Archive for February, 2010

Philadelphia Flower Show Speech!

This coming Sunday, February 28th, I shall give a speech at 11:30 A.M. at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Since this year’s theme is “Passport To The World”, we decided to focus on plant collecting. My talk is about one hour long, including a question and answer session. I shall speak off these “talking points”, so […]

Man-Made Personal Climate Change

The modern head cold is the price for an uncovered head. Even in men, bareness—hairy or clean—is thought to be sexy. It originated with the rise of both informal photography and the fashion for the outdoorsy look, culminating in President John F. Kennedy’s famous bushy mane shining in the sun of his 1961 Inauguration. (Ever […]

Ground Wars: Frederick Dobbs On Allelopathy

Even in antiquity there was an awareness that plants influence the growth of their neighbors. The earliest reference comes from Theophrastus (called the “father of botany”) who, roughly 2300 years ago, noted that chickpea killed weeds and depleted the soil. He might have been describing what we call “allelopathy”, the phenomenon in which a chemical […]

Our Vegetable Love

Next week we might remind ourselves that love is not rocket science. No, it’s way more difficult. Albert Einstein put the question, “How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?” We are still waiting for his answer. I would imagine, […]