Josephine Bonaparte Archives

Midnight at Versailles: The Moonlit Challenge of Pierre-Joseph Redouté

This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. September 10, 1825 On this day, my cherished garden enthusiasts, I find myself compelled to share a tale of extraordinary artistic achievement that should set every gardener’s heart aflutter. French King Charles X,…

A Brief History of Roses – Along with Some Surprising Fun Facts

“In the late 1700s, botanists discovered everblooming roses growing in the gardens of the sub-tropics in China. Because of their tea-like fragrance, they became known as Tea Roses. ” March 1, 1979 On this day, The Call-Leader out of Elwood, Indiana, published an article called The Roots Of Roses Go Back Many Years. If you were to trace the…

Why the Little Month of February has TWO Birth Flowers: the Violet and the Primrose; the Surprising Answer Along with Fun Facts

“Napoleon’s followers used the violet to weed out his detractors. They would ask strangers if they liked violets; a positive response was a sign of loyalty.” Even though roses are often associated with February, thanks to Valentine’s Day, February’s birth flower is not the rose. Instead, February has two birth flowers: the Violet and the…

January 14, 2020 Wes Shaw of Horniman Gardens, Richard Wilford on Alpines, Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Henri Fantin-Latour, Walter Hood Fitch, A Garden of Marvels by Ruth Kassinger, 3-Vase Propagation Station, and January’s birth flowers

Today we celebrate the Father of Paleobotany and the botanical illustrator honored by King Charles X. We’ll learn about the botanical painter who got sick of painting flowers (he’d painted 800 of them) and the botanical illustrator who worked for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine and Kew Gardens. Today’s Unearthed Words feature the hidden (and often unappreciated)…