What’s winter like at Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park? The mountain’s landscape undergoes a dramatic transformation. Its colorful subalpine meadows and lush old growth forests are draped with a thick blanket of snow for much of the year. The sometimes dusty-looking glaciers are freshly covered in white and the snow-covered roofs of the rustic historic buildings are rimmed with icicles – creating a picture perfect setting. Learn more about winter at the park: http://on.doi.gov/2glvuS5
The past week felt like a month: So many meetings, so many jaw-dropping, face-palm-inducing news headlines, so much sadness and confusion and anxiety jostling about inside this little human apparatus. Of course, it hans’t just been this week. In truth, i’ve spent a good deal of time this entire year paying attention to the many things that caused me to feel afraid, the many situations I described as “scary”. There have been a not insignificant number of them: uncomfortable conversations with family; unexpected political outcomes; uncertain romantic situations.
As someone who long ago decided to do whatever I could to surprise myself on the regular, noticing fear has become an invitation to step outside the bounds of my proverbial (emotional/intellectual) comfort zone. And this past week was a whole lot of that, with innumerable mugs of herbal tea (and my very first Facebook live chia pudding demo) interspersed throughout.
Read more and get the recipe here.
From Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants, v.4, (1838) comes this lovely poinsettia, perfect for Poinsettia Day, which just so happens to be today, December 12!
The
“flor de la noche buena,” as they are called in Mexico, are native to the tropical forests of the southern part of the country. Long nights are necessary for the plant to bloom—easy enough in a place with a year-round growing season. The name we know it as in America, “poinsettia,” comes from the name of the first U.S. Minister to Mexico, Joel Poinsett (1779-1851), who was responsible for helping introduce the plant to American botanists. Poinsett was also a founding member of the National Institution for the Promotion of Science (just two years after this volume of Paxton’s was published).
Through that organization Poinsett organized the United States Exploring Expedition. He also used it to advocate for the utilization of a strange bequest of half a million dollars from an illegitimate British gentleman who left it to the United States—a country he never visited—for a museum. That British gentleman was James Smithson, whose will left the young United States money for the establishment of an institution for “the increase and distribution of knowledge.” Long story short, we are here today as part of the largest museum complex in the world thanks in no small part to the guy whose name now graces an ubiquitous holiday plant.
Of course, it would take almost a century for the plant to be associated with the holiday season in America. First, it had to be seen as a cultivated plant and not just a specimen. Thanks in part for that goes to enterprising Scottish-born Philadelphia nurseryman Robert Buist. The association with the holidays are due to the marketing efforts of Paul Ecke and his sons, who cultivated the plant in Southern California in the early 20th century, and saw the potential of marketing one of the few winter-blooming plants (with red bracts, no less).
See Collections Search for Joel Roberts Poinsett-related objects in our collection, including a few books by and about him from the Smithsonian Libraries.
Speak with Tenderness 