At your next family reunion picnic you may run into some long lost relatives. Perhaps you’d think distant cousins, twice removed on your mother’s side, but in fact Lazy Housewife, Radiator Charlie, and Collective Farm Woman are beans, tomatoes and melons, respectively, more likely to be found on your plate next to grandma’s famous potato salad than out back bobbing for apples or spitting watermelon seeds.
By definition, heirloom vegetables are vintage varieties that have been preserved by passing seeds down from generation to generation. Heirlooms have often been selected for taste, appearance, and eating quality, and the demand for heirloom vegetables is rapidly increasing, especially among gardeners looking for unique flavors and freshness. While many heirloom vegetables are now available at farm stands, varieties of tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers are the most popular.
Among edible heirlooms literally thousands of varieties are available, many handed down, others swapped with fellow gardeners, and a growing number purchased from the ever-expanding selection of specialty seed purveyors. For The Edible Garden, the Home Gardening Center’s Lois Loeb Vegetable Garden has been redesigned by Rosalind Creasy into New York’s best heirloom vegetable garden. Using seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, this garden features a bountiful array of beautiful and delicious heirloom vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers. Seed Savers Exchange is the foremost organization dedicated to preserving agricultural diversity through the preservation and sharing of heirloom seeds.
At Shop in the Garden, we offer a wide variety of heirloom seeds, exclusively from Seed Savers Exchange, as well a great selection of heirloom tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings. You can also find fabulous garden gear online. So whether you are a longtime heirloom vegetable advocate (and there are many) or simply a home gardener looking for more variety, flavor, and excitement in your harvest basket, give heirloom vegetables a try. Who knows, in our hectic day-to-day existence, it may just be time to find the Lazy Housewife in all of us.
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
With apologies to Cicero but with respect to American eating habits: O tempura! O morels!
The Western diet—based on fats, processed foods and convenience foods, and industrialized agriculture—may be responsible for a host of ills. In the last hundred years or so, it “has changed in ways that are making us increasingly sick and fat,” one food journalist recently commented. Ever more frequently and from many quarters, it is being questioned, rethought, reinvented. So it is that The Edible Garden, the Botanical Garden’s summer-long celebration of growing, preparing, and eating great food, comes at a propitious moment. With the current debate and state of eating in the United States, what do our on-site exhibitions bring to the table? Here are a few sources for perspective on this issue.
Journalist/gardener Michael Pollan is one of the pioneers in sounding the alarm about the American diet. His most recent book, In Defense of Food, argues thoroughly, convincingly, and very readably that good health will come when we reject the current reliance on fast food, food substitutes, food byproducts, engineered food, overpackaged food, overprocessed food, or any comestible with an adjective attached. His manifesto is very close to the mission of this institution—to be an advocate for the plant kingdom—and it boils down to: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
What to Eat by Marion Nestle takes this advice and turns it into a field guide for the supermarket. What is fresh, organic, low fat, reduced fat, no fat, trans fat, polyunsaturated fat, fat free?? For the consumer trying to “do the right thing,” the grocery chain is ground zero in the food chain, but it is a mine field, with marketing, packaging, and processing tripwires that can land you with eggbeaters all over your face. What to Eat analyzes the claims, counterclaims, labels, small print, jargon, subtext, and easy-open cartons to uncover the real truth about the dairy case and the frozen food aisle to make shoppers more savvy.
Stephen Sinon is Head of Information Services and Archives in The New York Botanical Garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL), of which NYBG is a founding member, recently presented its 10th Annual Literature Awards. The awards, created to recognize significant contributions to the literature of botany and horticulture, honored three exceptional books this year, all of which acknowledge input from The New York Botanical Garden and all of which can be found in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library. The council is the leading professional organization in the field of botanical and horticultural information services.
The General Interest category was topped by Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America, by Philip J. Pauly. (This title is available at Shop in the Garden.) Genera Palmarum: the Evolution and Classification of Palms, by John Dransfield, Natalie W. Uhl, Conny B. Asmussen, William J. Baker, Madeline M. Harley, and Carl E. Lewis, won the Technical category.
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the awards, a Special Recognition Award was presented to TL-2, more formally known as Taxonomic Literature: a Selective Guide to Botanical Publications and Collections with Dates, Commentaries and Types, 2nd edition. This monumental work, the first edition of which was compiled by Frans A. Stafleu and Richard S. Cowan as a seven-volume set completed in 1988, is one of the most important resources in botanical literature. The current edition was updated by Laurence J. Dorr, Erik A. Mennega, and Dan H. Nicolson and was honored by CBHL for significant contributions to the literature of botany and the study of plants.
In compiling the massive 15-volume reference work, the authors of Taxonomic Literature used the collections of the Mertz Library; now, over 800 linear feet of their original research papers are in the Library’s archives. The CBHL award was given in recognition of the release of the final volume in this set.
TL-2 acknowledges the outstanding collections of the Mertz Library as well as the assistance provided by the staff, as does Fruits and Plains, whose author also consulted the collection several times while working on his book. The third work, Genera Palmarum, acknowledges the valuable input of two New York Botanical Garden Science staff members: palm expert and Institute of Systematic Botany curator Andrew Henderson, Ph.D., and postdoctoral research associate Thomas Couvreur, Ph.D.
Salvia has been seducing gardeners for centuries. Roman scientist and historian Pliny the Elder was the first to use the Latin name Salvia. The name derives from salvare, to heal and save, and salvus, meaning uninjured or whole. But for today’s avid gardeners salvias, or sages as they are commonly known, are not only used for their culinary and medicinal properties but for their vibrant flowers and easy cultivation in almost any climate.
At the Botanical Garden, you can see several species of Salvia by visiting the Perennial Garden, the Rock Garden, and the Home Gardening Center. The Family Garden has planted a number of varieties as well, including one with dark violet flowers, Salvia ‘Indigo Spires’, and bog sage, Salvia ‘Ulginosa’. And, of course, Martha Stewart used plenty of Salvia in her recent redesign of the historic Herb Garden. You can even download a site plan of Martha Stewart’s Culinary Herb Garden, which will be a feature of The Edible Garden celebration this summer.
If you’re inspired to include salvias in your own garden, be it urban or suburban, you’ll find a wide variety of both perennial and annual salvias in Shop in the Garden, from Salvia officinalis, culinary sage, to Salvia nemorosa, perennial meadow sage, and the unusual annual, black-flowered Salvia discolor.
The genus Salvia has arguably the truest blues and brightest reds of any group of plants and their applications are endless—borders, baskets, herb gardens, and patio pots to name a few. There is room in any garden, terrace, or patio for a Salvia or two. They are deer-resistant, relatively drought tolerant, and attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies. What more could a gardener ask?
New Book by Garden Scientists Identifies Role in Seed Dispersal
Scott A. Mori, Ph.D., Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany, specializes in the classification, ecology, and evolution of the Brazil nut family and is especially interested in plant/animal interactions in tropical forests, including the pollination and dispersal of seeds by bats, the subject of his new book recently released by NYBG Press. Scott co-authored Seed Dispersal by Bats in the Neotropics with Botanical Garden post-doctoral fellow Tatyana Lobova, Ph.D. (now an Assistant Professor of Biology at Old Dominion University and an Honorary Curator of the Institute of Systematic Botany of NYBG) and student Cullen Geiselman (doctoral candidate in the joint program of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology of Columbia University and the Institute of Systematic Botany of NYBG).
This yellow-shouldered bat (Sturnira lilium) is carrying a fruit of Solanum rugosum (a member of the tomato family). The bat digests the pulp surrounding the seeds and passes the seeds unharmed through its digestive tract; thus, the bat receives an important source of food from the plant and, in return, provides a service to the plant by dispersing the seeds away from the mother plant. Photo: Merlin Tuttle, Bat Conservation International
One of my roles as a scientist at The New York Botanical Garden is to inform policy makers and the general public about the ways in which plants depend upon animals for their survival, because conservation programs that fail to take the co-evolutionary relationships between plants and animals into account are doomed to failure. That, in part, was the purpose for writing Seed Dispersal by Bats in the Neotropics, in which my co-authors and I demonstrate the vital role bats play in maintaining the diversity of plants in New World tropical forests.
Bats are especially important as pollinators of flowers and dispersers of seeds, and this has become increasingly apparent as more and more bat/plant studies are published. In the book we review the role bats play as seed dispersers for the first time since A.L. Gardner’s classic paper on the topic in 1977. We present a literature review of all plants known to be dispersed by bats and all species of bats known to disperse seeds. We also present a summary of our intensive field studies of bat seed dispersal in central French Guiana. Our sampling expeditions took us to disturbed rain forest habitats as well as to some of the most pristine rain forests in the world.
Doctoral candidate Cullen Geiselman carefully untangles a bat from a mist net used for capturing specimens for identification and study. Photo: Patrick Chatelet
For over five years, we reviewed the literature on Neotropical bat/plant interactions and carried out field trips to French Guiana. Our basic research technique was to capture bats in the same kind of mist nets normally used to catch birds (see photo), hold the bats in numbered cloth bags until they defecated, and then identify the seeds found in the bags by comparing them to seeds represented in herbarium collections. We would look at the specimens of plants we had collected on the same expeditions that we were netting bats (we netted bats at night and collected plants during the day) and would also use the descriptions and images of seeds we found in the reviewed literature to help us identify the seeds we found in the bats’ feces. Our book includes 32 color plates of seeds that we demonstrated to be dispersed by bats, and this will be useful to help other researchers identify fruits and seeds regardless of where in the Neotropics they are carrying out their studies.
Douglas Daly, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute of Systematic Botany and B.A. Krukoff Curator of Amazonian Botany. He is the co-author, along with Beth Ellis, Leo Hickey, Kirk Johnson, John Mitchell, Peer Wilf, and Scott Wing, of the newly released Manual of Leaf Architecture, published by NYBG Press. In this blog entry, Doug describes the invaluable information the book provides.
Often we can distinguish two unrelated plants just from their leaves, even if the leaves are similar in size and shape, but how do we pinpoint those differences and put them into words? Similarly, foresters in the tropics need to be able to distinguish valuable timber trees from closely related tree species that may be endangered or have poor quality wood, but what characteristics can they use to detect those species? Other scientists who study the plants of the distant past need to be able not only to separate leaf fossils but also to quantify how many of the same species are found at a given site; how can they do that consistently?
Until now, plant classification and identification have relied heavily on flowers and fruits, but these structures are not present most of the year. Moreover, fossil leaves are almost never found together with reproductive parts. Leaves display a wealth of characteristics that can be diagnostic at the level of genus or even species, but there wasn’t a logically ranked system that defined, described, and illustrated these characteristics. My co-authors and I wrote the Manual of Leaf Architecture precisely to provide an exhaustive, comprehensively illustrated reference for thoroughly describing the leaves of flowering plants, especially their vein patterns.
In our reasearch and writing we were able to draw fundamental conclusions about the evolution, ecology, diversity, and management of ecosystems and plant resources, based on identifications and characterizations that in turn are based on leaves. This reference puts all that work on a more secure footing.
Editor’s note: Manual of Leaf Architecture is receiving rave reviews. Lawren Sack of UCLA considers it a major contribution that will “revolutionize the study of leaves” and says it is “analogous to the first manual on human anatomy.” Sir Peter Crane of the University of Chicago calls it “indispensable” for researchers.
Throughout the planting and growing season you’ll find many varieties of USDA-certified organic edible greens, herbs, and vegetables available at Shop in the Garden, where you can also pick up tools, gloves, rain barrels, and more. Each purchase you make helps to support the many programs of The New York Botanical Garden.
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
To somebody who’s really into plants, February finds the cosmic garden center always filled with five-pints of that herbaceous perennial called hope, so I’m thinking ahead. I’m looking forward to that lengthening daylight. I’m thinking about those first snowdrops, about mud and muck, about witch-hazels and Rijnveld’s Early Sensation and seed orders and Lenten hellebores and unpaid credit card balances because of plant purchases, and then there are books.
Here are several new books that will tell me what I’m doing wrong and what plants that I don’t have that I gotta have, books about other gardens and other gardeners, books that are celebratory and books that are valedictory, books that are encouraging and books that are alarming. Some of these are out now and some will be published later in the year, but here is a selection, 9 for ’09, of books about plants and the people who are mesmerized by them.
The Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters
At the acclaimed restaurant Chez Panisse, founder and chef Alice Waters created a style of cooking that is seasonal, market based, plant centered, and not just nutritional but nurturing. The Edible Schoolyard takes this template and applies it to education to reinvent the way we teach our kids. Her goals are our goals here at The New York Botanical Garden: to inject nature into our lives in a transformational way.
William Robinson, The Wild Gardener by Richard Bisgrove
William Robinson is one of those transcendent figures that everyone has heard of but whose achievement has been so long unstudied that newbies like me aren’t quite sure what he accomplished. One of the finest garden historians, Richard Bisgrove, reexamines the life and achievement of this icon who popularized the wild garden and the cottage garden and in whose works one finds the first intimations of a holistic view of gardening.
Listening to Stone by Dan Snow
What an inspired use of feldspar! If you need a dry stone wall with poetry as the mortar, Dan Snow is your mason. Listening to Stone is a look at his profession and an appreciation of his medium as well as a study of some of his recent constructions, which turn something weighty and substantial into works of art that are arrestingly enigmatic.
I suffer from an edible complex: I am always thinking about eating! So I find myself irresistibly drawn to the food section of the bookstore, checking out the display copies of new cookbooks to see how the recipes stack up: One of the perks of the clerk. This is how I’ve come up with a number of recommendations for holiday gift giving for the foodies in your family!
Anyone who looks forward to putting on their annual winter layer of fat will be pleased with A Year in Chocolate. In this month-by-month guide to cooking with cacao, noted New York chocolatier Jacques Torres has adapted for the home cook his exquisite, indulgent desserts full of butter and cream with explicit but not complicated instructions. I love fine eating, but I still ignored all the ones that called for tempered chocolate and headed right for the brownies and the poached pears with chocolate sauce. The chocolate cookie that includes ancho chili powder among the ingredients is a real sweet slap in the face!
Okay, the New York dead of winter is not the right time to think of farmers markets, but Outstanding in the Field, by Jim Denevan, with its seasonal and market-based recipes, summons up summer in a dish so evocatively you’ll be living in July in perpetuity. These recipes derive from the impromptu farm dinners created by Mr. Denevan and his fellow foodies for their unique, eponymous organization Outstanding in the Field, which goes across the country creating locavore versions of ’60s-style happenings, eat-ins maybe? I don’t know if they’ll ever come to the Bronx, but you can re-create the experience with the corn chowder, spinach gnocchi, and the free-range chicken dishes described here. Not until the roast turkey do you find a recipe that goes on for more than two pages. But if you’re like me you’ll read it, think “How interesting,” and then accept the invitation to dine at your sister’s for the holiday feast.
There is no point in trying to ignore the Barefoot Contessa, a.k.a. Ina Garten, whose latest cookbook is Back to Basics. She is as irresistible as the brownie pudding there on page 218. The subtitle is “fabulous flavor from simple ingredients,” but it is the element of subtle sophistication that sets her recipes apart. BC’s BLTs add avocado; roasting replaces poaching in her shrimp cocktail; caramelized onions fillip the burger. When she says “This version has always been my favorite but…” and then she tweaks it with one ingredient or maybe two, or some technical change…and the dish is transformed! She makes it look easy, but that inventiveness takes years of practice.
There you go. We’re really into food this season, and we’ll be expanding the selection as we ramp up to our big summer show on edible gardens. Stay tuned for details. Can’t wait for the okra to come in!
Love of Plants Is Natural for this Author John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
We’ve always wanted to salute the body of work of Ken Druse, one of our very best garden writers; so the upcoming release of his latest book, Planthropology, was all the trigger we needed to schedule a booksigning here at Shop in the Garden on November 8, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Through his lectures, journalism, books, and designs, Ken has advocated a style of gardening that combines the beautiful and the ecological in a unique and important way. Long before the concept of “green gardening” was born, he was emphasizing an earth-sensitive design and horticulture that has increased in relevance exponentially over the years. Look at the titles of his books as he created this template: The Natural Garden, The Natural Habitat Garden, The Natural Shade Garden. He makes his case with an elegant, accessible prose voice and his own beautiful photography.
Planthropology: The Myths, Mysteries, and Miracles of My Garden Favorites is more plant centered and personal than his previous books. It encompasses history, botany, folklore, horticulture, and medicine, and illustrates the concept behind the neologism with a series of stories about plants and explorers, scientists, neighbors, artists, lost relatives, obsessive-compulsives, insects, and the author himself. Some of the plants he studies are the poppy, dove tree, fig, orchid, daphne, ginkgo, and one of my current favorites, the lore-laden Franklinia.
He emphasizes the “plantyness” of gardening in this book, because I think he senses with some alarm that, as technology and culture develop, the bonds that have always tied people and nature together are being pressured and pulled and might snap permanently. Toward the end of the book, he refers to the metastasizing condition of “plant blindness.” He recalls in a story about a Victorian girl’s childhood that not so long ago kids encountered nature naturally, as part of their daily lives, but especially in their play. In other books he has recollected his own ’50s suburban youth of walking in the woods and finding plants and building forts in oak trees. (That you inevitably fell out of and scraped your elbow and your mother sprayed you with vermilion Mercurochrome.) How differently we grow up today! Instead of becoming a naturalist and writer, Thoreau could have been joined to a joystick playing Grand Theft Auto for hours on end.
The New York Botanical Garden is a plant museum with a mission, and that is to make sure we preserve and protect not just the physical world of plants, which we do through our programs of research and conservation, but also to show that love of nature (what the naturalist Edward O. Wilson calls biophilia) is a fundamental part of our humanity. And that we do through our visitor experience of which Shop in the Garden (all the staff here are proud to say) is very much a part. So it is fitting that we have our fellow plant lover Ken Druse and his new book Planthropology here this season. We look forward to seeing you when you come to meet him on November 8!
We’ve always wanted to salute the body of work of Ken Druse, one of our very best garden writers; so the upcoming release of his latest book, Planthropology, was all the trigger we needed to schedule