A tiger lily made of tigers
Years ago, in another life, I was head teacher of a school in north London. Our playground was on the site of the birthplace of Edward Lear, so the children and I got to know a lot about him when the centenary of his death occurred in 1988. I hope his work is a good subject for another post about garden-related humour.
Most people will know Lear as the wonderfully eccentric writer of limericks and nonsense verse where he invented characters such as the Quangle-Wangle, the Pobble Who Had No Toes and of course the Owl and the Pussycat. What is perhaps less well known is that he was a gifted artist, especially of landscapes and natural history. I wrote about him on here over ten years ago but thought this would be a good opportunity to return and write about his onsense botany.
August is traditionally the silly season in the media, so in keeping with that the next few posts are going to look at garden-related humour, beginning today with the work of Reginald Arkell.
One of the things that almost never ceases to amaze me is how many plants have been named after people who had little or no connections with them, and often wouldn’t even have known they existed let alone seen them. I was reminded of that this morning when looking at a glorious stand of red-hot pokers in my garden. It’s a family of plants that I’ve grown to love over the years, especially once I’d discovered there was more to them than the bog-standard orange variety.
The Garden History Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.