Category — Night-blooming plants

The last time I wrote about cucuzzi, the edible gourd, I still hadn’t gotten any female flowers or fruits.

I do now. I went away for a few days. When I left, the biggest fruit was a few inches long, and no thicker than my finger.

When I got back, it looked like this:

The female flowers are a little different than the male ones; the petals are narrower, creating a kind of pinwheel effect. It’s a nice variation.

My cucuzzi didn’t really get going for a while. I did get a late start on my garden, what with one thing and another, and it could be that they don’t have quite as much sun as they would like (though I gave them one of the sunniest places I’ve got), or that I didn’t give them enough flower fertilizer to get them flowering sooner.

Or it could just be that they were in a mood. Plants are like that.

In any case, I’m going to be eating them soon, because cucuzzis are supposed to be harvested when they’re about six inches long. Since they are gourds, you don’t want them to  get mature. (Well, even if they were summer squash, you’d want to avoid that.)

As much as I want to see what they taste like–if they really live up to the great things people say about the flavor– I’m saving this first cucuzzi for seed. I’m not an expert at seed-saving, but one of the things I remember is that, if you want a plant to bloom earlier, it’s best to select seed from the first fruits that appear. And so far the main pleasures of cucuzzi have been in their exuberant viny growth, springy tendrils, and faintly scented evening flowers.

It’s okay. It looks as if I’m going to have more edible gourds in just a few days. Unless it freezes tonight.

Louise Beebe Wilder says that, on cloudy days, four o’clock flowers open early and stay open all day.  Gerard says that if the air is temperate, the flowers stay open all day and close at night. I’ll have to take their word for it: by the time it’s late enough in the summer for four o’clocks to bloom here, both rain and temperate air are long gone.

They have a tendency to loll and flop, and are fairly thirsty plants. On the other hand, they’ll come back nicely from water neglect, as I can personally attest, and the floppiness isn’t altogether bad if you’re growing them closely with other plants. You can kind of lay the plant out of the growth path of the ones they’re interplanted with. They will continue to bloom, upright or sideways.

A Canadian garden book says they’re supposed to grow only one to two feet tall, but the first one I ever saw was a wide round bush of at least three feet, and one of my plants that is flopping and growing sideways is getting to about that length. My Sunset Western Garden Book agrees with me: they grow to 3 or 4 feet. The likelihood is that hotter weather gets them to come on faster. But don’t lose heart if you live in a cool-summer climate, since they are reputed to grow, and flower prodigiously, in Canada and England. Maybe you’ll get to see their flowers open all day, to make up for shorter plants.

I’ve planted one of my four o’clocks in a container by the door, so that each day I can witness the miracle of new parti-colored flowers just by walking out the door. And each evening the flowers open, release their slightly-sweet pale lemon scent, and stay open until shortly after the sun hits them the next morning.

Gerard describes the scent as being sweet like narcissus, but it isn’t to my nose. This could be because of a difference in our senses of smell, or because of a difference in varieties of Mirabilis jalapa. David Squire says its scent is “fruity and sweet”, which is more like my reading.

A sense of smell is an evanescent thing, and the interpretations and associations we give each odor are entirely personal, though there may be many people who share the same feelings about a single scent.

Mirabilis jalapa is not the herb called jalap, which comes from the root of Ipomoea jalapa, or High John the Conqueror root. Gerard claims that he heard from someone that the roots could be used as a purgative, but he doesn’t appear to have tested this claim. I’m thinking there’s a possibility he mixed up the two; jalap has long been known as a powerful purgative, and Gerard heard the purgative report from someone in Italy. It’s easy to get information scrambled when it comes a long distance, as anyone who has ever played the party game “Whisper Down the Lane” (sometimes known as “Telephone”) can testify.

Mirabilis jalapa caused quite a stir when it arrived in Europe (and what is now the UK) from the Americas. Gerard spends about three pages going on about it in his Herball (approximately 1636).  He says that the seed was brought from Peru to Spain, and thence to the rest of Europe, and England.  Parkinson, a bit later, is still excited about the diversity of the colors, but only enough to go on for two pages.

Among his observations on the habits of Mirabilis jalapa is,  “And I haue often also observed that one side of a plant will giue fairer varieties than another, which is most commonly the Easterne, as more temperate and shadowie side.”

This is strangely unlike my own experience with four o’clock, which mulishly refuses to bloom for me unless it gets a fair dose of sun throughout the day. Maybe morning sun was enough for the eastern side of Parkinson’s plants.

The name Mirabilis jalapa reflects an older name, Mirabilis Peruana, which translates into one of its modern common names: Marvel of Peru. Belle-de-nuit (“beauty of the night”) was common name for it in France, at least as late as the 1930s, and apparently it goes as “Beauty of the Night” (in English) in at least parts of North America. In older times, it was also called Marvell of the World (nursery-grower hype seems to be a tradition that has come down through the centuries). HachalI was, supposedly, the Peruvian name for it. Other European names were  Solanum Odoriferum; Jasminum Mexicanum; Carolus Clusius; Admirabilia Peruviana. All of which goes to show what Linnaeus had to deal with a little later, when he started standardizing plant names.

Educated people of the time used Latin as a common tongue, which is why all these names are in Latin, and why Linnaeus chose Latin for his binomials. Unlike the Latin-speakers above, he made the astounding move of relating plant the names to the family the plants were actually in, instead of just using names that plants reminded him of, or names of people he wished to honor (as in Carolus Clusius). We do, of course, keep to the European tradition of naming plants after people, but now we use cultivar or species names for that.

It’s an interesting cultural custom. In many cases, the plants named after European people were already well-known by non-European people in the plant’s country of origin. While I think the people who bring plants from one country to another, often at much peril, deserve credit, this makes me uneasy. European culture does seem to have a propensity for putting a stamp on things and calling them ours. I am not sure why we feel so compelled to do this. Fear, probably.

Gardens and plants make my mind wander down lengthy and little-used trails.  But it always comes back to the plants, the landscape, and our connections with them.

References:

John Gerard, Gerard’s Herball: The Essence therof distilled by Marcus Woodward, from the Edition of Th. Johnson, 1636, Crescent Books, 1985

John Lust, The Herb Book,  Benedict Lust Publications/Bantam, 1974/1979

Steven R. Smith, Wylundt’s Book of Incense, Samuel Weiser, 1989

Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening in Canada, Reader’s Digest Association (Canada) Ltd., 1979

Sunset Western Garden Book, Lane Magazine and Book Company, 1967, 1973

Louise Beebe Wilder, The Fragrant Garden, MacMillan, 1932; Dover reprint 1974

David Squire (with Jane Newdick), The Scented Garden, Rodale, 1989

“The stalks toward the top are garnished with long hollow single floures, folded as it were into five parts before they be opened; but being fully blown, do resemble the floures of Tabaco, not ending in sharp corners, but blunt & round as the flours of Bindweed, and larger than the floures of Tabaco, glittering oft times with a fine purple or crimson colour, many times of an horse-flesh, sometimes yellow, sometimes pale, and somtime resembling an old red or yellow colour; sometime whitish, and most commonly two colours occupying half the floure, or intercoursing the whole floure with streaks or orderly streames, now yellow, now purple, divided through the whole, having sometime great, somtime little spots of a purple colour, sprinkled and scattered in a most variable order and brave mixture.” John Gerard, Gerard’s Herball, Woodward edition pg. 75-76

“…it is a pleasant plant to decke the gardens of the curious.” ibid, pg. 78

I have the kind of four o’clocks that are yellow-and-cream, in combinations of splashes, stripes, and dots.  Sometimes I get an almost totally yellow flower, and sometimes I get an almost-white one. A friend grows a yellow and red-purple version that looks like the last of Gerard’s descriptions of this variable plant.
The first four o’clock I  ever saw in the flesh was blooming in a fairly shady spot (an unusual thing for four o’clocks, I found out later), and had flowers in solid colors. But the same bush had fuchsia, white, and orange-yellow flowers on it.

For a few years, I tried growing four o’clocks from seed, having read the usual propaganda that they are easy from seed.

They may be, and I may be the only one who can’t grow them that way. Or perhaps my garden just wasn’t sunny enough. Or perhaps I put them in places where they didn’t get enough water. After a few years of this, I ordered tubers of four o’clock (yes, they are tuberous plants) from Brent and Becky’s.

Gerard preserved his roots by digging them up at first frost and storing them in a butter firkin filled with river sand, and putting them in a dry place until planting them out in March or April. Likely his winters were more severe than my own. We get frosts, even snow, but we very rarely have ground frozen solid. Myself, I just leave four o’clocks in the ground.  They obligingly return each late spring.

When I see the screwed-up buds about to unfurl, I breathe a sigh of relief.  It’s late enough in the evening to expect some coolness soon.

 Next post: more about four o’clocks

References:

John Gerard, Gerard’s Herball: The Essence therof distilled by Marcus Woodward, from the Edition of Th. Johnson, 1636, Crescent Books, 1985

John Lust, The Herb Book,  Benedict Lust Publications/Bantam, 1974/1979

Steven R. Smith, Wylundt’s Book of Incense, Samuel Weiser, 1989

Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening in Canada, Reader’s Digest Association (Canada) Ltd., 1979

Sunset Western Garden Book, Lane Magazine and Book Company, 1967, 1973

Louise Beebe Wilder, The Fragrant Garden, MacMillan, 1932; Dover reprint 1974

David Squire (with Jane Newdick), The Scented Garden, Rodale, 1989

The datura in these pictures, ‘Evening Fragrance’, is identified as Datura meteloides, the same species as a wild datura that grows in my area. I got the wild datura to grow in my garden from seed once. Then I moved, and it wouldn’t. So basically, I bought a tame cultivar of a plant that grows wild in my area.

Probably.

There’s a lot of confusion in the botany of this genus. It’s pretty well agreed that the shrubbier plants whose flowers hang down are brugmansias, and the more herbaceous plants whose flowers point out or up are daturas. So now the hanging-down flowers have their own genus. But things are still murky in the genus datura, with a lot of argument over who belongs in what species, or whether it’s really a species at all. Since many of the daturas look a great deal alike (like Evening Fragrance, in fact) with only small variations, it’s not an easy question to settle. Someday I’m going to research it in depth so at least I know what the botanists are arguing about.

And then I suppose I’ll have to put any online sources on my RSS, so I can keep up with all the changes. When I was in high school and first learning Latin plant names, I remember feeling so satisfied with myself. “Once I learn these binomials, I’ll never have to learn them again,” I thought to myself. “Knowledge for life.” I knew that little about science, and the vagaries of human nature. Lumpers and splitters (the two categorizing types) have been with us forever. New DNA research has only churned up the delirium over who knows best.

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep growing daturas.

Evening Fragrance is, like many other daturas, not easy from seed. The seeds of daturas and brugmansias are hard to germinate; they seem to have very specific ideas about when they will sprout. But, while I have grown one or two daturas from seed, I’m still not sure what those ideas are, beyond the basics of warm and moist. J. L. Hudson ‘s genus description says that the annuals are easy from seed. Maybe so. But I notice that, along with regular datura seed, they offer datura seeds treated with gibberillic acid, which makes them easier to sprout.

For someone with a small garden and primitive breeding facilities, like me, it’s easier just to buy a plant. The trick is finding plants who like your climate. Some varieties of datura are hardier than others. There are daturas from India and Mexico; from the Northeastern, Southwestern, and Western U.S.; and from many places in Central and South America. The hardy ones from colder climates generally have smaller lavender flowers, without the intoxicating scent. Sorry.

By choosing a datura that grows wild in my area, I could be pretty sure that I’d picked one that would last. I have grown other daturas and brugmansias, but they haven’t liked my garden for long. Part of the reason for this may be that I can only offer them part sun, not the full baking sun they prefer. Or it may be something else.

So keep trying with datura species. Once you find the plants that like your climate, they will obligingly come up year after year.

They come up late, though. Each year I think, “Oh, it was too cold this winter. I’ve finally lost them. They froze.”

And then, sometime in May, I see this:

Fulfilled hope of beauty: sometimes confusing, but always the best intoxication.

References:

J. L. Hudson
Select Seeds

They say that datura’s intoxicating.

Well yes, it is. Is that bad?

Well, it is bad if you’re taking datura leaves internally. Or even if you make a paste and spread them on your skin. You can have respiratory failure, which in plain English means you stop breathing.

In the U.S. Pharmacopoeia of the 1800s, smoking datura leaves (a less drastic way of introducing the alkaloids to your body) was prescribed for asthma. So if you get it just right, instead of stopping breathing, you can stop from breathing fast and spasmodically. I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home, though. Remember, “intoxication” comes from the same root as “toxin”.

Eating datura, or rubbing a paste or salve on your skin, can have multitude of effects. You can hallucinate most unpleasantly, and be very sick to your stomach, for a very long time. Daturas can be used by experts to good effect-some tradtional healers have different kinds of datura or brugmansias growing in their yard. Each variety is good for divining a particular problem or illness in the village. Datura is said to be an herb used by European witches (who were, generally, shamans who were demonized by the Church) to travel to other realms and learn wisdom. In India, daturas are also regarded as sacred.

In fact, wherever it appears, datura is regarded as a holy plant. But holy means powerful. I have known datura to drive a person in a delicately balanced state over the edge, so there was no better solution than an institution. Treat daturas with respect. If you don’t know what you’re doing, back off.

But not too far.

Datura flowers can send me into an altered state even when they’re dead, as in the photo at the top of this post. And it’s a very pleasant sensation.

The slow bursting from velvety buds, the tight scroll unfurling in the evening, is a spectacular show.

And when the huge flower fully opens, you can bury your face deep within it. To me, it’s like a combination of fresh line-dried laundry, a hint of lemon, a whisper of sweet orange blossom, and a touch of something else.

Whatever it is, inhale it while you can, because by late morning, the flowers will be done.

Fortunately, there are more to come.

Next post: I go on about this datura