shots of the piglet and the dog can you take?). In the meantime, I will leave you with the one image that's earned pride of place on my piano and I think you'll see why...

Tomorrow, the slide show. And a taste of acai...

9:34 AM ET | 02- 3-2008 | permalink | comments (50) | e-mail post

 

For Love of a Sinkhole

Q: How many paleoecologists does it take to excavate a sinkhole, find seven previously undescribed bird species and reintroduce native plant species to a place they haven't grown in for a thousand years?

A: Depends on the paleoecologists.

Fact is, some aren't mortal. In particular, keep an eye out for the pair shown below. They were recently featured in an NPR radio report that mistakenly assumed they were human, based on their oh! so convincing paleoecologist clothing.

Closer scrutiny has determined it simply isn't possible for this couple to do as much as they do in as many places as they do it and not be in league with He Who Cannot Be Named. Consequently, approach with extreme caution should the pair be spotted one fine Sunday morning within the nether reaches of Kauai's Makauwahi Cave.

We'll post more photos shortly plus details as we gather them. Until then, be very afraid.

11:10 AM ET | 01- 2-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

Rock Star Botany 202

Mahalo! It's another splendid day here on virtual Kaua'i ... of course I haven't been to the actual island in a while, but tuning in to the island's public radio station helps ...

First, allow me a moment of preemptive denial: I am not in the pocket of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (see? no hyperlink). The only reason my Morning Edition report and Talking Plants Kaua'i stories are filled with NTBG people is that the Hawaii-based botanists on my "Must Meet List" were already working for the Garden.

Can I help it if its staff rocks?

In fact, is was on the NTBG staff that I met my first so-called rock star botanist, Ken Wood, a self-effacing plantsman who, despite himself, does justice to the romantic term ... a term taught to me by future botanical rocker Clay Trauernicht, a field botanist tragically too cute for his own good.

(Yes, Clay, you are).

But enough flirting with jail bait, today's rock star botanist is Steve Perlman, who you might have heard hunting for the rare fringed orchid.

Steve Perlman's daring hi-jinks to save Hawaii's native plants is now the stuff of legend among those in the know, as well as the subject of articles, books and an Imax film. He has risked his life so many times gaining access to endangered plants, he couldn't decide which story to tell me when I asked him to describe the scariest botanizing trip of them all.

But describe it he did.

"It's not thrill-seeking," says Perlman. "I'm there because the plants are there and I'm trying to get to them". His track record is astonishing; let's just say that if you were a betting plant lost in the wilderness, you'd be smart to put your money and your life on him. Not only will he get your seeds into cultivation, often — with the help of the world's best propagators — he'll see to it that your offspring make it into the nursery trade.

Perhaps the best-known story about Perlman (Ken Wood is often featured in this tale) is about the lengths he went to in order to collect Brighamia seed in the wild. I recommend you hear Perlman tell it himself, but here's the gist:

Because these plants prefer life on the edge — that is, on windswept cliffs facing out to sea — Perlman had to rappel down to the area where they often grew only to discover they hadn't set any seed. So he'd dangle around, hanging off the cliff, until he'd located a male plant and could collect its pollen. Then he'd dangle around some more until he'd located a female plant, and dabble on the goods.

Months later, he'd return to see if the pollinated female plant had set seed. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If not, he'd simply return again and again, as often as it took — rappelling off sea cliffs hundreds of feet above the ocean — to collect a few life-giving seeds.

Well, I don't know what you've been doing with your life, but something tells me I might yet consider doing something more significant with mine.

9:30 AM ET | 01- 2-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

The Little Green Orchid That Could

On behalf of all your chlorophyllic friends here at Talking Plants, Happy New Year!

Now I don't mean to twist your arm, but what I'm going to tell you about field botanist Steve Perlman and his search for Platanthera holochila is likely to make a whole lot more sense if you listen to the Morning Edition feature.

It wasn't a very big plant, maybe 20 inches high. The chances of spotting it were absolutely nil. But Steve Perlman of the National Tropical Botanical Garden had seen this rare orchid years ago, before it was dwarfed by knee-high shrubs. So it wasn't entirely miraculous — but it was pretty damn impressive — when he found it growing the middle of a wind-swept, fogged-in swamp.

His timing was perfect; the orchid was ripe for picking. So he carefully removed a couple of pregnant pods for safekeeping, each filled with hundreds of dust-sized seeds.

This fringed orchid was the last of its kind on Kaua'i, and previous attempts to propagate it had failed. Since there could be no certainty that the orchid would live to see another September, the seeds Perlman was collecting this day were crucial to its survival.

One of the main reasons this particular orchid survived was because the enormous bog it was growing in was pig-proof. No lie. Hawaii's wild pigs are like living rototillers; one of the only effective defenses against them is some very serious fencing.

The next day, Perlman shipped this vial of seed pods to orchid specialist Larry Zettler, professor of biology at Illinois College. (Think: Larry, Larry, he's our man, if he can't do it, NO ONE CAN).

And now, through the magic of radio, you can Be There! when he gets the package.

About six weeks after receiving the little guys, Zettler e-mailed Perlman with good news, saying, "in a nutshell, this has not been an easy orchid to work with, but I am much more optimistic." I wrote to Zettler just the other day. Here's his response:

Hi Ketzel. We sowed the seeds that Steve sent us and they are in incubation. At last check, the embryos appeared OK. Platanthera species in general take considerable time in vitro, especially without fungi, but I'm becoming more convinced that this should be our option with this extremely fastidious species ... I find it ironic that my research with fungi may be taking a back seat with this species in favor of the asymbiotic technique which I had little faith in for the terrestrials. But that's how science sometimes works.

In other words, after intensive work growing terrestrial (ground) orchids in different fungi typically associated with the plant in the wild, Zettler's coming to the conclusion that he might have better luck not using any fungi at all. His findings seem to be consistent with a recent breakthrough in orchid growing at the Atlanta Botanical Garden (beware annoying little "chirps" at this site!).

So will the little green orchid that could ever grown on Kaua'i again? Chances are pretty damn good, given that there's not a more delicious spot in the world to set down roots if your idea of a very good time is relentless wet, muck and rain.

3:15 PM ET | 12-31-2007 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

 

Fernier Than Thou

It all started with an e-mail from the celebrated California horticulturist and landscape designer, Roger Raiche, titled "With Fronds Like These, Who Needs Anemones":

In one of those small triumphs that will never change the world, but which are personally very satisfying, I finally came across a rare variant of a common fern that I had been hoping to find for nearly 25 years now.

I got the e-mail yesterday and once I found a few hours to read it (I jest, but it is the size of a magazine article), I thought of you guys, or shall I say I thought of the bonafide plant freaks among you.

His story is a very simple one. It's about his decades-long search for the native Californian Lyman fern, not because it was rare or endangered -- in fact, it's in the trade -- but because he simply wanted to see it in its native haunts.

It's a story for fern lovers, plant hunters, grail-seekers and hortiholics. If you've got a little down time and words like polypody and pinnae don't scare you, read on...

Continue reading "Fernier Than Thou" »

10:31 AM ET | 11-16-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

 

Author of 'Exodus' Honored by Plant?

Leon Uris (1924-2003) wrote the epic Exodus about the founding of the State of Israel. You probably never read it but you might have seen the movie with Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint and the ill-fated Sal Mineo (poor guy, a roller coaster ride through Hollywood, then murdered during a botched burglary in his late 30's).

Until the end of the 20th century, I thought author Uris had a plant that was named in his honor: Leonotis leonurus. I figured the change of spelling at the end - from "is" to "us" - was some Latin mannerism.

WRONG.

Leonotis leonurus is a South African mint family member otherwise known as Lion's Tail or Wild Dagga, though I've never heard it called anything but leonotus (leeya NOtice). A valuable medicinal (I think it's particularly popular in South America), the trade calls it a "tender perennial" so you'll still buy it in the hopes that it won't die come winter, but for most of you it's going to be an annual.

I garden in Z8 where my leonotis has been surprisingly reliable year after year. Or it was before Zoe Mae moved in. Alas, she has chosen that exact spot where dear Leon is growing to plant her four padded feet and stare down anything that walks down the street.

This, of course, is unacceptable. Such a plant deserves much, much better, simply incomparable for the late fall garden when everyone but salvia's petered out.

And it's color! Pure, thirst-quenching orange. If you didn't know better, you'd think the plant in full flower was a fake: densely clustered spider-legged whorls of flowers growing in tiers along a square-stemmed stalk.

Check and see what others' experience with this plant has been in your area if you're skeptical, but I can't imagine you'll regret giving it a try. Once upon a time I tried a cultivar named 'Staircase' or 'Ladder' or Giraffe Legs', who the hell remembers, it was a towering 8' but way too lanky.

Stick with Leon's namesake.

12:29 PM ET | 11-13-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

Tales from the Woods. Yours.

Man what a week we're wrapping up here at TP. So many new folks, so many smart folks and damn if you aren't an opinionated lot. Loggers, mill owners, non-profiteers, academics. Hortheads, spider freaks, xeriscapists.

My kinda folk.

First, a little housekeeping. If you've nothing more to say on the matter than Yes or No, I'd love to get your feedback on whether you've been posting because you heard the Sugar Maple story.

OK, now YOU...

Bill on the VA. woods:

a nearby crossroads...totally rural farmland of split rail fences and fields of straw and its thick summer air filled with setting sun softly illuminating barn swallows after darting dragonflies, mayflies, Lady Bugs, buzzing bumblebees and all their companions

Nice, huh? That crossroads is now called Tysons Corner.

Laura on a wooded refuge in Iowa:

Eden Valley. In the middle of the beautiful Iowa fields and prairie is this place that if filled with limestone bluffs and forests. I love to go at least once a week and escape.

Bruce on growing up around chestnut trees:

I can't tell you how many times over the years we had to have burrs dug out of our feet. Those things *HURT* a great deal. We'd go out and collect the chestnuts, pierce them and roast them. Good eats.

Mike on other painful chestnut memories:

About 30+ years ago a neighborhood friend and I were sitting on the edge of our driveway eating raw chestnuts that we had gathered from breaking limbs out of my fathers tree. Everything was going fine till my father walked up...

Rob on clearcutting:

A "clear cut" type harvest is a closer mimick of natural disturbance, and actually are rarely found anymore-modern sustainable forestry usually uses shelterwood cuts with seed trees left for regeneration (a "heavy thin").

Jason on clearcutting:

The notion that a clear cut is mimicking nature doesn't make sense. In nature...the trees are never removed from the site, but stay there as part of the ecosystem, supporting ecosystem recovery to a more natural state.

Matt on clearcutting:

...just as widely used now as they ever have been. The difference is that now foresters generally utilize an "AMZ" or aesthetic management zone to shield public eyes from viewing the harvest.

And Jim, who lives by the saw:

I work as a logger in the mid-coast area of Maine. I sold the skidder and use horses now. Each cut is different...I particularly like the fact that here folks can speak to their issues and perceptions. We can all learn from each other.

12:02 PM ET | 11- 5-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

A Good Lumberman Is Not an Oxymoron

I got thinking about good lumbermen after a comment posted yesterday by TP community member, Rob Spence. It was in response to my post about the felling of big trees.

Who is to say that (even) sustainable forestry does not include the taking of some large diameter timber? Big trees grow back too, they just take longer, maybe longer than we personally will be alive.

I know someone who undoubtedly signs execution orders for big trees. And much to my (naieve) amazement, he is a fierce environmentalist and a devoted steward of the forest.

And a lovely guy.

You might have met him briefly if you heard this week's Sugar Maple story on Morning Edition. His name is Jamey French. And we could probably get him to swing by the TP blog if anyone has any thoughtful questions for him.

6:24 PM ET | 11- 1-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

 

Shout-Out for the Sugar Maple

Out of my own harrowing frustration trying to boil down a complex and nuanced story, today's Morning Edition feature now spills onto the page.

The saga features that incomparable big-headed beauty Acer saccharum -- also known as the fiery Ms. Sugar Maple -- and her possibly fatal choice of a landlord -- often high-on-octane and always unpredictable -- the notorious Climate Change.

A quick count of the supporting cast, all stars in their own right, include Ecology, Entymology, Sustainable Foresty, and those three evil stoogies, Forest Fragmentation, Greedy Development and All-Terrain Terror. Plus the one player absolutely everybody's sweet on, Maple Syrup.

Without her, no one would bother seeing the show.

Can you imagine the trouble I had handling this cast, trying to keep one from overshadowing all the others?

Frankly, the whole story's a bit out of control. Imagine trying to predict the ending! Will Man save Ms. Maple? Will Climate Change conquer them both? And even if you don't like the way it's headed -- with Ms. Maple's friends the cold-loving Conifers getting the heave-ho first -- tell me this:

Do you think there's still time to change the ending?

4:56 PM ET | 10-28-2007 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

 

When It's Time to Talk to Plants

You know you've lost it after traveling all day and finally landing at a spectacular B&B, and instead of kicking back and breathing in the view, you spend three hours on the phone with Tech Support trying to get your laptop online.

Yes, I really lost it and alas, not for the first time. It tends to happen when I'm on assignment, running around collecting tape. (Make that "tape"; my hands haven't touched the real stuff in a long, long time).

But I am not a complete idiot. I do have a better self. And she's the one who yanks my head out of my hard drive and says, NATURE, GIRL. GET THEE TO NATURE.

So after I said goodbye to my last interview yesterday, an extraordinary forest historian named Charlie Cogbill who'd waltzed me through 18th century tree archives in Calais, VT, I got dropped off several miles short of the B&B and walked back home in the wonder that is northern Vermont.

I leave you today with a final word for the hard-working during this unfolding fall:

Get Over Yourself and Get Outside!

11:47 AM ET | 10-10-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

 

Oprah's Gorgeous Gardener

I blame this tawdry tidbit on my friends at Garden Rant, who had the gloriously bad taste to blog about Oprah's gorgeous gardener and his heavy pectoral past.

The Sydney Morning Herald liked the story, too...

Since I can't legally post Jamie Durie's pix, I'll go one better and offer you a rare glimpse of a real horticultural heartbreaker. To save him from the paparazzi, however, I must withhold his (truly) famous name.

2:07 PM ET | 10- 5-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

 

Rock Star Botanists

As promised, you're about to meet Ken Wood. He's one of the so-called "rock star botanists" on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, associated with the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Why rock star? Most likely because his exploits have become the stuff of legend, his relentless, daring feet (insert wink) in the wild decade after decade, in search of endangered Hawaiian and Pacific Islands plants.

Yet for all the risks he takes on his seemingly death-defying plant expeditions, Ken Wood is no pumped-up Indiana Jones. Consider his modest comments from the talk we had while hiking a ridge overlooking his beloved Kalalau Valley.

All through time, there've been very interesting field biologists, many out here in the Hawaiian Islands, and these naturalists, botanists and biologists were incredibly adventurous; the rigors and difficulties they encountered were intense and amazing. So I think we've a similar mindset.

As for describing that mindset, how's this for a swashbuckling answer:

It's often said, "Who am I, Where do I come from, Where am I going to." Well, the "who am I" part is not just my physical form but what I'm a part of. So that curiousity we have, that interest in understanding our relationship with earth and/or the universe, I think that's in us all. And once we start to tap into it and learn a little bit and open the first few pages of this incredible story, we're locked in there. And if you can make a living at it, then you're in for a really cool ride.

It occurs to me that reading Ken Wood is no substitute for hearing him. So much is in his delivery. As he talks about hand-pollinating plants to get them to set seed -- we're talking very rare plants now, often the last of their species, clinging to rock cliffs 3,000 feet high -- his slow, seductive way of explaining things makes the act itself sound like soft porn. So if you haven't already, give a listen to the audio clip up top.

Ready to rock? Cool. How 'bout starting with an overview of the endangered plant crisis in Hawaii. Two good articles that feature Wood are Hanging by a Thread from Discover Magazine, and Paradise Lost? from Plant Talk.

And for you plant geeks, here's the blow-by-blow list of Hawaii's threatened and endangered plants, as well as an awesome overview of Hawaii's native flora.

A flora, I might add, all the richer because of guys like Ken Wood (I can already hear him protesting that he's just one piece of the conservation puzzle. Agreed). Not only has he kept countless plants from extinction, he is the decidedly bashful papa of a previously undescribed species. Get a look at this exquisite yellow Hibiscadelphus woodii.

Stay tuned for more adventures from Kaua'i...

9:03 PM ET | 10- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

Botanizing in Hawaii

It's all-Kauai all week on Talking Plants where the subject is Hawaiian native plants. So get comfy and start streaming Kaua'i Community Radio (it plays Hawaiian music all morning, though some dj's are decidedly better than others) and let me say, Mahalo! for listening.

I'm just back from a week botanizing on Kaua'i with a pretty remarkable cast of characters, whose stories I'll be telling later this year on Morning Edition. No reason for you guys to wait, though, since these are plant people you're gonna want to meet.

First up, the guy below in the orange cap, Ken Wood, who climbs mountains, jumps from helicoptors and dangles thousands of feet in the air to save plants from extinction. His story, tomorrow.

3:05 PM ET | 10- 1-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

 

Maypop Memories

The gig's up. The mystery's solved. The Flickr Pix of the Week was Passiflora 'Incense'.

One of this hybrid's parents is commonly known as Maypop, and just about everything I know about the plant -- also known as Passiflora incarnata -- I found out this week from you.

All I'd hoped was to tease out a few passiflora experts with our Talking Plants Flicker Pix of the Week. And I did find a few.

But I'm happy to report I got way more than I bargained for. Click here and you will, too.

For instance: Chris has learned not to kill caterpillars (right, Chris?) because they could turn into Gulf Fritillary butterflies; Jason uses the plant's flowers to make tea; Michelle used to pretend the flowers were ballerinas, with three sets of arms and three heads; and Serene has a recipe for passiflora juice.

In addition: it's the Tennessee state wildflower, it's rich with Christian symbolism, and it does a wicked imitation of that creature immortalized in the 1958 classic, The Purple People Eater.

Finally, I'm aware of at least one person in our community who did NOT use a search engine to come up with the mystery plant's name. Congrats, Tai Haku.

I send you off into the weekend with the maypop memories of a Glasgwegian. Here's the last two stanzas of Where The Passion Flower Grows, by a fellow flower-lover, Charles M. Moore.

Feel your mind exploding
in the heavy scented air
experience the shiver
as you're captured unaware

A little touch of heaven
where imagination flows
the valley in the garden
where the passion flower grows.

10:18 AM ET | 09- 7-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

 

Take This Lawn And XERISCAPE!

Well, what a lively discussion we've been having about lawns in Arizona. I've had to beg for kindness, edit out four-letter words, interrupt with a little levity ... yes indeed, this one had legs.

So what did John Tynan and Rene Gutel do after the the City of Tempe popped 'em one on the nose?

They xeriscaped, what else ...

If you'd like to know how John and Rene went from scorched lawn to desert bloom, check out the family's blog.

And yes, folks, I heard you loud and clear: I'll pitch a story about xeriscaping to She Who Must Be Obeyed (aka, my editor) and see if we can't get one on the air.

11:27 AM ET | 08- 7-2007 | permalink | comments (27) | e-mail post

 

Lady Bird Johnson In Flower

I saw this quintessential "Lady Bird" Johnson quote in John Burnett's remembrance of the First Lady . With these two sentences she sets out an agenda with which she will transform the American landscape.

"I want Texas to look like Texas, and Vermont to look like Vermont," she once said. "I just hate to see the land homogenized."

If you're feeling as moved as I am by her death, and as grateful for her influence and priorities, consider a donation to your local native plant society in her memory. And now you've another reason to visit the Texas hill country in the spring: the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin. The first reason is to see her agenda in bloom.

12:50 AM ET | 07-12-2007 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

 

Iris bubbles

If this is the first you're reading of Beverly Sills' death and you find yourself a bit stunned, I might suggest you ease into the news by listening to NPR host Robert Siegel's poignant interview with actress Carol Burnett, one of Ms. Sills' best friends.

Here at Talking Plants, we'd like to offer you a moment of incomparable beauty, a photograph of the young Beverly Sills.

Not surprisingly, her iris namesake ( Iris 'Beverly Sills') pales by comparison, but does suggest the sheer sweetness and exuberance of a woman who preferred to be called "Bubbles".

I won't pretend this German iris will mingle quite as amiably as the diva once did; after all, it's tough to just work in a statement like this if you're not already growing irrepressibly tarty flowers. But if this plant does nothing more than remind you that such as woman once walked and sang among us, order a bunch of bulbs now and plant them in full sun in the fall.

3:28 PM ET | 07- 5-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

 

Hellebore Helluva bore?