Field of Science

Forcing taxonomy


Things are slowly greening up, but my taxonomy class needs more flowering specimens.  So TPP will have to resort to more forcing, that is, bringing nearly in flower specimens into the glasshouse to hurry them along.  And no, not the other kind of forcing where as a colleague of mine used to say, "I'll teach them (fill-in-the-blank) even if I have to tear their heads off and pour it in."  Actually with new learning technologies, microchips can be implanted thus eliminating the necessity of re-attaching the heads. Has anyone ever forced fragrant sumac into flower? No? And who would do so?  Well, we'll see how that goes.  Spicebush looks very close so forcing should work.  Elms are cooperating, but none are close by. Hepatica in my gardens is showing flower buds, but out in nature it'll still be one or two weeks from flowering. Hellebore flowers are opening so that will help. An example of TPP's desperation is checking out dandelions and mustardy weeds on the south sides of buildings to see how the buds are developing. Come on!  Come on! Imagine the thrill to find a star magnolia growing in a protected courtyard that is almost in flower! 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you have any coltsfoot? That should be ahead of dandelions.

The Phytophactor said...

No coltsfoot. It occurs in Lincolnland, but haven't seen it locally. Our herbarium has one specimen from about 150 years ago when it was probably cultivated for medicinal uses and that's it. Primroses also can't handle our climate for one reason or another.