Ornamental Plants

The Garden• A garden is a place to grow fruits and vegetables, medicinal

herbs, and ornamental plants. Historically, most gardens have been used for all these purposes at once.

• The garden represents an image of paradise on Earth: the perfect place for peace, relaxation, solitude. The beauty of the natural world, enhanced and tamed for human use.

– The word “paradise” comes from ancient Persia, meaning “a walled garden”

– In the Bible, the first humans Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden.

– The top Google Image search hits for “paradise” are all tropical beaches!

• Common garden elements: plants, water (fountains, ponds, waterfalls, streams), shade, sculpture, places to sit, paths.

• Elements of design: color, texture, line, and form.– That about covers my knowledge of design.

• Two main sources of flower and garden knowledge: China and Japan, and European.

Apollonian vs. Dionysian • Many aspects of culture can be viewed

through this philosophical concept, which was first expressed in a well-developed form by Friedrich Nietszche in his book The Birth of Tragedy.

• The basic idea is that society moves back and forth between these two poles:– Apollonian traits: rational, logical, self-

controlled, ordered civilization– Dionysian traits: passionate, feeling,

irrational, chaos• Apollo was the god of the Sun, light, truth, and

medicine• Dionysus was the god of wine, insanity, and

ecstasy• In gardening, Apollonian gardens are ordered and

well-kept: everything growing in a designated position, in careful patterns, well-manicured. A Dionysian garden lets nature run wild. The two impulses present in society get reflected in gardens.

Ancient Gardens• Ancient Egyptian gardens were surrounded by walls. The

world outside was harsh, dry and too sunny, and the garden needed to be protected from it. The arid climate meant that gardens needed constant watering and attention. Ponds and irrigation ditches were used. Gardens were laid out in a formal, geometric pattern. Plants were more similar to wild plants: they hadn’t had the years of breeding and selection that our current garden plants have. Trees such as date palms, figs, and pomegranates provided shade as well as fruit.

• Gardening was popular in ancient Rome, where topiary was invented: trees pruned to fanciful shapes. Since many Romans lived in city apartments, window box gardens were used.

• Gardening was common in the Muslim world. A common design matched the Garden of Eden: four waterways linked to a central pool divided the garden into quarters.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon• Constructed about 600 BC by King Nebuchdnezzar

to please his homesick wife. She was from Persia, a more fertile and hilly place than the flat land of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

• It was one of the Seven Wonders of the World: popular places for tourists from ancient Greece and Rome.

• Destroyed an earthquake around 100 AD• Needed to pump water from the river to the top

of the structure.

French Gardens• The French gardening style was based on

symmetry and order: human dominance over nature. Geometric patterns and carefully pruned plants were used.

• The Gardens of Versailles reached their peak under Louis X!V (1638-1715). He was the Sun King, the center of the European universe at the height of French power.– At the center of the garden is the statue of

Apollo, the Greek god of the Sun, symbol of Louis XIV

• Grand views, extending to the horizon, contrasted with more intimate perspectives within the garden: fountains, grottoes, statues.

• The parterre was a common element. A rectangular planting bed composed of closely clipped hedges and colored gravel (and sometimes flowers), in a geometric design.

• Masses of color: carpet bedding of flowers.

English Gardens• The English garden can also be called a

landscape park. It developed in the 1700’s as a reaction to the formal French style. It presented an idealized view of the natural world.

• Lakes, lawns, gently rolling hills, groves of trees, classical Greek temples or scenic (fake) ruins.

• No symmetry, plants growing into their natural form. It is designed to appear artless and uncontrived.

• The ideal was blending with nature, so the garden did not have a visible wall. Sometimes a ditch was dug and a wall placed at the bottom: the outside world was kept separate, but the wall was not visible from the garden.

• The cottage garden is the English garden translated into a style for the middle class. The design is informal, and it uses dense plantings of flowers and edible plants. Most modern American gardens are derived from this style.

Chinese and Japanese Gardens• Gardening in China is at least as ancient as in Egypt. • Gardens in China sought a naturalistic look, a spiritual connection

with nature and away from the pressures of society. The garden was the living embodiment of a painting or a poem.

• Many plants and objects had symbolic meanings: bamboo is strong and resilient; pine is long-lived and persistent; lotus represents purity; peonies symbolize wealth.

• Essential elements: a small building with the best view of the garden, pools of water, a “mountain” with a tree, rocks, asymmetry

– Especially interesting rocks represented wisdom and immortality, and could be very expensive.

– Water elements included ponds, streams, and waterfalls. Goldfish was often in them.

• Plants were essential elements. Some common garden flowers come from China: chrysanthemum, peony, flowering plum, roses, camellia. But generally, plants were more valued for seasonal changes than flowers. These gardens tend to be more shades of green and brown and not bright colors.

Zen Gardens• Buddhist monks spread much Chinese culture to Japan

around 600 AD. Japanese gardening modified and expanded on Chinese ideas.

• Zen Buddhism is based on the idea that one can gain transcendent wisdom through the practice of meditation and contemplation, and that written doctrines are a hindrance to achieving Enlightenment. Direct experience of the Divine is what is needed, not common beliefs or rational arguments.

– Zen philosophy originated when the Buddha gave the Flower Sermon: he sat without speaking, twirling a flower and twinkling his eyes. Wisdom was communicated to his followers wordlessly.

• Zen gardens are used for contemplation. They are extremely simple and highly symbolic. Water is represented by raked gravel or sand. The garden consists of a few carefully placed rocks or shrubs amidst the gravel

– Raking the gravel is itself a form of meditation.

Cut Flowers• Most flowers are sold for big

holidays: Christmas, Mother’s Day , Valentine’s Day, plus weddings and funerals.

• There is a great deal of ethnic group specificity: for instance, white is the color of death in many Asian cultures, but it symbolizes purity in European cultures.

• In Victorian times (roughly 1840-1910), an elaborate language of flowers was developed.

• There are two primary flower arranging traditional: English Garden and Japanese. These traditions have become mixed in contemporary design.

Ikebana• Traditional Japanese flower arranging got its start with

Buddhist missionaries from China, around 600 AD. – There are over 3000 Ikebana schools in Japan, with many

different styles and philosophies.– Much of modern Western flower arranging is based on

Ikebana.

• The emphasis is on a minimalist style, with each element carefully placed and symbolizing some aspect of the world. Line, shape, and form are emphasized, with the greens and browns of leaves and wood important. Usually only a single flower color is used. The positions, angles, and sizes of various elements are prescribed.

– Elements often I groups of 3: heaven, earth, humanity; or sun, moon, earth, etc.

• In this example, the shin branch represents Truth, the soe branch represents support for the Truth, and the hikae branch and flowers moderate and balance the ideas presented in Truth.

– The kenzan is a spiked plant holder.

Some Ikebana Examples

English Flower Arranging

• The emphasis is on masses of complementary colors, often with a radially symmetric design. This is what florists usually produce. Containers are not emphasized: usually just a simple vase. Foliage is present as a background feature, but the emphasis is on brightly colored flowers.

• This example is a crescent arrangement. The basic shape is defined by sprays of small flowering branches. A group of focus flowers is placed low and centered to achieve visual balance and stability. Finally, a group of filler flowers are used to fill in the shape and taper off the ends.

• Modern high style floral design is mixture of Japanese and English ideas.

Some English Floral Arrangements

Roses

• The rose is probably the most well known and popular cut flower, and it is also a very popular garden flower.

• There are several cultivated species of rose, in the genus Rosa. Members of the rose family, along with many common fruits like apples, pears, peaches, apricots, strawberries and raspberries.

• Various species of wild rose are found in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, in both the Old World and the New World.

• The basic rose flower has 5 petals and looks much like an apple blossom. The flowers have many stamens. Most modern roses are the result of a mutation that converted the stamens into additional petals.

• The fruit of the rose, called the rose hip, grows below the flower after fertilization. It is a rich source of vitamin C, but it isn’t eaten as a fruit very much. Rose hip tea is a common herbal tea variety.

Roses• Rose cultivation probably began in China 5000 years ago

or so. However, they were also cultivated independently in the Middle East and Egypt from very early times.

• They were well known in the Roman Empire. The first distilled essential oil was attar of roses (from the Muslim Golden Age, when distillation was invented).

• Europe and western Asia had their own cultivated roses, which were popular from ancient times. They are pictured on Egyptian tombs, ancient Greece, and Rome.

• Over 250 species, with lots of ability to hybridize between them. Once a good cultivar is found, it is propagated vegetatively, through cuttings.

– Growing them from seed allows meiosis and genetic recombination, giving lots of new variants to work with.

• Useful traits: flowering more than once per season, disease resistance, vigor, good flowers (appearance and scent), novelty.

Modern Roses• Cultivated roses from China were introduced into Europe

in the 1600’s, at about the same time the tulip and other exotic flowers were introduced into Europe by the Dutch. At the time, the Dutch were very powerful in oceanic trade, especially in the spice trade.

• Rose breeding involves the hybridization of many species and cultivars. It has often been complex and undocumented.

• Napoleon’s wife, the Empress Josephine, decided to grow every type of rose in existence, in about 1800. She gathered many horticulture experts, who did much hybridization and breeding.

• The first modern rose was ‘La France’, developed in 1867. It was the first “hybrid tea rose”

– Old Garden roses are types that were present in Europe before the development of the hybrid tea rose. They have primarily Mediterranean ancestry (as opposed to Chinese). They are shades of red, pink and white, with strong scents.

‘La France’, the firstmodern rose.

ABC Model of Flower Development

• What causes modern roses to have so many petals?• Flowers have 4 whorls. From outer to inner: sepals, petals,

stamens, carpels. • When a flower bud gets started, the cells are not clearly

determined to be any particular organ. Which organ each whorl becomes depends on the expression of 3 groups of genes, called A, B, and C.

– Cells with only A genes expressed become sepals.– Cells with A and B genes expressed become petals– Cells with B and C genes become stamens– Cells with C only become carpels.

• Knocking out any of these genes by mutation alters what happens. One key finding: A and C genes inhibit each other, and if one is knocked out, the other spreads to all the cells.

– Knock out A: get a whorl of carpel, stamen, stamen, carpel– Knock out B: get a whorl of sepal, sepal, carpel, carpel– Knock out C: get whorl of sepal, petal, petal , sepal.

ABC Model and Double Flowers

• The main mutation that creates double roses is a C mutation, but not a complete knockout. Rather, it shifts the boundary between A and C. Thus, C is only expressed in a few cells while A is expressed in many. This gives many petal (the results of A+B) and few stamens (the results of B+C).

– This mutation has the additional effect of making the flower meristem indeterminate: it keeps producing new flowers inside the old flowers, resulting in many petals.

• A semi-double flower has more petals than a single, but it retains many stamens.

• A double flower has few or no stamens, and must be propagated vegetatively.

Tulips• Tulips are native to central Asia, places like Afghanistan and

Kazakhistan.• They are monocots, in the lily family.• The flower parts come in groups of 3, like most monocots. In

tulips, the sepals and petals are almost identical, and they get called tepals for this reason.

• They are perennials, storing food over the winter in bulbs and then sprouting new leaves and a flower stalk every spring.

• Bulbs are planted in the fall, and send up leaves and a flower stalk in the spring. The bulb itself vanishes during this period, but it gets regenerated after flowering has finished. Also, small bulblets appear. These can be harvested and replanted. It takes at least a year of growth for a newly formed bulb to flower.

• Tulips can be grown from seed, but it takes 5-8 years before flowering occurs. And, many varieties are sterile hybrids.

Tulip Breeding• Tulips have lots of genetic variation, so new varieties

were easy to create.• Like roses and many other garden flowers, tulips have

been hybridized in complex ways between many species. This means that most tulips are sterile. Tulip bulbs are vegetatively propagated clones of the original.

– Tulip breeders keep stocks of fertile tulip species, used to make new hybrids

• Tulips were widely grown in Persia and the Ottoman Empire. It is the national flower of Turkey.

• They were brought to Europe in the 1500’s. The official beginning of tulips in Holland is 1594. They became status symbols for the wealthy and socially prominent.

• Carolus Clusius, a botanist at the University of Leiden, popularized tulips and did much crossbreeding. He founded the Dutch tulip industry. The flowers were so pretty that people used to steal them from his garden.

Tulipomania• Holland (aka the Netherlands, home of the Dutch) was probably the richest

country in Europe in the 1600's, due to worldwide trading.• Between 1634 and 1637, tulips in Holland became very expensive. It is the

first recorded speculative bubble. At the height of the bubble, a single tulip bulb of the one variety sold for ten times the annual wages of a skilled craftsman. Another single bulb was exchanged for 12 acres of land.

– The main account of tulipomania comes from the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay, published in 1841 and still in print. Like many good stories, this one may exaggerate the truth a bit. Contemporary accounts are spotty.

• Most tulips have a solid color, or a two color scheme. Occasionally, a tulip will "break": produce a wild color pattern after several years of having a normal color scheme. This was very popular, the essence of beauty, to the Dutch. The pattern was inherited through the bulblets, but not the seed. Broken tulips were slow to reproduce, which contributed to their value.

– We now know tulip breaking is due to a virus infection.• The Dutch invented the futures market. Since tulips can only be dug up and

shipped between June and September, during other months people would bid on bulbs to delivered in season. They would buy and sell contracts for future delivery. Most contracts were sold to others, not actually delivered on.

Semper Augustus,the most expensiveof all tulips.

Speculative Bubbles• A speculative bubble is when the price of something becomes much

larger than its intrinsic value. With the tulips, the value was purely aesthetic: they were beautiful, but contributed nothing else of economic importance.

– The price is inflated, as with air, and a small event can cause the price to plummet.

• The causes of bubbles are unclear. But, there is a bit of herd mentality going on: if everyone else thinks tulip bulbs are worth a lot of money, then they must really be. And, you would be missing your chance for great wealth if you didn't start buying them right away! And the price keeps going up, which implies that it will always keep going up.

• The "greater fool" theory: fools buy tulips at inflated prices, but the price keeps going up as long as they can find greater fools to sell the tulips to.

• Bubbles are the subject of much economic research.• A more recent version: Beanie Babies. Stuffed animals that sold for

$5, but “rare” ones brought huge prices. One that I know of sold for $2000.

• The housing market in the early 2000’s is said to have been a bubble too.

Orchids• Orchids may be largest plant family. They are

monocots: parallel leaf veins and flowers with groups of three. Like tulips, the sepals and petals are similar and so are called tepals.

– Vanilla is in the orchid family. It is the only “useful” orchid.

• Most are tropical, but they grow worldwide, in all climates.

• Many orchids are epiphytes: they attach themselves to tree branches and get their moisture and nutrients from air, rain, and dust. They are not parasitic on the tree: they are merely using the tree as a support.

• Orchid flowers have many shape variations that cause them to be interesting horticulturally.

• One petal is always enlarged and modified to serve as a landing platform for the pollinators.

• Orchid seeds are extremely small and are produced in huge quantities. They blow in the wind to distant locations, carried by tiny wings.

Orchid Pollination• Orchids are pollinated by insects primarily. Pollination is rare,

but when it happens, millions of seeds are formed.• The pollen grains are glued together in a sticky mass that sticks

to the pollinator's head or abdomen. When the pollinator reaches a new flower, the pollen mass sticks to the stigma, the top of the female reproductive parts.

• The flowers attract pollinators by interesting mechanisms first described by Charles Darwin in his book The Fertilisation of Orchids. (The original title is much longer)• This was the first book he wrote after The Origin of Species. • The idea of coevolution between the plants and their insect

pollinators comes from this.

• Orchis mascula was Darwin’s model. The two pollen masses are connected by stalks to adhesive balls that are kept moist in cups. When an insect sticks its head into the flower to get to the nectar, the adhesive balls are pulled out of the cup and stick to the insect’s head. The stalks then rotate the pollen mass downward, so they match the position of the female flower parts in the next flower.

Orchid Flower Structure

Coevolution• Coevolution is the idea that changes in one organism and triggered by changes in

partner organisms. – For example: Host-parasite interactions: an improvement in the host’s immune system

will lead to selection of traits in the parasite to evade that improvement. (Or, the parasite will go extinct).

• Plant-pollinator interactions are mutually beneficial. The plant needs to provide a benefit for the pollinator in return for getting its pollen dispersed. The plant also needs to attract the pollinator: orchids are especially good at this.

• What we see as beauty in flowers is really a mechanism to attract insect pollinators. Appearance and scent.

– And, attracting humans to propagate them also increases the evolutionary fitness of the plants.

• Orchid mimicry: the flowers resemble insects sometimes. Pseudocopulation: the orchid resembles a female pollinator, and the male tries to copulate with “her”. Pseudoantagonism: the orchid resembles an enemy species, and the pollinator attacks it.

• Others attract pollinators with nectar, or with scents. Some scents are nice and flowery, or odd things like chocolate or lemon. Other scents are awful, like rotten meat.

Orchid Mimicry

Insect proboscis with several attached pollen masses

On the basis of an orchid withA 10 inch nectary, Darwin predicted(correctly) the existence of a mothwith a corresponding proboscis

Fly orchid. The two yellow“eyes” are the pollen masses.

Bee orchid.

Orchid mimic of praying mantis

Orchidelirium• Orchids have been collected since the 1800’s by wealthy

fanatics. “orchidelirium”. They are beautiful and hard to grow. They grow in exotic locations, so only the wealthy or the adventurous can afford to acquire them. They became a mark of wealth and distinction. Orchids are still the subject of massive collection and breeding efforts. Many are endangered species, which increases their value.

• Orchids are beautiful, with many interesting flower shapes and unusual scents. There are many species, which often grow in very limited ranges in exotic locations. They hybridize readily and sometimes produce new and exciting forms.

– The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, is a non-fictional account of an orchid collector in Florida. Also Orchid Fever, by Eric Hansen

• It takes 8 months for a seed to germinate, and 7 years from seed to flower. This gives developers of new hybrids a long window to make a profit.

• Orchids can be easily propagated by tissue culture: growing the plant cells with hormones, then manipulating the hormone levels to produce roots and shoots.

Rothschild’s Slipper,worth $5000 for a single stem.

Some Orchids

More Orchids