249
hard-hitting anthropocenic revelations. We see manifested across the botanical art
world so-called ephemeral realism, meditations on the life and death of real flowers
within a public sculptured form, much like Tibetan sand paintings—here today,
blown to the four corners tomorrow. And so-called reverse agriculture as revealed
by contemporary flower artist Azuma Makoto.
31
Other stunning glimpses of angiosperms in full glory have utilized the latest techniques of scanning electron microscopy, as created by Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottawa.
32
But we also recognize the
historic retention of the Medieval mind as it continues to flower in cloistered, foursquare courtyard gardens, like those in Utrecht, or the abbey of St. Gallen in
Switzerland, whose Benedictine designs of the Middle Ages were refreshed at the
Metropolitan Museum of New York’s Cloisters.
33
26.5 Flowers Among the Ancients
The contention that Neanderthals may have buried their dead wearing tiaras of dried
flowers (an echo of the Egyptian burial rites) as suggested by early evidence from
the cave of Shanidar 4 in modern-day Iraq has been largely proved false.
34
But the
fact that human evolution, and our love of nature (physiolatry), has been comprehensively tutored by flowers remains a telling and indisputable fact of our lives.
35
One need simply remember the life of twentieth-century explorer/botanist Francis
Kingdon-Ward (1885–1958), famed for his knowledge of Himalayan rhododendrons and blue poppies, and for trudging throughout Asia’s outback in an ecological
Hance, June 24, 2015, Mongabay, https://news.mongabay.com/2015/06/amazon-tribe-creates500-page-traditional-medicine-encyclopedia/, Accessed May 14, 2019, as well as the most comprehensive book published on the Toda’s of South India, a vegetarian collective that worships
flowers, The Toda Landscape – Explorations in Cultural Ecology, by Tarun Chhabra, with a foreword by Anthony R. Walker, Harvard University Of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England, 2015.
31 See “Japanese Artist Plants Colorful Flower Landscapes to Explore Nature’s Cycle of Life and
Death,” by Emma Taggart on September 29, 2017, My Modern Met, ://mymodernmet.com/japanese-flower-art-azuma-makoto/. As well as Makoto’s astonishing three-volume Encyclopedia of
Flowers (2012), Florilegio i fiori, il tempo, la vita (2017), and Flora Magnifica: Art of Flowers in
Four Seasons (2019) all with photographer Shunsuke Shiinoki.
32 See “The hidden beauty of flowers: Microscopic images reveal the alien landscapes to be found
on petals, pollen grains and leaves,” by Victoria Woollaston, The Daily Mail, May 8, 2014.
33 See “In medieval monastery gardens, an uplifting model for something we could all use: Refuge,”
by Adrian Higgins, June 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/in-medievalmonastery-gardens-an-uplifting-model-for-something-we-could-all-use-refuge/2020/06/09/
ad4d6522-a5c3-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html, Accessed June 11, 2020.
34 See D.J. Sommer, The Shanidar IV ‘Flower Burial’: a Re-evaluation of Neanderthal Burial
Ritual, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol. 9(1), pp. 127–129, 1999.
35 See The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, by
Richard Mabey, W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
26.5 Flowers Among the Ancients
hard-hitting anthropocenic revelations. We see manifested across the botanical art
world so-called ephemeral realism, meditations on the life and death of real flowers
within a public sculptured form, much like Tibetan sand paintings—here today,
blown to the four corners tomorrow. And so-called reverse agriculture as revealed
by contemporary flower artist Azuma Makoto.
31
Other stunning glimpses of angiosperms in full glory have utilized the latest techniques of scanning electron microscopy, as created by Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottawa.
32
But we also recognize the
historic retention of the Medieval mind as it continues to flower in cloistered, foursquare courtyard gardens, like those in Utrecht, or the abbey of St. Gallen in
Switzerland, whose Benedictine designs of the Middle Ages were refreshed at the
Metropolitan Museum of New York’s Cloisters.
33
26.5 Flowers Among the Ancients
The contention that Neanderthals may have buried their dead wearing tiaras of dried
flowers (an echo of the Egyptian burial rites) as suggested by early evidence from
the cave of Shanidar 4 in modern-day Iraq has been largely proved false.
34
But the
fact that human evolution, and our love of nature (physiolatry), has been comprehensively tutored by flowers remains a telling and indisputable fact of our lives.
35
One need simply remember the life of twentieth-century explorer/botanist Francis
Kingdon-Ward (1885–1958), famed for his knowledge of Himalayan rhododendrons and blue poppies, and for trudging throughout Asia’s outback in an ecological
Hance, June 24, 2015, Mongabay, https://news.mongabay.com/2015/06/amazon-tribe-creates500-page-traditional-medicine-encyclopedia/, Accessed May 14, 2019, as well as the most comprehensive book published on the Toda’s of South India, a vegetarian collective that worships
flowers, The Toda Landscape – Explorations in Cultural Ecology, by Tarun Chhabra, with a foreword by Anthony R. Walker, Harvard University Of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England, 2015.
31 See “Japanese Artist Plants Colorful Flower Landscapes to Explore Nature’s Cycle of Life and
Death,” by Emma Taggart on September 29, 2017, My Modern Met, ://mymodernmet.com/japanese-flower-art-azuma-makoto/. As well as Makoto’s astonishing three-volume Encyclopedia of
Flowers (2012), Florilegio i fiori, il tempo, la vita (2017), and Flora Magnifica: Art of Flowers in
Four Seasons (2019) all with photographer Shunsuke Shiinoki.
32 See “The hidden beauty of flowers: Microscopic images reveal the alien landscapes to be found
on petals, pollen grains and leaves,” by Victoria Woollaston, The Daily Mail, May 8, 2014.
33 See “In medieval monastery gardens, an uplifting model for something we could all use: Refuge,”
by Adrian Higgins, June 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/in-medievalmonastery-gardens-an-uplifting-model-for-something-we-could-all-use-refuge/2020/06/09/
ad4d6522-a5c3-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html, Accessed June 11, 2020.
34 See D.J. Sommer, The Shanidar IV ‘Flower Burial’: a Re-evaluation of Neanderthal Burial
Ritual, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol. 9(1), pp. 127–129, 1999.
35 See The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, by
Richard Mabey, W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
26.5 Flowers Among the Ancients