Category: oakland cemetery

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.”

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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!

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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….

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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!

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