"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Revisiting Zinnias (2 of 3)

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From “Gardens, botanical” in Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield:

“The Aztec, whose empire was established in what is now Mexico in about A.D. 1100, planted lavish botanical gardens featuring enormous collections of plants both native to the area and imported from the tropical coast hundreds of miles distant….

“These arboretums, containing varieties of medicinal, hallucinatory, and sweet-smelling plants, were for the amusement and education of those who visited these sites. Spanish historian Cervantes de Salizar described the gardens of the Emperor Montezuma as containing ‘medicinal and aromatic herbs, flowers, and trees with fragrant blossoms.’ Not only were plants collected so that they could be preserved and displayed, they were also actively used as the basis for an elaborate system of plant classification and as laboratories for the discovery of medical break-throughs…

“The Tetzcotzinco garden of the poet-king Netzahualcoyotl, who reigned over the mountainous area of the Aztec Empire between 1426 and 1474, was legendary in its time. In 1530 one of his descendants described the experience of visiting it as being like falling into a garden raining with aromatic tropical flowers. Many of the plants there had been brought from remote places. Several botanical gardens were also a feature of the capital city of Tenochtitlan, which was the largest metropolis in North America, and perhaps the world, serving as a residence for about a quarter of a million people. Dahlias and Zinnias were two of the flowers grown in Aztec gardens that still give gardeners pleasure today.

“The Spaniards were astounded when they saw these Aztec gardens. Although some European monasteries had collections of plants in their herb gardens, they were small in comparison to the Aztec gardens. Some historians believe that the impetus for European botanical gardens came from a letter, first published in 1522, that Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes wrote to Emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain) describing Montezuma’s gardens…. The Cortes letter may not have directly inspired European botanical gardens, but certainly the exploration of the Western Hemisphere with its exotic flora sparked a European interest in botany….”

From “Zinnias (Zinnia elegans)” in Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield:

“Zinnias (Zinnia elegans) are one of the three most popular garden flowers today. They are characterized by showy composite blossoms and are indigenous to the area that is called Mexico today. The blooms that zinnias produce vary in color, including white, yellow, gold, orange, copper, crimson, purple, and maroon blossoms….

“The Aztec, who established an empire in what is now Mexico in about A.D. 1100, held flowers in high regard. They cultivated several varieties of zinnias. Spaniards brought the first zinnias to Europe in 1753. The plants were named after botany professor, J. G. Zinn. In 1796 the first Zinnia elegans variety was brought to Europe from Mexico. This variety quickly became popular and is the stock to which all modern garden zinnias owe their start.”

Hello!

This is the second of three posts with new photographs of Zinnias from Oakland Cemetery. The first post is Revisiting Zinnias (1 of 3). In that first post, I presented distribution maps of the Zinnia genus and two well-known species — Zinnia peruviana and Zinnia elegans — and briefly described some of what I learned about how zinnias were native to parts of North and South America; how they migrated from there to Europe and parts of Asia, Africa, and Australia; and how Zinnia elegans was reintroduced to the Americas in conjunction with plant exploration upon the breeding of new variants after their European assimilation.

Researching these complex stories involves multiple disciplines like traditional history, botany, and social and cultural history — especially around European exploration, imperialism, and conquest, where plants went along for the rides. European or Eurocentric frameworks tend to dominate botanical literature for many reasons, the most benign of which was that botanists and scientists from about the 17th century forward sought to document their naturalist encounters in extensive detail. That included adapting local knowledge from regions they explored, producing extensive botanical tracts, and incorporating images (botanical drawings and art) before (and continuing after) photography was used for that reason. Yet even though much of this was geographically anchored to Europe, the migrations and reintroductions of plants like Zinnias trigger a way to expand that framework and include other regions, their cultures, and their histories.

With all that in mind, I was pretty happy to discover that a book I already owned — A History of Zinnias: Flower for the Ages by Eric Grissell — devotes about three chapters and nearly 100 pages to the Zinnia movement I had started exploring. Here are 5,000 words summarizing the author’s research.

Haha, just kidding. However, if you click the link above, the Kindle sample will get you to the beginning of one of the relevant chapters, and I certainly recommend the book to anyone interested in the kind of research I cover here about botany and plant histories. It was from that book that I learned about the one I excerpted above — Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield — which is available on the Internet Archive and, among other topics, covers hundreds of native North and South American plant species and describes their cultural, ornamental, or medicinal use. In the case of Zinnias, the two books together helped me anchor on and decide to include the two excerpts above, as they reposition Zinnia’s history outside the European frameworks and represent the significance of this plant species to American indigenous cultures for hundreds of years prior to being encountered by explorers from Spain.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Revisiting Zinnias (1 of 3)

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From “Zinnia elegans” in  Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 by Denise Adams:

“Fifteen zinnia flower colors were noted in old catalogs and references, including white, sulfur yellow, golden yellow, orange, scarlet-orange, scarlet, light tan, lilac, rose, magenta, crimson, violet, purple, and dark purple. There were also variegated forms, but the solid double flowers were the most popular. This hardy annual ranged in size from the dwarfs at 3-12 inches to the tall zinnias that were 20-30 inches….

“Zinnias did not appear to their best advantage in masses — but looked well in mixed borders. They were also effectively grown as single plants in the lawn.”

From “Hours in the Garden” in Hours in the Garden and Other Poems by Herman Hesse:

…Over there, where at times the path approaches the beds,
Each year we let a few flowers grow, because we take that
Steep path quite often, in fact every day, and when the beans
And the peas and the cabbage are already brown and scorched,
At the edge of the path a few flowers still get their water:
Red-violet zinnias, or snapdragons and nasturtiums.
Past them, whose freshness brightens the languishing slope,
          I walk….

Hello!

This is the first of three posts with photographs of Zinnias from Oakland Cemetery. I always like to mark their return with new photos because they make their presence known right at the boundaries between summer and fall; and, once upon a time in the olden days of five years ago, I didn’t know what they were so I just called them “wildflowers” (see Ten Wildflowers and Three Butterflies from 2021). We have learned many, many things since then!

I took photos for this first post on a very sunny day in late August, and the photos for the next two posts on a very cloudy day in the middle of October. The Zinnias weren’t done blooming on the later date, so that gives you some idea about how long their overall blooming season can last. The excerpt I included at the top of this post describes the large number of colors Zinnias can produce, and you’ll find most of those colors among the photos.

There are several patches of Zinnias at Oakland in different locations, all of which demonstrate a Zinnia plant’s ability to manage growing conditions other plants would find intimidating. They grow well on steep hills, in sandy soil, and with stems that protrude from and rise high above rocks or gravel. Those tendencies probably explain why I originally thought they were wildflowers: they struck me as exhibiting behaviors similar to flowering plants one might find on the side of a road or around railroad tracks growing in gravel or sand.

Since we had a lot of fun with maps in my last post about the Eriocapitella genus, let’s take a look at three more!

Once again from Plants of the World Online, here are distribution maps for the Zinnia genus, followed by distribution maps for two of its most common species: Zinnia peruviana and Zinnia elegans (the original maps are (here, here, and here). Green on these maps defines the genus or species’ native regions; and purple defines where a plant has been introduced and has sufficient presence to be considered naturalized. (See What “Native” or “Introduced” Mean: Myths and Misconceptions for more on these terms.)

These maps tell a different story than the one I described for Eriocapitella — which was about migration from Europe and Asia to North and South America. The Zinnia genus travelled in the opposite direction: it was native to the Americas and migrated from there to Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa and Australia. The Zinnia peruviana species, as shown in the second map, made some similar journeys as the genus as a whole.

The story of Zinnia elegans (shown on the third map) is a bit more complicated: it, too, made journeys similar to those of Zinnia peruviana, but its native or wild version was widely modified (especially in Europe and Asia) to produce flowers with different forms and colors, perhaps most notably the double Zinnia as well as the exuberant layered-golf-ball design shown below:

The plant’s modifications meant its characteristics were different enough that its return to the Americas was considered an introduction, effectively replacing the plant’s prior designation as native. Their original form — if it can be called that still — is also represented throughout my galleries, where you will find similarly colored flowers with a single (though often overlapping) row of petals. To be fair, continued genetic modification means that the two flowers above could be variants of either Zinnia elegans or Zinnia peruviana — but that doesn’t alter the botanical history narrative too much. It simply reflects human influence on the species and the ongoing work of botanists and geneticists to produce new colors and forms. And their presence at Oakland Cemetery also tells another part of our Victorian garden story, where native plants like Zinnias are as likely to be found as those imported or “exotic” species native to other world regions.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Double Japanese Anemone (2 of 2)

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From “Japanese Anemones” in A Family of Flowers: Clematis and the Ranunculaceae by Deborah Kellaway:

“Japanese anemones always start by sulking, and seldom think of flowering until they have lived for at least two years in a new place. But once they perk up, there is no stopping them. They grow in all directions, horizontally and vertically. Before long the small original plant is filling a square metre of border space and a dozen or more straight stems are rising from the handsome basal leaves until in August they are waist high.

“The plant grows from a tuberous rootstock which spreads out horizontally 20cm/8in below the ground. In spring it makes strong clumps of divided leaves, dark green on top, pale green beneath, incised round the edges and arranged in the typical pattern of threes. The strong brown stems branch and branch again, four separate flower-stems coming from a single stalk, and each of these flower-stems branches again into four or six, and finally there will be four to six flowers, each on its separate pedicel at the end of each stem.

“The seed-heads are so round they look like buds, but they are yellow, and the buds are mushroom-pink. The final effect is a mixture of buds, seed-heads and open flowers all enhancing each other; the sequence goes on and on, from bud to flower to seed-head, in a cycle that continues from August to October.”

From “Windflower” by Bliss Carman in Windflower: Poems of Bliss Carman, selected and edited by Raymond Souster and Douglas Lochhead:

Between the roadside and the wood,
Between the dawning and the dew,
A tiny flower before the sun,
Ephemeral in time, I grew.

And there upon the trail of spring,
Not death nor love nor any name
Known among men in all their lands
Could blur the wild desire with shame.

But down my dayspan of the year
The feet of straying winds came by;
And all my trembling soul was thrilled
To follow one lost mountain cry.

And then my heart beat once and broke
To hear the sweeping rain forebode
Some ruin in the April world,
Between the woodside and the road.

Tonight can bring no healing now;
The calm of yesternight is gone;
Surely the wind is but the wind,
And I a broken waif thereon.

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photographs of Eriocapitella hybrids that very likely go by the name Eriocapitella × hybrida, from Oakland Cemetery. The first post is Double Japanese Anemone (1 of 2).

I opened this post and the previous one with excerpts from A Family of Flowers: Clematis and the Ranunculaceae by Deborah Kellaway because the book was useful for my earlier Clematis photos (see Clematis Abundance (1 of 3) and Clematis Abundance (2 of 3)) and also has a chapter devoted to Eriocapitella — though by their earlier genus name, Anemone. It can be a bit confusing, I think, when a plant has moved from one genus to another recently, and it takes a bit of mental juggling to remember that a book like Kellaway’s — published in 1997 — doesn’t differentiate between the two, especially with common names like Japanese Anemone remaining quite sticky in botanical literature and horticulture. It can help, in a case like this, to learn more about the plants from a current and frequently updated resource.

On Plants of the World Online, you can fetch distribution maps for most plant families, genera, and species. Below I’ve included its distribution map for the Clematis genus, followed by its map for the Eriocapitella genus, followed by the Anemone genus (originals here, here, and here). All three plants are members of the Ranunculaceae family, so share plenty of botanical (and visual) characteristics; but only two of the three have similar geographical distributions.

On these distribution maps, green indicates a plant’s native regions, and purple indicates regions where a plant is considered introduced. “Introduced” doesn’t necessarily mean a plant doesn’t exist in other regions, but reflects the extent to which a plant has been established outside regions where it’s known to be native. For a fine explanation of how these terms are used in botany, see What “Native” or “Introduced” Mean: Myths and Misconceptions — which elaborates on what I just wrote, and for the purposes of botanical history, anchors the definition of “introduced” on whether or not a plant “was present in a region at the time of European colonization of North America.”

The top and bottom maps — for the Clematis genus and the Anemone genus (which still contains a couple hundred species, even with Eriocapitella separated out) — show that the Ranunculaceae family overall has a nearly worldwide native presence. Eriocapitella, as shown on the middle map, has much more limited native regions (China and other parts of Asia) and has established well enough to be considered introduced only in Japan, some contiguous regions of Europe, and a small corner of South America. But it’s considered neither native nor introduced in North America, so its presence a mile from my house at Oakland Cemetery implies that it’s part of the history of plant migrations.

That kind of framing provides enough information to approach research with greater precision. In the book Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 by Denise Adams, Adams describes the documented presence of plants still included in the Anemone genus as early as 1596; but treats plants like those I’ve been photographing separately. The plants we now know as Eriocapitella japonica, Eriocapitella hupehensis, and Eriocapitella x hybrida (all among those often described as fall-blooming Japanese Anemones) made their way to North America in 1844 and began their employment as border, accent, and container-gardening plants in nineteenth-century North American landscapes. Their repeat performances and presence at a place like Oakland link these historical threads quite nicely, reflecting evolving attitudes toward landscape design in that era along with the rise of Victorian-influenced gardens and Victorian garden cemeteries, as well as the cultural preference for “exotic” plants (often of Asian provenance) caught up in European and North American exploration and colonization.

I love it when a (botanical) story comes together!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!