#history and plants

[internetiquette]

Mill ruins from 1786

[allegoryofthebeast]

I am so tickled by the thought of Daniel’s family seeing him at almost 80 branch out into a new social circle comprised of beautiful men in their 20s and 30s that are also the most intense and bizarre people anyone’s ever met and worse now Dad is acting Exactly Like Them

[headspace-hotel]

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia, except for Chinese people...who were only excluded because they were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

[amnhnyc]

Imagine a pinecone as heavy as a bowling ball and the size of a chihuahua. Believe it or not, such pinecones exist—and they belong to the coulter pine (Pinus coulteri), a conifer that can be found in parts of North America including California and Mexico. Infamous among loggers and foresters, this tree is nicknamed "the widowmaker" because of the unlucky individuals who met their fate as a result of its falling pinecones. This species produces the largest pinecones on the planet, weighing up to 11 lbs (5 kg)!

Photo: damontighe, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[flower-paintings]

Flowers in a Painted Ceramic Vase with Moths by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 - 1625)

[legbootlegit]

I was bamboozled by this copper merchant. Stay away from these swindlers.

[gent-illmatic]

[expressions-of-nature]

La Chapelle L’ange au Violon, France by JR pharma

[seismic-tartness]

This is made of glass

Blaschka Glass Models of Plants exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

From top to bottom, left to right:

[ID 1:

A photo of a large pitcher plant sculpture sitting in a case of glass and dark wood on a white background in a museum exhibit. The plant is photographed from below, so the plant's roots and bottom of the purple and yellow pitchers are in the foreground. The stems, leaves, and flowers are seen from below.

/end ID 1]

[ID 2:

A close-up photo of the leaves and pitchers, taken from above the pitchers.

/end ID 2]

[ID 3:

There are two signs to the left of the sculpture of the pitcher plant. The first and larger sign reads:

From the Hands of the Makers Over the course of fifty years, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, father and son, continually experimented with materials and methods that pushed the boundaries of glassworking. After his father's death in 1895, Rudolf continued to refine glass formulations, experiment with pigments and varnishes, and create his own palette of colored glass enamels. He produced this Great Pitcher Plant, [italics] Nepenthes maxima [end italics] (right), the largest and most complicated model in the collection, using many of his innovative techniques.

The smaller plaque identifies the artwork and reads:

[italics] Nepenthes maxima [end italics] (Great Pitcher Plant) Indonesia, New Guinea & Philippines by Rudolf Blauschka, 1906

/end ID 3]

[iliothermia]

I just wanted to say I love all of your art in general, but the recent talk of leeks have been particularly interesting to me - I'm Scottish Ashkenazi and leeks are a staple in some of my favorite foods and national dishes, it's so interesting to see leeks be such an important food in Jewish cultures around the world!

Oaaah yes that's cool! I need to look up the history of the leek's travels.. It's native to the middle east and mediterranean which is why it's pretty universal in Jewish food : ) but it was brought to Europe in ancient times! We all love leek because they are decently cold tolerant 💚

Leek

[jamiesansible]

I’m sure everyone remembers the article from 2020 where researches found three-ply cordage made by Neanderthals.^

But did you know that in the supplemental material for the article, it mentions that pine needles can be made into textiles?^^ As someone who works with textiles myself, I had come across pine needles as a dye stuff, but not as a fibre.

The source is listed as "L’acquisition des matières textiles d’origine végétale en Préhistoire" by Fabinne Médard. It talks about how other fibres, including brambles and broom could have been used prehistorically for a similar purpose, as well as flax. However, it contains only one metion of pine needles.

“Les aiguilles du pin sylvestre (Pinus sylvestris L.) fournissaient, après rouissage, une matière textile appelée « laine des forêts » qui remplaçait la ouate et l’étoupe dont on faisait également des tissus (Mathieu [1858] 1897)" * The needles of the Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) provided, after retting, a textile material called “forest wool” which replaced wadding and tow from which fabrics were also made.

So Scots pine needles were processed, spun and woven, or simply used directly after processing, potentially prehistorically.

If you follow the source for the quote above, it takes you to a book from 1860 called Flore forestière; description et histoire des végétaux ligneux qui croissent spontanément en France et des essences importantes de l'Algérie. It says:

“On fabrique depuis quelques années, avec les faisceaux fibreux, allongés, et tenaces des aiguilles, une espèce de drap grossier.” ** For several years, we have been making a kind of coarse cloth using the fibrous, elongated and stiff bundles of the needles.

So this processing of pine needles was also happening in the 1800s.

Another souce from the 1840s describes the texture of forest wool as resembling "...horsehair, and has been used for stuffing mattresses"** and that an industry sprung up in Humboldtsau, near Breslau for processing it. Manufacturies for forest wool then spread to Sweden, Holland and France, which may explain the mention in the 1860 Flore forestière.

Despite looking a bit more, but couldn't find much else on the subject expect a recent masters thesis in German (which I couldn't access) and an article on the designer Tamara Orjola.

Orjola's work investigates the modern use of pine needle fabric, showing there is still interest in it. She says:

"Forest Wool began with research on the forgotten value of plants. Valuable local materials and techniques are left behind due to the unwillingness of mass-production to adopt more sustainable practices. In the old days the pine tree was used as food, remedies, to build homes and furniture and for many other purposes. Nowadays, it is only valuable for its timber." ***

I find the line from prehistory to now facinating - that people have looked to something as mundane as a pine needle to spin, especially as researchers are discovering a lot of what they thought was linen fabric is actually ramie (from nettles).

As far as I can tell, only Pinus sylvestris L. and one other variety was used. I am not sure what makes that tree more suitable than other pine trees, or if it was simply a question of availability. In terms of processing, the answer as far as I can tell is retting, presumably followed by scutching and hackling - similar to how flax is processed. However I have not done that myself and cannot speak to the specifics.

It would be something intresting to try though.

________

^ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61839-w#MOESM1

^^ https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-020-61839-w/MediaObjects/41598_2020_61839_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

* https://journals.openedition.org/nda/602

** https://www.proquest.com/openview/276605d708970d416923b94e8856d20b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41445

*** https://lampoonmagazine.com/article/2021/05/15/recycled-wood-pine-needles-byproduct/

[serpentface]

how do you come up with the ways cultures in your setting stylize people/animals/the world in general in their artwork, i.e. jewlery, rock carvings, statues, etc? Each culture in your world seems to have a very unique "art style" and I love it a lot - makes them seem that much more 'real'. This is something I struggle with a lot in my own worldbuilding and I'd love to pick your brain if possible 😁

I think a starting point is to have a research process based in the material realities of the culture you're designing for. Ask yourself questions like:

Where do they live? What's the climate/ecosystem(s) they are based in? What geographic features are present/absent?

What is their main subsistence method? (hunter gatherer, seasonal pastoralist, nomadic pastoralist, settled agriculturalist, a mix, etc)

What access to broader trade networks do they have and to whom? Are there foreign materials that will be easily accessible in trade and common in use, or valuable trade materials used sparingly in limited capacities?

Etc

And then do some research based on the answers, in order to get a sense of what materials they would have routine access to (ie dyes, metal, textiles, etc) and other possible variables that would shape how the art is made and what it's used for. This is just a foundational step and won't likely play much into designing a Style.

If you narrow these questions down very specifically, (ie in the context of the Korya post- grassland based mounted nomads, pastoralist and hunter-gatherer subsistence, access to wider trade networks and metals), you can direct your research to specific real world instances that fit this general idea. This is not to lift culturally specific concepts from the real world and slap them into your own setting, but to notice commonalities this lifestyle enforces - (ie in the previous example- mounted nomadic peoples are highly mobile and need to easily carry their wealth (often on clothing and tack) therefore small, elaborate decorative artwork that can easily be carried from place to place is a very likely feature)

For the details of the art itself, I come up with loose 'style guides' (usually just in my head) and go from there.

Here's some example questions for forming a style (some are more baseline than others)

Are geometric patterns favored? Organic patterns? Representative patterns (flowers, animals, stars, etc)? Abstract patterns?

Is there favored material(s)? Beads, bone, clay, metals, stones, etc.

When depicting people/animals, is realism favored? Heavy stylization? The emotional impression of an animal? Are key features accentuated?

How perspective typically executed? Does art attempt to capture 3d depth? Does it favor showing the whole body in 2 dimensions (ie much of Ancient Egyptian art, with the body shown in a mix of profile and forward facing perspective so all key attributes are shown)? Will limbs overlap? Are bodies shown static? In motion?

Does artwork of people attempt to beautify them? Does it favor the culture's conception of the ideal body?

Are there common visual motifs? Important symbols? Key subject matters?

What is the art used for? Are its functions aesthetic, tutelary, spiritual, magical? (Will often exist in combination, or have different examples for each purpose)

Who is represented? Is there interest in everyday people? Does art focus on glorifying warriors, heroes, kings?

Are there conventions for representing important figures? (IE gods/kings/etc being depicted larger than culturally lesser subjects)

Is there visual shorthand to depict objects/concepts that are difficult to execute with clarity (the sun, moon, water), or are invisible (wind, the soul), or have no physical component (speech)?

Etc

Deciding on answers to any of these questions will at least give you a unique baseline, and you can fill in the rest of the gaps and specify a style further until it is distinct. Many of these questions are not mutually exclusive, both in the sense of elements being combined (patterns with both geometric and organic elements) or a culture having multiple visual styles (3d art objects having unique features, religious artwork having its own conventions, etc).

Also when you're getting in depth, you should have cultural syncretism in mind. Cultures that routinely interact (whether this interaction is exchange or exploitation) inevitably exchange ideas, which can be especially visible in art. Doing research on how this synthesizing of ideas works in practice is very helpful- what is adopted or left out from an external influence, what is retained from an internal influence, what is unique to this synthesis, AND WHY. (I find Greco-Buddhist art really interesting, that's one of many such examples)

Looking at real world examples that fit your parameters can be helpful (ie if I've decided on geometric patterns in my 'style guide', I'll look at actual geometric patterns). And I strongly encourage trying to actually LEARN about what you're seeing. All art exists in a context, and having an understanding of how the context shapes art, how art does and doesn't relate to broader aspects of a society, etc, can help you when synthesizing your own.

[headspace-hotel]

Sometimes, old American books about trees are all "This tree is unshapely, has ragged and irregular growth and has little economic value." but I was wrong to characterize them all as such, because for every capitalist-minded book about the USA's trees that is like "ough we gotta exploit every living thing" there's also a book like this:

The book is called Our Friends the Trees and it was written in the 1930's and this is the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH, no introduction no nothing, just going all in taking no prisoners from the very first line and it CONTINUES like this for the WHOLE book there is ZERO chill throughout the whole length of the book

[amnhnyc]

Here's a parasitic plant that smells like a rotting corpse: jackal food (Hydnora africana)! Unlike many plants, which use chlorophyll and photosynthesis to derive nutrients from the Sun, this species attaches itself to host plants instead, siphoning off their nutrients. Found in arid parts of southern Africa, including South Africa and Namibia, the stench of the jackal food’s fruit attracts a variety of animals including jackals, porcupines, and moles. What does it taste like? Its flavor and texture have been compared to that of a potato.

Photo: alexlansdowne, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[flower-paintings]

Posy of Flowers, with a Red Admiral Butterfly, on a Marble Ledge by Rachel Ruysch (1664 - 1750)