The Pansy Face

by Veronica Iriart

“Hoy me vas a ayudar a plantar en el jardín.”

“Okay. What are we going to plant?”

As was customary in my household of Argentine-American immigrants, my mom gave me orders in Spanish, and I responded in English. “Pansies.” My mom replied, grabbing the garden shovels and leading the way outside to a patch of soil just a few feet away from our front door.

The house of my childhood was beautiful. It had an old charm that came from being built in the 1960s and all the space a family of five could need and some.

Yet, the image that always comes to mind when I recollect those years on Timberline Drive is the yard. I decided that my love for biology was born in our yard, with both the front and the back offering distinct habitats occupied by unique insects, trees, and animals to observe and track. While I could watch a butterfly flutter from flower to flower for hours, I had never before taken interest in growing flowers until my mother handed me that packet of pansy seeds.

Together, we planted about 20 seeds, and suddenly the pansy patch became my new obsession. I would check on it every day, watching new seedlings emerge and grow, and finally flower into dazzling displays of purples, blues, whites, and yellows. Every flower I doodled from henceforth was a pansy, because I was enamored with the way the center of the flower was a prominently different color than the outer tips, and I always tried to capture that brilliant contrast in my sketchbooks.

Now, I’m twenty years older and a first-year graduate student in a plant-pollinator lab; however, I still prefer the pansy flower (Viola tricolor) over all others. For instance, if you look at the contrasted center of the pansy flower that I love so much, you can appreciate two things. First, the bold colors serve as an obvious cue for pollinators, attracting many different kinds of bees, butterflies, and moths by standing out amongst the crowd of green grasses. Second, if you look closely into the floral center, you will see that the pansy is actually showing you an angry (dare I say determined?) face.

Perhaps I’m falling victim to pareidolia (the tendency to see faces and other meaningful images in random objects), but I think pansies show a face that shouldn’t be trifled with. What image do you see? If you saw the face as well, you and I would not be the first.

In Spanish, the word for pansies is “pensamientos” meaning “thoughts.” The pansy probably got its name from people thinking the flower resembles a human face, intelligent and pensive.

Do you see the pansy face?

In my own work, I still feel the same excitement watching replicates in my greenhouse experiment germinate, grow, and flower as I felt caring for the pansies I planted with my mom. Likewise, every time I pass this common garden plant, I see the face of determination that reminds me to be brave and thoughtful in everything I do.

Veronica Iriart is 23 years old, and a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh studying the effects of sublethal pesticide exposure to plants and pollinators. Follow Veronica on twitter at @veroiriart.

Photo Credits:

Photo 1: https://newgarden.com/notes/pansies-now

Photo 2: https://www.broomfieldenterprise.com/2017/04/10/lets-plant-pansies/

Ode on a Green Tomato

(A play on Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)

by Bonnie McGill

I.

Thou still unripened bride of sunshine

Thou foster child of the South

Your true roots reach to the North and Midwest,

Where summers are short and

When “the frost is on the punkin”

You and your siblings,

Fallen short of your true, juicy, fire-colored fate,

Some mother of invention found a means 

Of putting your stored sunshine on a plate.

The hands that carefully saved seeds 

From your grandmother’s summer

Cared for your mother’s fragile seedling 

Through this year’s rains and cold spells of spring.

They gently tended her wild, glorious tendrils--

Those tendrils that beckoned the tiny pollen hunters

Who, unknowingly, inseminated your mother’s blossoms

So that you and your sisters could exist.

The magical transformation of flower to fruit,

A miracle of nature.

Your mother’s earlier flowers and fruits soaked up the northern sun

And ripened to the summer song of the cuckoo

To a brilliant rosy red.

Sliced on a plate with a touch of salt and pepper

Or eaten like an apple, barefoot in the garden

The summer’s first, wet, juicy, smooth, and soft

Bite goes down

The flavor is one I feel from my lips to deep in my breast

A pleasure, a privilege to know.

But you, dear immature friend,

Will never know this intended fate.

The geese are heading south again

And you are not yet red

But those hands that cared for your family before you

Will not simply let you

Fall to the earth and return

To the soil from which you were birthed.

Unlike your soft and red older sisters,

Your green body is firm and secretly, deliciously tart.

The mother’s hands know just how 

To prepare you with flour and corn meal,

Eggs and milk, 

A frying pan sizzling with hot oil.

Your crispy outside complements your softened inner meat--

With a dash of salt

Is an Appalachian treat.

II.

Like you, I was a child once, 

With a mother in the north country.

Her beloved hands, young then,

Tended tomatoes in a jungle of a garden

Overflowing with a kaleidoscopic bounty:

First asparagus, then lettuce:

She taught me

To bring a salt shaker out to the beds,

The joy of tearing a leaf of lettuce from the soil,

Sprinkling it with salt, and behold:

A savory summer snack.

After greens, then beans,

Oh so many of her meaty, bland beans.

Mother, ever the provider, would blanch the green soldiers

And carefully pile bags of them in the chest freezer

The better for us to enjoy in the dead of winter.

She made sure the least-est tastiest of the summer harvest

Outlasted all the rest.

Then green peppers would arrive, 

And sunflowers would reach for the sky

Watching over the garden.

Sweet corn would tassel,

And the first tomato fruits would ripen to red,

The regal red of a summer visitor’s epaulets--

Those of the male red winged blackbird.

For those of you who would not make it to red,

When my mother first made fried green tomatoes

To my virgin mouth

It was love at first bite.

What was this magically tart, soft yet crunchy

Explosion of joy in my mouth?

I would burn my mouth with impatience

For more fried green bliss from the pan.

III.

Many decades later, many states away from home,

Me, trying to make a new home

And wanting to satisfy a long-ignored craving.

I bought some green tomatoes,

And followed my mother’s recipe,

And even though the results met the letter of the law

They fell short of the spirit.

The taste was right but still did not satisfy

A hard to reach itch,

The longing for a faraway home

From the past,

And a longing for a home full of

My own dear ones to love.

The recipe left out the part about a 

Kitchen full of noisy children,

A barking dog outside,

A loving mother orchestrating the chaos.

Despite the miracle of a fruit

Embodying sunshine to feed

And fuel my body

It can’t always feed that longing of spirit.

But someday you will, my round green friend,

When I cook you up for my dear ones,

Or simply fry you up for mom.

The author and her mom, Patty, circa 1993.

Images

Green tomatoes, original work by the author.

Photo 1: The author's mother, Patty, gently holding a momentarily lost juvenile green heron. The family garden is in the back left.

Photo 2: The author, age 6, and the towering sunflowers above and chard below. The hills of western Pennsylvania in the background.

Bonnie McGill, @BonnSci, is an ecosystem ecologist living in Iowa City, IA with her dog, Bowie. Patty Moorhead lives in Indiana, PA, with a new kitten, Buttercup. Patty is the younger sister of Cheryl Moorhead Stone who brought us the pokeberry story. Bonnie is the younger sister of Tim McGill, featured in her first PLS, Two siblings, one tree, and one broken arm. All three of these stories take place in Indiana, PA.

Why I Photograph Plants

by Steve Anderson

On a hike with my four incredible nieces and nephews several years back, they asked me, “Uncle Steve, why do you take so many photos of plants?” I surprised myself with the depth of my answer. So let me share with you why I photograph plants.

Swamp Chestnut Oak (Quercus michauxii) leaf in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in NC. Photo by Steve Anderson.

What emotions do you feel most when moving to a new state, county, city, or neighborhood? Is it the sorrow of leaving friends and family behind? Stress about not knowing anyone, or the opportunity to meet new people in the place you are headed? Are you thrilled to experience new foods? Different weather? Change certainly offers a broad array of feelings for anyone going through it.

The idea of moving from one region to another has always created anxiety in me but also excitement for new possibilities. Several years ago, I moved to Durham, NC from Syracuse, NY for a job. Here, I substituted snow for humidity. Needless to say, this was a stressful period but also an opportunity to meet new natural habitats maintained by unique and diverse assemblages of species and past and present environmental conditions. Getting the chance to explore these new natural places got me more excited about the move. In parallel, I also joined a new community of people, all brought together for various reasons.

Zigadenus glaberrimus (Sandbog death camas) at Ft. Bragg in the Sandhills of NC. Photo by Steve Anderson.

What a new environment offers to a new human resident is excitement for new experiences, including the joy of learning to identify each new community member, or in this case, new plant friends, each with a wondrously unique natural history--each a work of art waiting to be admired by a pollinator, or a new neighbor like me seeking to praise it for its exceptional beauty.

When I relocate, I am a thrill-seeker, that is, I seek the thrill of finding a beautiful new-to-me grass, herb, shrub or tree. A chance to photograph what my eyes are seeing, and share that view with the world.

Cypress swamp in Merchants Millpond Preserve in northeast NC. Photo by Steve Anderson.

Even if I hike by myself on the trails of Merchants Millpond Preserve in the heat of the summer;

Flowering Utricularia spp. (Bladderwort). Photo by Steve Anderson.

or explore Hyde, Dare, and Tyrell Counties in eastern NC;

Cyrilla racemiflora (common name "Titi") at the Carolina Beach State Park in NC. Photo by Steve Anderson.

or take a late afternoon stroll through a Longleaf Pine Savanna at Carolina Beach State Park;

or spend a Sunday evening meandering along the banks of the Eno River...

Pinus taeda (Loblolly Pine) is common at the Eno River State Park. Photo by Steve Anderson.

Silene virginica (Fire Pink) at the Eno River State Park in the NC Piedmont region. Photo by Steve Anderson.

...I am never really alone.

I capture images along the way and hope the photos might inspire others to follow in my footsteps hoping to be graced by the same landscape or plant. And maybe my photos give indirect access for those who may not have the ability to visit these special places.

Capturing a still-frame of plants and the ecosystems they embody, gives me the chance to examine and explore a species at a deeper level. It also enables me to relive a joyous moment a ten days or ten years down the road. Every time I look up at the photo above my desk at home of the Sandhills of southeastern North Carolina, I can feel the warm summer shining on my back, the humid air condensing on my skin, the smell of pine needles baking in the sun, and the overwhelming excitement of inspecting

"A chorus of tall, elegant, and fragile yellow pitcher plants (Sarracenia flava) lining the banks of the Sandhills’ seasonal ponds." Photo by Steve Anderson.

a chorus of tall, elegant, and fragile yellow pitcher plants (Sarracenia flava) lining the banks of the Sandhills’ seasonal ponds.

Chaptallia tomentosa (Woolly sunbonnet). Photo by Steve Anderson.

Much like a favorite song or distinct scent transports us back to a time or a place, a photo of a breathtaking, or even mundane, plant can do just the same.

Further, photography empowers us to document the existence and intrinsic beauty of plants in a way that

can transform the way we look at all of life and enables us to witness the invaluable.

Plantanthera ciliaris (Orange Fringed Bog Orchid). Photo by Steve Anderson. In a secret spot somewhere in the coastal plain of NC.

Like ecosystems, our individualized experiences in life are shaped by change. When we experience new places, how is it that we connect with our surroundings or community? For me, it’s meeting a new forest, wetland or stream, and getting to know them by observing the crowd of new plant friends that call it home.

This is why I photograph plants.

Steve taking a break from field work in a NC coastal plain wetland that was formerly drained farmland. Photo by Bonnie McGill.

Steve Anderson, @smkanderson, is an ecosystem ecologist pursuing an M.S. at NC State U. in Forestry and Environmental Resources. He studies plant responses to salt and flooding stress in coastal and river floodplain wetlands. Steve is also a drummer and lives in Durham, NC with his partner, Katie, and one-year-old schnoodle puppy, Meatball. https://smkanderson.weebly.com