#corallorhiza multiflora

[thebotanicalarcade]

n136_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: Flowers of mountain and plain /. New York :H.W. Wilson Co.,1920.. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40792119

[sensitivefern]

Reading: After having had to read so many mediocre books in connection with the Civil War and Canada, it is a pleasure to get back for a while to really well-written ones. Smollett’s Travels through France and Italy, Auden’s excellent anthology of Walter de la Mare’s poetry, Saintsbury’s Miscellaneous Essays, a volume I had never seen which I picked up at Blackwell’s in Oxford. Saintsbury at his best, in his middle period... Lionel Trilling cannot understand why I admire Saintsbury.

[Edmund Wilson]

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BALTIMORE, SEPTEMBER 24, 1945. George S. Schuyler, the Negro journalist, was here last night, and August and I put in a couple of hours palavering with him in Hollins street. He is now in charge of the New York office of the Pittsburgh Courier... He said that the Courier now has six or eight regional editions, and sells 280,000 copies a week. Its gross intake last year was nearly $2,000,000. [...] His view of World War II and of the events likely to flow out of it is substantially mine, so our confab was free from argument. He has a white wife, but is very dark himself, with plainly negroid features. I have been following his doings for nearly twenty years, and... [he] is unquestionably the most competent Negro journalist ever heard of... When I compare him to any of the dunderheads now roaring on the Sun, I am sharply conscious of his enormous superiority. He is not only much more intelligent than they are; he is vastly more honest.

[H.L. Mencken]

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HANS IN LUCK

Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes right – all that falls to them is so much gain – all their geese are swans – all their cards are trumps – toss them which way you will, they will always, like poor puss, alight upon their legs, and only move on so much the faster. The world may very likely not always think of them as they think of themselves, but what care they for the world? what can it know about the matter?

One of these lucky beings was neighbour Hans.

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LICHEN: ‘Eternity’s soil maker’, you could call him. Long before your ancestors and mine appeared on earth, he was laboring endlessly on flinty rock and sterile sand, in steaming tropics and icy tundra. [...] Lichens are eaten by snails, mites, caterpillars and the like, and these creatures supply manure to further the soil making. [...] In ancient times, lichens were used for everything from dyes and pigments to perfume and hair tonic. Tanners, brewers, distillers and medical men found them highly useful. At one time, various lichens were recommended as cures for dozens of ailments, and as a narcotic and even an insecticide. [...] LICHENS IN THE GARDEN: You can have a lot of fun with lichens in both your indoor and outdoor gardening... Collect some lichens in the country. Look for old rocks and tree trunks overgrown with them. A knife can be used to scrape them off. After a few hours drying in the sun, they can be crumbled and rubbed into the surface of a rock freshly sprinkled with water. This moisture is very important – sprinkle the rock two or three times a day. In a few days, a gentle green will appear, gradually deepening until the whole surface is carpeted Granite is slower to respond than sandstone, shale or limestone, but the result is equally pleasing.

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Paeonia Seeds are double dormant – they need to be cold-stratified (indoors or out) for several weeks; during the long period of warm stratification (‘summer’) roots may develop, but the seeds still need another bout of chilliness... plants will ultimately reach the flowering stage in perhaps 5 years... black seeds are fertile; all others are not...

‘Oriental poppies reproduce naturally from broken roots left in the soil, so root cutting usually succeed. They should be 3 inches long, inserted vertically into free-draining soil mix. Keep in a sheltered place over winter. When the new shoots have good roots in spring, line out in a nursery bed or pot singly’... seeds need light to germinate; a steady 50 degrees would be appreciated...

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dame’s rocket | Hesperis Seeds require light and a temperature between 60 and 85 degrees... start indoors 8-10 weeks, outdoors, midsummer – mulch over winter...

hyacinth Don’t bother starting seeds indoors – sow seeds in late summer to early autumn, 1/2 inch deep; germination is iffy... offsets can be planted, but, again, success is iffy...

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July 29 [1853]. Moist banks covered with the nearly grown, but green, partridge-berries now. Prenanthes, almost... Coral-root well out, – Corallorhiza multiflora, – at Brister’s Hill. There are some beautiful glossy, firm ferns there, – Polystichum acrostichoides (?), – shield fern. Nature made ferns for pure leaves to show what she could do in that line. I also see some small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake atop... Clethra, a day or two in some places. In the Poorhouse Meadow, the white orchis spike almost entirely out... This is the best place to find the Pycnanthemum muticum and lanceolatum that I know.

[Thoreau, Journal]

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❚David Frum Nature wants 5 of your 7 children dead. It wants you dead by 50. Everything better than that is brought to you by science & technology

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