hung up on flowers

I love flowers. Most people do, I know. But I really really love flowers. It’s always been this way, or at least I have many memories of picking bouquets of wildflowers to bring home to my mother, recognizing early on the delight their beauty brings. It wasn’t until about 6 years ago that I began to find myself almost disabled by the sight of a beautiful flower. I’d see a fluffy, light pink vining rose dangling over a fence on my way to work and be stopped in my tracks, followed by 20 shots of it on my camera phone, desperately trying to photograph the essence of this unfuckingbelievable natural wonder that is a flower. I curbed my enthusiasm around others many times for fear of sounding, I don’t know, extremely basic? Like of course flowers are cool, they’re flowers! But then why I am crippled with love for them?? The only place it felt totally safe to nerd out was on trips to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, taking as much time as I wanted to gaze and sniff and touch the delicate petals.

I mean come on

Thankfully, around the same time, my good friend Irene and her partner Matt decided to begin their own flower farm and I found in her a kindred spirit with whom being a flower freak was accepted and understood. Treadlight Farm grows exceptionally beautiful flowers. Irene’s eye for flower beauty is unmatched, in my opinion. Several times I’ve stood on their farm and felt completely cleansed by the same air and light that the blossoms were reacting to around me. Irene and Matt’s example of eschewing their school and career trajectories to become flower farmers has been a huge influence in bringing me into this next chapter.

Irene with poppies

On a recent run past the gates of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I was stopped dead by the sight of a light pink and green tulip with wavy edges. This is definitely the most beautiful tulip I’ve ever seen. I gawked a while, then ran off, returning to that question that’s been kicking around in my head for years - what is it about flowers?

Michael Pollan asked this question too in his book The Botany of Desire, saying “Let’s say we are born with such a predisposition - that humans, like bees, are drawn instinctively to flowers. It’s obvious what good it does bees to be born liking flowers, but what conceivable benefit could such a predilection offer people?” He goes on to cite evolutionary psychologists who say that our brains were developed via natural selection to be good foragers, and the presence of flowers is a reliable predictor of future food. “In time the moment of recognition - much like the quickening one feels whenever an object of desire is spotted in the landscape - would become pleasurable, and the signifying thing a thing of beauty.”

Carl Safina takes it further, I think, by offering the emotional component inherent within us, and if within us, then also within other creatures. “Flowers’ appearance and fragrance’s only purpose is to attract pollinators (mainly insects, at that, hummingbirds and honeycreepers and specialized bats). There is scant utilitarian reason why humans should also find the sight of flowers and their perfume any more attractive than the sight of fallen leaves… As brains elaborated and proliferated from a bee’s pleasure in a field of flowers, to our inner fish, to a bird’s delight in dance, and to our own - have our brains retained or even reinvented aesthetics that arose in other lines of life? If so, our convergence with the insects is a mystery worthy of awe for the little elders at our feet and flitting among the flowers of our gardens. Regardless of who gets our thanks for the honor, there is no more wondrous fact than that we are kin, bee and bird of paradise - and great elephant - stardust, all.”

the tulip that stole my heart

Safina’s viewpoint breaks barriers for me because it’s difficult to comprehend that my personal, human emotional response to flowers is strictly human. If we can delight in the transfixing beauty of the natural world, then surely it’s not just specific to humans, but more so, humans acquired that emotion from a much older and more ancient ancestor. I love the thought of thinking of insects as elders. I will endeavor to remember this evolutionary gift the next time we cross paths.