Both Federer and Nadal have won their opening matches convincingly. There is no sure bet where the ladies are concerned too! We have a new number one in Ivanovic, and of course the Williams sisters, Sharapova and lots of big names in the running.
I was watching the Men's opening game between Federer and Hrbaty and that was when I learned that the oldest potted plant in the world, planted in 1775, can be found at the Kew Gardens, London.
The plant is commonly known as the cykad. It is known as a jurassic plant, meaning it existed during the days of the dinosaur. Botanically speaking, it is described as extinct. In other words, this plant cannot be found in the wild anymore! Currently, they can only be found in private homes or public parks and places like Kew Gardens. Well, I am no botanist, so I have decided to do a copy and paste job and the following is what I found for your reading pleasure.
The World’s Oldest Potted Plant
‘Laughing Stock or Hero?’ James Wandersee and Renee Clary ask, as they consider potted plants and profile one mighty example, from Kew Garden. Thank you, Jim and Renee, for another five-star (if flowerless) project. Your work on the sociology of plants continually inspires us.
By James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary
EarthScholars™ Research Group
Vice President Dan Quayle remarked of his role in White House conferences, “I am not, as they say, a potted plant at these meetings.” Brendan V. Sullivan, the famous criminal defense attorney, once exclaimed, “What am I, a potted plant? I’m here as a lawyer, that’s my job.”
Potted plants get little respect. Indeed, most people think of them as passive, trivial, dispensable, a nuisance to tend, and purely decorative. One cannot even assume that indoor potted plants are alive, given how easily today’s artificial (“silk”) potted plants can deceive the untrained eye!
However, there is a particular live potted plant you can visit that reclaims the dignity of potted plants everywhere....
Moving the giant cycad
Royal Botanic Gardens—Kew
c. 1980
Photo: NCCPG
This species (Encephalartos altensteinii) reproduces via seed cones, not flowers. It is a member of the Cycad family. Such plants have changed little since the days of the dinosaurs. This family’s fossils date back to the early Permian Period ~ 280 million years ago. The Ginkgo tree also appears in the fossil record about this time. Both taxa are considered “living fossil” plants.
So where can this amazing palm-like potted plant be seen? In a far corner of the Palm House at the venerable Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew (near London). Its iconic glasshouse home, 363 feet long, 100 feet wide and 66 feet high, was designed during Victorian times to house the exotic palms then being collected and introduced to Europe. Just two horticulturalists and two assistants maintain the entire Palm House plant collection today.
Francis Masson (1741-1805), RBG-Kew’s First Plant Hunter
Photo: Plant Explorers
This particular cycad was sent to Kew in 1773 by the famous plant hunter Francis Masson, at the encouragement of Sir Joseph Banks. (Banks became famous as the chief naturalist aboard the Endeavour, serving on the first round-the-world voyage commanded by Captain James Cook.) In other words, this plant is at least 234 years old, or about as old as the US Declaration of Independence!
Near a side entrance to the glasshouse, atop an old, perforated, cast-iron grating, the world’s oldest potted plant resides in a large teakwood box. (Actually, this is probably not the oldest potted plant specimen alive today, but, after our after being led down many botanical-historical pathways only to find flaws in documentation or unanswered questions, it is the best known and documented candidate we have been able to find.) It has been over 180 years since this particular cycad plant grew a cone (both male and female plants are necessary for reproduction to occur). Emma Fox, Kew’s Keeper of the Palm House, watches and waits with great anticipation. When the Palm House was renovated in the 1980s, this grand old plant—weighing in with its soil and container at over 2 tons—had to be moved very gingerly to temporary quarters.
Kew’s “ambassador from Africa”
Photo: EarthScholars™ Research Group
This unique potted plant has the potential to be a marquee plant, but for some reason, Kew doesn’t publicize its presence much. It is a potential ambassador of endangered plant species in Africa as well as a repository of rare genetic material. In Africa, this cycad is known informally as a “bread palm,” since a bread-like, starchy food can be prepared from the center of the stem.
Alas, many visitors leave the Gardens without ever seeing it! The recent, full-color, BBC book, A Year at Kew (2004) —a wonderful insider’s view of plant life year-round at the Gardens—allocates only one sentence to the huge cycad (p. 108). We have observed it many times during our studies at Kew and never cease to marvel at how long and well it has been tended, and how it continues to grow. Laughing stock or hero? We say hero! Who of us can live and grow that long?
As for the other potted-plant prejudices, these creatures are far from passive. They simply move and grow on a scale that differs from human time, something Charles Darwin pointed out long ago in The Power of Movement in Plants (1880). Potted plants are far from trivial. B.C. Wolverton, a retired NASA research scientist, has written How to Grow Fresh Air (1997), describing the scientific research on house plants as air purifiers; Wolverton explains how air contaminants enter our homes and notes the adverse effects these chemicals can have on human health. The book provides concise, quantitative data about which substances some 50 different houseplants remove from the air. In addition, potted plants release (and use some) vital oxygen.
So potted plants have aesthetic value, health value, cultural value, and teaching value. We can testify to the latter. Our nation-wide research studies on public understanding of plants have found that the sustained, observation-driven, recursive interactions involved in tending a plant throughout its life cycle (whether a potted plant or a garden plant) heighten a person’s visual awareness of all plants—indoors and outdoors—and lead to an increased appreciation of the importance of plants in human affairs and in the biosphere. Plant-caretakers also can recognize the missing details, subtle color differences, and false perfection of artificial plants.
Kew’s old cycad is a hidden treasure for plant connoisseurs, and we think it should be on the life list of every plant lover. Yes, we have appropriated the term life list from bird watchers because we assert that plant watching is equally challenging and interesting. Why not start your own life list of plants this year? There’s a large and fascinating kingdom of plants beckoning you!
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