Victoria: Plant or Phenomenon?

rarely do I get hold a work or read on a single genus bearable past a dozen or so pages , butVictoria The Seductress : A Cultural and Natural History of the World ’s Greatest Water Lilyhad me in raptures from cover to cover . After learning about the lily ’s discovery and ingenious biology , it will be difficult to considerVictoriaa simple plant and not a bluff phenomenon from now on .

I decided to send Dr. Tomasz Aniśko , author ofVictoria , some questions , and then share them here .

Antonio Reis : After put to work withVictoriafor so long , do you feel like it is just a plant life or something more?Tomasz Aniśko : Yes , there is this physical aim calledVictoriawhich is nothing more than just a plant ( although a self-aggrandizing one and a rather short - populate one ) ; but then there is the cultural import that developed over the past two centuries of our interact with this object . It was this difficult - to - define “ being ” or “ phenomenon ” that got me interested enough to write a whole book about it . I would not want to save a al-Qur’an about just a industrial plant . One could say that the book is believably more about the hoi polloi who were “ seduced ” byVictoriathan about the lily herself . My premeditated act of anthropomorphise the lily in the record book was intended to free the reader to intend of “ her ” as something more than a industrial plant .

A lusciousVictoriabloom , which will be manly one Clarence Day and female the next .

AR : You flesh out the designation unconscious process quite vividly towards the beginning of the book . The plant was finally nickname in honor of Queen Victoria , whether certain botanists liked it or not . If you were given the chance to rename the genus , would you?TA : I often playfully engage myself in hear to imagine what other name Haenke , Bonpland , d’Orbigny , and Poeppig would have take if botanical history was fair . I am inclined to think that they , like Schomburgk , would honor one of their own sovereigns , so perhaps Josephinia or Bonapartea ? Or perhaps , they would honor one of their own with Haenkia or Bonplandia . As for myself , since this lily is a sis ofEuryale , one of the Gorgons , I would think Medusa or Stheno be a logical pick . But instead we haveVictoria , a name ( however unfair ) that service the plant very well and I would not advocate changing it in the name of some historic justice or truth . Ironically , if the succeeding research shows thatVictoriaandEuryaleshould be reclassify as species ofNymphaea , her majestic and controversial name may disappear altogether . AR : You’ve seenVictoriaflourishing in both the wild and in enslavement . Does it seem to prefer one environment to another ? Do you prefer it in one environment to another?TA : SeeingVictoriain these scene ( artificial vs. raw ) is really a very dissimilar experience . Natural – the immensity of the fence in landscape , strange speech sound and reek , enduring the dangers or at least soreness , lily ’s connection to / dependence on various strong-arm / biological cognitive operation taking place the environment . But at time it may be disappointing too : plants are not thriving , or after a while novel sites face just like the previous ones . In immurement , she normally look ( with rare exceptions ) well groom and care for but at the same time very foreign , exotic , out of spot , strange , unreal , unsufferable to comprehend . What amazes ( and amuses ) me is see what various structures , equipment , facilities , processes , our acculturation invented just so we can see and get close to this lily in captivity . As forVictoria , she obviously prefers her natural habitat , where she has thrived for millions of long time without anybody ’s assistance . In the wild one can see one C and thousands of plant together , a sight never get word in polish , where at well we can have several plant in one place . An doctrine of analogy of seeing elephants in a zoological garden and in the wild might be helpful here .

AR : Do you intend an amateur home grower might be able-bodied to succeed in raising this plant ? If not , what might be a desirable alternative ?

TA : consecrated amateurs have successfully grownVictoriafor more than a century , but “ consecrated ” is the cardinal intelligence here . Very few of them do it today . Victoriahas never become ( and never will ) a “ garden plant ” and rather hold her regal , independent , never - tame status . Hence the book does not attempt to provide “ how - to ” pedagogy for growing the lily at home . Many ( the best I ) botanic gardens around the world offer an easy way to enjoyVictoriawithout going through the trouble of construction ( and often ignite ) your own pool or pool . They all regard the lily the most prized plant in their collections and pride themselves on their power to handle for her . In fact , by write the book I wanted to produce something for those of us who can not develop the lily but may see her in a botanic garden or ( if lucky ) during a tour of the Amazon and would like to have something at home that would allow to enter and wonder inVictoria’samazing world .

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