As
part of our 125th Anniversary celebration at Stein Your Florist Co.
we are sharing a year of floral education, November 1, 2012 thru October 31,
2013. Each day we will post something new on our Facebook page to share
our knowledge of our favorite things, flowers and plants and we'll be updating
our blog every 5 days or so. No need for pencils and notebooks, just sharing
some simple lessons in floristry.
Day 326 – We know that leaves get their
green color from chlorophyll, but sometimes leaves appear red, such as on a
Japanese maple, or have variations of color throughout the leaves, such as
croton plants, so where does this come from? Most plants have other
pigments: carotenoids, which appear
yellow to orange, and anthocyanins, which range from red to purple, and these
pigments may dominate the appearance of the green chlorophyll. So chlorophyll
is still present and at work, its color is simply masked.
Day 327 – Flowers began changing the way
the world looked almost as soon as they appeared on Earth about 130 million
years ago, during the Cretaceous period. That's relatively recent in geologic
time: If all Earth's history were compressed into an hour, flowering plants
would exist for only the last 90 seconds. But once they took firm root about
100 million years ago, they swiftly diversified in an explosion of varieties
that established most of the flowering plant families of the modern world.
Day 328 - Today flowering plant species
outnumber by twenty to one those of ferns and cone-bearing trees, or conifers, which
had thrived for 200 million years before the first bloom appeared. As a food
source flowering plants provide us and the rest of the animal world with the
nourishment that is fundamental to our existence. In the words of Walter Judd,
a botanist at the University of Florida, "If it weren't for flowering
plants, we humans wouldn't be here."
Day 329 - Botanists call flowering plants
angiosperms, from the Greek words for "vessel" and "seed."
Unlike conifers, which produce seeds in open cones, angiosperms enclose their
seeds in fruit. Each fruit contains one or more carpels, hollow chambers that
protect and nourish the seeds. Slice a tomato in half, for instance, and you'll
find carpels. These structures are the defining trait of all angiosperms and
one key to the success of this huge plant group, which numbers some 235,000
species.
Day 330 - Just when and how did the first
flowering plants emerge? Charles Darwin pondered that question, and
paleobotanists are still searching for an answer. Throughout the 1990s
discoveries of fossilized flowers in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America
offered important clues. At the same time the field of genetics brought a whole
new set of tools to the search. As a result, modern paleobotany has undergone a
boom not unlike the Cretaceous flower explosion itself. We are learning more
about flowering plants all the time.
Day 351 – Charles Darwin, in his interesting work on
"Cross and Self-fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom," gives some
interesting particulars of the ingenious way in which bumble-bees obtain the
honey from the snap-dragon when they cannot push past the projecting lip:
"In Antirrhinum majus one or two holes had been made on the lower side,
close to the little protuberance which represents the nectary, and therefore
directly in front of and close to the spot where the nectar is secreted."
In experiments, Mr. Darwin found that while fifty seed-pods protected by a net
gave nearly ten grains of seed, a similar number of pods from plants that the
bumble-bees had free access to yielded over twenty-three grains of seed. It is
not, however, by piercing holes in the flower that the bees effect
fertilization, but by thrusting their way through the jaws of the dragon into
the throat, where they encounter the stamens, and becoming dusted with pollen,
leave some of it on the stigma of that or the next flower they enter in like
manner. 
Day 353 – A few species of Muscari flowers, including M. comosum, can be used to
make wine that is high in antioxidants and vitamin C. In addition, some
homeopathic remedy practitioners crush the bulbs to create a form of poultice
for irritated or red skin. Other practitioners also boil the bulbs to make a
diuretic tea.
Day 355 – Many
parts of the Typha or Cattail
plant are edible to humans. The starchy rhizomes are nutritious with a protein
content comparable to that of maize or rice. They can be processed into a
flour. They are most often harvested from late autumn to early spring. They are
fibrous, and the starch must be scraped or sucked from the tough fibers. Plants
growing in polluted water can accumulate lead and pesticide residues in their
rhizomes, and these should not be eaten.
