Death by Gardening

Spring is here and as our thoughts turn to life, love and warmer days ahead, I felt it would be a good time for a reality check about the true viscous nature of ... nature. Plants are not just pretty, they can be pretty deadly too. They are engaged in biological warfare against pests, predators and peers, strangling and smothering the competition and playing a role in our own personal human vendettas. Gardeners are often credited for their ability to nurture life - but sometimes they take it too - and not just by means of herbicide or insecticide!

Audrey, the mother of all carnivorous plants

There are numerous cute mysteries involving garden titles and a few good ones involving horticultural means and methods (White Oleander was a favorite of mine.) Some of the more common plant derived poisons are belladonna, henbane, and strychnine which comes from the seeds of a tree. Cyanide is also naturally occurring - though usually in small quantities - in certain seeds and fruit stones, e.g., those of apple, mango, peach, and bitter almonds (not to be confused with it's highly publicized appearance in apple juice, believed to be a result of environmental poisoning)


Certainly plants can be the cause of death (and with so many medicinal uses, no doubt also the cure) but sometime they can be the witness. In The Secret Life of Plants Peter Thompkins suggested that plants are telepathic, sending out electrical impulses at the "sight" of another beings suffering. His book published the results of Cleve Backster, who in 1966 performed experiments involving plants and the use of lie detectors to measure their response. Backster claimed these plants responded to fear of damage, sympathy to the suffering of other living things and and the site of a perpetrator of these injuries. While his claims have since been disputed, it is a tantalizing idea - that plants could potentially help identify criminals - and in a way it's true. In the emerging field of forensic botany pollen, leaves, twigs and wood fibers can be used to identify the scene or timeline of a crime. 


Still, sometimes plants are the reason for murder as detailed in this account of how the tree worshiping Germans of Medieval times punished anyone caught stripping the bark from a tree:

"The guilty party's navel was cut out and nailed to the injured tree.The culprit was then driven around and around the tree until all his innards were wound about the trunk of the tree. The life of a man for the life of a tree."

- From: The Golden Bough, Sir J. G. Frazer, Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1933, pg 110

Um, wow. That is not the only instance of barbaric behavior practiced by gardeners though. Gardeners, or Bostanci, of the Ottoman empire's rulers had an additional job title, - that of royal executioner. The Turks made quite a sport of it too: the condemned was challenged to race his executioner through the royals gardens to the execution spot. If he managed to outrun him, his sentence was reduced to banishment.  If he lost, he was strangled on the spot. Souflikar, gardener to Mahomet IV must have been quite an athlete. He is reported to have killed some 5,000 people in this role - an average of three a day over his five years at the post - by strangling them with his bare hands.

The Sultan's bostancı basha, or head gardener. The Ottoman corps of gardeners wearing the traditional uniform of muslin breeches, shirts cut low to expose muscular chests and red-skull-capped bostancıs, heralded death by decapitation or strangling for many thousands of Ottoman subjects. 

The Winds of Change

It's been an unseasonably warm week here in the Northeast, reaching as high as 68 degrees on the 23rd of February in the Philadelphia suburbs. The New York Times is reporting that Camillas, Viburnum and Apricots at the New York Botanical garden are beginning to bloom already. Locally, I have seen snowdrops and crocus, but other flowering species seem to be containing their excitement.

Springs such as this throw off the nature of things: flowers blossom while bees are still in hibernation or other pollinators have yet to hatch, migrating birds (who rely on day length instead of temperature, a less fickle benchmark) return to find they have missed the emergence of important food species and, of course, plants that emerge too early run the risk of being damaged by frost. Besides resulting in an unexciting spring, this has potentially catastrophic results as the loss of bloom will result in little or no seed production, or in the case of damaged leaf buds, stress from poor photosynthesis or re-foliation that drain the plant of its energy stores. Animals which rely on the plants for fruit, foliage and cover also suffer.

It can be difficult to draw conclusions about the global environmental causes of this over the course of just one season. Personally, I feel it is erroneous to blame all this on global "warming." Don't forget that in October 2011 we were fearing a long and difficult winter ahead after a Halloween snowstorm knocked out power and covered the area with a blanket of white. The winters of 2011 and 2010 were some of the snowiest on record and coldest in recent memory across the region. Finally, let us not forget Punxsutawney Phil, with a 50-50 chance, he certainly got it wrong this year by predicting 6 more weeks of winter, but for years his other option has been "spring has sprung." This tradition goes back to 1886, which means that more than 100 years ago there was a 50 percent chance that spring was just around the corner on February 2nd in southeastern Pennsylvania, long before the Kyoto Treaty!

Now look, I am an environmentalist - I believe we should find alternative fuel sources, enjoy more meat-free meals, grow organically and scale back our consumption  to live in greater harmony with this planet - I just think that it may not make a difference. The world may be changing for reasons beyond our control or comprehension. So what to do? Well, all those things I just mentioned - but really we should do those for our own good. I also think we should acknowledge that this planet is constantly changing and, unfortunately it may not be to our benefit. The down-side of evolution is that not everything is meant to survive "as-is." Species will  adapt, others will fill their roles and hopefully we will be smart enough to stop trying to save the world we remember and instead start developing habits and technologies for the one that is.

As for what should be blooming, here is a list:

Whitchazel, Helebore, Pieris, Mahonia, Snowdrops, Crocus,