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Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Spring

Tree Peonies: Better than Jade

Posted in Around the Garden on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman

Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies,
Pale jade mountains fill your rustic windows.
I envy you, drunk with flowers;
Butterflies swirling in your dreams.

— Qian Qi, Tang Dynasty

In the words of poet Billy Collins, the lyricists of Imperial China had “nothing up their ample sleeves” as they scribbled down the world around them. There’s a candid linearity to the early Chinese wordsmiths. Never dawdling in the roundabout of ten dollar adjectives or subtlety, they explain what they see with directness and clarity, and in doing so pull the reader into a rich history of images.

Today, standing on the hill overlooking the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden among prim rows of rounded tree peony shrubs, I found the same honest verse in each flower. It’s right there in the names. From time to time I would crouch to part the branches in an effort to see the cultivar titles on the small signs below each plant. Behind the leaves I discovered shaped words, often as straightforward as dynastic verse, at other times more like flash fiction–short stories in a staccato of concrete nouns. Our tree peonies are a lyrical bunch, blooming as they are in this early spring.

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Morning Eye Candy: Black Parrot

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 15 2012, by Matt Newman

The tulips are out and about! And contrary to what Holland’s classic advertising suggests, not all bulbs sprout cup-like, candy-colored petals. In some cases they fall more in line with the imagery of Poe.

Don’t worry, Holland. We love you.

Tulipa ‘Black Parrot’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

A Crabby Disposition

Posted in Around the Garden, Gardens and Collections on April 13 2012, by Matt Newman

I remember my dad telling me, rather gleefully, of fall afternoons spent pelting his friends with rock-hard crabapples flung from his homemade slingshot. It’s a Dennis the Menace trope in its purest form. But it also seems a fitting use for a fruit some say is named for its disagreeable nature. And if you were to take the dive and snack on a crabapple off the branch, with few exceptions you would probably find yourself cringing as if you’d just sampled a wedge of unripe lemon.

With the cherry trees doffing their hats until next year’s flower effusion, the questionably edible crabapples are only too willing to steal away the spotlight with looks (and being in the rose family, the crabapples have them in spades). The crabby name belies the abundance of blossoms which spot the grounds with cloudy displays of ivory, fuchsia, and burgundy. And the history of crabapples at The New York Botanical Garden is equally as rich, beginning early in the Garden’s life with a planting of trees near Twin Lakes. Later, in 1930, the collection moved to its current home in the southwest section of the grounds. Placed in neat rows along Daffodil Hill, the many cultivars–rare and common alike–burst into effervescent color just after the daffodils have faded. This year’s bizarrely early spring has, of course, given us the benefit of both beauties sashaying through flirty florescence in tandem.

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Morning Eye Candy: Filling In

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 13 2012, by Matt Newman

I’m continually amazed by the subtle but rapid changes the Garden undergoes, sometimes seemingly overnight. No two days walking the grounds are spent in repetition–there is something new to see between each moment.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen