THANK YOU EPHRAIM
Foxy Grapes
Early each fall I come upon a most delicious fragrance, reminiscent of jasmine, at a certain point as I walk along the rail trail near my home. No flower claims responsibility for that aroma. Wild grapes, dangling in ripe clusters from low hanging vines, are the source. That scent begs a taste, whose quality you quickly discover pales by comparison with that of the perfume. Wild grapes are downright sour.
Now go to your grocer’s shelf and take a deep whiff of the grapes there. Hardly a hint of aroma — unless the grapes happen to be the variety Concord, a commercial grape variety that captures the essence of our wild grapes. And Concord’s berries are indeed edible, being much larger and sweeter that their wild counterparts.
AMERICA’S FIRST BOTANIST
Come on Over
Come on over to John’s garden, one of the best around. John Bartram’s, that is. In case you don’t know him — rather, of him — he was America’s first botanist. Carl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century devised our whole system for classifying plants, called Bartram “the greatest natural botanist in the world.”
John’s garden is a convenient stop during any visit to Philadelphia. You’re going to visit the Liberty Bell, aren’t you? The Bartram garden is only minutes away, just south of Center City.
When John bought this tract along the Schuylkill River in 1728, it was rural land skirting the colonial city. His botanizing took him throughout what is now eastern U.S., and his garden was where Read more
RED LIKE I’D NEVER BEFORE SEEN
First Sightings
The first time I saw cardinal flowers, they were growing in a drainage ditch along a farm field in southern Delaware. Their intense, red color took my breath away, in part, because of their surroundings. After all, this was no well-tended, perennial flower border, where colorful flowers would be expected. No, growing along that ditch, those cardinal flowers were “mere” wildings.
What’s more, the plants were blooming in deep shade, a place usually lit, if then, by white flowers.
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