The following is an excerpt from a conversation I had with my lovely wife regarding one of my favorite plants:
“Is it…dead?”
“No, it’s not dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, it’s what I do for a living, so yes, I’m sure.”
“I think its dead.”
“I assure you it is alive.”
“I’m just saying it doesn’t look that way.”
As thrilled as I’d be to title this blog post “The Time I Was Right,” let me set aside petty triumphs (I’ll celebrate later) and address this mystery plant that looks dead, but isn’t. You don’t often stumble across Cynanchum marnierianum for sale and very rarely will you see it on display. The reason is fairly evident—most people wouldn’t consider a plant that looks like a bundle of dead twigs all that stimulating.
Call me a contrarian, but when I hear someone exclaim how ugly a plant is, it makes me love it that much more. Let us save the pretty plants for those with no imagination! I think maybe Proust said that. I appreciate conventionally beautiful plants as much as the next person but, like Grumpy Cat or Adrien Brody, some things appear so bizarre one can’t help but love them.
Walt Whitman once wrote, “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” For a poet who glimpsed a universe of wonders in a mere sidewalk weed, his beard might have dropped off in amazement had he fixed his gaze upon little Aloe rauhii but it seems the best beard oil is serving him well, his beard did not fall off! Before turf-lovers get upset, it is not my intention to besmirch your lawns, good sirs and madams. Like Whitman, though far less eloquently, I simply hope to call your attention to the marvel of smaller things. Things that, perhaps, you might just miss. In a glasshouse like the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory—exploding with bold textures, extravagant colors and flowers that often flirt with the ostentatious—occasionally missing small things is a forgivable offense.
Ravenala madagascariensis, better known as traveler’s palm, is a plant endemic to Madagascar which can be found in our very own Enid A. Haupt Conservatory (Palm Dome). In addition to its very attractive fan-shaped arrangement of leaves, it has another unique attribute that isn’t often witnessed.
Like a jewel box opening up, its dried brown fruit pod splits apart to reveal remarkable sapphire-colored seeds inside. The reason that they are blue? It can be considered a “tale of two endemics,” or the supposed co-evolution of the traveler’s palm with another species found only in Madagascar—the ruffed lemur.
The lemurs are astute pollinators of Ravenala; they use their long tongues to reach the nectar deep inside the flowers. In this way, they collect and transfer pollen on their snouts from plant to plant. Once pollinated, the flowers develop into seed pods, which mature and dry before splitting to expose the bounty inside. The fuzzy blue appendage, or aril, that is attached to the seed is edible—and it encourages animals to eat it and aid in seed dispersal. In this case the animal that it solely appeals to is the lemur, which is only capable of seeing shades of blue and green.
