Are you growing, Gladiola?

The plants are also sometimes called the Sword Lily.

Gladiola is Latin for a small sword.

In Victorian times, the Gladiola meant, "You pierce my heart."

And the next time you see a Gladiola, take a closer look: Members of this family produce parts in multiples of three. There are three sepals, colored to look like petals, and three true petals, and three stamens.

 

 

---

Brevities

#OTD It was on this day in 1923 that the botanist Edwin Way Teale married Nelly Imogene Donovan.

The two had met while Teale was at College. After they married, they moved to New York so that Teale could continue his education at Columbia University.

Teale’s first job was writing for the magazine Popular Science.

On the side, he began taking pictures and specializing in nature photography. When Teale was 42, he left Popular Science to become a freelancer. By 1943, his book By-ways to Adventure: A Guide to Nature Hobbies won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural history writing.

During World War II, Teale's son, David, was killed in Germany. The couple began traveling across the country by automobile. The trips help them cope with their grief.

The trips became not only a catharsis but also an integral part of Teale's writing. Their 1947 journey, covering 17,000 miles in a black Buick, following the advance of spring, led to Teale's book north with the spring.

Additional road trips lead to more books: Journey Into Summer, Autumn Across America, and Wandering Through Winter. Wandering Through Winter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966.

And, it was Edward Way Teale who said:

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.

Any fine morning, a power saw can fell a tree that took a thousand years to grow.

“Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd.”

“Our minds, as well as our bodies, have need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.”

 

 

---

#OTD And today is the birthday of the botanist Franklyn Hugh Perring who is born in London on this day in 1927.

In 1962, Perring, along with Max Walters, wrote The Atlas of the British Flora, which some called the most important natural history book of the 20th century.

It was Franklin Perring who devised the Dot Map.

He was an outstanding field botanist with a phenomenal memory for plants.

Perring was the best kind of botanist, possessing the eagerness of an amateur and the training of a true professional.

Perring had obtained his Ph.D. in Cambridge. When Max Walters, the director of the University herbarium, invited him to map the distribution of all the wildflowers trees and ferns of England and Ireland, Perring said, "yes."

Planning and leading groups of experts on remote field trips by bicycle, train, or on foot, was Perring’s favorite thing to do. Walters and Perring successfully mapped all of Britain’s plants in under five years.

 

 

---

Unearthed Words

"The English winter, ending in July
To recommence in August."
- Lord Byron

 

 

---

Today's book recommendation: The Garden Chef: Recipes and Stories from Plant to Plate

For many people, gardens are just extensions of the kitchen. Today restaurants are utilizing rooftop gardens for growing herbs and spices, and larger plots allow for cultivating vegetables along with fruit trees.

The garden chef offers more than 100 garden-focused recipes, and it shares how 40 of the world's top chefs grow and cook with produce directly from their garden.

The book offers stories along with the recipes for folks to enjoy reading cookbooks. It also provides tips for gardeners showing how the smallest space can grow Something delicious to eat.

 

 

---

Today's Garden Chore

Plant herbs in a strawberry jar.

Fill it with a mixture of potting soil and perlite and in each of the open spaces, set in perennial plants or sow annuals.

The jar can be brought into the house for the winter.

 

 

---

Something Sweet
Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart

And it was on this day in 1950 that The Ithaca Journal out of Ithaca New York published a question from a reader. The reader wanted an answer to this question:

Please list a few plants that are named for people.

The answer

Here is the answer

The poinsettia was named 'for Joel R. Poinsett, a famous statesman.

Wisteria is named in honor of Caspar Wistar, a distinguished physician, and scientist of Philadelphia.

Leonard Fuchs, a German botanist, discovered the 'plant known as fuchsia, while William Forsyth, a Scotch botanist, is responsible for the name of forsythia.

The name of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, a French soldier and explorer, is perpetuated in the bougainvillea.

The paulownia is named for the Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna, daughter of Czar Paul I.

 

 

 

---

Thanks for listening to the daily gardener,
and remember:
"For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."