Warm Rain On Demand

1901

Luxurious Quarters Provided For the Horticulturist's Favorites.

Everybody knows more or less about the cultivation of flowers, but few have either the time or money to grow such rarities as the orchid, sometimes called the "rich man's flower" because so far its cultivation has been restricted almost entirely to great private estates. These botanical aristocrats, like the famous black tulip which, according to the novelist Dumas, bloomed once and once only in the seventeenth century town of Haarlem, require luxurious surroundings in order to attain their best development. They require also special arrangements for their care and protection during exhibitions. Every new building devoted to horticulture has been the means of adding something to these arrangements, and the new horticultural hall in Boston naturally represents the latest achievements in this direction.

Temperature, of course, is one of the first things to be taken into consideration. Readers of Dumas will readily remember Van Baerle's famous drying house and the care with which he raised and lowered the windows. The exhibition rooms of the new hall are drying rooms on a larger scale and are so arranged that pressure on a single lever opens all the windows at once, thus filling the rooms at any moment with sunshine and fresh oxygen. But they are an improvement on the seventeenth century tulip fancier's arrangements in that modern science with its fans, heating apparatus and ventilators, has made it possible to keep the atmosphere always exactly regulated.

It is interesting to know also that the watering of plants in the new building is as scientific a process as the regulation of the atmosphere. Each of the exhibition rooms has several hose connections, supplying hot and cold water The temperature of the water may be regulated before it enters the hose and it thus reaches the individual flower at the exact degree of warmth which scientific experience has shown the gardener will produce the best results.

The Possible Intelligence of Plants

1914

SENSES OF PLANTS.

A Theory That Flowers See and Hear and May Even Talk.

Jean Viand-Bruant, who is one of the most famous French horticulturists, has just published a little book on flowers, in which he advances the theory (I believe it is not entirely novel) that flowers both see and hear. As a young man, he says, he began to study flowers, for which he has always had a passion, and he sought to understand the habits of the blooms which he cultivated. When he saw the growing plant reach out toward the necessary support he asked himself whether the action was the result of volition and whether the plant had eyes.

M. Viand-Bruaut is now apparently convinced that flowers both hear and see. There are some that are sensitive to anaesthetic substances, ether in particular, which suggests the existence of a nervous system, like that of a nervous woman. And he would even credit them with something analogous to the power of speech.

"One knows," he writes, "that the perfume of flowers is a manifestation of vegetable life, a living radiation. Perfume is as much a vibration as an olfactory sensation. The perfume is the voice of the flower. A bouquet is a wordless romance. Each perfume or, rather, each odorous sensation corresponds with a certain rate of vibration. There is an analogy between the perceptions of sound, light and scent. The strong scent corresponds with the deep notes, while the delicate odors correspond with the shrill notes." — Paris Cor. Cincinnati Enquirer.