gardening

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A Century of Plant Exploration and Research

Brian M. Boom, Ph.D., is Director, Caribbean Biodiversity Program, and Melissa Tulig, is Associate Director of the Herbarium at The New York Botanical Garden.

The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory provides an excellent occasion to draw attention to the Botanical Garden’s long history of plant exploration in Cuba and the Garden’s current scientific activities on the largest and most biologically diverse island in the Caribbean.
Beginning in 1903 and as recently as October 2009, the Garden has collaborated with Cuban botanists and institutions in documenting and studying the Cuban flora, collecting more than 20,000 specimens on 23 expeditions. The Garden’s research in Cuba is active and ongoing.
(The black-and-white photo above from the Mertz Library Archives is from an expedition to the Isle of Pines in Cuba led by the Garden’s founder Nathaniel Lord Britton in 1916. The photo below, by Garden scientist Fabián A. Michelangeli, Ph.D., is from the most current expedition and shows Garden scientist Wayt Thomas, Ph.D., at left, with his Cuban student Waldo Bonet collecting sedges.)
One good way to tell this story of more than a century of plant exploration in Cuba is through the more than 12,500 digitized specimen records currently available via the Garden’s C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium. Some newly created Web features allow easy access to these data, and we recommend trying the following to explore the Garden’s history in Cuba and some of the plant diversity on the island as told by the specimens.
The Web page Garden Scientists in Cuba provides an overview of the program and includes an interactive map of Cuba. The red place marks indicate a sampling of native Cuban orchid species, mapped to the level of province, and the blue place marks indicate a sampling of specimens of other plant families collected on the Garden’s October 2009 expedition. Clicking on a species name takes you to the specimen record and image.
To learn more about the entire range of Cuban plant specimens available at the Garden, visit a new Web page on the Caribbean Biodiversity Portal that lists the 23 Cuban expeditions of the Garden and links to several specimen showcases, the first comprising a sampling of 65 specimens collected across the island over the years and additional specimen showcases featuring hundreds of specimens organized around four historical Garden scientists (N.L. Britton, E.G. Britton, J.A. Shafer, and P. Wilson) and two contemporary Garden scientists (F.A.. Michelangeli and W.W. Thomas). Click on their names to learn more about them, and on the word “Cuba” following their names to see specimens they collected.
Once in the specimen showcases, we recommend selecting “Contact Sheet View” for best browsing, and “Map View” to visualize geographic distributions, for those specimens with localities that have been mapped so far. From “Map View” you can click on the underlined plant name in the balloon that appears when you click on a red place mark to be directed to the specimen record itself.
Also from the Caribbean Biodiversity Portal, you can explore on your own by using advanced search to query the database for specimens from Cuba. You can learn about the Garden’s current conservation project involving Cuban plants by clicking “Projects” on the bar at the top of the page and then scrolling down to the project, Habitat Specificity of Selected Endemic Cuban Plant Species.
We hope you visit The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower to experience the splendors of the exhibition in person. We hope, too, you will visit Garden Scientists in Cuba to learn more about Cuba’s native flora as documented by The New York Botanical Garden and Cuban colleagues, and to begin your own journey.
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In January, the snowdrops in the Secret Garden looked like this:

Snowdrops in the Secret Garden January 2010

This Sunday just passed–March 7th–those same snowdrops looked like this:

Those same snowdrops in early March

Such are the vagaries of an upstate New York winter. Since then, the temperatures have been mild and the sunshine brilliant, and the snow is receding. This, my fellow cold climate gardeners, is the best time to decide where to plant your earliest spring bulbs. Look around, no, better yet–grab your camera, and record the places in your garden where the snow melts first.

Snow melts first around the base of trees, even stumps

The snow melts in damp areas first, though bulbs for this site must tolerate soggy soil.

The south-facing areas amongst shrubs are another good place for the earliest bulbs

Plant some early bulbs by a corner of the house that traps heat.

South-facing areas near pavement are the best of all. Can you see the snowdrops?

Here I followed my own advice, and in a previous year planted some Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’ in an area that always melts first. I chose this particular snowdrop because it is both large and early. As a matter of fact, a few of them bloomed today, though I didn’t manage to get a picture.
Label Your Images
As you may have noticed, these images don’t look like much. If you don’t rename your images, tag them, write captions for them, or whatever your photo managing program permits, you will look at them in July and wonder, “What was I thinking? Why did I take a bunch of photos of dirty, tired snow?” Put them in a folder labeled Plant Bulbs Here and make a note in your calendar to order them in June, when there are discounts for early online orders.
Which Bulbs Are the Earliest?
Of the commonly available snowdrops, Galanthus elwesii is the earliest. Winter aconites (Eranthis spp.) are reputedly equally as early, though they have not been so for me. I am not sure if they are coming back this year. When they like your garden, they really take off. The small species crocus bloom soon after the snowdrops for me. Two to three weeks after the very first blooms, the larger Dutch crocus, the Siberian squills, and the glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa) are all blooming. By then it’s a whole different ball game.

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yougrowgirl posted a photo:

As we march toward spring, attention turns to outdoor gardening, even though the weather holds us back.

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Jessica Blohm is Interpretive Specialist for Public Education.

Christopher Columbus first landed in Cuba in 1492, leading the way to the country’s being settled in 1511 by the Spanish, who quickly discovered how well suited the land was for growing sugarcane. The plant, which is from the South Pacific island of New Guinea and thrives only in tropical areas, had been introduced to the New World by Columbus during his second voyage (1493–96).
European colonial powers established huge slave-based sugar plantations throughout Cuba and the Caribbean. The cane sugar industry became Cuba’s economic mainstay of the 17th and 18th centuries.
But by the 20th century, the popularity of sugarcane gave way to an alternative source of sugar—the sugar beet, which could be grown in Europe and other temperate regions. This new sweetheart crop plant, coupled with the abolition of slavery in 1886, resulted in the closing of numerous sugar mills throughout Cuba and the Caribbean. Ruins dotted these lands, many of which have since been reclaimed by native forest.
A re-created sugar mill ruin and sugar cane can be seen in The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower.
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IT was a cold, foggy morning in Tuscany , and La Foce, a 15th-century villa that sits on 2,000 acres of rolling fields overlooking the storied Montepulciano vineyards, was eerily quiet.

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I recently downloaded an iPhone App titled "Master Gardener" recommended to me by the creator David M. Andrews. The original plan was to redeem a complimentary copy via a promotional code but the code was US-centric and didn't allow this l'il Aussie to try it out. Regardless, I'm always keen to test and trial new gardening software so I parted with the $4.99 price tag.

The premise of this app is to enable gardeners to keep a handy journal of their gardening exploits in their iPhone or iPod. You start by creating a garden, I began with my veggie patch, and then add the plants that you now have growing in them. Other gardens can be created to accomodate your many plants and to keep them separate or you could just work on the one single garden.

What I liked about Master Gardener
This app has huge potential. Rather than keeping paper notes in a garden journal this not only replaces it but also keeps a compendium of plants (which can be added to within the My Gardens screen), a schedule of to-do items and a way to store some of your favourites.

What I didn't like about Master Gardener
This is one app that has been offered prematurely. Firstly, there are still a few bugs that stop the main core of the software having any benefit at all. When trying to add a plant to your garden via the Find a Plant screen the user is meant to click the Add button. This brings up a message that a plant needs to be selected first. So, the user selects a plant only to be taken to a further screen which gives more info about the plant. In short, there is no way to actually select them.

Second, changing the photo image for a specific plant is performed by clicking on the current image. The user is then given two options; (1) Add Exisiting Photo, or (2) Take a Photo. Neither of the these two methods actually alter the current image.

Finally, the list of plants are fairly basic with very limited data. I'm guessing that the idea is that the user can update these details and hence improve the value of their own software but at the moment this is not possible.

UPDATE
My mistake, the Add a Plant does work. Here's the creator's comments;
Adding a plant. Yes indeed this works. Please take a look at the tutorial on my web site. That should clear up the confusion on how to add a plant. For the record. The only other complaint I got on this issue was cleared up by watching the tutorial.

to which I responded;

Thanks to your tip I have now worked out that a plant can be added although this is not how most people would work it out. I would suggest using another icon rather than a bullet point as this is very confusing without seeing the tutorial - and most people won't go there, trust me.

In all fairness to the creator the Add Existing Photo and Take Photo functions do work, but only once the plant is added to the created garden. At present the user is given options to perform this task via the Find a Plant screen as well (which doesn't work, and according to the developer, was never intended to work!!!!). The rationale for this is to allow the user to have multiples of the same plant, each with different images.

My Opinion
My initial opinion was to save your money until the bugs were worked out and while I think there are still some functions that need tidying up, or could work better, the Master Gardener app is definitely worth the few bucks that it charges.

The app works well in its current form and one can only expect, with future updates, that it will continue to get better and better. IMHO I would invest the few bucks now before this becomes wildly popular and the developers can begin to charge what the app is really worth.

Over the years, garden trends have come and gone. Fairy gardens, elf gardens, even gnome gardens have made their way into our psyche and, if we all come clean we might even admit trying a few of these specialty styles while justifying that we did it for the kids! Yet, the one garden that we could create, albeit for a short period, is a Santa garden.

A santa garden is, as the name suggests, a garden devoted entirely to that affable Christmas character, Santa Claus. Obviously it's for the kid's enjoyment more than our own...that goes without saying, really! But picture the whimsical possibilities: Santa's sleigh pulled by Donner and Blitzen, elves scurrying around carrying packages tied with bows, christmas trees adorned with tinsel and a myriad of Christmas symbols.

While most people love to make their front yards a Christmas lighting spectacular, their back gardens remain relatively unchanged. This is a perfect spot for you, and the ankle-biters, to start creating a winter (or summer - depending on your relationship with the equator) wonderland.

You're probably wondering "Why?" To which I would retort, "Why not?" Our gardens are a place to enjoy and be frivolous within so why not include the kids and get their ideas about creating a santa garden as well.

A Santa garden is a great way to celebrate the festivities and take advantage of a season that is usually extreme at both ends of the globe. Here are some options to get you into the creative mood;

Bring the garden indoors and decorate your santa garden in a spare room or to one side of the living room.
Integrate your santa garden with another theme, ie. the beach, an Hawaiian luau, Santa-meets-the-Cotswolds etc.
Add some poinsettias, dwarf conifers and even reams of mistletoe to your garden to bring it inline with the Christmas festivities.
Find quirky santa adornments such as baubles and figurines to bring your santa garden to life

But, mostly what a santa garden needs is a heap of inspiration and if you have some children in your home they will be the conduits for this creativity. It may even become a helpful family bonding time trying to create one. All the best.