{"id":3212,"date":"2020-10-19T08:23:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T16:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3212"},"modified":"2020-10-19T08:23:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T16:23:43","slug":"ordinary-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/ordinary-miracle\/","title":{"rendered":"Ordinary Miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pelargonium\"<\/a>As I bring some of the geraniums inside, and consign others to death at the hands of the Frost God, I have to stop and consider the miraculous nature of these ubiquitous plants.<\/p>\n

The bright, fluffy-headed, tender perennials that we call \u201cgeraniums\u201d are actually members of the Pelargonium species.\u00a0\u00a0 When we fill our window boxes and containers with modern hybrid geraniums, we are nurturing the descendants of two flowering species that hail from South Africa, a cradle of biodiversity and the homeland of many modern garden favorites.\u00a0 One of those plant parents is Pelargonium zonale, with pale pink or red flowers and leaves that are \u201czoned\u201d or ornamented with colored rings that contrast with the predominant green color.\u00a0 The other parent is Pelargonium inquinans, with umbels, or rounded flowerheads in shades of rose to deep red.\u00a0 In 1844, the marriage of those two species resulted in the development of the first scarlet-flowered geranium–Pelargonium x hortorum.\u00a0 The \u201cx\u201d in the Latin names signifies the plants\u2019 hybrid nature.<\/p>\n

Various pelargonium species arrived from South Africa beginning in the 1600\u2019s as traders and merchants began stopping at ports on the African continent\u2019s southern tip.\u00a0 The great botanist John Tradescant reportedly grew one of those new pelargoniums in his London garden in the early to mid 1600\u2019s.\u00a0 Pelargonium zonale arrived in Europe in 1710 and the inquinans species arrived four years later in 1714.\u00a0 A host of other new pelargonium and other species arrived later in the 1700\u2019s, when King George III sent Scottish botanist Francis Masson to South Africa with orders to collect as many new plants as possible.<\/p>\n

Even before King George\u2019s reign, colonists or traders brought pelargoniums to the United States, where they first appeared in 1732.<\/p>\n

The successful movement of pelargoniums from South Africa to Europe was miraculous in and of itself, since the seeds or cuttings had to be transported thousands of miles by ship.\u00a0 The perils of salt water, insecure storage and shipwrecks were a constant threat.\u00a0 The plants that we use so casually today have hardiness in their DNA.<\/p>\n

The far-flung plant hunting of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided the raw material for the geranium crazes at the beginning and end of the nineteenth.\u00a0 The mysteries of pollination revealed themselves in the Victorian era and hybridization of plants took off.\u00a0 According to Susan Conder\u2019s wonderful book, The Complete Geranium,<\/em> the knowledge of pollination even filtered down to affluent young ladies who would \u201chang nosegays of especially lovely geraniums upside down over their own plants, hoping to achieve cross pollination.\u201d\u00a0 While the young ladies were busy with their nosegays, plant breeders were even busier trying to conjure up new varieties.\u00a0 At various times, nineteenth century catalogs listed over 800 varieties.\u00a0 Needless to say, many of those Pelargoinum x hortorum varieties were virtually indistinguishable from each other.<\/p>\n

\"Pelargoium<\/a> The common geranium has gone in and out of fashion since its arrival on the horticultural scene.\u00a0 It returned to vogue after the Second World War and took off after Penn State professor Richard Craig bred \u2018Nittany Lion Red\u2019, a seed-raised pelargonium that was a forbearer of the modern bedding geranium.<\/p>\n

These days, of course, we can obtain Pelargonium x hortorum just about everywhere, along with some of its relatives, like the regal or \u2018Martha Washington\u2019 geraniums, not to mention ivy-leafed, scented-leafed and fancy-leafed varieties.<\/p>\n

My father loved bright red geraniums best and used them to fill front porch containers and decorate his father\u2019s grave.\u00a0 When I was younger I rebelled against annual plants, including geraniums, and reveled in the sterling qualities of perennials.\u00a0 The miraculous nature of the common geranium eluded me.<\/p>\n

But Nature has a way of getting back at horticultural snobs.\u00a0 When my daughter was old enough to start accompanying me on garden center visits, she fell in love with geraniums and begged me to buy them.\u00a0 I gave in and common geraniums have been growing on me and in my garden ever since.\u00a0 Snobbery gave way to appreciation, which ultimately led to understanding of the disparate forces that came together over the course of many centuries to give me plants like the white geraniums currently blooming in front of my house.<\/p>\n

If happiness is being able to see the miraculous in everyday things, I certainly owe some of mine to the common geranium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I bring some of the geraniums inside, and consign others to death at the hands of the Frost God, I have to stop and consider the miraculous nature of these ubiquitous plants. The bright, fluffy-headed, tender perennials that we call \u201cgeraniums\u201d are actually members of the Pelargonium species.\u00a0\u00a0 When we fill our window boxes … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[64,492,2201,2394,65,1282],"class_list":["post-3212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-geraniums","tag-houseplants","tag-overwintering-plants","tag-pelargonium-x-hortorum","tag-pelargoniums","tag-south-african-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}