Posts Tagged ‘Ericaceae’

The Corpse Plant

Posted in Learning Experiences on March 26th, 2012 by Matt Newman – Be the first to comment

Monotropa uniflora. The scientific name isn’t particularly menacing; it suggests the singular–mono-, uni-. But on a register of local vegetation, you’d likely overlook it. It’s a passing Latin designation in a sea of other plants, many of them named after scientists. And this remains the case up until you get to know this pale, vampiric oddity of the plant kingdom.

A friend (one altogether disinterested in botany, strangely enough) happened to post an image and a scientific name on Tumblr the other day. I was hooked from that moment. What was this “plant,” with its ghostly presentation, and what other traits were so interesting that it would distract a chemical engineering student from her studies long enough to share it? With its singular, slumped flower, it looked like a tulip under the cloud of an awful malaise; from petal to stem, there was not a single blush of color.
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Neotropical Blueberries

Posted in Around the Garden, The Orchid Show on March 8th, 2012 by Matt Newman – Be the first to comment

Ceratostema silvicola (Photo courtesy of Meri Shaffer)

Far south in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, where the sandy flats aren’t struck through with creeks, you’ll find parcels of land dedicated to row upon row of scraggly bush. It’s the antithesis of a tropical landscape; like large-scale agriculture in the midwest, the skies over these tended fields are big and empty, with the occasional conifer contorting itself under and around a telephone wire near the bordering dirt roads. The pine woods sit further off.

In the winter it’s a vacant space save for the blueberry bushes. But these berries have a relative of a more tropical disposition. Perhaps not down in southern Jersey, but here in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, certainly.
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