After a feast of sausage-rolls, Sandwiches of various meats, Jewelled jellies, brimming bowls Of chocolate ice and other treats, We children played at Blind Man’s Buff, Hide and Seek, Pin-the-tail-on-Ned, And then — when we’d had just enough Of party-games — we all were led Into another room to see The Magic Show. The wizard held A wand of polished ebony. His white-gloved, flickering hands compelled The rapt attention of us all. He conjured from astonished air A living pigeon and a fall Of paper snowflakes; made us stare Bewildered as a playing card — Unlike a leopard — changed its spots And disappeared. He placed some starred And satin scarves in silver pots, Withdrew them as plain bits of rag. Then swallowed them before our eyes. But soon we felt attention flag And found delighted, first surprise Had withered like a wintry leaf; And, when the tricks were over, we Applauded, yet felt some relief, And left the party willingly. ‘Goodnight,’ we said, ‘and thank you for The lovely time we’ve had.’ Outside, The freezing night was still. We saw Above our heads the slow clouds stride Across the vast unswallowable skies; White, graceful gestures of the moon, The stars’ intent and glittering eyes. And, gleaming like a silver spoon, The frosty path to lead us home. Our breath hung blossoms on unseen Boughs of air as we paused there, And we forgot that we had been Pleased briefly by that conjuror, Could not recall his tricks, or face, Bewitched and awed, as now we were, By magic of the common place.
Here we go again!
Once upon a time, in the winter of 2019, I started a “Days to Christmas” project to experiment with photography, camera settings, and lighting techniques using various holiday figurines, baubles, and trinquettes as my photo subjects. It somehow (?!?) became a tradition, so once again, for 2025, here we have the first post in this year’s series.
Working indoors with interior and artificial lighting is a lot different than most of my photography, which is of course outdoors in natural light. While this whole project can seem a bit effortful at times, every year it teaches me something new, especially about how to manage light when — unlike outdoor natural light — you can manipulate its characteristics yourself. When photographing Christmas subjects, we tend to emulate how we visualize the season: contrasts between colors like red and green, bright lights against dark backgrounds, or explosions of colors and textures like those of a Christmas tree. During the first couple of years of this project, I typically took photos as night fell to capture those effects; with practice I’ve learned to manage lighting so that I can take photos during the day and simulate what we might see when the sun goes down. The photos in this post, for example, were all taken around mid-day yesterday, yet I (hope) I’ve managed to evoke the Christmas metaphor of warm lights opposing the darkness of winter — one of this season’s intuitively understood visual themes.
The poem I selected for this year’s first post reflects similar visual scenes, as its characters move from the frenetic opening lines to end up in the quieter “magic of the common place” — something that echoes the seasonal transition from chaotic first days to Christmas Day itself. Finding poems that resonate with the work I do for this series is as much fun as the photography itself, and there will be at least one such poem (and some prose) for all of the posts.
If you’d like to see any of the projects from previous years, here they are:
“Lantana montevidensis (Trailing Lantana, Weeping Lantana): Trailing lantana is a prostrate plant with brittle, twiggy, spreading branches. The leaves are rough and rather dull, but they are almost completely obscured by the wealth of rose-lilac flowers which appear in compact heads and literally cover the foliage. The plant is almost everblooming — from spring, through summer and fall, and even into the winter months in protected locations….
“Trailing lantana is perhaps most effective when planted at the tops of low walls and allowed to cascade over them. It is beautiful in hanging baskets, and may be trained on trellises to provide design patterns. Although the plant is an excellent ground cover, it loses its leaves in even mildly cold areas and is killed to the ground by freezing temperatures. It grows back readily from the roots the following spring, if properly mulched….
“Trailing lantana tolerates cold to central Texas and South Carolina. It grows well in Florida and the Gulf States, the southwestern desert areas, and the warm subtropical regions of California. [It] loses its leaves in cold spells and dies to the ground with frost…. If cut to the ground, the plant will grow back readily the following spring.”
From “Flowering Plants for Color on the Ground” in Color for the Landscape by Mildred E. Mathias:
“Lantana montevidensis (Trailing lantana): This species of lantana has long trailing stems with small leaves and bears clusters of lavender-purple flowers in profusion throughout the entire year. It is considered tender but is sometimes seen in interior valleys in sheltered locations. It stands much drought and neglect and is one of the most satisfactory and ornamental plants for slopes in areas with a favorable climate. It is best in full sun and is attractive when draped over a wall…. For a spectacular bloom over a whole year it is difficult to surpass the bush or trailing lantanas.”
Hello!
Once upon a time in October, I posted a series of photos of a flowering vine I later identified as Lantana montevidensis, which I thought was either new to Oakland Cemetery or had previously been undiscovered by The Photographer. The plant — originally named after one of its native regions, Montevideo in Uruguay — is known for its trailing or weeping habits and its ability to bloom through multiple seasons. Yet I was nevertheless surprised to see that it was still producing flowers on November 16, six weeks after I originally photographed it (see Lantana montevidensis, Weeping or Trailing Lantana) and after we’d had a few days of below-freezing temperatures early in the month.
Compared to its condition in the previous photos, it’s true that the plant now has fewer blossoms, they’re a bit smaller, and some of the vine’s leaves are extra-dark green, likely from frost. Yet the fact that there are blossoms at all, they’re mostly undamaged by the cold, and there are still buds waiting to turn into flowers is quite a demonstration of this plant’s hardiness. Its sunny physical location probably helps, and the stone and brick around it would reflect ambient heat to keep the plant warm when temperatures drop. I’m intrigued to see if it’s resilient enough to continue growing and flowering through the winter, or will flower in those very early spring days when hardy plants like quince, plums, and the first daffodils mark the transition away from winter.
“Chrysanthemum parthenium, feverfew, was, as its name implies, cultivated as a herb for lowering the temperature, and its strongly aromatic foliage no doubt helped to sustain its image as a herb of considerable efficacy. Its white daisy flower and pale green chrysanth foliage can be detected on the fringes of many walled gardens. Its name is said to have been derived from an incident related in Plutarch’sLife of Pericles during which a man who fell while working on the Parthenon escaped death by grabbing hold of a clump of feverfew.”
“C. parthenium. Feverfew. This plant is generally accepted as a native, though some think that it was introduced by the Romans, on the ground that it is one of a number of trees and herbs whose Anglo-Saxon name is obviously derived from the Latin. In this case, feverfew is said to be a corruption of febrifuge, ‘taken from his force of driving awaie agues’ [according to John Gerard’sHerball.] But it is equally possible that the Romans found the plant already here, and merely brought its properties to notice.
A double variety was brought into gardens at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was then regarded as ‘peculiar onely to our owne Countrey’. ‘It abounds in Britain’, wrote the Dutch florist Crispin de Pass, in 1614, ‘because it appears to be grown there with skill and industry, and indeed from thence many kinds of flowers composed of a manifold series of petals are first brought into the neighbouring countries.’
Later on, it became popular as a foliage-plant for bedding-out purposes, particularly the golden-leaved variety, C. parthenium aureum. As to its properties, it was held to be ‘a special remedy to helpe those that have taken Opium too liberally… In Italy some use to eat the single kinde among other greene herbes… but especially fried with eggs, and so it wholly loseth his strong and bitter taste.’ It was ‘very good for them that are giddie in the head, or which have the turning called Vertigo… also it is good for such as be melancholike, sad, pensive and without speech’.
It appears on garden lists in various spellings — ‘Double Featherfew’, ‘Double Feaverfew’, and ‘Febrefeu’ are among them — for nearly a handful of centuries…. It was called Parthenium by the early botanists because of a tradition (recounted by Plutarch) that it saved the life of a man who fell from a height — having presumably become ‘giddie in the head’ — during the building of the Parthenon….
The scent is supposed to be particularly distasteful to bees. Varieties of C. parthenium are sometimes listed as Matricarias.”
The fields are merely clods of darkest brown and here and there a bit of yellow-green, and little sparrows, silly, fresh, and daring, are darting over them like raucous children… And far away the city with its towers, with houses storming forth, so light and merry,
is like an image from a fairy tale. The air is quiet, filled with yearning, so that you wait for sky-blue larks and want to ride in slender rowboats.
Here stand white asters, white and pure, and there a head of cabbage, small and young. They’re like a long forgotten parasol in the middle of snow covered streets. A rabbit, running past, cannot believe it….
Alert readers (like you!) might notice that the two excerpts above — from books published in 1982 and 1971 — refer to the plant as Chrysanthemum parthenium, something that emphasizes what I wrote about in the first post: its current name Tanacetum parthenium is a recent enough change that even contemporary botanical references use the previous name. Those two excerpts also elaborate on the parthenium part of the plant’s name (which has remained constant) with rescue stories, though one might still puzzle about whether “grabbing hold of a clump of feverfew” would have mitigated against gravity.
From “Meaningful and Useful: A Plethora of Chrysanthemums” in Chrysanthemum (Botanical) by Twigs Way:
“[A plant] which has at times been awarded the ‘chrysanthemum’ title is the daisy-like feverfew. Easy to grow, it is native to Eurasia, originating in the Balkans, but long ago spread to northern Europe. Feverfew has a small, bright, daisy-like flower with white petals and a sunny yellow centre. It loves to grow in sunny places and spreads rapidly by seed to overwhelm flowerbeds on dry slopes. The feverfew was originally classified by herbalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as Chrysanthemum parthenium but later became Pyrethrum parthenium, before being finally (one hopes) transferred yet again to become Tanacetum parthenium, aligning itself with the tansy, which was also once a chrysanthemum.
“Originally given the common name ‘featherfew’ after its feathery leaves, the feverfew is widely regarded as most useful for fever, arthritis and headaches and is recorded as being used as an anti-inflammatory in the first century AD. It may well have been introduced into England from central Europe by the Romans, who used it for these medicinal properties…. In his 1597 The Herball; or, Generall Historie of PlantesJohn Gerard did not hazard a guess as to the feverfew’s familial or (in modern terminology) genetic associations, but instead listed its virtues in physic, including being a remedy for ‘those of a melancholic nature’ who might be ‘sad, pensive or without speech’….
“Feverfew has attracted renewed interest in its medicinal usage thanks to its parthenolide content, which preliminary research indicates may have an impact on cancer-cell growth. It was traditionally known as ‘bachelor’s buttons’, a naming it shared with cornflowers. Explanations for the derivations of this vary from the flower literally having the appearance of a button, to the wearing of a small posy of such flowers in the buttonhole to indicate romantic availability….
“The parthenium part of the plant’s name, which has remained constant, contains a reference to virginity, but this meaning (or the Latin name) is unlikely to have been known to the country folk who originated the name ‘bachelor’s buttons’ or the alternative ‘pale maids’.”
Acre on acre, mile on mile, Like spray from a waterfall, The little wild white asters Offer their beauty for all: Fairyland-flowers that frost Will copy on window panes; Blossoms, like breath of winter, Drifting the valleys and plains. When the wind passes they whisper, Like the sound of the sea in a shell, A silver good-bye to summer: Summer, farewell… farewell….
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with photographs of Tanacetum parthenium, that I took at Oakland Cemetery in October. This plant has a large number of common names (see here for an extensive list), but it seems that the most commonly used common names are Feverfew, Featherfew, and Bachelor’s Button.
As I’ve likely mentioned before, Oakland’s gardens include an extensive collection of plants from the Asteraceae family, a family that includes delights like aromatic asters, chrysanthemums, coneflowers, cosmos, daisies, goldenrod, sunflowers, tansies, and zinnias — among many others — which I’ve been photographing for about five years. In 2022, I started trying to identify the specimens I photographed more accurately and to segregate them by genus name, so that for at least the past three years, it would be possible to view those I identified as chrysanthemums and those I identified as asters, for example, independently. I’m sure I’ll continue to refine that as this body of work evolves, and perhaps at some point go back to older posts and give their tags a tuneup as I learn more.
The excerpt from Chrysanthemum (Botanical) by Twigs Way at the top of the post hints at the complexity that I sometimes encounter. The Tanacetum parthenium plants featured below not only have a large number of common names, but have also had shifting scientific names. At various times, they’ve been botanically known as Matricaria parthenium, Chrysanthemum parthenium, Pyrethrum parthenium, and now Tanacetum parthenium — the most recent genus name assigned after genetic analysis determined that the plants shouldn’t be classified as Matricaria or Chrysanthemum, and the genus Pyrethrum had fallen into disuse. The earlier names were often culturally reflective — Matricaria, for example, was derived from terms associated with maternal or reproductive health — but changed over time as horticultural observation suggested they had been categorized inappropriately, or scientific methods improved (especially in the 20th century) to refine their botanical characteristics and group similar plants more precisely. It will always be something of a moving target, I suppose, yet it’s weirdly fascinating to me how much I learn by just exploring how these names emerged and were modified over time.
This is especially true for the Asteraceae family of plants, which contains nearly 2000 individual genera, including the Chrysanthemum genus, the Aster genus, and the Tanacetum genus, which together include about 400 species, and are respectively referred to as mums, asters, and tansies. This might suggest something obvious: it’s difficult to identify specific species of many mums, asters, or tansies when working from photographs, because there are so many possibilities to choose from and those featuring similar color combinations — like the white-petaled, yellow-centered flowers in this post — create additional identification challenges. Even my favorite plant i.d. source, PlantNet, trips on the challenge sometimes, and will often simply identify plants like these as genus chrysanthemum or genus aster only, as it can’t differentiate among their subtle differences to figure out the species. Nevertheless I persist! — and hope that as I do more and more research, I’ll get better at targeting my photos with the right plant names. And I’ll keep doing it since I learn so much about plants, their history, and their botanical characteristics along the way — something that can only happen if I do the research.
When I use PlantNet as a starting point for identification, I upload photos one at a time so that it can analyze the plants from different perspectives, without one image influencing its analysis of another. With this series of photos, closeups like this one — while aesthetically pleasing — don’t provide PlantNet with enough information, since the plant’s stems aren’t visible and its leaves are out-of-focus in the background.
While PlantNet did identify it as Tanacetum parthenium, the likelihood of a match was around half a percent — a low probability that in itself reflects the fact that so many Asteraceae family flowers look very similar. With this image, instead…
… PlantNet had more detail to work with, and the probability that the plant was Tanacetum parthenium increased quite a bit. Yet it was still quite low — so I was left with only a slim possibility that the identification was correct, but could conclude that the plant’s leaves were key to getting its name right. As historical botanical drawings have played a role in plant identification for several centuries, I searched for botanical drawings of the plant by its long-established common name “feverfew” to see how naturalists have documented the plant in the past. Click here if you would like to see the search results, where the plants’ leaves — and their distinct parsley-like appearance — are very evident, helping to confirm that Tanacetum parthenium was the correct botanical name for this plant.
“Evolution teaches us that thistles, daisies, sunflowers, asters, and all the triumphant horde of Composites were once very different flowers from what we see today. Through ages of natural selection of the fittest among their ancestral types, having finally arrived at the most successful adaptation of their various parts to their surroundings in the whole floral kingdom, they are now overrunning the earth.
“Doubtless the aster’s remote ancestors were simple green leaves around the vital organs, and depended upon the wind… to transfer their pollen. Then some rudimentary flower changed its outer row of stamens into petals, which gradually took on color to attract insects and insure a more economical method of transfer….
“As flowers and insects developed side by side, and there came to be a better and better understanding between them of each other’s requirements, mutual adaptation followed. The flower that offered the best advertisement, as the Composites do, by its showy rays; that secreted nectar in tubular flowers where no useless insect could pilfer it; that fastened its stamens to the inside wall of the tube where they must dust with pollen the underside of every insect, unwittingly cross-fertilizing the blossom as he crawled over it; that massed a great number of these tubular florets together where insects might readily discover them and feast with the least possible loss of time — this flower became the winner in life’s race. Small wonder that our June fields are white with daisies and the autumn landscape is glorified with goldenrod and asters….
“[The} Late Purple Aster, so-called, or Purple Daisy… begins to display its purplish-blue, daisy-like flower-heads early in August, and farther north may be found in dry, exposed places only until October. Rarely the solitary flowers, that are an inch across or more, are a deep, rich violet. The twenty to thirty rays which surround the disk, curling inward to dry, expose the vase-shaped, green, shingled cups that terminate each little branch….”
This year the autumn is a restless sea Of weaving crests of waving goldenrod And swirling billows of the purple aster Whose foaming mauve tinges the tumbling air; Across the hills and hollows of that ocean A fleet of trees rides, with slow yellow sails And crimson pennons ribboning the wind, Toward the harbour of the horizon’s bar Where an invincible navy waits at anchor, A fleet of clouds, unfurling sails of snow.
These flowers are among the first asters to bloom across Oakland’s autumn landscape, typically appearing in September then expanding and tumbling throughout their surroundings over subsequent weeks. Their blooming time coincides with a similarly sized white aster — probably Tanacetum parthenium or a close relative — whose photographs I’ll feature in the next two posts after this one. The simultaneous appearance of these two variants, one with purple flowers and one with white flowers, is one of the first signs that we’re moving from later summer to early fall, their abundance marking that seasonal change just like the appearance of daffodils and early irises usher in spring. We might think of them as transitional plants, as they bloom and then are gone before even later blooming mums and asters take over the gardens as the oak and maple tree leaves start changing colors.
For this post, I wanted to show how these Aromatic Asters are used in memorial displays like those at Oakland. Their mix of wild, native, and naturalized variants makes them especially appropriate historically: asters of various kinds — especially those that bloom late in the year — fill in the spaces where earlier flowers have receded and have been used for that purpose for centuries. Aromatic (or similar) Asters that produce a large mass of purple flowers connected by stems that twist and turn in all directions create a muted yet colorful contrast as they mound upward then bend forward in waves. In Victorian, memorial, and cultural symbolism, the color purple is often used to convey dignity, respect, and remembrance, and lighter shades like those of Aromatic Asters encompass those meanings while creating a serene contemplative space.
If you look closely at some of the photos where I’ve zoomed in on the blossoms, you may also be able to see how that purple/violet color gets reflected in the memorial stones and gravel nearby. This reflected visual effect — one that is apparent even on overcast days — is intense enough that it comes through in photographs and is equally compelling when observed in person: studying the scene gives you a sense that you’re enveloped in the color purple, regardless of where you stand, and with all its symbolic meanings. The positioning of these asters — that is, where Oakland’s landscapers chose to plant them — is likely intentional, as none of the growth intrudes upon the memorial markers but instead complements them in terms of both color and texture. These visual effects are even more remarkable, it seems, since each individual flower is less than an inch in diameter, yet their combined density creates a purple tide that can be seen from every vantage point.
