Category: Gardening

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Tarzan in the Garden

Many gardeners in Mississippi are familiar with Jewels of Opar, though with varying degrees of fondness. While the plant—native to tropical America—isn’t a noxious invader, Talinum paniculatum seeds lavishly, and once established persists.

The plant was discovered on the “sea cliffs of Martinique and Santo Domingo” by Dutch botanist Baron Joseph von Jacquin during his travels to the Americas in the mid-18th century. Jacquin described the flowers as “small, numerous, red, and odorless,” likely the source of its common name in other parts of the world, “flame flower,” which brings us to our riddle. How did this modest little flower acquire a name so closely associated with one of literature’s greatest adventure heroes, Tarzan of the Apes?

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916) is a novel by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifth in his series of twenty-four books about the title character Tarzan. As conceived by Burroughs, Opar is a lost colony of Atlantis located deep in the jungles of Africa, in which incredible riches have been stockpiled down through the ages. Tarzan first visits Opar in Burroughs’ second Tarzan novel, The Return of Tarzan (1913), and returns to the city time and again to replenish his personal wealth, for the second time in The Jewels of Opar, again in Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1923) and Tarzan the Invincible (1930).

If Burroughs had described the jewels of the lost kingdom of Opar as “small, numerous, and red” we would have a more substantial link with the plant in my garden, but, alas, he only writes that Tarzan saw only as “a great tray of brilliant stones.” No mention of color, no mention of size, though he does say that some were cut, some not. Perhaps an enterprising nurseryman out to sell dozens and dozens of delicate little flowers that came up in his greenhouses just happened to be a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs and bestowed the exotic name on them in an effort to make them more appealing to gardeners. Such things are known to happen.

I hope that the reason an insignificant flower collected on the volcanic slopes of Martinique became named for a “tray full of brilliant stones” from a fabled Atlantean kingdom remains rich for speculation.

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About Pepper Vinegar

Most other Americans seem to think that the quintessential Southern hot sauce is a Tabasco-type mash, but restaurants across the middle South usually offer pepper vinegar as well.

Many people find pepper vinegar essential for flavoring greens, and some—like me—like it on peas and beans. Any hot pepper can be used, but long cayennes and sports are most common. Make it in jars, and serve it in a shaker bottle. Prick the peppers; you don’t have to stem them. Pack the containers until the lid just mushes the fruit. Use white vinegar, full strength, salted, something like a tablespoon of salt per quart of liquid. Heat the vinegar until just simmering. Add a few drops of vegetable oil in with the peppers before pouring in the hot vinegar. This adds a little kick, and no, I don’t know the science behind it. Some people add sugar, but don’t.

Pepper vinegar ages well over several weeks and you can infuse the peppers with more vinegar–no heating required, but shake well–to stretch a jar.

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Idaho Peaches

The early October morning was warm; the afternoon was going to be hot. On the left of the produce stand piles of pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks and hay bales were somewhat artfully arranged in a semi-circle stretching across the parking lot. The bins were stocked full of peas, beans, squash, corn, and other fresh vegetables. People wandered to-and-fro, poking, picking, sacking, and asking questions of the woman in the center behind a register. When I reached the stand, my eye caught a basket of round, ruby-red, fuzzy fruit.

“Hey, Brenda!” I called out. “Where’d you get these late peaches?”

“Idaho!” She said. I couldn’t help staring.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she said. “I asked Rupert if he had any Carolina peaches left and he said, no, but I have some from Idaho, and I said I didn’t think they even knew what a peach is in Idaho and he just said take or leave, so I bought them because I wanted some peaches, and they’re better than nothing.”

“How are they?” I asked.

“Well, they’re peaches,” she said. “They ain’t the best I’ve had by far, but they’re probably not the worst. They’re peaches, take or leave.”

So I bought a half a dozen Idaho peaches, more for the sake of novelty than for any other reason. And they’re not the best, by any means, but firm and sweet nonetheless, with a deep yellow flesh around a blood-red center.

As I was checking out, Brenda pointed at a table of rattlesnake watermelons and said, “You’ll never guess where those are from”

“So tell me,” I said.

She rang up my total and said, “Nebraska.”

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Flower of the Dead

Red spider lilies bloom in the diminishing days of summer, springing up from drying lawns and fields as if from nothing.

A native of China, the lily (Lycoris radiata), is poisonous to most animals. Every part of the plant can induce vomiting, paralysis, even death. They’re planted in rice fields to deter rodents. When they spread to Japan, where the dead were buried without coffins, the lilies were planted to prevent vermin from disturbing grave sites. In time, the brilliant red flower became known as the corpse flower, the ghost flower, and—most poignantly—the lost child flower.

Buddhism also came to Japan from China, and the Lotus Sutra became a fundamental text for many Japanese schools. In the sutra, heavenly flowers descend from the realms of the gods, falling on the Buddha and his audience. Many devotees associate this flower – called Manjushage – with red spider lilies.

The lily blooms around the autumn equinox, Higanbana, the day the dead return to the world, and higanbana is a popular Japanese name for the flower. The flowers are said to bloom on O-higan “the other shore,” of the Sanzu-no-Kawa, a Styx-like river separating the lands of the living from the banks of carmine blossoms beckoning  spirits to life.

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The Imperiled Pea

Most of us know Mississippi silver hulls as a crowders, and y’all are probably as surprised as I was to find that they’re an endangered variety of field peas (Vigna unguiculata). Silver hulls thrive in the lower Mid-South; the 6″ pods carry blocky black or brown-eyed peas that “crowd” one another in the pod. Easy to shell, fresh seeds have a thin skin, giving them a cleaner flavor. Sad to say, field peas of any kind just aren’t grown much any more.

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Singer in the Arms of Dawn

Tithonus was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the naiad Strymo. He was a talented musician with a beautiful voice. His brother was Priam, the last king of Troy.
Aurora, goddess of the morning sun, fell in love with Tithonus and took him to Olympus for her groom.Aurora asked Zeus to make him immortal and he agreed, but she had not thought to ask also that he should remain young. So it came to pass that Tithonus grew old, but could not die. Helpless at last, unable to move hand or foot, he prayed for death, and Aurora, with a feeling for the natural fitness of things, turned him into a cricket that sings to her as the morning warms.
The Mexican sunflower was first described by the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who visited the United States in 1877. He came at the invitation of American botanist Asa Gray, who with Dalton intended to investigate the connection between the floras of eastern United States and those of eastern continental Asia and Japan.It was during this visit that he visited the American Southwest where—in addition to meeting Brigham Young—Hooker collected specimens of the plant, which he sent to England that year along with over a thousand others. As is the custom, Hooker, as the discoverer of the species, was entitled to give it a name, and for reasons that may forever remain unfathomed, he named it after the bridegroom of Aurora, goddess of the dawn.

Though considered coarse by our doyen of Southern gardening, Elizabeth Lawrence (among others) she (along with those others) unfailingly mentions in the same breath that the Mexican sunflower (Tithonia roundifolia) sets Monet’s gardens at Giverny ablaze in late summer, their blazing branches tower over his gentle lines and mounds of green and blue, pink and purple.

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Drying Cayennes

Select the ripest peppers without bruising, mold, or tears. Wash, drain, and remove stems and husks. Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan and place in a very low oven. In most ovens, this is the “warm” setting, about 160 degrees,  Vent slightly (I use a wooden spoon.) Toss and turn every half hour or so until thoroughly dry. Store in a vented container until ready for use.  This process  works for most thin-skinned peppers, and depending on the size takes three to five hours.

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Docteur Magnol

Pierre Magnol was born in 1638 to an apothecary’s family in Montpellier. He enrolled as a medical student at the University of Montpellier in May 1655.

By Magnol’s time, Montpellier was an important, long-established commercial and educational center. Montpellier was the first university in France to establish a botanic garden for medicine and pharmacology. After receiving his degree (MD) in 1659, Mangol’s attention shifted to botany. In 1687, he became Demonstrator of Plants at the botanic garden. Magnol was appointed Director of the Montpellier botanic garden in 1696, later Inspector of the Garden until his death in 1715. Magnol’s most important contribution is the concept of plant families. He developed 76 tables, which not only grouped plants into families but also allowed for easy and rapid identification, an important step towards a tree of life.

Magnolia in botanical nomenclature first appeared in Charles Plumier’s Genera (1702) for a flowering tree in Martinique. Much closer to home, William Sherard, who studied botany under a pupil’s of Magnol (Tournefort,) adopted the name Magnolia in the taxonomy of Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1730) for another flowering tree. It’s almost certain Linnaeus never saw a specimen of Plumier’s Magnolia, if one even existed, and left with a scribbled description and a scrawled drawing, must have taken it—rather despite the yawning geographic disparity—for the same plant described by Catesby.

Things eventually ironed out. Initially, Linnaeus described a monotypic genus, with the sole species being Magnolia virginiana—which we know as the sweetbay magnolia—and assigned it five varieties. He later raised these to species status. The Madagascan plant Plumier described is now known as Magnolia dodecapetala. The name Magnol now adorns a genus with anywhere from 210 to 340 species (we have 8 in the southeastern US), a family (Magnoliaceae) with two genera, Magnolia and Liriodendron (tulip trees), and division (Magnoliids) with more than 10,000 species.

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Muscadines and Scuppernongs

It’s late summer. The exhausting heat endures, and September’s sure to extend the drought, but on a (rather singular) bright note, muscadines are beginning to appear in markets.

North America has two native grape species, Vitis labrusa, often called the fox or possum grape, which has several cultivars, and the more popular Vitis roundifolia, which most people call a muscadine. Muscadines have a thick skin and rind–they’re actually chewy; when you bit into them, you get an explosion of sweet, sharp flavor, and of course that essential hint of musk. They’re a little bit pricey, but to me, they’re worth it. Naturally, both species are widely used for making wines, which are most often cloyingly sweet, the sort of thing a little old lady would poison, pour into cut crystal apéritifs, and serve to a  middle-aged rogue she’d discovered was cheating on her with the choir director.

The name muscadine comes from its similarity to early settlers with the Muscat grape, a Mediterranean type used in making muscatel, both words deriving from the Sanskrit muska-s  (testicle,) in reference to the musky scent of the fruit. (Never underestimate etymology.) Muscadines come in a variety of colors, but there are two basic color types: the black/purple and the white/bronze. The white/bronze type is called a scuppernong because of a natural cultivar discovered on the Scuppernong River in North Carolina. Because this plant is such an early variety, any ”white” muscadine is called a scuppernong.

Use muscadines as you might any berry: in pies and cobblers, muffins, jams and jellies as well as the aforementioned wines, but the fresh fruit is incredibly wonderful, so keep a bowl  out to nibble on.

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Fresh Pimentos with Cheese

Before bells became the most popular mild pepper, everyone grew pimentos. These beautiful, thick-walled peppers work well in dishes across the main board. For this recipe, we used both green and red fruit. Halve and seed fresh pimentos. For two cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese use about a half a cup of diced peppers lightly sauteed in scant oil. Use enough mayonnaise to just moisten, a bit of granulated garlic, and chopped scallions or shallots. Salt to taste.