Magical Botany Y

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  We’re getting close to the end now, but it’s not too late to check out my fellow A to Z bloggers on the Master List of participating blogs here.

        Today’s plants span worlds and time, so we’d better get right to it…

        Yellow musk creeper is another dangerous plant from the world of Dungeons & Dragons.  Its bright yellow orchid-like flowers waft out a heavy, musky scent that both attracts prey and dazes it.  The plant then burrows into the mind of the victim and plants its bulbs in their brain.  When the bulbs sprout, they reanimate the victim as a zombie.  However, if you can collect the petals of yellow musk creeper you can use them as an ingredient in Potions of Superior Healing.

        Another yellow-flowered plant, beneficial instead of monstrous, is yao grass.  Actually, there are two types of yao grass mentioned in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and despite having the same name, they don’t seem very closely related.  The yao grass of Guyao Mountain has yellow flowers, lush leaves, and a stringy-looking fruit like cooked spaghetti.  It’s a powerful love potion, and anyone who eats it will attract the love of others.  The yao grass of Taishi Mountain, on the other hand, has white flowers and black fruit, and its magical power is to bestow mental clarity and prevent confusion.

        We can’t leave Y without mentioning Yggdrasil, the world tree (see W) of Norse mythology.  Yggdrasil is an ash tree whose branches reach up into the heavens while its three roots reach to wells in the different worlds of humans, giants, and Hel.  The gods hold council around Yggdrasil, and Odin once sacrificed himself to himself on its branches.  It has the classic eagle above and snake below, but also has a squirrel that runs between them, and deer that browse its branches, so that (like everything in Norse mythology) it’s all about the suffering.

        Halfway around the world, Y is also for ya’axché, the world tree of the Maya.  Ya’axché is a ceiba tree (aka kapok), that grows not just as the axis mundi at the center of the world, but also with another tree at each of the four cardinal directions.  Sometimes its trunk is actually a crocodile, reminiscent of the distinctive thick thorns on a ceiba’s trunk.

        The moral of yellow musk creeper is that ’tis better to plant than to be planted in.  The gardening tip of the day is that you can try coyote urine, electric fencing, or all manner of other pest deterrents to protect your world tree, but those darn deer and squirrels will always find a way!

        Which kind of yao grass would you choose?

[Pictures: Yellow Musk Creeper, illustration from Wizards of the Coast, 2017 (Image from Worldanvil);

Yao Grass, collaged by AEGN using illustrations from Honzo Zufu by Iwasaki Tsunemasa, ca. 1830-44 (Images from Library of Congress);

Yggdrasil, illumination possibly by Sigurður Gíslason from Langa Edda, late 17th century (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Yggdrasil, illustration from Prose Edda, English translation by Oluf Olufsen Bagge, 1847 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Ya’axché, detail from Tepantitla Mural, Teotihuacan, ca. 500 (Image from Historical Mexico).]

Magical Botany X

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  As for this whole A to Z Challenge thing, you can find out all about it here.

         X is often a bit of a grab bag for A to Z posts, and I’ll start with the most famous plant of Planet X in the Marvel Universe.  Groot is another tree person, but although he is presumably part of a whole species (Flora colossus), for the most part he’s one of a kind.  He can make his arms grow into enormously long vines, or shoot out suckers all over his body.  He can

regrow limbs, and even after being thoroughly destroyed he can be regrown if a small twig of his wood is carefully repotted.  He’s fiercely loyal to his found family, and famously the only words he ever says are “I am Groot” — but those three words can mean anything and everything necessary, to those who understand him.

        Xi Wangmu’s Peaches, or Peaches of Immortality, are served by Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, at her magnificent banquets for the Immortals.  These feasts are held only once every six thousand years, because A) the peaches grow so slowly and B) there’s no need to rush things when you’re already immortal anyway.  The peaches grow in an orchard on Mount Kunlun, and Xi Wangmu loves them so much that she often wears them on her headdress.

        For more plants that begin with X we need to return to the Aztec herbals.  In Nahuatl xiuh means “herb” so there are actually tons of Aztec plants that begin with X, but I’ve chosen xiuh-ecapatli because it’s another of the ingredients in the potion that cures “those harassed by a tornado,” which seems to me like it must be magic.  Then there’s also yollo-xoxhitl, which

may mean “heart flower.”  I’m counting that one as magic because it’s good “against stupidity of mind.”  This is something for which the whole world could definitely use a magic cure!

         The other way to take X, however, is as the mark of the unknown, so I’m using that as my excuse to feature a magical plant that doesn’t have a name at all.  This unnamed flower is recorded by the Brothers Grimm in the fairy tale “Jorinde and Joringel.”  It has deep red petals and a pearl at the center.  It was first seen in a dream, and when it’s finally found in real life, after long searching, it is a powerful antidote and protection against dark magic.  Magic spells don’t

affect anyone holding this flower, and enchanted items have only to be touched with the petals to be restored to their true form.

        The moral of X (and Groot) is that you can find meaning in anything if you look hard enough.  And also, don’t give up on a “dead” plant too soon.  Sometimes plants really can surprise you, and indeed every year in colder regions around the world, trees appear to die in the winter and come back to life in the spring.

        Gardening tip of the day: if you should by chance acquire a peach of immortality, don’t bother trying to plant it.  According to Xi Wangmu, ordinary soil isn’t suitable, and besides, the tree blooms only once every three thousand years.

        So, immortality: good idea or bad?

[Pictures: Groot (of Planet X), film stills from “Guardians of the Galaxy” 1 and 2 by Marvel Cinematic Universe, 2014, 2018 (Images from Fandom);

Xi Wangmu’s Peaches of Immortality, hanging scroll by Kumashiro Yūhi, mid 18th century (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Xiuh-ecapatli, illustration from Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis by Martin de la Cruz and Juan Badiano, 1552 (Image from Academia);

Yollo-xoxhitl, illustration from Florentine Codex by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, c. 1575 (Image from Digital Florentine Codex);

Flower X (actually kornblomen), hand-colored wood block print from translation of Ortus sanitatus by Johannes von Cuba, ca. 1601 (Image from MDZ);

Flower X, detail of cover illustration by Lotte Arndt from Jorinde und Joringel, 1978 (Image from AbeBooks);

Flower X, detail of illustration by Adrienne Adams from Jorinde and Joringel, 1968 (Image from Carol’s Notebook).]

Magical Botany W

         Welcome to the #AtoZChallenge ! 

My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find all my fellow A to Z bloggers on the Master List of participating blogs here.

        W is for Waqwaq tree, a strange and miraculous tree that grows all kinds of animals from its branches — but there’s a certain amount of disagreement about the details.  According to some versions it grows beautiful women, because that’s how the all-female population of the Islands of Waqwaq reproduces.  According to other reports the tree grows the heads of men, women, and monstrous animals, and they all scream all the time.  Then there’s the 1388 account that says the tree is covered with heads of women, birds, horses, ducks, monkeys, hares, foxes, and rams… but the reason for these fruits is that the tree eats the animals, and then their heads bloom from it like flowers!  But in any case, the Waqwaq tree and the land of Waqwaq serve as symbols of the very edges of the imagination in Arabic lore.  (For those

who like some of the non-magical scholarly background, it is likely that Persian tales of the Waqwaq tree influenced both the jinmenju tree of Japan, introduced at J, and the oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon encountered by Alexander the Great back at O.)

        The willow is well-known as a real-world mundane tree, but there are also a number of magical species in the willow family.  Old Man Willow of Middle-earth is an old and evil tree who makes all paths through the Old Forest turn to himself at its heart.  He then lulls trespassers to sleep so that he can engulf and imprison them within his huge, gnarled trunk.  Then there’s the Whomping Willow, the most famous specimen of which is grown on the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  This is a particularly violent tree whose arm-like limbs will attack anything within range, pummelling its victims with knotty branches writhing and

swinging like thick, heavy fists.  And finally, I have to include a gentler species, the pussy willow tree that grows real kittens, which I myself have recorded in a small relief block print.

        Woodland tweezers are another group of parallel plants described by Leo Lionni.  They grow in sociobotanical colonies in which the areas of growth may be determined by a mind which is composed of the rootstock of the tree beneath which these plants live.  (And keep in mind that Lionni recorded this before the discovery of mycorrhizal networks!)

        Finally, as I foreshadowed earlier, now that we’ve reached W it’s time to talk about world trees.  Like trees of life (see L) and often somewhat hybridized with them, these are a whole class of varied species that have occurred in cultures around the world.  The defining characteristic of a world tree is that it connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld.  Often it holds up the heavens with its branches, and often it also serves as the axis mundi, which is the center or axis of the

world.  It represents order and harmony.  World trees support all kinds of life, but very frequently there are two particular creatures associated with them: a bird or celestial creature, often an eagle, living at the crown, and a dragon or serpent living down among the roots.  These motifs hint that some of our previous magical trees can also be considered world trees, including Fusang with suns in its branches, Golden Apple with a dragon at its base, Huluppu with a magic bird up top and a magic serpent in the roots, Jo Mu with its trunk forming a path between earth and heaven, and Kalpavriksha serving as an axis mundi on Mt Meru.  And even though we have only a few letters left in the alphabet, there are still a couple of world trees to come.

        The moral of W is that plant and botanical networks may have a lot more purpose and agency than the European Enlightenment gave them credit for.  Modern science with its discoveries about mycorrhizal networks is only just now catching up with ancient mythology in its understanding of the ways trees really do connect everything.  Gardening tip of the day: don’t make the plants angry!

        Do you have any willows in your neighborhood — and have you ever noticed any suspicious behavior from them?

[Pictures: Waq-waq, painting from Mughal India, early 17th century (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

Waqwaq Tree, painting from Golconda, India, early 17th century (Image from The Met);

Old Man Willow, illustration by John Howe from The Hobbit, 1989 (Image from The One Ring);

Whomping Willow, illustration by Mary GrandPré from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1999;

Pussy Willows, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2022 (now sold out);

Woodland Tweezers, illustrations from Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni, 1977 (Images from Ariel S. Winter on Flickr);

World Tree, steel drum bas relief by anonymous Haitian artist (Image from Etsy shop MetalArtofHaiti);

World Tree, clay sculpture from Nayarit, Mexico, ca. 300BCE-300CE (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

World Tree, pysanka motif from Ukraine, ca. 2009 (Image from Wikimedia Commons).]

Magical Botany V

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find out about the A to Z Challenge here.

        One of my very favorite plants in all of fantasy is the vegetable lamb, but since I’ve mentioned it several times in this blog already, I’ll just direct you to go reread the prior posts on The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary and The Vegetable Lambs are Back.  (Today’s illustration is a little one from my book On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination, but you can see my whole big detailed block print in that second post.)

        Moving into new territory, V is also for vampire pumpkins and melons.  These can be found in the Balkans, and are transformed from ordinary produce that’s been kept for more than ten days, and exposed to a full moon.  When this happens, the pumpkins begin to shake themselves and growl.  Sometimes you can see a spot of blood appearing on the rind of a vampire pumpkin.  When pumpkins go to the dark side, you must boil them, and throw away not only the gourd and the water, but the brush used to scrub it.  If you fail to do this, the vampire pumpkins will go around stables and houses

and suck the blood of humans and livestock.  Luckily, however, they can’t do as much damage as regular humanoid vampires.  (Presumably it’s the lack of teeth?)

        There are vampire pumpkins on Discworld as well as Earth, but Discworld is the only place to find vul nut vines.  This is a species of re-annual plant, which grows before being planted.  Vul nut vines can flourish as many as eight years prior to their seeds actually being sown, and vul nut wine is supposed to give drinkers insight into the future, which is - from the nut’s point of view - the past.

        Finally, here’s another indecipherable herbal collection in which we’ll never know the names of the individual plants - but we’re filing them all under V for Voynich Manuscript.  This is another for which you can find out all about it by going back to a prior post: Mystery Manuscript.  The illustrations in this codex are fairly crude, but they’re detailed

enough to make it clear that these are no ordinary everyday plants.  No doubt their fantastical properties and magical uses are thoroughly described in the arcane text that no one will ever be able to read.

        The moral of the plants at V is eat or be eaten.  Also, better to write all your arcane secrets in an indecipherable text and be thought a fool than to write in a commonly known language and remove all doubt.

        Gardening tip for farmers of vul nut vines and other re-annual plants: keep good records and set clear reminders on next year’s calendar; if you forget to plant your crops after you’ve already harvested them, you might rip the entire fabric of causality.  What’s your best tip for reminders?  Strings tied around fingers?  Electronic beepings?  Pocket diaries?  Tattoos?  Scraps of paper pinned to your shirt?

[Pictures: Vegetable Lamb, illustration from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination by AEGNydam, 2019 (find out about the book at Nydamprints.com);

Vampire Pumpkins (actually The great round Pompion with tweaks), wood block print from The Herball by John Gerarde, 1597 (Image from Missouri Botanical Garden);

Vul Nut Vine (actually bryony with tweaks), hand-colored wood block print from Ortis Sanitatis, 1485 (Image from University of Cambridge);

Voynich Manuscript herbal pages, anonymous illustrations, early 15th century (Images from Yale University).]

Magical Botany U

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find all my fellow A to Z bloggers on the Master List of participating blogs here, for your blog-reading pleasure.

        U is for the upas or bausor, which is the most poisonous tree in the world.  Funnily enough, the fruit is actually edible, but the sap is so deadly that to come anywhere within range of the tree is fatal.  According to some accounts, nothing can live within a 15 mile radius from the upas.  Some say that out of every ten condemned men sent to collect the sap, only one is likely to return alive, because most people can’t even reach the trunk before falling down dead.  Another account says that a poisoned man can take no more than nine steps on level ground before dying.  The use of this deadly sap was primarily to poison arrows and blow-darts in southeast Asia, and prisoners could also be executed by being tied at the base of the tree, always assuming, of course, that anyone could get within range of the tree long enough to tie them.  (This is one of our magical plants that was born from exaggerated accounts of a real plant, Antiaris toxicaria, but the stories about it are so fantastical that I count the upas as a different, magical species.)

       If we travel to South Africa we may be unlucky enough to encounter a similarly deadly tree.  The umdhlebe is a shrub or small tree that not only has deadly sap, but can exhale poisonous vapors from the ground around its roots.  What’s more, it can lure animals and people to it in order to kill them!  The umdhlebe’s poison is used by witches, and anyone cultivating it is surely as evil as the tree itself.  However, the fallen fruit of the tree, which looks like a long, black and red pod, can be an antidote to the poison.  If you want to harvest the fruit, you must first sacrifice a goat or sheep to the demon of the tree, and only approach from the windward side.  (Ditto the parentheses above about being based on a real species.)

        For our third tree of the day we’re back to Neverbelieve Island.  Umbrella Palms grow on rocky outcrops along the shore, where they must produce their own rain to keep their roots moist during dry spells.  When seasonal rains come, Umbrella Palms close up their umbrellas so as not to block any of the water.  Clipper crabs are know to cut through Umbrella Palm trunks with a nip of the claws, and a cut tree immediately floats away into the sky.  I’m not sure why the crabs nip the umbrella trees, but presumably this is how the species can spread to new islands.

        The moral of the upas and the umdhlebe is that when you encounter a being that toxic, it’s best just to stay as far away as possible - as much as 15 miles away!  On the other hand, if you’ve discovered an antidote, please do share.  Gardening tip of the day: consider keeping goats with your poisonous trees.  But not if you actually like goats.  (Remember the moral at M about not sacrificing animals…)

        Umbrellas: do you carry one around, always prepared, or do you take your chances with the weather?

[Pictures: Upas Tree, hand colored wood block print from Hortus sanitatis, ca. 1497 (Image from University of Edinburgh);

Umdhlebe (not really), detail from Let’s Wait A While, print (etching?) by Themba Khumalo, 2019 (Image from Artist Proof Studio);

Umbrella Palms, illustration from The Land of Neverbelieve by Norman Messenger, 2012.]

Magical Botany T

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find out about the A to Z Challenge here.

        T seems to be a letter particularly richly grown with magical literary flora.  I’ll start with one of my all-time favorites, the Truffula Tree.  Truffula Trees have tall, slender trunks topped by bright-colored tufts.  The touch of their tufts is much softer than silk, and they have the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.  They’re also the favored habitat of Brown Bar-ba-loots, who eat the fruit of the Truffula Trees.  However, because truffula silk is so excellent for knitting thneeds, the trees were severely over-harvested in the 20th century, and are now nearly extinct.  Only careful conservation will be able to restore them and the beautiful habitat they provide - an appropriate reminder for Earth Day.

        Another classic is the triffid, a tall species of carnivorous plant that can walk about on three stubby “legs.”  Although they seem to have originated and spread faster in equatorial regions, triffids soon became invasive throughout the world.  They can be quite dangerous because they have a venomous stinger in the head, but the stinger can be docked, rendering them harmless for the next two years while the stinger regrows, when they can be pruned again.  When intact, the stinger is used to kill large prey instantly, which the triffid can then feed upon as it decomposes, plus they can also catch insects and small prey in the manner of a pitcher plant.  Despite these dangerous characteristics, triffids can be economically very useful as a source of high-quality oil.  Outside of oil farms, they are now mostly eradicated.

        Tesla trees are native to the planet Hyperion, where they are the defining species of the Flame Forest.  Named for the Tesla coil, these tall-trunked trees have a sort of bulb at the top in which they can store massive amounts of electricity that their branches draw in from static charge in the clouds.  When the trees discharge this electricity in powerful jolts like lightning strikes, it causes wildfires, which drive the cycle of regeneration and growth in the forest.

        While we’re covering the classics, I have to mention the Tumtum tree, even though we don’t know much about it.  In fact, all we know is that it grows in the tulgey wood, and is a good place to stand in uffish thought if you’re hoping to encounter a Jabberwock.  Most artists don’t pay a lot of attention to the Tumtum tree, but here are details of the tree from three of the books that I featured back in my prior post A Jumble of Jabberwocks, plus one extra.

        Finally, a much less well-known plant, another of the parallel plants (first introduced at P) described by Lionni: the tiril.  Of all parallel flora, tirils are the most widely distributed around the globe, and among the oldest.  They live in dense groups, and

although all parallel plants are black, tirils sport the widest array of black.  (And by the way, parallel plants are generally matterless, indifferent to the passage of time, and impossible to photograph.)  One tiril species has a habit of lodging itself ineradicably in the memory and occasionally forcibly reappearing in the mind.  Another is a powerful aphrodisiac, and yet another species produces a loud, high-pitched whistle, but always stops as soon as anyone tries to get near enough to investigate.

        Even now, the floral bounty of T is not quite exhausted, as you can always go back and revisit the triglav flower introduced at my post R is for Regeneration.

        Gardening tip of the day for commercial triffid farmers: you can’t dock their stingers without lowering the quality of their oil, so be sure to wear protective gear and enforce strict safety protocols.  Triffids know to aim for the exposed face and hands.

        While the moral of triffids may be that many plants have immense commercial value, the moral of Truffula Trees is not to let exploitation of this commercial value get out of hand.  The moral of Tumtum trees is that trees can be an excellent place to stand awhile, but the moral of Tesla trees is that sometimes it is not a good idea to stand under a tree: particularly during a thunderstorm.  In short, you can surely find some plant to justify any moral at all that you’d like to draw!

        What words of wisdom do you think people most need to hear?  And what plant can be used to illustrate that moral?

[Pictures: Truffula Trees, illustration by Dr. Seuss from The Lorax, 1971;

Triffid, illustration by John Wyndham from The Day of the Triffids, 1951 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Tesla Trees, detail of cover illustration by Garry Ruddell from Hyperion by Dan Simmons, 1990 edition (Image from Fandom);

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Joel Stewart from Jabberwocky, 2003;

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Kevin Hawkes from Imagine That! Poems of Never-Was selected by Prelutsky, 1998;

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Eric Copeland from Poetry for Young People: Lewis Carroll, ed. E. Mendelson, 2000;

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Stéphane Jorisch from Jabberwocky, 2004;

Tirils, illustrations from Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni, 1977 (Images from Ariel S. Winter on Flickr).]

Magical Botany S

         Welcome to the #AtoZChallenge  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can see all my fellow A to Z bloggers on the Master List of participating blogs HERE.  Take a look, because you’re sure to find something of interest among them!

        To start with, S is for Sanjivani, another magical herb mentioned in Hindu epics.  It grows on a mountain beyond Mt. Meru, and has incredibly powerful healing properties.  Even a whiff of the scent is enough to bring people back from death (or at least, “mostly dead”).  Despite the fact that it glows in the dark, it’s not necessarily easy to identify.  Hanuman, who was sent to fetch some after a battle, couldn’t identify it, and had to bring the whole mountain, just to be sure he got it.  As for humans, they’ve been searching for centuries to find and identify sanjivani in real life, including with considerable state funds in India, but so far it remains elusive.  There are some more mundane herbs that are commonly sold under the name, but they’re not the real mythological thing.

        Another plant that’s certainly useful, if not so miraculous, is the spaghetti tree.  As its name implies, this is the plant on which spaghetti grows.  It can be farmed as far north as southern Switzerland although it cannot withstand hard late frosts.  A healthy adult tree can provide enough spaghetti for an average family, assuming mild winters and no trouble with spaghetti weevils.  The BBC reported a short segment on spaghetti trees on April 1, 1957, and afterwards told the people who enquired about it that they could grow their own tree by placing a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hoping for the best.  The spaghetti tree is obviously related to the pasta tree which grows on Neverbelieve Island, a location to which we were first introduced at G.

        Sapient pearwood is a kind of tree that grows in intensely magical areas mostly in the Agatean Empire on Discworld.  It is intelligent and impervious to magic, as well as being fairly impervious to sharp implements.  Like the Greek oaks we saw at O, these magical traits persist in objects made of the tree’s wood, and the most famous products are wizards’ staffs and luggage.  Trunks made of sapient pearwood can scurry around on little legs, defend their owners ferociously, have infinite storage and access to multiple pocket dimensions inside, and find their way back to their owner no matter how often they get lost.  Their one way of dealing with obstacles is to ignore them and smash or chomp straight through.

        Finally, I want to mention Codex Seraphinianus, an encyclopedia of a surreal magical world by Luigi Serafini, of which the first chapter is devoted to the flora of this land.  Because the book is written in an asemic script which is indecipherable, I can’t tell you what any of these plants are called or what fantastical properties they may have.  I can simply file them all under S and share some of the beautiful illustrations, which you can interpret as you will.

        The moral of our S plants is that no matter how appealing or how authoritative, sometimes things that sound fantastic really are just fantasy.  Gardening tip of the day: go ahead and poke a sprig of spaghetti into a tin of tomato sauce and see what happens.  After all, isn’t pretty much all gardening just hoping for the best?  (But remember, it has to be raw.  Once you cook it, it will certainly never germinate.)

        What unusual specialty crop do you wish you could grow in your garden?  Barnacle

geese?  Money?  Never-lost suitcases?  Or just strawberries that the critters never eat?

[Pictures: Sanjivani (actually detail from Gaudi Ragini), painting from India, probably Jaipur, 18th century (Image from Cleveland Museum of Art);

Spaghetti Tree, stills from BBC’s “Panorama” aired April 1, 1957 (Images from BBC.co.uk);

Pasta Tree, illustration from The Land of Neverbelieve by Norman Messenger, 2012;

Sapient Pearwood Luggage, illustration by Kidby? (Image from TerryPratchett.com);

Seraphinianus plants, illustrations from Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini, 1981.]

Magical Botany R

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  If you don’t know about the #AtoZChallenge you can find out all about it here, and thank the organizers for putting it together for us.  And now, diving right in…

        R is for raskovnik, an herb which is neither rare nor remote, but it’s almost impossible to pick anyway, for the simple reason that it’s almost impossible to identify.  According to Slavic folklore, only certain animals can find it: a tortoise, a snake, or a hedgehog, depending on whether you’re in Bulgaria, Dalmatia, or Serbia.  But however hard it may be to find the raskovnik, it’s worth it, because this plant can unlock any sort of lock, and reveal hidden things, especially treasure.  All you have to do is touch the herb to the lock, or walk over the place where the treasure lies, and all is laid open before you.

        The opposite in some ways is red weed, a plant from the planet Mars.  Brought to Earth during the War of the Worlds in the mid-1890s, it spread across Earth invasively, marking the areas that the Martian invaders had conquered.  Its appearance is described by the original chronicler, H.G. Wells, as being a prickly creeper of a vivid blood-red tint.  It has cactus-like branches, but unlike cactus, it grows near water, and indeed water makes it grow so quickly and tumultuously that it entirely chokes the waterways.  It’s not poisonous, but it has a sickly, metallic taste, and it gives off a faint violet fluorescent glow.  On the planet Mars there’s so much red plant life that it’s what gives the entire planet its characteristic red hue, but on Earth, although the red weed initially spread vigorously, it was ultimately wiped out by Earth bacteria.

        The raskovnik may be beneficial, and the red weed may be destructive, but our third plant for the day is simply puzzlingly useless.  According to Douglas Adams, "The life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruit is quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer shell which crumbles to dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what it is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it."

        I can’t resist adding two plant-animal hybrids from Scranimal Island, recorded by Jack Prelutsky.  The radishark is an underwater nightmare whose only thought is to catch and bite its prey, while the rhinocerose is too firmly rooted to chase anyone, and is beloved for its captivating blossom and enchanting scent.

        The moral of R is that nature does what it does, without regard for your opinion.  Nature doesn’t care whether or not you can identify its forms or make use of its products; nature may cause things to grow like fury or die away just as quickly, all without any intervention or effect from your actions.  Which means that our gardening tip of the day is: the one thing every gardener absolutely must cultivate is a spirit of patience and resignation.  You can’t control your garden!

        But if you could choose one plant to be able to grow successfully without fail, what would it be?

[Pictures: Raskovnik (actually European waterclover), plate from Flora von Deutschland, Österreich un der Schweiz by Otto Wilhelm Thomé, 1885 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Red weed, illustration (colored by AEGN) by Henrique Alvim Corrêa from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, French edition of 1906 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Ratchet Screwdriver Fruit, illustration by AEGNydam, 2024;

Rhinocerose and Radishark, illustrations by Peter Sís from Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky, 2002.]