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 since this year’s plants and roots are eradicated by a substantial frost, Jewels of Opar (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 writer 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, in his novel, Burroughs had been 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.

But I find this explanation far too mundane. Instead, I prefer 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 a mystery we should cherish.

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Our 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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The 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 the prince 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 open branches tipped with blossoms of yellows and reds that tower over his gentle lines and mounds of green.

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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 back to life.

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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, no more than 200 degrees. Vent slightly (I use a wooden spoon.) Toss and turn every half hour or so until crisp. 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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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, our native grapes are beginning to appear in markets.

North America has two native grape species, Vitis labrusa, often called the fox or possum grape, and Vitis roundifolia, which most people call a muscadine. While the wild fruit of both species is edible, the fruit of cultivated varieties are vastly superior.

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 so named because of its discovery along the Scuppernong River in North Carolina. Because scuppernongs are such an early variety, scuppernong entered common usage to refer to any ”white” muscadine grape.

These grapes 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.

You can use muscadines and scuppernongs as you might any berry: in pies and cobblers, muffins, jams and jellies , as well as the aforementioned wines, but their fresh taste is incredibly wonderful, so keep a bowl  on the kitchen table during the season to nibble on.

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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 as 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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Fresh Pimentos with Cheese

Everyone should grow pimentos. These beautiful, thick-walled fruit carry a sting of goodness that works in dishes across the board.

For this recipe, we used both green and red fruit; the unripe peppers have a bit of astringency, but that’s undercut by blanching whole—ripe and unripe—in lightly salted water to cover until they are just soft, maybe 5 minutes.

Halve and seed peppers. If you’re not going to use them immediately, put them in a jar with a salty water. They’ll keep for a week or two like this, or you can put them in a jar with salt water and oil to keep longer.

For 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese we used about a third of a cup of diced blanched peppers. We used just enough mayonnaise to moisten, but no cream cheese to keep the pimentos’ pinch.

A bit of granulated garlic and salt rounded out this batch, though chopped scallions or shallots wouldn’t be out of place.

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About Limas

All butter beans are limas, but not all limas are butter beans.

Actually, it’s a lot more complicated. While lima beans and butter beans are usually thought of as two different types of beans, they are both varieties of Phaseolus lunatus (literally “moon bean”), which has a very long and complicated history of domestication in Meso- and South America.

During the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru (16th-19th centuries), when limas were exported to North America and Europe, the boxes of beans were stamped with their place of origin (“Lima, Peru“), and the beans got named as such. But of course, when referring to the bean, the word is pronounced LY-mah, while the Peruvian capital is (as you all know) pronounced LEE-mah.

As a rule, large, yellow/white/speckled limas are generally known as butter beans, while the smaller, green varieties are called, well, limas. The smallest may even be called “baby” limas. However, I have been told that “they call butter beans limas up North,” which really throws a wrench in the works.

Limas are a warm-weather crop and come into season sometime around mid-June and with the planting of second crops in late July and early August, stay in season well into October.

Among the most popular varieties grown in Mississippi are ‘Thorogreen’ and ‘Henderson,’ both small green bush types; ‘Jackson Wonder,’ also a bush variety, is small and brown or speckled; ‘Florida Speckled’ is a larger pole variety, and the hard-to-find ‘Willow Leaf,’ also a pole variety, has something of a cult following. Butterpeas are a type of lima beans.

Fresh beans should be smooth and plump, somewhat tacky to the touch. Fresh beans should be washed and picked over for damage, dirt, or detritus, washed, and set to cook in water 2:1; fresh beans don’t need as much water as dried, and they don’t need pre-soaking. As with most American bean recipes, fatty pork is a classic addition.

Bring beans to a boil, then lower heat to simmer and cover until beans are soft. I always use white pepper instead of black to season, and rarely use anything more until the beans are cooked, at which point they become the basis for any number of wonderful dishes.

Every summer I make baked limas in sour cream. For a pound of cooked limas with about a half cup of the liquid, add a quarter cup of brown sugar, and a cup of sour cream mixed with a teaspoon corn starch to keep it from separating. Flour will work in a pinch. Mix well. Bake in a low oven until set. This dish goes with anything at all but is open to any number of frivolous variations.

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Čapek’s Gardener’s Prayer

Some know Karel Čapek as a seven-time Nobel nominee, but most remember him as the man who gave us the word “robot”. Among Čapek’s more endearing works is The Gardener’s Year (1929), a learnéd, light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek depiction of the enduring, eccentric gardener, including a “Gardener’s Prayer” that’s more of a demand for Eden than a supplication. This illustration from the accompanying pages was drawn by his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek.

 O Lord, grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o’clock in the morning, but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, helianthus, lavender, and others which You in Your infinite wisdom know are drought-loving plants-I will write their names on a bit of paper if you like-and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not, for instance, on the gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron) and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no lice or snails, or mildew, and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven.
   Amen