Lobb's Clitoria
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
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| Rosa 'Mary Magdalene' |
When my mother sent me to St. Edward’s High
School in 1956 I was a mother’s boy. We lived in a mining town in northern Mexico and my father was in Buenos Aires. I had not seen him for 5 years.
With my pimples beginning to act up I was
in a full-blown repressed teenager who had little idea about the birds and the
bees.
Fortunately my mother had fomented in me a
love of reading and we seemed to read the same books like the historical novels
of Samuel Shellarbarger (The Spider King), Frank Yerby (The Saracen King) and
the more literate Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. I introduced to my
mother Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart and Taylor Caldwell’s novel about
St. Luke, Dear and Glorious Physician. I was keen on my mother’s favourite
author of medical fiction, Frank G. Slaughter (Sword and Scalpel). The reason I
was keen on Slaughter and Edison Marshall’s The Viking is that they had good sex
scenes. In an age, particularly Austin,
Texas, racy stuff was not to be
found anywhere except, I soon found out in the bookstores that sold pulp
fiction.
To this day I try to forget my foray into
Slaughter and Yerby and I can assert that the best sex scenes I ever read where
the very subtle, between-the-lines novels of Dorothy Dunning.
I have read all of José Saramago’s novels (mostly in translations
from the Portuguese into Spanish. The one that is the most difficult to read
(and I read it in English and then in Spanish) is The Gospel According to Jesus
Christ. In it Christ, as a young man (suffering from stigmatas) is taken care
of and introduced into carnal endeavours by Mary of Magdala. The sex scene in
the book makes me blush. And I don’t even have to read it as I remember most of
it. For his efforts Saramago was pilloried in Portugal
so he left in exile to the Canary island
of Lanzarote. When
Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years later his county
beckoned him to return. He did not.
I cannot speak for
others but I do believe that from the first time that a little American girl,
age 8, came to my house in Buenos Aires (I was 8 or 9) and she asked me, “Do
you want to see my…?” I answered, “Yes,” I have thought about women and sex a
lot.
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| Rhodochiton atrosangunieus |
In fact when I was in
kindergarten I had the uncommon pleasure of sharing the classroom with the
Argentine quintuplets, the Diligentis. They were two boys and three girls. I
remember lifting the skirts of my fave, María Fernanda. You could say that my
depravity began early in my life.
How else can I explain
the fact that I have 85 roses (old roses and David Austin English Roses) and
that at least 25 of them are pink and multipetalled? The queen of them all is my
(just off white to be pink) multi named Maiden’s Blush. It is also called
Cuisse de Nymphe, Incarnata, La Virginale and (yes!) La Séduisante.
I have hinted about
this here. But few, as far as I can tell made the connection. The connection is
that every time I look at my flesh coloured old roses I think about women and
in particular about that which they have that I don’t.
My suspicion, after
having lived with my plants since 1986 is that they are far less repressed than
most humans.
The idea to write this
blog came about when I discovered that 19th century plant hunter William
Lobb had discovered an azure blue Clitoria ternata in Panama.
It was some 10 or 12
years ago that I used to frequent with Rosemary, the Mother’s Day plant sale at
the UBC Botanical Garden. We always managed to
get a plant list a few days before. On that list was Clitoria ternata.
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| Clitoria ternata |
When a rare plant was
offered the technique, besides the one of going early to be ahead of the line,
was not to think of the plant you wanted to get. And of course you would never
discuss this with anybody near you. The fact is that one of Rosemary’s friends,
just two people in front of me, got to Clitoria ternata and that was that.
Since then I have had
the consolation prize of what I call the Male Member Plant (it is a lurid
purple). It is a non hardy vine called Rhodochiton atrosanguineus. I particularly
like to show the plant to the many little old ladies that come to visit our
garden.
Now I cannot get a
clitoria to scan but this one from Google Images will have to do.
Mary Madgalen (e)
Mary Madgalen (e)
