I’m not a plant person. Don’t get me wrong. I think flowers, plants, and trees, can be quite beautiful. They are a magical miracle with the way they grow. Amazing in how they live their lives.
But I don’t have an aptitude for them. I can remember a numeric sequence. I can recall a variety of useless trivia facts. I seem to absorb and remember things in most cases. Yet. When it comes to plants, I am lunkheaded and dim.
Yet, I continually try to observe those plants. I always try to learn something about them when Mary and I walk about. But most days, I can’t tell a petunia from a pansy.
There is so much to know about them.
Like this. Flowers did not always exist. Our world was a flowerless place until they first appeared 140 million years ago. Before that, ferns and cone-bearing trees dominated the earth. Not ice cream cone-ish. More like pine cone-ish.
As time went on, though, we did get flowers. Like tulips. Several centuries ago in Holland, tulips were more valuable than gold. Back in the 1600s, tulips were a beautiful thing in Holland. They were introduced into Europe when the ambassador from the Netherlands sent tulips to Vienna.
Well. Europe went crazy for them. Everyone in Europe wanted those richly colored blooms. Tulips were such a hot commodity that they were worth more than some houses. They became a symbol of wealth. This craze exploded. They called it ‘Tulip Fever’ or ‘Tulip Mania.’
That’s the dirt on tulips. But did you know that all flowers don’t need dirt? Some plants — orchids, for one — don’t need soil to grow. They get all of their nutrients from the air.
On the other hand, it seems as if soil might not be enough for some plants. Carnivorous plants. They eat bugs and small animals. This scares me for some reason. We’ve all heard about the Venus Fly Trap. It has leaves covered with little fine hairs. When an unsuspecting bug lands on those hairs, the trap snaps shut. That poor bug, down the old hatch. The Venus Fly Trap uses digestive juices to dissolve the bug.
I just read about another carnivorous plant called the Pitcher Plant. They have leaves that form pitchers. In those containers are digestive fluids. Insects, frogs, and other small animals are attracted to the plants by the nectar and bright colors on the pitchers. But. That poor little creature falls in and drowns. And sadly, those fluids in the pitcher digest the prey.
I’m a rock person. They are simple. They need very little care. And most of them smell exactly the same. But that is not true for flowers. Some smell amazing, like the excellent honeysuckle, not the invasive honeysuckle.
But other flowers smell awful. One of those is the Titan Arum. It is the rarest, largest, and smelliest flower in the world. Strange looking too. It is also known as the corpse flower because it smells like a rotting dead body. The bloom is over 8 feet tall and 12 feet in circumference, and they smell of dead, rotting flesh to attract flies — for pollination. They stink so bad people will often pass out from the smell. Corpse plants live in Sumatra. Oxymoronic, yes?
I mentioned it was large, but not the biggest. That distinction goes to the Puya Raimondi. The “Queen of the Andes.” This lofty thing can be over 50 feet tall and produce between 8,000 and 20,000 flowers in a three-month period. Huge and prolific.
One of my favorites, though, is the snapdragon. I love that they have those little mouths that open and shut when you squeeze the sides. I’ve had great conversations with those little wonders while I squeeze away.
So, no. I am not a plant person. And probably won’t remember much of what I learned today. And if any of this is wrong? Don’t blame rock-headed me. I read it on the internet.
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Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
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Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.
— Earl Nightingale
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To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.
— Leonardo da Vinci
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Plant it here. Or plant it there.
