Flowers Against the Stereotype

Many a poet has drawn upon the delicate beauty of flowers for literary inspiration.  The softness of the petals.  The sweet fragrance.  Flowers thus lend themselves to being a symbol of femininity. (Also, notice how in our U.S. culture, women will be given a corsage to wear vastly more often than men are given boutonnieres.)

Here are some poetic examples of flowers in an inspiring role:  Shakespeare's Juliet, in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, depicted herself as "a beauteous flower."   Alfred, Lord Tennyson connected the physical characteristics of a flower even more explicitly to those of a woman, writing:

"Lightly was her slender nose

Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower."

The 19th-century German writer Heinrich Heine went straight to the point, titling one of his poems "Du Bist Wie eine Blume," which translates to "You are Like a Flower."

I wonder what such poets -- who thought of flowers as being delicate and feminine -- would have thought about a flower from Sumatra that I heard about on the radio. Far from sounding feminine, it was described as being "like a giant finger jutting straight up... eight feet tall and [weighing] 250 pounds."  Nor would a person want to extract the essence of the aroma this flower gave off, because it had a "distinctive rotting-corpse-like odor."  The evolutionary explanation behind that flower (scientific name Titan arum) is that the putrid odor enables it to attract insects who believe they are coming to the carcass of an animal on which they might feed.  The insects flocking to the flower get tricked, while the clever flower gets itself pollinated.

It was not only insects who have been disappointed in the case of this particular flower, which was on display at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.  Many of the museum-goers who flocked to the flower, hoping to get a whiff of its repellent odor, were disappointed because the colossal flower emitted its odor for only a few hours, and did not have the courtesy to schedule its opening so as to align with the museum's daytime hours.

The finger-shaped Titan arum is not the only tropical Asian flower to have evolved such a trick of deception.  Another species, the Rafflesia arnoldii, has a more typical floral shape, being circular with petaled edges.  But it is similarly oversized (two or three feet in diameter) and also smells like a carcass during part of its blooming period, even if only briefly.

I was not among either the disappointed or the pleased museum-goers at the U.S. Botanic Garden. Nevertheless, I take delight in that news story about the non-stereotypical flower for two reasons.  I take delight first in being reminded again about how evolution, with all its immense variety, has developed a living being that defies our human expectations, particularly our cultural associations.  Secondly, I am pleased to hear that so many people can themselves take delight in an example of biodiversity that we ourselves would not have designed, and might have usually found repulsive.

~~~

Do you have any thoughts about these huge, putrid flowers?

(The Tennyson lines are from "Gareth and Lynette," line 574, in Idylls of the King. 1859-1885.)

(The news story was "Lure of Flower's Putrid Essence Draws Crowd," July 22, 2013. © NPR.)
(Second photo, by Henrik Ishihara Globaljuggler, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.) 

Life-Giving Corn

When I was a child, my mother would usually allow me in the kitchen while she worked. More than allow -- she often seemed to like it. She endorsed the motto of "learning by doing," inspired by the early 20th-century educator John Dewey.  When I was young, there was not much I could do by myself in the kitchen except watch up close.  But occasionally, there was a task I could do all by myself: shuck the corn.  However, she sent me outside to do it, knowing it could make a mess.

I would first open several sheets of newspaper, and spread them out on the driveway (the way I had been shown).  That would make it easy to fold up the discarded parts of the corn into a large wad that could be tidily dropped into the trash.  It was pretty easy for me to pull off the green husks and most of the long "hairs."  (Only once was I startled by a small, now dead caterpillar that lay neatly in one of the rows of kernels.)  It was a bit of a chore, however, to try to get rid of every last one of those "hairs" on the ear of corn.  I might have been appreciative of those silks if I had know that it was through them that the cob of corn had been brought to life, those strands being the upper female part of the plant's flower.

Over the past decades in the U.S., corn has been mentioned in the media mostly in regard to concerns about the amount of corn syrup in processed foods, or about the drawbacks of using food such as corn (rather than something like switchgrass) to make ethanol to add to gasoline. About the only time corn gets mentioned with exuberant appreciation is in the patriotic story of how in 1612 Capt. John Smith's ill-equipped Virginia colonists were saved by the bushels of corn they received from Native Americans.  And so, I'd like to speak a good word for the often overlooked corn (which is called "maize" in most of the world).

corn vendor
in India today

Those Virginia colonists were not the only people whose lives have been saved by corn.  When Columbus landed in Cuba, he found the production of maize going strong.  A similar discovery was made by Francisco Pizarro in the early 1500's.  The Inca nation (whose leader Pizarro captured) was vast:  2,200 miles long and containing nine million well-fed people.  Their lives were to a great part sustained by maize.  Even though corn contains little protein, its advantage over the world's other major grains (wheat and rice) is that it can be simply cooked and eaten without having to process the grain.

Moreover, the "sweet corn" bred for human eating is but one category of maize.  Even the Native Americans had field-corn as well for their domesticated animals (which in turn supported human life).  And they had flour corn, whose kernels are more suitable for making flour.  Not to mention that enduring cinema attraction, popcorn.

Guila Naquitz cave, Oaxaca, Mexico
(site of 6,250 year-old corn remains)

All these types date back to a form of wild grass in the Zea genus, whose seed-ear is minuscule.  Human cultivation enlarged that seed-ear.  The great chain of human life living off cultivated corn throughout the world has been traced back by archaeologists over 7,000 years!

~~~

Do you have any childhood memories involving corn?            
           

(The photo of the vendor is by Babasteve.  That of the cave is by Jerry Friedman.

  Both are used under Creative Commons Attribution Generic licenses.)

Kingly Care for Animals

Before the PBS series "The Story of India" provided me a fairly-deep look at that nation's history, my knowledge about that Eastern culture had come through the movies of Satyajit Ray, restaurants, and books.  For example, an Indian over-the-counter vegetarian restaurant named Annapurna's led me to a reference book to discover that it was named after a mountain in the Himalayas.  On a different occasion, however, when a more formal Indian restaurant opened bearing the name "Ashoka's," I was ahead on my knowledge.  I was delighted an establishment with that name was opening not just because I liked Indian cuisine.  It was also because, from my reading, I already knew of and admired Emperor Ashoka's religious tolerance and compassionate attitudes toward animals.

one pillar
erected by Ashoka

Ashoka ruled in the 3rd century B.C.E. and made known his wishes partly through edicts carved on tall stone pillars, ten of which are still standing.  Part of his edict regarding religious tolerance reminds us that we do not increase the appeal of our own faith-tradition by unnecessarily disparaging the faith-traditions of other people.

Ashoka's compassionate attitudes came about as part of his adopting Buddhism, one of the most significant conversion experiences in all of history.  Previously, he had followed the approach of earlier emperors by expanding his kingdom through war.  But after winning a huge battle at Kalinga in 260 B.C.E. (in which 100,00 were killed and 150,000 deported), Ashoka was shocked by the horrible sights when he surveyed the battlefield.  He turned his life around (the root meaning of the word "conversion").

lion capital on
another Ashoka pillar
     

For the 31 years that remained of his rule, Ashoka cultivated throughout his administration a peaceful attitude of enhancing the welfare of all people, and encouraged a similar attitude among the populace.  Here is where the animals come in. Ashoka ordered protections on their lives in many ways (2000 years before the SPCA was created in the West!).  As one edict of Ashoka's explained, "On bipeds and quadrupeds, on birds and aquatic animals, various benefits have been conferred by me even as far as the grant of life."  Another edict specified over two-dozen mammals and birds "declared by me inviolable," rounding off the list by including "all quadrupeds which are neither useful nor edible."

Ashoka matched his words with actions.  Among his humanitarian accomplishments were the construction of  roadside way-stations providing water and shade.  As an edict explained, "wells have been caused to be dug and trees have been caused to be planted, for the use of animals and humans."  He also created hospitals for "medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals."  Some of those veterinary clinics are still in existence in India today -- a continuous legacy of care probably unparalleled in the world.

I'd tell you more about this man, but I've got to stop writing and go put fresh water in the water dish on my deck.  I've been reminded by Ashoka that the birds might be thirsty.

~~~

Do you think any of Ashoka's ideas are applicable today?  Which ones?  How?

(All quotations are from Ashoka's Rock Edicts, Nos. II, V, II, and II, respectively,

adapted from the translation in Asoka's Edicts, by Amulyachandra Sen. © 1956.)

(Photo of full pillar by Amit Bikram Kanungo, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

“Bard of the River and of the Wood”

It seems to me that a large number of the poems written in the U.S. today contain the word "I" in their first sentence.  Even if the word "I" is not actually present, many contemporary poems focus on the poet's individual experience.  Two centuries ago, one American asked what American writing should be weighted toward to distinguish itself -- what it should be drawn to. And he had a different answer.  He thought this new nation should have its poetic attention drawn to Nature, particularly the extraordinary woods, mountains, and skies of the American landscape.  Through his own poetry, his editorship of the New York Evening Post, and his cultivation of other poets and artists, he had that very effect upon 19th-century American creativity.  His name was William Cullen Bryant.

"Kindred Spirits"
(depicting Bryant and Cole)

Even if you do not recognize his name, you may have seen an often reproduced painting in which he and another man stand side by side at a cliff's edge, surrounded by green forest, a waterfall within earshot, and mountains in the hazy distance.  That painting's title, "Kindred Spirits," describes the friendship of the two men depicted.  One of them is the painter Thomas Cole, who led the Hudson River movement, and whose own landscape paintings both glorified the American wilderness and struggled with its relationship to human civilization.  "Kindred Spirits" was painted by Asher B. Durand in 1849 as a memorial to Cole the year after he died.  The second man in the painting, holding a hat, is none other than William Cullen Bryant, who is sometimes wearing just such a hat in some photographs of him later in life.

Following the American Revolution, the question arose in some American minds of how this new country could differentiate itself from the ancient, warring nations of Europe -- not only politically but also culturally.  Born only a decade after the American Revolution ended, Bryant came to promote the idea that an American freedom of poetry and art could be developed by drawing upon our communion with America's distinctive manifestations of Nature.  Walt Whitman described Bryant as "Bard of the river and of the wood, ever conveying a taste of open air."

Bryant's spirit was personally suited for such a task.  He wrote of himself, "I was always a delighted observer of external nature."   His most famous poem, "Thanatopsis," opens with a description of how we can feel a kindredness with Nature despite its variability:

"To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

Into his darker musings, with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness, ere he is aware...."

~~~

How do you draw strength from friendships?  How do you draw strength from Nature?

(Whitman's description and Bryant's description of himself are taken from

 the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, © 1977.  Vol. II, p. 328.)

(The full text of Bryant's poem [1811, 1817] can be read at this external link:  "Thanatopsis".)

The Oyster’s Secret

One species of
edible oysters

Any number of movie writers have used the plot device of a person eating at a restaurant and finding a pearl in their oyster.  If the screenwriters had consulted marine biologists, those scientists would have disappointed them by explaining that those species of oyster people eat do not include the mollusks that produce pearls. The idea of such a find is appealing, however -- like a winning lottery ticket from Nature herself!  But this source of new-found wealth would come in the form of a small luminescent sphere.

The 20th-century novelist John Steinbeck cautioned against that appeal in The Pearl, a book that was assigned reading when I was in middle school.  The school's decision to require our reading that novella probably lay in its small size and obvious moral:  Greed over material possession can cause people to damage what is truly valuable -- human relationships and love.  Human beings have now figured out how to artificially induce the growth of "cultivated" pearls.  We have not, however, figured out how to get rid of human greed.

There can be another reason for appreciating mollusks:  for food, as many oyster lovers know. Oysters even come with a running gag to make eating them more entertaining.  Namely, the joke that it was a brave man who ate the first oyster.  (I myself very much appreciate the first man or woman who learned how to batter and fry oysters prior to their being served.)  Many people repeat that "brave man" joke without knowing that it originated with the 18th-century Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels.

Although the oyster's secret might seem to be a possible pearl hidden within, it is really no secret that pearls are now usually cultivated.  What is a secret is not what might lie within an oyster, but where oysters lie.  Where they now lie "at rest," so to speak.  And what that speaks about humankind.

The walrus and the carpenter --
whose oysters had fictional legs

That secret lies underwater in middens, old refuse heaps from human cultures.  Those underwater heaps,  which are on coastal areas throughout the world, besides containing bones, contain oyster shells -- evidence of how oysters were an important source of dietary protein and minerals to Neolithic cultures twelve thousand years ago. One midden in Maine, mostly oyster shells, was over 30 feet deep and over 1,300 feet wide.  Although in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass the comic walrus and carpenter tempted the oysters to come out for a walk on the beach so that they could be eaten, oysters had the benefit to humans of being food that could neither run away nor counterattack.  As such, oysters would have sustained human life over precarious times.

Without eyes or an obvious head, and given their inability to run away, it can be easy, I think, for us to forget that oysters are animals, as are we. Oysters live; they breathe; they reproduce. They are another testimony to evolution's ingenuity.  Moreover, although there may not be a pearl within that rugged lump of seeming rock, for ancient humans, there was a source of life within.

~~~

Imagine people gathering oysters thousands of years ago.  Does anything come to mind?

(The photo of oysters is by Myrabella

and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

(The illustration of walrus and carpenter is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)