Photo of the Day: A Product of ‘Long'd for May’)

“Now doe a quire of chirping Minstrels bring
In tryumph to the world, the youthfull Spring.
The Vallies, hills, and woods, in rich araye,
Welcome the comming of the long'd for May.”—English poet Thomas Carew (1595?-1639?), “The Spring,” in Restoration and Augustan Poets: Milton to Goldsmith, edited by W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (1965)
 
It might be hard to believe, but I came across this blooming bit of flora outside a building in a bustling Bergen County, NJ suburb this week.
 
It was a far different environment from the one in which Thomas Carew wrote his poem. 

When he wasn’t busy serving as ”sewer in ordinary” (i.e., the guy who tasted the royal food first before passing it on, thus preventing the possibility of poison) to King Charles I or leading the “Cavalier poets” who supported the monarch in the tumult leading up to and through the English Civil War, he was also pursuing a variety of ladies.
 
And so, lest you think that “The Spring” is some sort of ancestor of Wordsworth in its ecstatic embrace of Nature, it is really Carew’s attempt to woo a woman keeping him at bay—a lady with “June in her eyes, in her heart January.”

Quote of the Day (Jean Craighead George, on the ‘Night Secrets’ of Plants in Midsummer)

“Plants, too, have their night secrets. Moonflowers, water lilies, and many of the cacti of the desert bloom in darkness, to be pollinated by moths and night flies. One plant specially equipped for the darkness is the yellow evening primrose [pictured], found among many country roads throughout the land. It opens just at dusk, so swiftly that it can be seen—and heard! Many an evening in my childhood, as the sun sank, I would sit down in a clump of these flowers to watch. Presently I would hear a noise like popping soap bubbles, and as I looked closer, I could see the swelling buds burst open.”— Children's author Jean Craighead George (1919-2012), “A Midsummer Night,” Audubon Magazine, July/August 1961

Photo of the Day: ‘Burgundy Lace’ Dyckia, Berkshire Botanical Garden

I photographed this plant and many others while visiting Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, MA in late August three years ago. 

Dyckia plants like the one in this picture like sun and tolerate drought. These colorful flower spikes lure bees and hummingbirds.

Photo of the Day: Monkswood, Hancock Shaker Village, MA

Monkswood, an herbaceous wildflowers, grows in mountain meadows in the Northern Hemisphere. Growing 2 to 4 feet tall and 1 to 2 feet wide, it sends up purple-blue flowers like this in late summer or early fall.

Come to think of it, that’s when I saw and photographed this particular plant—in late August 2017, to be exact, at Hancock Shaker Village in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. 

This former experiment in communal living, established in 1790 and active until 1960, now functions as a living history museum of this fascinating sect. Though buildings cover much of the grounds, this remains a working farm, with vegetables, herbs and a barn full of livestock. A visitor can spend much of the day here, and it would be time well-spent.

Photo of the Day: Screw Pine, Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh PA

This past October, among the many exotic and beautiful sights of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, I came across the screw pine. It’s a novelty plant that grows best in a tropical environment.

Photo of the Day: Bottle Palm, Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh PA

Much like the last decade, 2019 contained a multitude of moments of unsurpassed personal ugliness. But I could not say goodbye to the past year without taking note of beauty that went against the grain. 

That beauty was physical rather than emotional, in the form of the species popularly known as the “Bottle Palm.” But any group that can maintain this and the other specimens on display at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh can’t be all bad.

(For more on the conservatory, a gem of the city of Pittsburgh, please see this prior post of mine.)

Photo of the Day: Creeping Thyme, Hancock Shaker Village, MA

A year and a half ago, after several missed chances on previous trips to the Berkshires, I finally made it to Hancock Shaker Village. This 750-acre “living museum” in Western Massachusetts was as informative as I expected it to be in telling the story of the Shakers, an unusual American religious movement that gradually declined after the 19^th century.

What I hadn’t expected, though, was the exposure that this site would provide to so much information about botany. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really—after all, among the ways that the Shakers were able to subsist, through agriculture and commerce, was through knowledge of botany. But for anyone interested in knowing more about plants—or in photographing them, as I am—this was a welcome stop.

The photograph I took here is of creeping thyme, an easily grown, low-lying perennial. Growing creeping thyme ground cover is both deer-resistant and able to endure frequent foot traffic.