Between form and force of color to find the illuminating place of order where fruit trees soar no longer bare and brandish oranges, figs, mangos above Birds of Paradise sailing in place, orange flower-ships of natural grace, gladiolas pointing bluntly through green blades above red zinnias buttoning up their patch…
until luscious fruits and flowers are too much and the fertile garden shrivels, picked, dead, dazed in silent time of sun and stone, waiting dumbly for the sacred time of rain when nature and man kindle care into color-bursts again, and rejoicing air crystallizes with bright, dying revelations to teach our eyes wonder, art of glory.
“From a botanical and evolutionary perspective, there is no doubt whatsoever that zinnias have grown in Mexico for eons. After all, species of this genus are endemic to the region and, having evolved in the area, would have been known to any peoples who viewed and valued the countryside in which they lived. If a plant had any use at all, whether ornamental or material, the inhabitants would have explored the possibilities of making it service their needs. [A] question is whether the Aztec peoples [cultivated] these zinnias in their gardens. The answer is almost certainly ‘yes,’ but… there appears to be little written evidence from the period….
“As with zinnias, multiple species of dahlias and marigolds are also endemic to regions of Mexico and are found growing under similar conditions — hot, dry, and even somewhat hostile. These are all members of the family Asteraceae (once better known as Compositae), and in their original wild or natural forms each group of plants was attractive enough to warrant attention: a common dahlia (Dahlia coccinea) with single red flowers, marigolds (Tagetes of several species) with yellow or orange flowers (some mixed with burgundy petals), and zinnias (of several species) with pink, yellow, or reddish flowers. Thus, the trio — dahlia, marigold, and zinnia — may be taken as a unit with regard to their potential inclusions in Aztec gardens. Certainly they all find their place in today’s gardens, but these plants were viewed in different contexts in their own times….”
I used to worship East to West, imbibing light, air, water; forming seeds too heavy for the wind and, sturdy, rough, a firm stalk, an unconscionable desire to burst into the sky. Thick with ochre now, and umber, thirsty for the water I no longer have the strength to bear, leaves parch and rustle. Turn a countenance that used to rival Sol’s from sunlight to the medium on which I root: see zinnias, still scarlet, blooming.
Orchards bow and apples dream of falling. I am spent and crackled, dry but full of seed; I hear the clamour of a tangled germ of voices from within. The earth demands ascetic posturings: I bend, but wryly — only from the neck — not to the soil, but to the fallen smell of shrivelling leaves, to summer’s end, its gathering, hiss and crumble — to necessity.
Since these are close-up photographs, it’s not apparent that they grow in a garden space that resembles the “hot, dry, and even somewhat hostile” environment described in the quotation at the top. The stone wall shown in the first three photographs may give the impression of flowers popping up in a sweet, cool spot — but in August and September it’s one of the hottest sections in the gardens (which is why I’d rather photograph them on cloudy days!) The wall also belies the fact that they’re actually growing on a hill, one graded at about forty-five degrees and mostly filled with loose, sandy soil.
The first time I encountered this zinnia patch a few years ago, I didn’t quite understand why they didn’t just slide down the hill along with the grains of sand that would roll onto my feet every time the wind blew. But they’re more resilient than that — and it turns out that they have a fast-growing fibrous root system capable of wide horizontal spreads with additional root-shoots that help stabilize them (and the soil) under these conditions. And since the root system typically goes no deeper into the soil than a twelve inches, they’re able to snag plenty of water from any rainstorm (or gardener’s hose) before it runs into the nearby road. The bees, the butterflies, and The Photographer certainly appreciate that!
“Zinnia: Among the most effective of summer-blooming plants, they flower well until autumn, their blooms not easily injured by inclement weather, but retaining freshness and gay colour when many flowers present but a sorry appearance. In mixed borders, beds among sub-tropical plants, well-grown Zinnias are always attractive, but require a deep loamy soil and a warm open situation….
“Seed should be sown in gentle warmth. Nothing is gained by sowing before the middle or end of March, as, if the young plants have to stand before being planted, they become root-bound and seldom fully recover. If the tissues once harden so much as to bring the young plants to a standstill, there will be little chance of rapid progress when finally set out. It is not advisable to plant them out much before the second week in June, as they are sensitive to atmospheric changes, and are completely ruined by a few degrees of frost.”
And before that, in the hot day, many were the moons of zinnias.
And the whole time there was the moon of my thoughts in its skull basket.
One was the color vermillion and others the red and yellow of celebration.
One swallows the universe like snow swallows a field…
Hello!
This is the first of three posts with photos of zinnias from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, taken during the last few weeks. I’ve photographed and posted them once before (see, for example, Zinnia Elegance (1 of 4) from last year), and while these aren’t substantially different from the previous photos, they are new — which counts for something, too! After I took the first six photos, the sun slipped behind some clouds — so while those first six look a little like I used a camera flash (I didn’t), the rest are more to my liking because the lighting is more balanced yet the colors still shine through.
With temperatures remaining very high this fall — nights in the 60s and days pushing 80 — there hasn’t been a lot of traditional fall color (you know, red, yellow, and orange filling the trees) so far this year, so taking new photographs of zinnias, asters, mums, and daisies is fulfilling my autumn color needs instead. My favorites of the zinnias are the ones that resemble tiny pineapples, but the others are pretty sexy too — especially those with yellow threads stitched around the centers of the flowers.
From “A Bulb I Can’t Resist” in One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell:
“I never met a crinum I didn’t like, though I know these handsome bulbous creatures with tall stems crowned by lilylike flowers are not hardy much north of Washington. Still, many of them will stand occasional freezes to zero. Once in Memphis the temperature dropped to twelve below zero and I feared for the crinums, just sitting out there unprotected, without even a mulch or a nearby wall for shelter, but they bloomed as well as ever the following summer….
“Crinum leaves tend to be long and floppy. The white ‘Carolina Beauty’, a free-blooming small white with clusters of fragrant trumpets on eighteen-inch stems, good for cutting, has neat leaves that stand up, and they are narrow. But most other crinums can soon occupy a circle five feet in diameter. The leaves may flop flat on the ground. If they are near a path, the gardener will trip over them twenty times a summer, and if well back in a garden border, the leaves will lounge happily over any plant within hollering distance, and the gardener will wonder what ever happened to those phlox or irises or whatever it was that used to be there….
“I often saw the white flowers, somewhat drooping, the central rib stained deep madder, in fat clumps in old parts of southern towns, and the sight of them (they bloom off and on from May to October when they feel like it) used to reassure me that winter was a long way off.
“Most crinums are fragrant, though I do not much like the smell. It suggests thin sugar syrup to me, though I notice specialist growers of crinums keep insisting that it is the headiest perfume in the world. It is nothing like the tuberose or night jasmine or gardenia, so don’t count on it too much. Still, it gives the nose something to do.”
Hello!
To wrap up October, here we have photographs of another member of the Amaryllis family: Crinum, one of the Amaryllis varieties that’s often called “Swamp Lily” (because in the wild, it often grows at the edges of wetlands), but may also get tagged with the names River Lily, Milk Lily, Cape Lily, or Cemetery Lily. That “lily” is in all these common names is a hoot, since they’re not lilies (I guess we’re getting used to that, aren’t we?). Cemetery Lily is a nice fit — since that’s where I photographed them — and you probably can imagine these growing near the edges of a spooky swamp.
I was hoping “Ghost Lily” was one of the common names, since tomorrow is Halloween and I found this one that actually does look like a ghost…
… but, alas, even with that costume, I can only pretend.
“The natural order, Amaryllidaceae, composed of about fifty genera, is a beautiful tribe of plants, and seems to be very generally and very deservedly admired…. Their brilliancy of colors combined with delightful fragrance have excited admiration from the days of Solomon, who called them the Lilies of the Field, to the present time.
“They are all bulbous-rooted, and with but few exceptions, they differ but little in figure and general outline; their flower-spikes are usually one to two feet in height, those of the Doryanthus, and some species of Crinum, however, far exceed that height. In foliage they possess a uniformity of figure which is very singular; in color they vary from white and yellow to deep scarlet and azure blue, some beautifully striped and marked; in fragrance some are delicious, others entirely free….
“Some of the species are natives of the cooler provinces of Europe and Asia; others are found deep-rooted in the burning shores of islands where scarcely a blade of grass interposes itself between them and the torrid rays of a tropical sun. Many are found in the damp and sultry woods of equinoctial America; others are found scattered throughout the states, while another group intermingle with the Ixias and the Gladiolus of Southern Africa….
“It is only to be expected that plants found so widely scattered, and growing under such varied conditions of temperature and soil, should require in many cases, special treatment. We shall notice each of the genera, as they are respectively entitled, estimating their value simply as flowering plants, and their adaptation to the open border, window garden, conservatory and green-house. Some of the genera we should not notice at all, if it were not that there is an earnest and increasing demand for all the information that can be obtained of any plant belonging to this noble family.”
For this post, we’ll take a close look at some of the flowers from a pair of tall Amaryllis — shown in the first three photos in the galleries below — by photographing them from different angles and then diving inside the blossoms.
The first time I photographed these flowers was in 2020, when I identified them as lilies because… well, they looked like lilies to me and I hadn’t yet discovered PlantNet. A couple of years later, I identified them correctly, and remained fascinated by the structures inside the flower.
Let’s, for example, zoom in on this one…
… where you can see that there are two pairs of three anthers each inside the flower. Those toward the front of the flower are lighter in color — almost white — while the three anthers deeper in the blossom’s throat are darker, the color of light brown sugar. In any of the photos where the anthers are visible, you can see the same pattern: three lighter-colored anthers toward the front and three darker-colored anthers toward the back.
These anthers are loosely attached to the ends of six filaments, where even the slightest breeze causes them to wiggle back and forth. That first time I saw them, the movement led me to believe I was looking at grubs or worms until I realized they were part of the flower’s structure. But they do look a little like grubs, don’t they?
Perhaps I spend too much time puzzling about the way flowers are constructed, but I couldn’t help asking my imaginary research assistant ClaudeAI a couple of questions about these (what I thought were incidental) observations: Why does an amaryllis have three light-colored anthers and three dark colored anthers? And: Why do the anthers wiggle like worms?
Claude’s answers were quite long, but here’s part of its answer to the first question about the anther colors:
This dimorphic (two-form) anther coloration in Amaryllis is a real and consistent feature. The three lower/front anthers are typically paler (often whitish or cream-colored) while the three upper/back anthers are usually darker (tan to light brown).
This feature combines with the slightly downward-pointing orientation of the flowers and the arrangement of the stamens to create an organized landing platform for pollinators. The color difference might help make the reproductive structures more visible to approaching pollinators, particularly in low light conditions when these flowers are often visited by moths.
And here’s part of its answer to my question about why the anthers wiggle like worms:
The wobbling movement of the anthers enhances pollen dispersal. When the anthers shake, they release pollen more effectively than if they were rigidly attached. This movement also helps ensure that visiting pollinators get dusted with pollen as the anthers brush against them. The loose attachment allows the anthers to make contact with different parts of a pollinator’s body as it moves around the flower.
Their resemblance to small worms or grubs is particularly interesting from an evolutionary perspective. This might serve as a form of visual attraction for certain pollinators, especially moths and other insects that are attracted to moving prey. The combination of the wiggling motion and grub-like appearance could create what’s called a “dummy pollinator reward” — a visual signal that tricks insects into investigating the flower, thereby facilitating pollination even though there isn’t actually a prey item present.
In other words, the Amaryllis has evolved this way as a pollination strategy — part of which optimizes pollinator attraction and part of which enhances seed dispersal. Plants are so much smarter than I ever imagined!
