Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Photography on July 5 2016, by Matt Newman
The lotus blossoms are the stars of early July. Find them presiding over the water lilies in the Conservatory Pools.
Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) in the Conservatory Pools – Photo by Brian Sullivan
Posted in Photography on August 7 2015, by Lansing Moore
The Conservatory can admire itself in the Reflecting Pools on this clear day, with plenty of waterlilies and lotus blossoms as well! Get a closer look at what’s beautiful at the Garden with our Curator’s Spotlight series.
At the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Horticulture on September 11 2014, by Kristine Paulus
Kristine Paulus is NYBG’s Plant Records Manager. She is responsible for the curation of The Lionel Goldfrank III Computerized Catalog of the Living Collections. She manages nomenclature standards and the plant labels for all exhibitions, gardens, and collections, while coordinating with staff, scientists, students and the public on all garden related plant information.
I recently became the Plant Records Manager here at NYBG, and when I was offered the position I thought I would be spinning plant records as a DJ at the Orchid Dinner and the Conservatory Ball. Just kidding! However, while I was fully prepared to take on the massive task of keeping tabs on the Garden’s living collections, I still secretly harbor a desire to play plant records—that is to say, to play records (or CDs, or MP3s, or whatever is en vogue now) about plants.
There’s so much good music out there about plants! Sure, there are tons of vague ditties about generic flowers (blue flowers, red flowers, wild flowers, where flowers have gone, and not getting flowers anymore) but I get particularly excited about songs that allow me to “botanize” because they’re about specific plants. Songs about plants that grow here at The New York Botanical Garden are even better.
Posted in Photography on July 8 2014, by Matt Newman
What was it that I said recently about the lotus blossoms not being far behind the Nymphaea? The Conservatory pools are far from the proverbial mud that the lotus is famous for emerging from, yet the persevering beauty of these plants is nonetheless potent.
Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) in the Conservatory Pools – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on July 18 2013, by Matt Newman
Think like a parasol. The lotuses do.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on July 16 2013, by Matt Newman
Are you a trypophobe? If so, the sight of a lotus pod might just set off your fight or flight response. This fear of “clustered holes” and similar patterns most often finds root in the fleshy, expanding seed chambers of this particular plant, though some psychologists have pointed to Photoshop and the popularity of giving people the willies on social media as a factor in the supposed spread of the phobia.
Us? We just think they’re fascinating botanical constructs.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on July 1 2013, by Matt Newman
What’s the size of a popcorn bowl, an enduring symbol around the world, and making a scene in our Conservatory Courtyard?
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on July 13 2012, by Matt Newman
After I posted the relieving conclusion of the ‘Ray Davies’ saga, commenter Gene mentioned that another pond-dweller, this time a lotus, shared its name with yet another rock star–Scottish singer Maggie Bell. For those who didn’t catch the exchange, I dove in and found what I could of Nelumbo ‘Maggie Bell Slocum’, dubbed not for a rocker, but someone far more horticultural.
‘Maggie Bell Slocum’ was so named for the second wife of prolific water lily and lotus hybridizer Perry D. Slocum, a New Yorker and a long-lived icon in the pond plant world. This one still has stage presence, though, with or without the rock pedigree.
Nelumbo ‘Maggie Belle Slocum’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden on July 7 2012, by Matt Newman
For all the wabi-sabi of the surrounding stands of lotus, you’ll find symmetry if you catch the Water Lily Pool from just the right angle.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Gardens and Collections, Monet's Garden on July 5 2012, by Matt Newman
You could call our spotlight on the lotus blossoms an opening act. The true marquee headliners of Monet’s Garden–the prima donnas of our current collection–are without a doubt their nearby neighbors, the water lilies. There is no other flower in the landscape of spring, summer, or fall that so thoroughly represents the oeuvre of master Impressionist Claude Monet.
In the closing years of his life, the genus Nymphaea would come to define Monet’s obsession. He pulled dozens and dozens of scenes from that iconic spot by Giverny’s Japanese bridge, bringing concept to canvas with a verve few painters could match, then or now. Today, his water lily series stands as the ostensible height of his contribution to the history of art.
“It took me time to understand my water lilies,” Monet once wrote. “I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them.”