A few Nepenthes

One of my favorite genera is Nepenthes, the tropical pitcher plants. While some of the most coveted species (e.g., N. villosa, N. rajah) are difficult if not impossible to cultivate on a glorified windowsill (my conditions), there are many species and hybrids that are surprisingly tolerant as long as a few cultural conditions are met. Bright light and pure water are absolute necessities. Nepenthes prefer moderate to high humidity. Mine grow most vigorously and produce the best pitchers when the humidity is at least 50%, but they tolerate brief dips to around 30% during the winter. At worst, they are slow to pitcher when the air is dry. As for temperature, Nepenthes are roughly divided into three groups according to their altitudinal distribution: lowland (0-1000 m.), intermediate (100-1500 m), and highland (1500+ m). Intermediate-highland Nepenthes are often the best suited to household temperatures, at least in my climate. During hot spells in the summer, it can be a struggle to keep the plants cool enough but I've yet to lose a plant due to the heat.

There is a lot of mystique surrounding Nepenthes but, like orchids, as long as you can meet their basic cultural needs, there are many possibilities for the windowsill grower.

Here are a few recent pitchers from my collection:

N. glandulifera x burbidgeae

N. glandulifera x burbidgeae

N. glandulifera x burbidgeae is a hybrid between the recently-described N. glandulifera, which is covered in a fuzzy, brown indumentum and produces numerous nectar glands along its leaves and tendrils (hence the name), and N. burbidgeae, one of the most beautiful species. This plant is young, but has great potential. It is a bit of a slow grower.

N. chaniana x veitchii

N. chaniana x veitchii is another great hybrid. This one is a vigorous plant, consistently producing larger pitchers with each new leaf. Like N. chaniana, it is another fuzzy Nepenthes. But where N. chaniana generally has plain green pitchers, the N. veitchii lends a wide and colorful peristome to this cross.

 

 

N. vogelii

N. vogelii is a beautiful species from Borneo. Like all Nepenthes, it demonstrates leaf dimorphism, so lower pitchers and upper pitchers are shaped differently. The lower pitchers (like this one) are cylindrical. 

Libertine botany?

I've been reading Guy de La Brosse's De la nature, vertu et utilité des plantes [On the Nature, Properties, and Usefulness of Plants] (1628). The book is not much read, either by botanists or humanists, and that's a shame, because La Brosse was one of the most original and forward-thinking intellectuals of his time.

Guy de la Brosse (1586-1641) was the médecin ordinaire [staff physician] to Louis XIII (1601-1643) and it was in this capacity that he obtained, in 1626, royal authorization to create a garden of medicinal plants in Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Victor, the Jardin des Plantes. In addition to conserving medically important plants, the garden would also serve as a laboratory and a teaching establishment. The Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris did not look favorably upon the competition and fought to prevent its opening. After a protracted dispute, the Jardin des Plantes opened in 1640.

View of the Jardin des Plantes

But the Jardin was not just any competition. It was Guy de La Brosse's brazen rejection of authority, his unorthodox botany, and his personal connections to high-profile freethinkers that especially troubled the conservative faculty or, as La Brosse dismissively called them, "philosophes par livres" [bookish philosophers]. La Brosse's quest for knowledge rested on empirical foundations, including the direct observation of botanical phenomena that led to the publication of De la nature, vertu et utilité des plantes in 1628. Ostensibly a book about botany, La Brosse's theory of plant sentience upsets the traditional understanding of the nature of the soul as tripartite--consisting of a vegetative part responsible for growth, an animal part responsible for locomotion and perception, and a rational part unique to human beings--and comes perilously close to proposing a materialist account of our vitality.

Detail from the frontispiece of De la nature [...] des plantes.

La Brosse's rejection of received wisdom and traditional authority is manifest in the frontispiece of De la nature des plantes, where the sun, here a symbol of enlightenment, shines on the motto "Truth and not Authority." There is a lot to say about the treatise, but I want to focus here on some of La Brosse's more daring theses: that plants have souls, that these souls are unique and indivisible, and ("la question la plus hardie" [the boldest question] by his own admission) that they are incorruptible.

La Brosse establishes in the first part of the treatise that plants, as living things, have souls (p. 18). The attributes of the vegetative soul--growth, nutrition, reproduction--are not unique to plants and thus, he concludes, these attributes are better understood as "faculties" of the soul, shared by all living things. Further, he locates the attributes of the sensitive or animal soul in plants, noting that plants move toward the object of their appetite (e.g., water, sun), some more dramatically than others. "The Cucumber," for example, "so loves water that if one places a full basin near its fruit, it will stretch out to reach it" (p. 60). A fanciful image? Sure. But it is also typical of La Brosse's forward-thinking empirical approach to the pursuit of truth, pitting direct observation against bookish authority. Such empirical evidence also proves, for La Brosse, that the souls of plants are unique, that no two plants are alike. "Let us observe [emphasis added] differences in plants of the same species that closely resemble one another, never will we encounter two exactly the same" (p. 32). Now, for the incorruptibility of plant souls, La Brosse anticipates and deftly avoids accusations of impiety by distinguishing between two "durées" [time spans]: one, divine and immortal, extends to the great beyond, the other, natural, exists as long as the world does. It this one that the souls of plants "enjoy" (p. 43). According to this view, plants cease to grow once they fulfill their allotted time span, at which point their souls retire in a kind of sleep to rest until called forth again. Perhaps, he conjectures, all plant souls have existed since the beginning (interestingly, he does not write "creation") of the world, coming and going in a kind of ceaseless botanical metempsychosis. Who fashioned these plant souls? "L'Artisan" [The Artisan], who may or may not be God. What does this have to do with philosophical libertinage? La Brosse does not go so far as to question openly the immortality of the human soul, but he does sketch out--through his defense of plant souls--an alternative that allows for the existence of a kind of materialist soul independent of the Christian framework.

I haven't yet figured out what's going on here, but I sense there's an untold story about botany's role in early modern freethought... 


Further reading:
La Brosse, Guy de. De la nature, vertu et utilité des plantes (Paris, 1628) Read on Gallica
Pintard, René. Le Libertinage érudit dans la première moité du XVIIe siècle. (Geneva: Slatkine, 2000)






 
  

No, this plant is not dead

This is Oeceoclades gracillima (also called O. roseovariegata), a miniature orchid from Madagascar.

The plant is quite alive, although its mottled, brown leaves might suggest otherwise. Growing terrestrially among leaf litter, the unusual coloration allows it to blend in to its surroundings, an example of crypsis.


Most species of Oeceoclades (pronounced ee-see-oh-clay-dees) are endemic to Madagascar, an island known for its weird and wonderful flora. O. gracillima hails from dry deciduous forests. The temperature does not vary much annually, but the area endures 6-8 months of seasonal drought, so organisms, like the famous baobab, have had to adapt accordingly. Unlike many other orchids, Oeceoclades spp. can take very little water and are more popular with succulent enthusiasts than orchid growers.

This is the only Oeceoclades I have (for now). I love the patterned leaves and their brown, purple, and black mottling.

O. gracillima is fairly easy to cultivate. A well-draining substrate is important because the thick, fleshy roots are prone to rot. I grow mine in a mix of lava rock, pumice, and fine-grade orchid bark. When actively growing, I water and fertilize regularly. Once the new growth has matured, I hold back on the water, offering just enough to keep the pseudobulbs from shriveling. Intermediate to warm temperatures are fine and the plant can handle low to moderate light. Though not what most people imagine when they hear the word "orchid," I think this understated beauty deserves to be more widely grown.

Rossolis

In an 1860 letter to geologist Charles Lyell, Darwin wrote that he "care[d] more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world." With a keen naturalist's eye, Darwin observed Drosera rotundifolia's capacity to capture insects, its sensitivity to touch, and its ability to secrete enzymes not unlike the digestive juices of animals. These observations would lay the groundwork for Insectivorous Plants, which appeared in 1875. Today, sundews are among the most recognizable carnivorous plants.

Yet long before Darwin hypothesized the insectivorous nature of the sundew, the plant's glistening tentacles captured the imagination of herbalists, who named it ros solis or "dew of the sun" because it appeared covered in dew even as the heat of the sun evaporated the moisture from surrounding plants. In turn, it was surmised that the sundew was useful for combating dehydration as well as for pulmonary problems, including asthma and "dry" cough. Modern studies suggest that the sundew may indeed have antitussive properties. 

Illustration from Jacques Daléchamps Histoire générale des plantes (Lyon, 1615)

But the sundew was more than medicine to early modern minds. Madeleine de Scudéry, celebrated seventeenth-century novelist, wrote of the sundew: "une fleur appellée rossolis qui vient d'une montagne de Languedoc, est toujours couverte de rosée pendant la grande ardeur du soleil, dans le même temps qu'elle sèche sur les herbes qui l'environnent." [A flower called rossolis that comes from a mountain in Languedoc is always covered in dew in the heat of the sun, which dries the surrounding vegetation.] This passage appears in her moral essay "On Flowers and Fruits," where the seemingly never-ending variety of botanical wonders, including the sundew, offers proof that "it pleased God to decorate the earth with such beauties."
For theologians, the sundew's marvelous ability to conserve its dew in the heat of the day was nothing short of miraculous. In a devotional book titled Les plaisirs de la vie spirituelle (1682), the Carmelite Dorothée de Saint-René assimilated the Virgin Mary, "Dew of Heaven" (Ros Coeli) to the sundew (ros solis). The plant "is marvelous in that, when exposed to the most ardent rays of the sun, it conserves dew in its leaves, which are fashioned like little spoons, such that it appears always covered in bright drops like pearls." The preacher's poetic description of the sundew sets the stage for the theological analogy he wishes to make: "Such was the humble Virgin, who [...] attracted the dew of the divine Word."
Of course, approaching Nature as a "great book" to be read in light of Christian doctrine was common practice. One of the most striking examples is found in Augustin Chesneau's emblem-book, Les Emblèmes sacrez sur le tres-saint et tres-adorable sacrement de l'Eucharistie (1667), a French translation of the original (much better titled, if you ask me) Orpheus eucharisticus (1657). The Latin title reveals the cleric's aspirations: like Orpheus, whose music calmed wild animals and coaxed rocks and trees to dance, God makes all of Creation sing. The book, a collection of one hundred emblems designed to encompass the vastness of the natural world (divided into sections on plants, animals, birds, stones, and so on) thus functions a the "great book of Nature" writ small, a theological field guide. The sundew appears as the 92nd emblem:

Humble souls, Chesneau explains, are like the little sundew (Rossolis) that grows in low, wet places. They are always "moistened with drops of heavenly grace's dew," especially when they are near the altar, where the "heat" of charity increases the production of heavenly dew (much like the heat of the sun appeared to increase the sundew's dewy appearance). Ultimately, the sundew is for Chesneau a figure of humility, contrasted with the "heights of self-esteem" that are exposed to "the most tempestuous vices" and "the winds of ambition."

There are probably many more references to sundews as marvelous, miraculous plants. Indeed, sundews continue to fascinate us not only by virtue of their insectivory, but also because of their unique and enchanting appearance. 

Leaf of Drosera anglica

 
   

Spring comes to Connecticut

The first day of Spring brought nearly five inches of snow to southern Connecticut. After an especially long, cold, and snowy winter, this, for all its hibernal beauty, was not a welcome sight this morning:

Luckily, Van Wilgen's garden center in Branford is holding its annual "Escape to Spring" event this weekend. It's a really wonderful event, with local vendors of food, gardening products, and crafts, cooking demonstrations, horticultural society tables, and plenty of precocious plants: daffodils, hyacinths, hellebores, etc. My partner and I spent the morning there and left, predictably, with a couple plants in tow. A small, fragrant narcissus and an unidentified Paphiopedilum that I picked up from the CT Orchid Society's table.

I don't have any Paphs in my collection, so couldn't pass this one up. Right now, it's nestled on the top shelf of my grow rack, behind my light-loving Nepenthes.