Though the Swedish East India Company folded in 1813, one of its earlier Directors, Magnus von Lagerström, made a handsome investment through funneling plants to Carl Linnaeus. Lagerström was something of a plant fanatic, especially regarding the potential of plants from the East. According to Emil Bretschneider (1898, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China) …
Author Archives: jamesfolsom
Sericious Moments and Carmine Broods
Zayton (the Arabic alias for Quangzhou, China) gives its name to satins, fabrics produced through a kind of weave that yields textiles with particularly beautiful lustre and drape. Of course the early satins, today called antique satins, were made of silk and were conspicuous as merchandise traded through the silk routes. Satin production is an …
Protogyny
It’s that time of the year, the time when female flowers go stepping out ahead of the bachelors. I am not talking about debutantes, of course. I’m talking about flowering of the Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum. The Huntington has a population of about 40 plants, most of which are mature enough to reproduce. The story …
From Rags to Riches
Cotton has been a fabric of human life for thousands of years, but Westerners came to cotton only in the past two centuries. Linen predates cotton as the crucial European and Mediterranean fiber plant, indeed fine linen was a prized product even in Egyptian antiquity. And it was precious. Sails for tall ships were made …
Beautiful and Wicked
Hanging on a wall in the upper floor of Huntington Gallery, Charles Voysey’s design, Snake Amongst Flowers, depicts a handsome silk-embroidered snake moving through a luxurious field of embroidered flowers. But these are not just any flowers. Voysey surrounds his snake with lavish interpretations of opium poppies – flowers that can be enjoyed each March …
What are the Chances?
Growing up, I understood that when two people (especially family members) behaved…, or responded the same to eventualities, they’d be branded as two peas in a pod. But science and experience tell us that old saw is misguided. Beyond having been produced in the same fruit (the pod), and appearing similar, peas in a pod …
Cells to Contemplate
Cells are truly life’s building blocks. Everything we are as humans, everything that makes up a plant is either a cell or extruded from a cell. And each of us is made of trillions of cells. Heck – a typical wine cork is made of nearly 300,000,000 cells. So most cells are pretty small. What …
Noble Seed
Much of what is fun to know about the Laurel tree (Laurus noblis) is explained beautifully by John Claudius Loudon, in volume III of his multi-volume Arboretum Et Fruticetum Britannicum (published in 1838). Here are some extracts: “in the reign of Elizabeth, the floors of the houses of distinguished persons were strewed with bay leaves. …
The Pinnacle of Hospitality
As tea was brewing in Boston’s harbor, pineapples were trendy specialties in Britain, where 18th century gardeners had learned to grow the lowland tropical bromeliads, making fresh pineapples available to the wealthy. This exotic and remarkable fruiting structure of a South American native plant, topped with its crown of leaves, had already come to symbolize …
Bittersweet
Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton was born in St. James, Jamaica, 22 March 1783. Her mother’s family had grown wealthy through owning and managing sugar cane plantations on the island since 1655. The prominent Barrett scions, so very proud of the island empire they had built, mandated that any individual in succeeding generations maintain the family …