Yesterday I wrote about Hemlock, a poisonous plant that can kill. In the interest of fair and balanced reporting – and no, no false equivalencies here – I will today introduce a plant that heals, in ways just called for by our current times where war-like action by state and military forces start to dominate our streets, tear gassing peaceful protesters, if only to create photo-ops near churches.
The outside beauty of Borage, Borago officinalis L., is matched by the positive effects of the chemical properties contained inside. The leaves, flowers and seeds of the plant stimulate the adrenaline gland when ingested, helping to produce adrenaline which enables flight or fight responses in times of stress. In fact, Roman soldiers prepared themselves for battle by drinking Borage wine, claiming: “Ego borago gaudia semper ago” – I, Borage, will always bring courage. Both ancient Greeks and Romans also believed that it was useful as an anti-depressant, or, as they put it, cheer the heart and lift melancholia. Aren’t we in dire need of that? Courage and less sadness, so we can resume to act rather than feel paralyzed?
Liquid distilled from the leaves helps with the damage of steroid therapy (often use while fighting cancer,) alleviates dry coughs (lingering effects from Covid-19 infections,) and eases the effects of menstrual disorders. Borage poultices can help with inflamed skin and eczema.
Throughout the centuries, healers and now contemporary naturopathic practitioners all incorporated Borage into their arsenal of medicines. Eventually, science caught up: Borage is used by pharmacological industries as an antioxidant due to its bioactive compound content, called phenolics. These acids exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and, as it turns out, anti-carcinogenic effects. Put simply, both wild and cultivated Borage provides chemical blueprints that can be used in the fight against cancer, infection and improve the immune-system.
And if that isn’t enough to lift your spirits, the plant also makes for one of the best sauces around – the traditional green sauce of the region around Frankfurt am Main. Here is the recipe. ( I assume it’s a sauce. Or is it gravy? Or dressing? How many more decades do I need to live here to figure out the difference? For once German is simple: it uses one word for all three! Soße.
And here’s the last bit of cheery news: Borage is quite effective to protect neighboring plants in your garden from pests and diseases. It attracts a lot of bees (as you can verify in the photographs) which also helps to pollinate your vegetable patch.
People have obviously always known it for its value – if you look at 17th century flemish paintings, for example, you find quite a lot of Borage blossoms mixed in with the other flowers that signify importance, either in terms of economic or religious value (tulips, lilies, carnations.) I am posting a few samples here but encourage those who love a good still life to check out the National Galleries’ recent exhibition. There is barely a flower painting that does not have Borage flowers peek through here or there.
Insects with Creeping Thistle and Borage Jan van Kessel the ElderBouquet in Clay Vase Jan Brueghel the Elder (Excerpt)
Flowers in a White Stone Vase, Dirck de Bray (Borage on the marble slab)
Bonus: here is a clip of how British florists recreated a Dutch masterpiece with real flowers, in huge dimensions, in honor of the exhibit.
And if you think we should not spend time with trifling issues like beauty while our country burns – I politely disagree. We need to preserve our sanity, keep our mental resources together, and that can only happen if we look at beautiful and hope-instilling things as well. That is how other generations survived far worse as well. Here is a reminder: Shostakovitch’s Symphony #11, commemorating the violent crushing of the 1905 uprising, Bloody Sunday, in Russia (and also hinting at the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.) (Music starts at 5:48)
As with so many things in life, where poison or rot is only revealed by a closer look beneath the beautiful surface, so it was when I hiked among this fairy-tale landscape of a sea of white blossoms last Friday, an incandescent lace pattern against the fresh spring greenery.
What you expect to see in meadows or at the edges of woodlands is cow parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris. What I found was its rather more famous cousin hemlock (both are in the families of carrots,) Conium maculatum, which looks almost identical, but is highly toxic, even deadly. It grows tall, sometimes over 5 feet, with leaves that are triangular and lacy, and little flowers clustered im umbels – just like cow parsley. The only way to figure out which is which for the lay botanist not schooled in subtle variations, is to look closely at the stem: if it has blotches of purple or dark red color, it is hemlock.
Medieval lore insisted that hemlock grew on the hills of Golgatha and Christ’s blood touching it upon crucification – the purplish spots – made it forever toxic.
Those crucified die by asphyxiation – they cannot breathe.
Death by hemlock comes through lack of air as well. Hemlock contains a poisonous alkaloid named coniine, which has a chemical structure similar to nicotine. This poison disrupts the central nervous system—a small dose can cause respiratory collapse. Death can result from blockage of the neuromuscular junction caused by coniine. In practice, it eventually stops your ability to breathe, causing you to suffocate.
We all know why I am thinking of this right now: the killing by police of George Floyd, another suffocation of an unarmed Black man, and poisonous state violence, from up on high through the ranks of the police who wield teargas, nightsticks, rubber and pepper projectiles with abandon, having people gasp for air. Or the smoke from the fires that are erupting in the course of the protests, set by those enraged, or those intent to provoke and instigate blame, manipulating the racial divide. Or breathless, distracting focus on property destruction, so we can maintain a state of denial about police violence against human bodies. Or Covid-19 which makes it impossible for drowning lungs to provide you with oxygen, or hard to breathe through masks that are a necessity to prevent the spread of the disease.
Bushtit parent with chicks lined up above the hemlock
It is more than that, though: as Dahlia Lithwick points out in one of the most thoughtful short pieces I’ve seen in recent journalism, you can’t breathe when you are unable to stop screaming in anger or frustration or plain fear. You can’t breathe when you are sobbing or terrified. You can’t breathe, or breathe with shallow intakes, when you are forced to be in public or work in places where you are not protected and surrounded by potential spreaders of a lethal virus. We will also not be able to breathe if clean and cool enough air is no longer available due to the climate catastrophe, at least for most of humanity stuck in the places where it will unfold in first extremes.
“To be dying of a lack of air is a powerful symbol; it’s a metaphor for scarcity, for insufficiency. It’s a marker for ways in which the “richest country in the world,” the “most powerful nation in the world,” and the “leader of the western world” somehow finds itself gasping. Fighting for what should be plentiful….. We can’t breathe, and the words “last gasps” seem to have taken on a new force as we contemplate the stunning fact that we all breathe the same air, whether we like it or not, and that a nation in which only some people can draw breath safely is not a nation, but rather a tenuous hostage situation.”
To be confronted with or dying of a lack of air is a traumatizing experience. I was 13 years-old when first put on a post-operative ventilator, after 9 hours of lung surgery, and then again at age 16. It is drowning with full consciousness, the very essence of life, of living somehow clogging your throat, unable to get in or out, accompanied by ever rising panic. I do not wish that on my worst enemy. Much less on all those who are exposed to variations of that experience now, due to no fault of their own other than having been born into a certain race or class or circumstances beyond their control.
And yet here we live in a country and a time where it is inescapable. Imagine to be a person of color, or their parent, the horror of slavery encased in your DNA, venturing out daily into a world that disrespects you, denigrates you, debases you, discriminates against you. A world where you are deprived of opportunities or dispossessed if you grabbed them. A world where physical harm awaits you to the point of being killed when you encounter those who, stoked by group mentality in their like minded corps, empowered by weapons, sheltered by partial immunity, and fortified with the knowledge that historically they never ever had to bear the consequences for unlawful, excessive violence, can decide to make you gasp for your last breath. It is a life of trauma.
How can you breathe?
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You might vaguely remember that Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, chose a cup of hemlock as his execution method when sentenced to die for religious disobedience and corrupting the young. Officially he was condemned for his teachings, but political motivations were behind it, since he quite literally engaged in civil disobedience (Martin Luther King, Jr. would cite it in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”)
Through the reports of his students (he never wrote anything himself) we know that one of the questions that concerned him was personal ethics. Why do we do wrong when we genuinely know what is right? He believed that we go wrong when the perceived benefits seem to outweigh the cost. We have not developed the right “art of measurement,” correcting the distortions that skew our analyses of benefit and cost.
In line with Socratic method – instilling knowledge through a questioning dialogue, rather than provide answers directly – I ask those of us who are White, privileged, living in relative security from state violence or racist encounters in public for our own measurement:
What kind of civil disobedience is appropriate when all other peaceful methods have failed to right a wrong?
What kind of actions are needed to stop racially motivated killings?
What means do we have to shift the value attached to preserving property compared to the value of preserving human health and life (on all fronts, not just the direct killing through police, but the endangerment through exposure to to lethal diseases or hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, lack of education, science phobia etc etc.)
How do we become conscious of language that uses a passive mode for protestors gettin hurt (the journalist lost her eye when struck by a projectile,) versus an active mode when protesters act (they laid a dumpster fire)?
How do we change the fact that we judge the protestors by the most violent elements among them (those rioting looters), versus allowing the “a few bad apples” schema application for structural police violence?
What price are we willing to pay for changing a system that is inherently unjust? What are our personal ethics when it comes to giving up privilege?
Some of the answers can be found here: I have recommended Kendi’s book before. (#HowToBeAnAntiracist by @DrIbram is sold out on Amazon and third party sellers on that site are engaging in major price gouging. Please order on @Bookshop_Org or from any indie such @PoliticsProse or @Shakespeare_Co.)
Some of the answers can be found by honestly looking into the mirror; a closer look might reveal a paper-thin membrane between the truth and denial, one that could easily be ripped off to allow living up to our purported ethics.
Here is Lianne La Havas singing Paperthin. I chose this music because it is about human connectedness, not afraid of strong emotions, and as immediate, un-artifical a musical experience s we can have right now.
And here is evidence of a red thread through history, particularly for minority groups who always suffered from state-sanctioned prosecution.
I cannot think of another time of the year when the landscape around us is as intensely, profusely patterned as it is now. Billowing patches of wild flowers, carpets of fresh grasses and nettles, whole seas composed of lupines and chamomile, color and form and bees wherever you look. Blooming,buzzing confusion comes to mind, when you blink at it, but that is of course a quote by William James published in his 1890 Principles of Psychology and referring to babies’ perception. (And boy, did he get it wrong, as we now know 130 years later. Infant perception is fit from the get go.)
I know, I know, some will argue that the color carpets of autumn’s fallen leaves match the spring profusion, or that the geometric lines of wintery, stark, leaf-less branches are prime examples of pattern – please don’t. Just leave my May enthusiasm unchallenged! Uncurbed enthusiasm is what I need right now. Lest you want me to resume uncurbed wailing about politics and administrative utterances of human capital stock ready to work... No? Thought so.
I do not know some of the plants I photographed last week, identification welcome. But I thought it would be fun to juxtapose the billowing forms with art that is the opposite – exacting geometric lines, connected to nature as well, in some ways, or just connected to the world as photographed.
I am talking about the embroideries of Dutch-born, California-based Natalie Ciccoricco, who has a wonderful eye, a steady hand and in some of her work a deft sense of humor (as well as on her website where she goes by Mrs. Ciccoricco. At least I assume that is meant as a joke.)
Her most recent series of embroideries on recycled aper used found twigs and branches, encasing them in geometrically refined line patterns with a remarkable sense of balance. Here is a page where you can see the diversity within that body of works (Nesting).
I had first seen her images of circles – a series called color holes – embroidered on old photographs or landscapes, vintage postcards, images of SF houses etc., which struck me as creative in the radial pick-up of the color palettes.
They are also artful in the sense that they shift the spatial relationships while adding an eerie artificial element. Fabric artists are really seeing a renaissance, don’t they.
So, juxtaposing the straight with the diffuse, the carefully selected palette with the organically haphazard one, craft with nature – I think we have busied our eyes enough to allow ourselves to forgo reading the news. (Ha, got the hint at politics in twice!)
And music, what else could it be, will juxtapose the violin with the piano, in Beethoven’s Spring sonata (# 5, Frühlings-Sonate.)
One of my favorite outbursts in my ongoing battle with the deer in my garden is: “Have you no shame?” Preferably yelling it loudly, as much as my grumpy lungs allow, or my consideration for my lovely neighbors who don’t need more of my screeching. Not that the deer react – they go on munching on my rose buds, my pink wild-geranium flowers, my columbines, their business – you name it.
Even in the wild, well, in the wilds of Tualatin, where they should be less accustomed to human/deer interaction they do not budge. Photographs from Monday’s walk are evidence that I could approach them to up to 2 meters with my small point&shoot camera. Then again, I did not yell, because I was happy to see them anywhere but in my stripped-down flowerbeds.
Much to know about deer, including the fact, among others, proclaimed by a science site: “The Chinese water deer is the only species that doesn’t shed its antlers, because it doesn’t have any.” Glad that could be added to the canon of irrelevant but funny bits in my brain.
Levantine Cave Painting Art, dated from the end of the Mesolithic Age and during the Neolithic Age at Valltorta-Gassulla Cultural Park in Spain near Valencia.
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I’m actually more interested in talking about shame rather than deer today, since the absence of the former, whether among those cloven-hoofed ungulates or certain members of the political sphere, has significant consequences for our well-being. Thoughts about shame were triggered by a book review of a book by Ute Frevert, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and director of its Center for the History of Emotions.
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Adam and Eve, (1526)
The Politics of Humiliation: A Modern History, now translated from the German by Adam Bresnahan, concerns the relationship between power and shame, shaming, or humiliation. Three areas of interest are used to explain the psychological mechanisms: shaming as punishment for individual transgression in the political, public sphere, humiliation online and in school, and foreign policy between countries. I look forward to reading about the history of how shaming developed across the centuries. “It is the story of the democratisation of the right to dignity and honor, which at different times were regarded as belonging only to the aristocracy and not to commoners, to adults and not to children, to men more than women, to a sovereign and not to a people. ” It is certainly interesting to think that not only the display rules of emotions differ between cultures, or genders, but that there were differences, across time, in who had a right to a particular feeling, or the power to induce it.
Attributed to JOHN FERNELEY JR. (British 1781-1860) The Stag Hunt
The ever looming memory of Nazi public shaming of women married to Jews, (or Norwegian public shaming of women in love with German soldiers) also raises questions about gendered approaches to shame: women often had their hair cut forcibly and in public, humiliation always directed at their bodies, in war (ancient and recent) often through the ultimate humiliation of rape.
Frida Kahlo The Wounded Deer (1946)
Found this stag on a hike on Mt. Hood near Paradise Meadow two years ago
As a cognitive psychologist I am of course most interested in how an emotion can be utilized to enact power or manipulate people, mechanisms spelled out in a 2018 interview with the author here. The distinction between shaming and humiliation is important. Shaming was always used as punishment for a norm-defying person to get them to repent and then back into the fold. Humiliation, on the other hand, has the goal to stigmatize the person and set them apart from the group. The state or political actors historically used these mechanisms, but nowadays on-line platforms have joined in, with body/fat-shaming just one example (which reminds me: I did NOT find Speaker Pelosi’s fat shaming of a certain monster appropriate, in fact it irritated me to no end. You can’t join the gutter.)
Here is the contradictory part: on the one hand we, as a society, value honor and respect (and rightfully decry its absence), but on the other hand we show increasing appetite for public humiliation, just look at all those reality shows. The psychological mechanisms seem to point to a gain in self esteem or sense of group membership when we berate and belittle others, openly and in front of everyone. If we are part of the group that is humiliating rather than humiliated, it gives us a sense of security and belonging, as well as power. And if we create specific out-groups through acts of humiliation we can utilize their status for our political purposes, directing and displacing anger at those victims. (Although seemingly, if we are paid enough, we are also willingly complying with a potential state of humiliation – just look at the lines of the casting show. Honor has a price, after all, as Frevert puts it.)
Franz Marc Crouching Deer (1911)
I think, well, I hope that knowing about the mechanisms of how humiliation works enables us to inoculate ourselves against related attempts to employ it as a tool, attempts surely to increase in the context of the election campaign. If humiliation thrives on having a public participate, it is up to us, the public, to refuse to be participants in the spectacle. We can turn away.
Now all I wish is for the deer to do the same.
Today you have a choice between Mozart’s The Hunt and Haydn’s (The Hunt) and Cesar Franck’s Accursed Hunter – maybe the latter felt some shame….
I had to laugh out loud when I read that sentence embedded in an erudite prose poem on snails. They are hell on salad, indeed – and bring up a fond memory of a long ago trip with my then 13 year-old to France. There we were, having lunch in an outdoor café, when what I thought to be a black olive began to move…. the waiter, resenting that I called him over, just shrugged, did not even take the plate away, much less took it off the bill or compensated with a free dessert. “What did you assume,” a bystander at the next table declared, “after all, it’s Marseille.” My son’s aversion to French waiters, who regularly scolded him for not finishing the food on his plate, a move long given up by his mother, went up a notch.
Here is another passage from the poem (it is too long to print here, therefor the link above,) revealing Francis Ponge‘s artistry with words as much as observations:
“There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.“
One might add: their pace…..
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Ponge (1899-1988) was an interesting character and marvelous wordsmith. He was keen on creating a “visual equivalence” between language and subject matter by emphasizing word associations and by manipulating the sound, rhythm, and typography of the words to mimic the essential characteristics of the object described.” Seems more like an auditory equivalence to me, but what do I know.
Trained as a lawyer and philosopher, he was loosely connected to the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, and affiliated with the French Communist Party in 1937, and was active during the war in organizing the Resistance movement among journalists. He left the Party in 1947 decrying its embrace of Stalinism. In 1952 he became a professor at the Alliance Française and started to concentrate on writing. His politics remained progressive, though, and his choice of subjects – the everyday, common use, down-to-earth objects of the material world around us in some way echo his commitment to make the world a better place. Being mindful about the things around us and respectful of nature were frequent themes in his work. He was made Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1959 and received the French Academy’s grand prize for poetry in 1972 and the National Poetry Prize in 1981.
His early work had a focus on small things. Soap, shells, cigarettes, plants, – and, of course, snails. There is something to be learned from looking at the minute, then extrapolating from it to the larger world around us. I find myself doing that as a photographer as well and maybe his astute observations crafted into detailed descriptions of the visual qualities of things explains why I am drawn to his early writings.
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And so it was some days ago, when the rains had once again made the woods into a muddy, moist, verdant, dripping landscape where fungi unfolded in full curves and snails and slugs slimed their way across the glistening surfaces.
My camera depicted, as did Ponge’s poetic words, but stuck to the observable, in contrast to his musings. For one so interested in a materialistic aesthetic it is surely weird to anthropomorphize the feelings of snails.
“It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.
They are a little vain about this convenient ability: “Look at me, a vulnerable and sensitive being, who is nevertheless protected from unwanted guests, and so always in possession of happiness and peace of mind!” It’s not surprising the snail holds his head so high.
“At the same time I am glued to the earth, always touching it, always progressing, though slowly, and always capable of pulling loose from the soil into myself. Après moi le déluge, I don’t care, the slightest kick may roll me anywhere. I can always get up again onto my single foot and reglue myself to the dirt where fate has planted me, and that’s my pantry: the earth, the most common of foods.”
Oh well, to each their own. I certainly appreciate that there are people other than me who indulge in the beauty of these creatures, even though I regularly smite them when they decide to eat my garden. Hell on salad and hell on hostas, too. Aesthetic appreciation only goes so far.
Here is a strange snail ballet from 2019, part of Cryptic’s Sonica Festival.
From the announcement: “176 snails will travel to Kings Place to take centre stage in a live sonic installation like no other. French artists Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes and Cyril Leclerc conduct an immersive sensorial experiment as they harness each snail with a small diode. Slow Pixel highlights Kings Place’s theme of ‘time’ and invites the audience to slow down as the snails draw their individual trajectories through this sensory environment.”
If Leclerc’s music is too jarring (certainly for my Monday brain), here is something classical, lilting albeit at a snail’s pace, the Adagio from Mahler’s 9th.
And here is a shorter prose poem about the substance that makes snails (presumably) happy, particularly on this rainy Monday morning:
The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different rates. In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest. A little distance from the walls to the right and left plunk heavier drops, one by one. Here they seem about the size of grains of wheat, the size of a pea, while elsewhere they are big as marbles. Along gutters and window frames the rain runs horizontally, while depending from the same obstacles it hangs like individually wrapped candies. Along the entire surface of a little zinc roof under my eyes it trickles in a very thin sheet, a moiré pattern formed by the varying currents created by the imperceptible bumps and undulations of the surface. From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.
Each of its forms has its particular allure and corresponds to a particular patter. Together they share the intensity of a complex mechanism as precise as it is dangerous, like a steam-powered clock whose spring is wound by the force of the precipitation.
The ringing on the ground of the vertical trickles, the glug-glug of the gutters, the miniscule strikes of the gong multiply and resonate all at once in a concert without monotony, and not without a certain delicacy.
Once the spring unwinds itself certain wheels go on turning for a while, more and more slowly, until the whole mechanism comes to a stop. It all vanishes with the sun: when it finally reappears, the brilliant apparatus evaporates. It has rained. Translated from the French
In 1489 Albrecht Dürer painted an iris (Schwertlilie, as they are also called in German, literally translated as sword lily.) He was not the first (da Vinci had drawn them in great detail) nor the last painter to depict this plant – it is probably the most frequently offered flower in visual art right after the rose. In fact one of the earliest known artwork of an iris is a fresco in King Minos’ palace on the island of Crete from 2100 BC.
It was probably not just their beauty that attracted artists, but their symbolism, handed down from Greek mythology where she personified the rainbow and served (in Homer’s Iliad, for example) as a messenger of the gods. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, she was the daughter of Thaumas and the ocean nymph Electra. As the books tell me, in Hesiod’s works, at least, she had the additional duty of carrying water from the River Styx in a ewer whenever the gods had to take a solemn oath. The water would render unconscious for one year any god or goddess who lied. Can’t we have that here and now – for self-declared deities as well, given that it is only half a year until November and a long slumber would protect the nation? But I digress. You should be used to that now, though.
Here are a few samples from the 17ty century on. I will skip most of the golden period of Dutch flower paintings, since we would never get to the end, so much beauty there.
Maria Sybille Merian Late 17th century – she of the German Wanderlust – one of my heroines. Packed everything up late in life to travel to Surinam, lusting after its flora and fauna…. Iris xiphium, variety, engraved by Langlois, from ‘Choix des Plus Belles Fleurs’, 1827 (coloured engraving) by Pierre Joseph Redoute
And here are some of the most famous of them all, from van Gogh in his declining years (who saw none of the proceeds this painting fetched not long ago, some 53 million dollars,) from Monet of the garden that was central to his artistic career and finally to O’Keefe, who we have probably seen as poster art for so long that we have ceased to appreciate the inherent power of her floral painting.
Claude Monet Irises 1914 – 1917
I have always been fascinated by irises, because they undergo visible transformation from the very tightly wrapped, spindle-like blossoms promising wonder, to the unfolding of decadent beauty in shape, color and velvety or silken texture, not coincidentally tempting sexual interpretation, to the metamorphosis into something slimy, curly, shriveled, an ugly death – they do not elegantly drop their petals, or droop the entire blossom like a fainting Victorian lady, they just stand there and decay into mush. Beauty carrying within it visible destruction.
When I was young I went for the showy specimens, trying to make watercolors of them to my eternal irritation, ripping up expensive paper, never finding them satisfactory. These days I like the wild irises better, dainty swaths of color in the landscape, often just glimpsed through large bushes of those sword-like leaves. The yellow flag iris, in particular, seems to be so beautiful against the backdrop of its favorite habitat – the edges of water.
Wouldn’t you know it: they are an invasive pest, even though they purify water by removing heavy metals and nutrients in agricultural runoff with their roots. “This fast-growing and fast-spreading invasive plant can outcompete other riparian (water loving) plants, forming almost impenetrable thickets.” — Okanagan and Similkameen Invasive Species Society.
In Oregon we have the most beautiful iris show garden and horticulturist exposition an hour’s drive South of Portland. Schreiner’s Iris Garden has been one of my favorite outings in May for some years, but it is closed now due to Covid-19. Some photographs from the past, then, mixed with some from this week from my walks, linking to the present just like Iris used the rainbow as a conduit to connect one world above to the other below.
(Sing all a green willow, willow willow willow,) With his hand in his bosom and his head upon his knee. (Oh willow, willow, willow Shall be my garland.)
He sighed in his singing and made a great moan… I am dead to all pleasure, my true love she is gone…
The mute bird sat by him was made tame by his moans… The true tears fell from him, would have melted the stones…
Come all you forsaken and mourn you with me… Who speaks of a false love, mine’s falser than she…
Let love no more boast her in palace nor bower… It buds, but it blasteth ere it be a flower…
Though fair and more false, I die with thy wound… Thou hast lost the truest lover that goes upon the ground, sing…
Let nobody chide her, her scorns I approve… She was born to be false, and I to die for her love…
Take this for my farewell and latest adieu… Write this on my tomb, that in love I was true…”
Othello, 4.3
You’d probably figured out there would be no happy ending after you listened to Desdemona and later her maid sing this song, even if you never heard of Othello before. Shakespeare really knew how to punish with willow: In Hamlet, Ophelia falls to her watery death when the willow branch she had been sitting on, gives up its ghost. In 12th Night Viola moans about unrequited love with reference to willows.
Willows have been prominent in mythology – Hecate was the goddess of the willow and the moon, Apollo’s harp was made of willow wood, Orpheus carried willow branches during his travels in the underworld. They also played an important role in literature, both in Western Europe, Russia and China where they were seen as a symbol of immortality and renewal.
They were adored by individuals for whatever reason – Napoleon, for example, sat forever under his beloved willow tree in exile on St. Helena and eventually was buried under it. (It is claimed that a clone of this very tree now lives next to I-5 in Seattle, in fact has done so for 135 years, which is weird in itself given that willows don’t live long, 30 years on average. Here is the full story of how a tree migrated from France via San Francisco to Washington state.)
Most people think of willows as weeping willows, those gracious, voluminous trees that you don’t want to be near when they crack and fall over, which they do with regularity….
I am more fascinated by the regular straight or bushy ones, who grow faster than most plants on earth (some up to 30 meters high!), don’t mind having wet feet, and act as a local pharmacy to deer who make use of the painkiller in their bark, and people who have used their bark as medicines since Etruscan times. (I’m too lazy to get up right now and photograph it, but a self seeded willow in my yard needed a protective wrap recently, because the deer rubbed their itchy antlers to get to the aspirin-like compound in it, completely destroying the trunk’s bark.)
Yes, aspirin. Well, salicin (named after Salix, the genus name of the willow tree), which formed the basis of the discovery of aspirin. To this day there are conflicting opinions who actually deserves the honor of having invented it in 1890, but it made a fortune for Bayer, the German pharmaceutical company and is now the most sold drug in the world. Was it the head of the pharmaceutical division, which was responsible for developing new drugs, the chemist working for that division (who invented heroin use a few months later), or the head of the pharmacology section, which was responsible for clinical trials? Here is a fun read about the history.
In addition to its medicinal value – Native Americans called willows the toothache tree – it has many practical functions: great for weaving baskets, perfect for making charcoal for drawing, paper pulp, and daub-and wattle structures.
And in the conflict department: in many countries, particularly England, they now use new adaptations of traditional methods. Willow cuttings are rooted and woven into a living fence on the riverbank, provide highly effective erosion control at a low cost, using a renewable and biodegradable material. Scientists also work on finding ways to use willows in biofiltration systems to purify water.
In Australia, on the other hand, most willow species are termedweeds of national significance. Their invasive nature, causing flood and erosion along stream beds, reducing water quality and amounts of available oxygen to aquatic plants, their water uptake being humongous, all threaten stream health. Much legislation is planned or enacted to control spread and eradicate the “infestation.”
It’s never easy, is it? In ecology they are seen as good and bad actors. In literature they signify death and renewal. Their medicinal properties, known for 3500 years, are exploited by patents. And in my garden they attract these bucks soothing their antlers by rubbing the bark only to go on and eat every flower in sight. I am so done with the deer….
It is, however, easy to revel in the willow trees’ beauty. Stark shadow play in the wintry season, bright, earliest green in the spring, lightening up the groves. Dotted with the most delicate signs that renewal is upon us. Makes my head ache less simply by looking at them, rather than chewing their bark!
In 1917 a ‘Lupin’ banquet was given in Hamburg at a botanical gathering, at which a German Professor, Dr. Thoms, described the multifarious uses to which the Lupin might be put. At a table covered with a tablecloth of Lupin fibre, Lupin soup was served; after the soup came Lupin beefsteak, roasted in Lupin oil and seasoned with Lupin extract, then bread containing 20 per cent of Lupin, Lupin margarine and cheese of Lupin albumen, and finally Lupin liqueur and Lupin coffee. Lupin soap served for washing the hands, while Lupin-fibre paper and envelopes with Lupin adhesive were available for writing. (Ref.)
I guess, the guy liked lupins. Turns out, he was not the only one. In 1949, Connie Scott (later know as the Lupin Lady), of Godley Peaks Station in New Zealnd, “scattered lupin seeds along the roadside. She bought about £100 worth from the local stock and station agent, hiding the bill from her husband for many months, hoping simply to make the world more beautiful.” It started an ecological disaster, as well as becoming a source for economic gain both from tourist trade – travelers arrive in flocks to marvel at the beauty – and sheep farming in otherwise barren regions.
What is it with lupins? On the one hand, they (particularly the white and yellow varieties) are a high-protein plant source, a real alternative to soy beans. Given that the global demand for meat, dairy and fish products for human consumption is recognized as unsustainable due the high environmental impact of animal production and given our knowledge about the rise in diseases associated with excessive consumption of animal products, plant-based protein really looks promising. Lupin use as a protein crop is widely spread in Australia and now recommended for European farmers, once some advanced breeding techniques are developed to provide new lupin varieties for socio-economically and environmentally sustainable cultivation.
Ironically, the protein these plants provide is also widely used in sheep farming, so we all can enjoy one more rack of lamb….
This is where the conflict between conservationists and farmers arises, at least in New Zealand. Lupins clog braided river beds, providing shade for many invasive species of weeds to move in and they are disturbing nesting sites for endangered birds – Black stilts and certain terns need to nest on gravel beds in these rivers, which are now grown over. The environmental agencies are bowing to the sheep farmers’ needs, with scant efforts to control the spread of the plant that gets carried far in the sheep’s fleeces, with landowners not taking any responsibility. Ecologists see them as uncontrollable weeds like scotch broom, their spreading soon to be unstoppable across the entire land
In Oregon we have, strangely, the opposite problem. Kincaid’s lupine or Oregon lupine is regionally endemic from Douglas County, Oregon north to Lewis County, Washington. They are now threatened due to the loss of prairie lands where they once flourished. The smaller the prairies – a result of urbanization and use for agriculture – the larger the distance between them, which means seeds have a harder time being spread into suitable environments to grow. We finally got a critical habitat designation in 2006, after the plant had been declared threatened in 2000. The was essential because they are the primary larvae food plant for the endangered Fender blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides fenderi), which is found only in Oregon. The plant is also used by the Puget blue butterfly ((Icaricia icarioides blackmorei) in Washington State.
It’s never simple, is it? What’s good for ecology in our region might be bad in other countries. What’s good for economic development, including alternate protein sources for poor, developing-world nations whose populations face hunger and malnourishment, might mean the end of certain species whose habitats get destroyed by the plant. Even within industrialized economies there might be conflict. What serves the sheep farmers well for their livestock might undermine the success of brands like Icebreaker who buy up all the wool but run under a certified sustainable flag, now debatable – surely brought to consumers’ attention by ecologist who try to save habitats.
What is simple is to enjoy the beauty of the plants, once you manage to stop thinking: so it was on my Saturday walk up at the protected area on Powell Butte, on an unseasonably hot, windy day with the waves of grass rolling, the lupines shining in blue, the daisies pointing their faces to the sun and the mountains glowing in the distance. My heart sang.
And here is a piece inspired by endless prairies, from 1948, with the composer Lukas Foss playing the piano.
Here is a short piece about the composer and here is an excerpt from The Prairie a composition that is probably more fun to sing than to listen to.
That’s what H.E.Bates called hawthorn. Hmmm. Must have known only the white ones, so prevalent in english hedgerows and pastures. They do come in red and pink as well, although admittedly less often.
Lots of lore attached to the bush which, once it grows into a tree, can become 400 years old. Or so they say. It held significant place in Greek mythology, as a symbol of love and marriage, believed to be able to ward off dark spirits, and rumored to have provided the crown of thorns for Christ.
Lore also has it that it is a portent of disaster if you bring the hawthorne blossoms inside. There might be some scientific explanation for that: the early blossoming tree is essential for bees and other pollinating insects – if they are deprived and starving, they will not be available for later necessary crops.
Hawthorn was the badge of the house of Tudor, because Henry VII lost his crown and it was found in a thorn bush. Maybe it is indeed a plant that brings misfortune…
Hawthorns belong to the rose family of plants and are in the genus Crataegus, a large group widely distributed throughout the north temperate zone and in the tablelands of Mexico and the Andes. The small, red berries covering the tree in autumn are called “haws”; they contain bioflavinoids, cardiotonic amines, polyphenols, vitamin C, the B vitamins and other nutrients. Squirrels and birds love them.
The scent of flowers includes trimethylamine, also released during sex and by dead bodies. Just what you needed to know, right? But, taken together with the symbolism of the ancient Greek goddess Hymen, protector of love and marriage, who carried a torch made out of Hawthorne, we might have immediate clues helping to understand the poem below. It is said to be among Willa Cather’s favorites, even though she was unhappy about how the poetry volume, April Twilights, in which it first appeared, was received.
THE HAWTHORN TREE
by Willa Cather
ACROSS the shimmering meadows– Ah, when he came to me! In the spring-time, In the night-time, In the starlight, Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Up from the misty marsh-land– Ah, when he climbed to me! To my white bower, To my sweet rest, To my warm breast, Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Ask of me what the birds sang, High in the hawthorn tree; What the breeze tells, What the rose smells, What the stars shine– Not what he said to me!
Risen cream, shimmering meadows, rose smells, secretive murmurs of lovers – all points to May arriving soon! With our warm spring, the hawthorns got a head start. Photographed yesterday. Music is an ode to the English Country side by Finzi Eclogue in F major.
And that brought to mind another Eclogue, only to be enjoyed by adventurous readers, who appreciate naked bodies in a sunlit dale, approached by cows…. it’s actually quite an astounding piece by May Swenson.
I have always liked swallows. They were constant companions from late spring through fall in our village, nesting in corners under the barn roofs, often in large numbers. Barn swallows are quite social, attack in groups, if they feel their mud abodes are threatened, and they sing their heart out to attract a mate. They swoop and fly fast, doing all kinds of acrobatic maneuvers to catch the insects that they feed on while in the air, with unending chirpy commentary. Mating up there as well, must be a fleeting pleasure.
The old lore of “when swallows fly high, the weather will be dry,” lost its magical prediction power when my scientist father explained to me, early on, that of course swallows change the level at which they fly depending on weather, if you think where their food source will be: when it’s warm, outside thermal activity carries bubbles of air up and with it the insects that swallows hunt. Convection is even stronger near heated surfaces of sunlit buildings. If it rains or colder weather brings winds, the insects seek shelter under trees and bushes, with the swallows following in lower swoops.
Well, magic could still be had elsewhere. One of my favorite fairy tale books of Hans Christian Andersen tales had color plates depicting an old fashioned Thumbelina flying South to a warm, sunny, fairy tale land on the back of her rescuer, a neon-blue swallow, only to meet a prince her size and live happily ever after. Things had seemed pretty hopeless after having been abducted and given in service or forced marriage to all kinds of threatening creatures, but hey, swallow to the rescue. I longed more for the trip than the prince, all of age what, 6 or 7?
The tales containing swallows changed over time, becoming much darker when reading turned from fairy tales to Greek mythology. Remember the myth of two sisters, Philomela and Procne? Procne was married to King Tereus, a political alliance forced by her father, an Athenian king. Tereus coveted her sister, raped her and cut her tongue out so she could not tell. She managed to put the story into her weavings which were sent to her sister. The two sought revenge, unwilling to let the crime and the silencing of female voices stand – something that impressed me tremendously as a teenager, even though it included infanticide of the king’s son with Procne, and feeding Tereus the child, unbeknownst to him. The glimpse of justice served by two strong women refusing to be victims almost made up for having to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses.…
When Tereus tries to persecute the sisters, they ask the Gods for help and are changed into a nightingale (Philomela) and a swallow (Procne) respectively, voices forever heard in beautiful song. (Never mind that female nightingales in real life are mute, and it is the males who sing.) The sisters avenge the assault and regain their honor and freedom, much in contrast to so many others in Greek mythology who share the female fate and get punished on top of it (just think Medusa!) Then again, it is ravaging Gods in most other cases, who get away with it, while Tereus was a mere mortal – maybe those will be punished after all. Or will they?
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In North America you mostly see tree swallows, migratory birds that come back every spring. They are amazing aerialists and they are some of the migratory birds most affected by climate change. Shifts in temperature and amount of rainfall since the 1970s have led to breeding patterns that have been catastrophic. Due to warmer winters, eggs are laid earlier, but then the critical period for babies’ weight gain falls into time windows where there are not enough insects to go around to feed them because of excessive spring rains. Not only has the insect population itself steadily declined, but insects hide when it is wet and cool, and the swallow parents stop going to the nesting sites for days on end since they can’t find food. Often it is too late for the fledglings who die of starvation and hypothermia before better weather resumes.
One way to combat that is, of course, to increase insect availability. That means creating more wetlands, no spraying with pesticides, and allowing weeds to grow that really attract insect populations. Dandelions are among the ones that really help fight the insect decline and yet they’ve become scarcer and scarcer due to overeager gardeners and farmers waging war on them (yours truly included before I learned this.) Let them bloom!
In any case, when I see and hear swallows it makes me happy, it makes me think back to the fascination they have obviously held for many across centuries, to the fact how they were integrated into the literary arts. It makes me want to document their beauty to get us all more engaged in trying to do what’s right for the environment.
You can have the chattering of swallows by Janacek.
