Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
Acorn "coffee" was drunk in South by Scarlett O'Hara and her Confederate compatriots. For Turks, acorns yielded raccabout. Under pressure of World War II, Germans drank Eichel kaffee. Hitler deserved it, opined physician and author Richard Gordon. And according to the ineffable Pamela Michaels, the English used oak leaves to make wine.
Speculation? Meteorology? Theft? Poor cultural practices? Unstable supply? Increased demand? By end of March this year there was said to be a shortage of real vanilla, one of the world's most desirable #. Prices were being quoted at US$600 per kilogram compared with US$540 for a similar weight of silver.
Long before multimedia and the internet, to the print press August was the 'Silly Season.' And as the planet revolves so does such return at least thanks to Frederik Busch. The German photographer uses his art to explore the identity and personalities of office plants, according to The New York Times. Indeed, says Herr Busch, "I have a sensitivity for plants," and he has published an illustrated book to prove it, at least to his own satisfaction.
Wasps get a good and a bad rap. Initially they prey upon other arthropods. Many of these, bugs, caterpillars, flies and others, are considered garden pests. These they chew up to feed their larvae back at their nest.
Victorians loved the unusual. So, when Araucaria imbricata trees first arrived on British shores, they were eagerly installed in newly designed gardens. Many continue to flourish there to this day.
Spiderwort in the perennial border. Perhaps Wandering Willy decorating the house. Both are botanically Tradescantia, commemorating the John Tradescants, father and son, plant collectors, botanists and gardeners to British Stuart royalty. Between them, they introduced dozens of new plants into cultivation, many which remain popular to this day.
Qin Shi Huang Handan, first Emperor of China and Founder of Qin Dynasty is best known today for his fantastic 6,000 terra cotta guards of honour in the afterlife at his Xi'an mausoleum. Some years before this, seeking an elixir to achieve immortality, he dispatched searchers for such a long-believed Plant of Longevity.
Walnut trees are wonderful -- so long as they aren't pounding people or their vehicles. Or preventing gardeners from growing prized plants in their proximity.
Fraxinus are threatened with extinction. North American species are under attack by an invasive East Asian beetle. In Europe, native ash is being decimate by a fungus, also apparently from the East. Despite dire and increasingly ominous warnings, most people seem entirely oblivious to these threats.
A rope placed around the garden will keep out snakes or in warm climes, planting lemon grass, Cymbogon, will achieve the same. Forget it--neither work. Nor will placing plastic jugs of water keep dogs off lawns or sprinkling sugar or baking soda on the soil produce sweet tomatoes.
Juliet Rose, from Harrow, UK, is 25 years old, weighs just 70-pounds, is confined to a wheelchair and can no longer eat solid food because of her Lyme disease. She believes she has harboured the infection, spread by ticks, since childhood. Juliet has not long to live.
Trees ensure distribution of their seeds in many ingenious ways. Maples and ash produce whirring propellers; oaks drop acorns; apples tasty fruit. Then there is the Eastern Cottonwood, Populus deltoides. It packs tiny seeds in billows of white fluff. These drift the wind to optimistically fall on fertile soil in an acceptable location. And, as with most such tree prolific productions, almost none succeed.
A porker loose in a potato patch and a pair of pig-headed leaders nearly provoked a war between Britain and the US. It was only diverted when less rambunctious admiral refused to "involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig"
June is designated, amongst others, as Strawberry Month. Bernard le Bovier de Fontanelle, French writer and gourmand, who died in 1757 one month short of his hundredth birthday, attributed his longevity to the luscious fruit. Strangely, strawberries consist of more water, 90%, than most other popular fruits: apple, pear, plum, peach, cherry, blueberry, raspberry, cranberry, blueberry or blackberry. Worse yet, strawberries, botanically at least, are not true berries, bearing their seeds on the outside. Neither are raspberries and blackberries, also being deficient in this respect. Instead, they are 'aggregate fruits.' But still delicious.
You are admiring the roses when you notice what appear to be flecks of white cotton. Closer inspection reveals the stems crawling with green bugs: aphids. The white flecks are their moulted skins.
The world's most dangerous animals--causing more deaths per year than any other creature--is the mosquito. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mosquito bites result in several million human deaths every year, the majority from malaria, but also from dengue, yellow fever and other mosquito-borne diseases.
It may have started for the Merry Monarch up an oak tree. Having lost out at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, Charles II was forced to hide up in the branches of a Boscopel oak while the bushes below him were beaten by Parliamentary forces.
"Erection is chiefly caused by parsnips, artichokes, turnips, asparagus, candied ginger, acorns bruised to powder drunk in muscatel," explained the Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle, 384-22 B.C.
Such aphrodisiacs owe their name to another even more ancient Greek, the goddess of love Aphrodite. Every culture has had suggestions. On examining English herbals, it often appears that almost any plant was, at one time or another, so designated. This may offer an explanation why such a tiny archipelago remotely located off the northwest shores of Europe has producing so many citizens.
"Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vanaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but no importance," opined Françoise Sagan (1935-2004), French playwright and screenwriter of Bonjour Tristesse.
It is the cri de coeur of gardeners far and near: "What grows in the shade?" Surprisingly plenty, although it requires much peering at plant labels in the garden centre to determine which annuals are candidates for shadowed installations.