How to read a seed packet: a beginner’s guide to growing flowers from seed
Last spring, a neighbor handed me a packet of zinnia seeds and said, “Just stick them in the dirt.” I did, and about half of...
The cultivation of flowers for the global perfume industry
It takes roughly eight thousand jasmine blossoms, hand-picked before sunrise, to produce a single ounce of absolute. Multiply that by the volume a single perfume...
How flowers respond to touch and physical stimuli (thigmotropism)
Touch a Mimosa pudica leaf and watch it fold shut in less than a second. Brush past a Venus flytrap’s trigger hairs twice and the...
The survival strategies of parasitic flowers like rafflesia
Somewhere in the rainforests of Sumatra, a bud the size of a cabbage sits underground for nearly a year before anything visible happens. When it...
Flowers that are used as natural fabric dyes
Long before synthetic dyes took over textile mills in the 1850s, dyers across every continent were raiding gardens and hedgerows for color. A surprising amount...
