From: hughes@dogwood.botany.uga.edu (wayne)
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: That time of year again
Date: 7 Apr 92 23:25:00 GMT
Organization: Botany Department - U of Georgia, Athens
Originator: hughes@dogwood


 I found this, an unsigned piece in the March 30  1992 New Yorker, p30-31.
 I have posted it without permission, hope it is enjoyed.
 Apologies to any who object.
__________________________________________________________________________
  We slipped away to the New York Flower Show last Monday, not telling
anyone, so that nobody could say, "I didn't know *you* were interested
in flowers," in a dry tone suggesting something prosaic and unflorescent
about us - something indehiscent.  "Indehiscent" is a new word we've        
learned.  It means "not dehiscent, not opening at maturity," as in 
"indehiscent fruit."  During the blast of freezing cold thatt has been
rattling our windows lately, we have sometimes dehisced in the form of
a sneeze, and hisced up all the tighter.  But, of course, a dry or unde-
hisced person, an afloral person, is exactly the kind of person a flower
show is there to stimulate, and that's why we went.  We took a taxi to
Pier 92, one of the big passenger-ship terminals on the Hudson, and
paid our eight dollars, and breezed in.
  We saw rex begonia and asparagus ferns and a plant labelled "A String
of Peas" - a plant with leaves that look like peas - and shamrocks, violets,
cyclamens, azaleas, Johnny-jump-ups, and battalions of tulips.  There
were ranks of plants arranged by genus or variety - competing plants, with
the prize ribbons beside them, and the judge's scoring card right there
for all to see.
  Roaming among sections of streptocarpus and primula, we noted how
terse were the judge's compliments on the winning plants:
  
  "Magnificent"!
  "Superb plant"!
  "Spectacular and showy".
  "Showstopper".
  "Excellent specimen".
  "Beautiful".
  
  And how sharp, how barbed, were their comments on the second- and 
third-place plants and the honorable mentions:
  
  "Good start". (A third-place begonia semperflorens)
  "Poor color".  Severe pruning is obvious."
  "Unusual growth habit".
  "Slightly off-center and overpotted". (A third-place _Andromischus
cristatus_)
  "This plant would look better with more foliage".
  "Lovely plant but a little beyond its prime". (A third-place narcissus)
  
  The withering irony of "This plant would look better with more foliage"!
The faint contempt behind "Unusual growth habit"!  And imagine the poor
grower bringing his best begonia down from Connecticut, an affable man
in bib overalls and porkpie hat leaving the tropical calm of his green-
house for the honk and harangue of New York; his station wagon plows south
on the West Side Highway, the begonia terrified and perspiring on the seat
beside him, and he parks blocks away and hauls the plant to Pier 92 and
sets it in its place and spritzes it with bug juice, and a judge comes
by, a big, beefy man with a long waxed mustache, and peers down at it 
and scribbles  "Good start"  on a card.  How would *you* feel?
  Once in a blue moon, a judge handed out a flowery compliment, such
as "Wonderful presentation with a bonus of bloom"  for a winning 
_Mammilaria plumosa_, but most of the plants came in for digs.  A pot
of tulips was criticized for a lack of "floriferousness" and a 
narcissus for "meager growth."  One of the succulents was said to have
had  "a cultural problem in its development," and a hippeastrum was   
dismissed as  "immature."  "Lacks ornamental value," said the card 
attached to a sea onion.  Perhaps, we thought, but could the same be said
about us?  The remark that the narcissus was "a little beyond its prime"
stung us especially.
  We had come to the end of Pier 92, and were in front of a ceiling-high
window that looked south to the next terminal and to the floodlit
U.S.S. Intrepid beyond.  The next terminal was where, one afternoon last
June, we embarked for England aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2.  We stood at
the port rail as she slipped down the Hudson, the blocks of Manhattan
drifting past like rows of tall corn, and when we got to Forty-third
we wnapped a picture of our companion with the Chrysler Building coming
out of her head like an immense stalk of wheat.  A fireboat zipped along-
side and shot a fifty-foot plume into the air, the Staten Island ferry
bobbed in our wake, our funnel eased under the Verrazano Bridge, and
we sailed along the coast of Brooklyn  and out to sea.
  We normally prepare for a trip by imagining the worst and then are
grateful for what doesn't happen to us, so we fully expected cold weather
and fierce winds on the crossing, with sheets of salt spray lashing the
deck, and the ship rolling and plunging; and we imagined ourself lying
on a bunk quietly retching into a plastic bag, and then the inevitable
iceberg and the rush for the boats, with us caught in a despicable act
of cowardice and going down with the boat in shame and disgrace, and
then our obituary ("Was fondly regarded despite insufficient flowering
over the years").  But of course, the first day out was bright and
balmy, and we lay in a deck chair and dozed and slowly burst open.
  From dread comes dehiscence, just as from winter comes spring.  From
stern judgments come better begonias.  You let a flower show drift 
toward permissiveness, and soon they'll be exhibiting dandelions
and skunk cabbage, and where will we be then?  We bought a bottle of
soil conditioner and an asparagus fern and went home.

The New Yorker 30 March 1992
_________________________________________________________________________