My nipper are very excited that the calendar has turned over into October . They ’re lobbying daily to get the Halloween laurel wreath out of the Australian crawl space , but I ’m not sure I ’m ready to look at all the spooky pumpkins just yet , so we ’ve begun instead to appear for Halloween activities to keep them happy .
Yesterday we visit the Franklin Park Conservatory , a botanical garden and conservatoire in Columbus , Ohio , which had a number of exhibits kick off the free fall crop season . We fend for a while and look on a group of artists chip at pumpkins and got inspired to go well beyond the commonjack - o’-lantern faceswe ordinarily do . Next we toured an exhibit of script - blown glass pumpkins — the conservatory domiciliate quite a accumulation of Chihuly , so drinking glass pumpkin are whole appropriate .
My favored part of the twenty-four hour period was tour the “ shivery works ” exhibit , an court to a haunted greenhouse . works with carnivorous habits and bad reputations were on video display , and many mass assemble to see the moody side of generation . I took a few word picture , especially enjoying the black bat prime .
I wondered at the choices for the display . I know quite a quite a little more plants that are assort with nervous tale that would have been a good burst . So I ’ve decided for this whole month I ’ll dedicate my entries to some of these plant life . First up : paperwhites ( Narcissus tazetta ) .
Flower Of A Narcissistic Prince
Paperwhites are typically realise in the winter , when hoi polloi draw the bulbs for holiday show . It ’s the first prime that comes to my brain when I suppose of the name Narcissus , though this genus of flowering plants includes quite a few fountain drawers , such as thedaffodil . All of the heyday , regardless of coinage , tend to come in the same shape , with a cannular projection out front and five flower petal behind , fanned out in a sort of Philomachus pugnax . The flowers often tend to nod , which goes nicely with the R.C. poet Ovid ’s story of their origin .
The story locomote that Narcissus was a youthful and freehanded man that would take the air through the woods where a nymph identify Echo hold out . She fell madly in love with him , but due to a curse put upon her , she could only repeat back what he said . Her attack to romance him made the very woods around the vain youth seem to support his self - perceptiveness . He in conclusion became so enamored with himself that he sat down beside a small syndicate so that he could stare at his own paragon . His conceitedness was so accomplished that he spend his remaining days trying to espouse his own icon rather than use up and liquidate away to nothing . I am not sure which god or goddess it was that would have take pity on Narcissus and give up him to be immortalize , but it is said that where he go bad is the place that the narcissus flower first sprang from the earth .
A Plant To Be Wary Of
The Narcissus genus has a long history of being used medicinally . We see the bulbs of the plant refer by Dioscorides , Pliny the Elder and Hippocrates . They were used both locally and internally for what is believed to be cancerous conditions . Like many other plants that are used in this way , the phytochemical are strong and dangerous to use when place in the wrong custody .
While the bulb is known to be fantastically toxic , it can be very difficult to overdose if you were to use up them . They are reputed to be very defective savoring and so you do n’t tend to overdo it on fortuity . Nonetheless , industrial plant in the Narcissus genus are not a good to add together to our casserole , and I think this tot to the mystique . On a confirming note , evidently there are some great indications that the plants can be utile in some of our modernistic degenerative diseases , such as alzheimer ’s , when synthesized into pharmaceuticals .
The phantasmal , blanched blooming of the paper white always remind me of Ovid ’s storey . They do n’t seem gay to me , but rather a bit deplorable and creepy-crawly showing off in the midsection of winter when they are hypothesize to be resting below footing . I think they would make an excellent plus to a flighty Allhallows Eve video display , but then , I ’m a self - proclaimed industrial plant dweeb .
Rina Pitucci/Flickr
Christian M.M. Brady/Flickr
