Date Palm

Yesterday, I posted about Datura with some hesitation.  Not because the plant is not worthy of a post, but because it's a summer annual and here we are in the middle of February.  I try to keep this post relevant to the seasons, but this is a tough time of year to find much inspiration outdoors (though now that some of our snow has melted, I have spied some daffodil foliage!).  I'll keep looking for remarkable flora for February, but for the rest of this week, we're going to focus on palms.

Above, Phoenix dactylifera is growing in a Versailles box at Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.  Date palms are easy to spot, as they almost look like a Chrysanthemum firework that is slowly drifting back to earth.  The leaves (or fronds) are long and pinnate, with leaflets reaching up to 14".

The shots above and below are at Park Guell in Barcelona.  The texture of date palms are so fine - almost furry looking -- it's hard to miss them.  Date palms have been cultivated since at least 6000 BC and they are thought to be native to the middle east.  Though it's hard to know for sure since they are now found in any tropical or Mediterranean climate.

The plants are dioecious, which means there are males and females.  Obviously, only the females have the wonderful edible dates.  I must have had dates on the brain this week, since just yesterday I had a terrific salad -- arugula, dates, ricotta salata and walnuts.  Delicious.

 

Above, date palms in Oahu, Hawaii. As you can see the crown or head of the palm works its way up, leaving dying and dessicated leaves further down the trunk.  Often these are removed manually as part of the tree's maintenance.

Datura metel, and Botticelli

Posting yesterday's pic of the stone bench in Giverny made me a bit wistful for Paris and so I began browsing some of my photos.  I realized I had not yet blogged about Datura metel, an annual I photographed at the Jardin du Plantes. 

 Datura is a lovely annual, reaching about 3' high and at the gardens here it's mixed with Verbena bonariensis.  However, it is dreadfully toxic when ingested.

Most species of Datura are toxic and recently when art historian David Bellingham hypothesized that  D. stramonium is featured in Botticelli's Venus and Mars.   He noted a strange fruit in the hands of an imp surrounding Mars and had it identified by a botanist at Kew Gardens as Datura.
 

The story at NPR on this is terrific - as it elaborates on the plants toxicology and touches on the debate about whether or not Datura stramonium could have possibly been cultivated in Italy during Botticelli's time (there's some speculation on whether or not the plant is native to the new world and India, or only the new world). 

Water Lily

 It occurred to me this morning, after posting a photo of the bench in Giverny, that although I've posted about the wonderful gardens there before, I've never shared more than one measly photo of the famous pond with its very famous waterlilies.

  

Monet's pond is largely populated with Nymphaea odorata, a fragrant, summer-blooming waterlily that is actually an invasive species in the west, where it can become weedy with an absence of cold winters.

The wide flat leaves (the petioles are at the center and reach to the bottom of the pond where they root) help keep the leaves afloat. 

The sepals on the flowers are thick and leathery, which also helps keep the flowers (fragrant, as the species name implies) afloat.

Nymphaea of course means nymph and refers to the ancient Greek belief in feminine free spirits that were often found at springs or water bodies.

Bench Siting

When I worked at the Bronx Zoo, I drew up a lot of quick little construction drawings for the installation of benches throughout the park's campus.  In a million years, a sketch indicating this would never be approved. Anyone know why?

We always had to incorporate some kind of paving (ideally a porous one) underneath the bench.  The arrangement above (though lovely with the pink granite pedestals underneath each bench foot) would require to much maintenance.   Mulch would have to be re-applied and weeds would need to be combated (particularly in a sunny location like this).  Granted, the operating budget for the Sculpture Garden may very well exceed that of the Bronx Zoo's, but this detail just looks unfinished to me.

Above, at the Bronx Zoo, benches are sitting away from the main traffic path and elevated above Astor Court's historic granite curb.

At Longwood Gardens, the benches are sitting on platforms and pulled back from the path, so your knees aren't in traffic.

The detail above, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, is even more elaborate.

 In Teardrop Park, the bench sits on a continuation of the sidewalk paving.

As it does at this church courtyard in Paris.

At the High Line,  the bench sits above a drain grate.

Finally, the bench I'd most want to sit on: a stone bench at Monet's home in Giverny, France has cobble paving to distinguish this from the main thoroughfare.

Musee de Quai Branly

It seems silly to post about the vertical garden at Musee de Quai Branly and fail to post photos of the more traditional landscape that abuts the building, designed by paysagiste Gilles Clément.  

 

The garden's biggest gesture is the installation of a massive glass wall - this is to protect the landscape from harsher winds that may pass along the Seine.  The pragmatist in me had doubts about this.  On the one hand, why use a plant palette that needs a glass wall to adjust its microclimate?  Also, a glass wall only looks good when it's clean.  A rainstorm and accumulated city dust will only make the space seem more bleak.

That said, it does present some creative uses for signage and announcing the space and events at the museum and does provide a necessary security measure.

The approach the restaurant-side of the museum is above.  Massive grasses and 'naturalistic' looking plants are placed in broad swaths.  It's refreshing to see such an enthusiastic departure from a more traditionally French landscape (not that I don't have a soft spot for Andre Le Nôtre).

Of course, the museum seemed to still be working out some kinks with the oversized plants.  This is apropos to yesterday's rant about public spaces being under pressure to have an 'instant' landscape and consequently planting things far too close together.

In other areas - this is facing the museum directly (through the glass wall) with the Seine behind me - plants were still struggling to establish. 

 

I suspect that they may have had some erosion issues here - perhaps water was pitching down the slope and eroding some of the soil and mulch away.  Again, these photos are from October 2007, and the museum was still quite new.  I took a brief glimpse of the landscape later, in September 2008, and it looked like it was evening out. 

The aggregate paving was interrupted by 'ancient' stone paving.  Scattered among the joints of these stones were glass cubes with anthropological objects encased with them.  A creative way to bring the museum's collection outside, though the glass was scuffing a bit, which compromised the clarity of the view.

Another gesture in the paving.

Patrick Blanc

While it can be argued that green walls have been in existence for hundred of years in one form or another, the popular, high-design resurgence they have had recently can be traced back to Patrick Blanc, a French artist and botanist, without much argument. 

Blanc has been designing green walls (or vertical gardens) for almost twenty years but his green wall on Jean Nouvel's building for the Musee de Quai Branly marks perhaps his transition to maintstream recognition.  His work includes interior and exterior spaces.  I visited the Branly shortly after it opened in 2006.

What I like most about Blanc's work is his horticultural variety and flair for mixing textures.  Above you have Hostas, next to creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia) that is interrupted by tufts of fern.

In the photo below, tendrils of Jasminum nudiflorum are tangled with Hosta leaves.  

Even more original, below, Heuchera is planted next to Mahonia.   I'd love to get back to the museum sometime soon and see how it's faring.  Including winter jasmine and Mahonia are imperative with an exterior wall, since the wall could look a bit bare in winter if the herbaceous plants die back. 

Fontainebleau and Oranges

Here's a shot of the (rather grand) entry stairs at The Palace of Fontainebleau, one of the great Royal Châteaux of France.  Far to the right, you'll notice a wee tree.  

Truly French, the trees are oranges (Citrus) in Versailles planters.  French châteaux almost always have oranges to be found, the most famous appear at the l'orangerie de Versailles.  Orangeries were popularized first in Italy during the renaissance and soon after in France, the Netherlands and England.  They became possible only after the invention of large panels of clear glass, which of course allowed light to travel indoors and keep such plants alive. 

Fontainbleau itself has a unique connection to the history of orangeries and Versailles.  When André Le Nôtre had completed design and construction administration of Louis XIV's grand palace, the orange trees that previously inhabited the Fontainebleau orangerie were moved to Versailles.

Legend has it that one of the oranges sent to Versailles in 1686 had existed since 1499, when the Queen of Navarre sent Queen Anne of Bretagne a gift of orange cuttings.  The tree was grown first in the Chateau of Chantelles, then moved to Fontainebleau.  It was called 'The Grand Bourbon.' The tree was mentioned years later, in 1857, in Armand de Quatrefages de Breau's, The Rambles of a Naturalist on the Coasts of France, Spain and Sicily.