Queer /kwir/</p> differing in some way from what is usual or normal</li> of, relating to, or being a person whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual and/or whose gender identity is not cisgender</li> </ol> Those who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community have long been labelled as being abnormal or queer. While many of us have since claimed the term and use it with pride, it still carries the weight of a history of being outcast and labelled as ‘unnatural.’ Isn’t it strange, though, that nature doesn’t seem to be at all concerned with what we as humans find natural or not?</p> There are hundreds of documented cases of homosexual behavior in animals. Hermaphroditic animals are plenty as are transsexual animals. And just last year at the Denver Zoo, a Komodo dragon</a> laid a clutch of eggs resulting in two baby dragons all on her own through an asexual reproduction process known as parthenogenesis. All these occurrences might be considered unnatural by certain human values.</p> </picture> </div> </article> Bonobos, commonly known to exhibit homosexual behavior. Source</a> </p> Plants also have a variety of sexual forms and states. A single plant can have both male and female sexual organs, while other plant varieties have separate plants that hold each type of sexual organ. Some plants reproduce sexually through pollination while others reproduce asexually through vegetative propagation, fragmentation, or spore formation. In 2019 it was discovered that Solanum plastisexum</em>, a species of bush tomato, exhibits “breeding system fluidity,” or sexual fluidity: at times the same plant might exhibit only characteristics of the female reproductive system and at others will have only the male reproductive system. What a weird and beautiful plant.</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> McDonnell AJ, Wetreich HB, Cantley JT, Jobson P, Martine CT (2019) Solanum plastisexum</em>, an enigmatic new bush tomato from the Australian Monsoon Tropics exhibiting breeding system fluidity. PhytoKeys 124: 39-55. Source</a> </p> “Nature” has often been used as the justification for the ostracism and animosity hurled at those in the Queer community. Queer ecology, a fairly recent ideology, attempts to break the understanding of nature that humanity has created, and instead allow nature to just be what it is. Stemming from Queer Theory which challenges the notion that heterosexual desire is “normal,” Queer ecology is about “letting go of the idea of what is natural and acknowledging the diversity of the natural world.” “Natural” is a completely human defined term, and so long as we continue to view nature through our limited understanding of what it should be, it’s likely we will never fully understand it.</p> </picture> </div> </article> Denver Botanic Gardens participating in Pride, 2019.</p> The queerness of humanity and the natural world outside of us provides a beautiful backdrop of diversity. Perhaps we should embrace the Queer.</p> Learn More!</h4> The Helen Fowler Library has many books on environmental justice and topics like Queer ecology. The collection is always growing!</p> "The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World" by Andrea Wulf contains ideas about the interconnectedness of nature similar to Queer Ecology.</p> </p> More Resources</h4> Nothing more queer than nature</a> | Brigitte Baptiste | TEDxRiodelaPlata</li> Queering Botanical Science: A Recap</a></li> How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time</a></li> Feminist and Queer Ecology Reading List</a></li> </ul> </p>
Succulent plants have fascinated gardeners for many decades, and this trend shows no sign of slowing. There are many attributes that make them a great choice for Denver, and although delving into growing them can be frightening, I’m here to give you the 411 on making them thrive as you impress your friends and neighbors.</p> Let’s go over a few definitions and ground rules. Technically speaking a succulent plant is any plant that has ability to store water for later use. Generally, they want a lot of light and a little water. I know, easier said than done. For me, keeping the Gardens’ indoor collection of succulent plants from around the world requires diligence, attention to detail and of course, my trusty old crystal ball. </p> Here are some tips to keep your plants healthy and happy. Keep in mind these are generalizations; not meant to take the place of looking up individual plants for specific details.</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Echinofossulocactus multicostatus</em></p> Planting Outside</h4> The general timeline that frost-sensitive plants can be grown outside in Colorado is from Mother’s Day to early October. When it’s time for the plants to fledge your nest, they must be carefully acclimated to brighter light or they will scar, burn or worse! One trick is to put them in partial shade under a tree, etc., or under shade cloth. Try to increase the light steadily for about a week.</p> Containers</h4> Keep it tight, pack it full of plants; it will be easier and prettier. I like pots that are more wide than deep.</p> Soil</h4> Bottom line: Just make it drain well without too much organic matter. Succulents would much rather have lean, fast-draining soil than that rich chocolate cake you grow your other plants in. There is no one good mix for everything. I take regular bagged topsoil (about 50%) and add ingredients like charcoal, perlite, sand and gravel (other 50%) to “chunkify” it to my liking.</p> Watering</h4> Best advice I can give: When in doubt, do without. This is and was the hardest thing I struggle not to do, 18 years into collecting. I love succulent plants and I still tie a ribbon around my finger to not love them to death. Plants grown outside, I water thoroughly once per week. The cycle of soil moisture should look something like this: totally wet for one day, medium moisture for 3-4 days and almost totally dry for 2-3 days.</p> Times of Trouble</h4> Things to look for that will require immediate action are stretching or discoloration. If your once nice, tight, red plant is stretching in every direction and turning green, it needs more light and possibly less water. Rot is another problem you need to act on right away. Pull the rotting plant out of the soil, cut off the rotted portion at least a half inch past the rot. Put rooting hormone on the wound and expose to sunlight for a couple days. Once the wound has sealed place carefully back into soil. Some stems may need to be braced until they grow roots again.</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Bulbine torta</em></p> Lastly, buy plants from reputable nurseries and garden centers who employ a trained horticulture staff. I guarantee you will get better plants and advice, and the plant will have a name tag! Spend time with your plants and pay attention to changes and they will tell you everything you need to know. Don’t give up even if you kill a few --I sure have, and that’s how I learned to do it right. </p> </p> This article appears in the June 2021 issue of Life on Capitol Hill.</em> </p>
As spring transitions to summer, there is something in bloom just about everywhere at the Gardens. Amid this floral abundance, it can be easy to miss the brief flowering displays of cacti and succulents. Even without flowers, cacti and succulents are the backbone of many gardens at Denver Botanic Gardens, providing bold architectural shapes and year-round structure. And when in bloom, they have flowers striking enough to compete with any showy perennial. What’s more, these plants have specialized metabolisms that make the most of the little rainfall we receive here in Colorado, so they’re a great place to start when planning a water-smart garden. Here are just a few areas where you can see blooming cacti and succulents this month.</p> </p> Dryland Mesa</strong></h3> Start out at the northwest corner and walk south between Dryland Mesa and the Laura Porter Plains Garden. This garden showcases plants adapted to arid environments from western North America and like the Plains Garden receives no supplemental irrigation. Keep this in mind as you view some of these June showstoppers.</p> Claret cup cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus</em></strong>) is Colorado’s state cactus! You can find it blooming on the west side of Dryland Mesa, tucked in rock crevices. Its scarlet red flowers are visited by hummingbirds, so be on the lookout for these pollinators while you are strolling through.</li> As you walk along the west side of Dryland Mesa, you will pass by several species of cholla cactus (Cylindropuntia </em>spp.</em>). These odd cacti with their sprawling tentacle-like stems do very well in our climate. There are several species on display in this garden: Cylindropuntia whipplei</em> 'Snow Leopard' (silver cholla)</strong> may not be blooming but its white spines have a glowing aura, especially if you catch it during the warm, natural light of golden hour. Cylindropuntia imbricata </em>(cane cholla)</strong> is Colorado’s most common cholla species and you can see several interesting selections here, including ‘White Pyramid,’ which has cream-colored flowers.</li> As you reach the southwest corner of Dryland Mesa, you’ll find towering tree-like yuccas. Yucca </em>spp.</em> are not cacti (and among purists, not even technically succulents), but rather a member of the asparagus plant family (Asparagaceae). Look for emerging flower stalks on the top of the plants and you’ll see the resemblance to its vegetable relative. These plants can store water in their thick, fleshy stems and are found far to the south in the Chihuahuan Desert, but we can grow them here in Denver in warm, dry microclimates. Here you’ll find impressive specimens of Yucca faxoniana </em>(Spanish dagger), Yucca thompsoniana</em></strong> </em>(Thompson’s yucca)</strong> </em>and Yucca elata </em>(soaptree yucca)</strong>. If these aren’t blooming here, you can see them in the Crossroads Garden in front of Boettcher Memorial Center. The creamy bell-shaped flowers are pollinated exclusively by moths which have coevolved with yuccas. This specialized relationship is known as an obligate mutualism, where both plant and pollinator cannot persist without the other. Now, head north on the stone path that bisects Dryland Mesa to see a number of other blooming cacti. From here, walk east past the Hive Garden Bistro toward the greenhouse complex and the Nexus Garden.</li> </ul> </p> Nexus Garden</strong></h3> Baked by the hot afternoon sun, this western-facing slope is a perfect site to display cacti and succulents. Once again, the plants here thrive with very little supplemental irrigation. This space was redesigned in 2018, swapping out water-guzzling annual displays for xeric perennials.</p> These are a few plants that you shouldn’t miss:</p> The prickly pear cacti (Opuntia </em>spp.</em>)</strong> in this garden are WALK IN BEAUTY™ hybrids and unlike other Opuntia </em>they are able to re-bloom! Check out the peachy blooms of ‘Mandarin Sunrise’ and soft pink flowers of ‘Apricot Glory.’ Many of these hybrids have purple pads during the winter months, a product of betacyanin pigments that help protect plants from abiotic stressors like cold weather. The result for gardeners is beautiful coloration that makes for excellent winter interest.</li> You’ll also see several mounding cacti, like Echinocereus fendleri</em></strong> (Fendler’s hedgehog cactus) </strong>and Echinocereus reichenbachii </em>ssp. baileyi </em>(Bailey’s hedgehog cactus) </strong>tucked into crevices between the sandstone slabs where they benefit from the stone’s thermal mass and radiant heat. Crawling through interstitial space amid cacti and along the bottom of the berm, the radioactive pink flowers of Delosperma</em> ‘PJS01S’ GRANITA™ Raspberry (Ice Plant)</strong> demand your attention. There is a dizzying array of Delosperma</em> cultivars and selections on the market, so you can surely find one to fit your personal taste.</li> </ul> Hopefully you’ve been convinced that cacti and succulents are more than a prickly nuisance and deserve a place in your garden. Make note of how these remarkable plants have been woven into other spaces at the Gardens.</p>
One of my botanical heroes is the remarkable Alice Eastwood. Although she never had any formal training in botany, Alice was one of the most preeminent botanists in the West in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She began her career as a high school teacher in Denver in 1879, after graduating as class valedictorian from East Denver High School. While working, she saved most of her salary of $475 a year to fund her most passionate hobby – summer botanical explorations in the Rocky Mountains. </p> Alice went to great lengths to pursue plants – she learned how to ride horses so that she could travel to remote, inaccessible locations, and she even designed her own expedition outfits. During this time, Alice also compiled and wrote “A Popular Flora of Denver</a>,” published in 1893, a few copies of which are housed in the rare book collection of the Helen Fowler Library</a>.</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Image source</a>. Public domain. </p> Alice moved to California in 1892 and began working as the curator of the California Academy of Sciences herbarium in San Francisco, but she continued to return to Colorado to document the flora. In particular, Alice was interested in the desert country and Mancos clay hillsides of the western part of the state. During her career, she described to science over 700 new species of plants, such as Castilleja scabrida</em></a>, and had many more named in her honor, such as Erythranthe eastwoodiae</a></em>. One new species that Alice described was Oreocarya aperta</a></em>, which she collected near Grand Junction in 1892. Today, this species is only known from her type collection and is otherwise presumed extinct. Alice even received the great honor of having two genera named in her honor – Aliciella</a></em> and Eastwoodia</em>. </p> When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck, it destroyed the California Academy of Sciences building and herbarium. Alice bravely rescued over 1,000 type specimens (irreplaceable reference specimens for species) from the building by climbing the broken marble stairs and lowering the priceless specimens to a friend. Unfortunately, most of her own specimens that she had been diligently collecting over many years were lost – but thankfully, some of her specimens were deposited as duplicates in other herbaria.</p> Alice Eastwood’s amazing legacy lives on through the over 340,000 herbarium specimens she collected! The collections she made in Colorado eventually formed the basis of the University of Colorado herbarium. Along the way, a few specimens found their way to the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plants</a> at Denver Botanic Gardens, including this specimen of Solidago </em>collected in Barnum Park, Denver in 1910. Although Barnum park is very different looking now, this specimen provides us with window to what it looked like over 100 years ago.</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> </p> We are documenting the current flora of the metro Denver area through the Denver EcoFlora project</a> – and will use this data to compare our findings with those compiled by Alice Eastwood over 100 years ago!</p> From the Vault: Wonders and Oddities from the Gardens’ Collections</h4> Inspired by the fantastic stories of collections highlighted in the 2020 exhibition From the Vault: Wonders and Oddities from the Gardens' Collections</em>, staff working with art, library and natural history collections will be sharing wonders and oddities from the collections online. Each entry in this new blog series will feature a staff-favorite object. Enjoy these peeks into our storage vaults to learn more about our varied collections. </p>
Adorning the body with paints and dyes, both temporary and permanent, has been a wide practice around the globe and across centuries. The purpose for these decorations has ranged from culturally significant rituals and ceremonies to simple beauty practices. In recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we offer a brief exploration of two historical practices that are still used today.</p> Lawsonia inermis</em> (commonly known as the henna tree, mignonette tree and the Egyptian privet) is a flowering plant native to much of the south of Asia (including the more specific regions of Southern Asia, Southeastern Asia and the Middle East). The leaves are crushed into a fine powder and mixed with water to make henna, a paste which has, for millennia, been used as a dye to color everything from fabrics such as silk, wool and leather to parts of the body including the hair, fingernails and even the skin, resulting in a rich, deep russet tone when finished. </p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Lawsonia inermis </em>Blanco</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Henna for dying hair.</p> While henna is used for a wide array of everyday coloring and dyeing, the tradition of decorating the hands and feet in beautiful intricate patterns has grown in notoriety and popularity. The application of henna has become popular as a temporary tattoo, but the art of henna (or mehndi in Hindi) is an important practice that has been performed for centuries in Southern Asia as a ceremony held the day before a wedding. The bride-to-be, surrounded by her closest female friends and family, is beautified and blessed in preparation for the wedding. In Hindu tradition, this beautification and blessing ritual, Solah Shringar, is a series of 16 adornments applied to the bride, each with an individual purpose and belief behind it.</p> Among these 16 adornments, the purpose of mehndi stems from the deep red color and the long-recognized cooling properties of the henna paste. The color is associated with emotional and fertility-related qualities as well as representing the essence of love; painted on the hands and feet, the intent is to strengthen the bond of love between the bride and groom. When applied to skin, henna has also been known to cool the body, particularly useful in the warmer climates of Southern Asia. It has also been used to relieve stress fever and headaches. These wonderful cooling and medicinal qualities are said to calm the bride’s nerves as she prepares for her new life as a married woman.</p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Mahendi</p> Body modifications include the permanent tattoos of the Pacific Islands’ various cultures. The traditional practice of tattooing in Hawaii (kakau) had been almost completely lost to time and the colonization of the islands of Hawaii. To keep their heritage alive, some tattooists have dedicated themselves to practicing only the traditional method of the kakau. </p> This method requires the use of chisel-like tools, typically made of wood and animal tusk; not at all like the needles that most who are familiar with modern tattoos would see. The ink would have been made from the soot of the fruit of the kukui tree, and then tapped into the skin by the tattooist. The tools and particular tattooing technique were very similar across many peoples of the Pacific, including Samoa and the Maori peoples of New Zealand. While the tools used for these tattoos today are still much the same, the composition of the ink has now change to modern productions. </p> </picture> </div> </article> Instruments for traditional Pacific Island tattooing. </p> In traditional Hawaiian tattooing, the placement and the tattoo all have a meaning. These tattoos would tell the life story of the individual. Given the lack of antibiotics historically, it was a dangerous procedure to undergo, but the significance far outweighed the risk. The process is a little less risky today, but likely just as painful. </p> Dig Deeper</h4> Learn more about henna</a>.</p> Listen to this interview with Keone Nunes</a>, the man renowned for reviving the art of the traditional Hawaiian tattoo. </p> At the Helen Fowler Library:</strong></p> “Religious & useful plants of Nepal & India: medicinal plants and flowers as mentioned in religious myths and legends of Hinduism and Buddhism” by Trilok Chandra Majupuria</p> “Plants in Hawaiian Culture” by Beatrice H. Krauss </p> There are far too many practices across cultures to name, but if you would like to learn more about the practices of such cultures, particularly those that involved certain plants, the library has a fine selection of books on ethnobotany. The library</a> will be opening again for limited hours in June. All such materials will be available to browse, and members of Denver Botanic Gardens will be able to check books out. Come visit us!</p> All images public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.</em></p>
Nature’s stage is (re)set: How might plant communities respond to disturbance by wildfire?</p> In ecology, the word disturbance </em>has a specific meaning. While our everyday use suggests a disruption to a desired, peaceful state, ecological disturbances represent a change to the landscape that alters resource availability and, as a result, patterns of biodiversity. Pulsed and dramatic disturbances such as fire cause obvious changes to the physical environment and resources. Fire opens space by clearing vegetation and plant litter, increases light availability and can prime the soil bed with nutrients. With such pronounced environmental change, it is easy to see that a new stage has been set. What is harder to know is which actors will arrive to shape the post-fire scene. </p> Plant community response to fire is complex because the characteristics of the disturbance – in this case the size, intensity, and return interval of the fire – interact with propagule availability, or the pool of species that can potentially recruit post-fire. While there are many actors waiting in the wings, only some will play a lead role in the post-fire landscape, recruiting abundantly and having large attendant effects on ecological processes such as soil erosion and water infiltration. Still, even plant species with bit parts have their place, as it is these uncommon species, sprinkled judiciously but often vividly across the land, that contribute disproportionately to biodiversity. In grassland and shrubland ecosystems along Colorado’s Front Range, forbs (herbaceous plants with showy flowers) largely contribute to biodiversity, provide ecosystem services like food for pollinators, and nitrogen fixation for the soil.</p> Given the importance of understanding plant community response to fire in a changing world, researchers from the Gardens are partnering with Boulder County Parks & Open Space to work on the 10,000-acre CalWood Fire that burned in 2020. We are asking how fire interacts with previous treatment to remove cheatgrass, an introduced annual grass that can become so abundant that it reduces native propagule availability, potentially affecting how plant communities re-assemble following fire. </p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Leucocrinum montanum </em>(sand lily) growing in area burned by the 2020 CalWood Fire.</p> </p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Viola nuttallii</em> (Nuttall’s violet) growing in area burned by the 2020 CalWood Fire.</p> </p> </picture> </div> </div> </article> Scorched bunchgrass and bleached Opuntia </em>(prickly pear) cactus.</p> </p>
