Saturday Essay The chicory was made into a coffee substitute during the war – now the plant can be planted digitally even in a trolley on a business trip, why in the world?

On business a happy-looking man carrying large bouquets hit the eyes of the trunk window. A wonderful party coming somewhere, or would a man be a florist? There were dozens of white roses, easily another hundred.

Tired and always overwhelmed by the war news that has become more and more shocking, the sight moved: we still have our normal life here with its celebrations and flowers. And now is May, the best of the months.

In the honor of that I bought the first peonies from a convenience store. In my own floral calendar, however, peonies belong to early summer and midsummer rather than early May. But the world books are messed up anyway, the seasons are mixed up, the years go by fast-forwarding, not to mention the months. (And the point is Midsummer, the days are starting to shorten again, but I won’t write it here now.)

The three peonies open in an instant, like in an accelerated film. They are majestic. I almost start speaking to them respectfully in the mornings.

Masterful the Dutch and Flemish painters also once had a generous attitude towards the timeliness of the flowers.

Read more: Two art museums take off in the summer: Kukkaloisto now fills both the Sinebrychoff and Järvenpää museums

Contemporary artist Clare Woods (b. 1972) he also paints flowers. The large inflorescences perpetuated by Woods on the aluminum base in thick layers are coming close and there is also something threatening in them. The Serlachius Museum in Gösta The largest of the paintings on display in Mänttä is gigantic, eight meters wide.

I read in the exhibition publication that the Flower Paintings have their origins in a sick bed. Woods photographed the flowers he received at the hospital as a convalescent at various stages, from flowering to withering and death. The paintings were created on the basis of photographs, like Woods’ works most often, and the source of inspiration has also been Edouard Manet (1832–1883) paintings. The French Impressionist also painted the flowers he got sick.

Somewhere I remember reading that peonies were Manet’s favorite flowers. Woods also has them. In both, they somehow look more like individuals than just representatives of their species.

The name of one of Woods’ flower paintings is Equally Dead“Equally dead,” another A Thin Place. It refers to a place where the boundary between the earthly and the eternal dimension is thin.

Flower paintings often have their own sadness. The flowers do not live long. Disappearance is another name for flowers. They also remind us of our own mortality. Art is more eternal.

Swedish botanist Carl von Linné (1707–1778) allowed the rough wooden walls of his bedroom to be wallpapered with authentic, valuable graphic magazines depicting plants. When asked if the moisture did not spoil the works, Linnaeus replied, “Yes, of course, but the pictures have to be in it; I want to watch them for the rest of my life. ”

That’s what he did. On the walls of Linné Hammarby’s house, those precious graphic magazines stained with moisture can still be found, yellowed for centuries. Meanwhile, nature pushes the intense green under the guidance of its DNA in Hammarby’s garden and everywhere else.

And good so.

Without plants neither would we. Humans are completely dependent on plants: the food we use, the entire food chain, and oxygen come from the flora.

The plants are mind-boggling, surprising – and there are more to be found all the time. Plant neurobiologists Stefano Mancuson books are read like detective stories: research constantly reveals new aspects of the miraculous intelligence and ability of plants to function.

Read more: Vine imitates a neighbor, and Mimosa remembers 40 days – more special abilities are revealed from the plants

And would botany have progressed without art?

With accurate plant pictures was of revolutionary importance to science as early as the Renaissance, and the German, for example Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708–1770) also worked closely with Linnaeus. With the help of the pictures, the classification method of the Swedish scientist was opened Natural system in (1735) also effortlessly for those who could not read Latin.

Mancuso, on the other hand, points out that the living image was used to assist in plant research very soon after Lumièren the brothers had invented it: Wilhelm Pfeffer (1845–1920) introduced the motor abilities of plants to an astonished audience of botanists. According to Mancuson, this was the first time child in history. Among other things, Pfeffer presented the eruption of a tulip flower, the movement of the sensory part, and the miraculous growth of the root.

On the Internet I come across for a special chicory project.

Chicory and coffee come to mind first; chicory root got a coffee substitute. And the drink still seems to be sold today, at least in health stores. But chicory also has a more spiritual cultural-historical side – and an oven-fresh digital life.

Probably the blue flower of the chicory gave its name to the blue flower of the longing for German romance. British artist Anna Dumitriun according to the chicory was Goethen mind when he created the primary plant (Urpflanze) and is also mentioned Darwinin In the pathogenesis of species (1859). A research project that started in 2019 Biotechnology from the Blue Flower with chicory Jump into the digital age.

Dumitriu, who specializes in bioart, dives with his digital colleague Alex Mayn with the chicory root inside the 3D models, and they make the blue flowers hover anywhere. They define their work as a “sculptural bio-digital installation”.

The results are currently on display at the Kunsthaus Wiesbaden in Germany and in the fall at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, USA. But the work of Dumitriun and May is accessible to anyone. With the app released in app stores this week, digital blue flowers can be “planted” anywhere.

I downloaded the app, and it worked. After filling my bedroom with lots of green chicory leaves and flowers and noticing that they were even swaying in an unreal way, I tried the same on the way to work.

In the coffin, the roots had to linger longer than at home. A few heads would seem to turn as I pointed to the floor and ceiling of the tram in search of the roots of augmented reality on the iPad. But found!

This kind of intrigue is meant to make you think about the concepts of “natural” and “artificial”. Genetic engineering is one of the keys to the project: genetically engineered chicory has nothing to do outside of laboratories – except as an art.

In science, chicory and its modification are of interest because of the medicinal properties of the plant. The chicy root of chicory contains inulin, which is an interesting dietary fiber due to its health properties. The plant also contains terpenes, which have a wide range of uses, I read From Dumitriun’s website.

Olof Rudbeck Jr., a key Swedish plant illustrator, painted handsome watercolors in his book in the late 17th century Blomboken. The immeasurably valuable plant illustrations made by his father had been burned to ashes in the Uppsala fire in 1702, but the boy’s illustrations have survived.

Among them is a handsome sunflower, that marvelous plant whose symmetrical inflorescence follows the orbit of the sun.

This spring sunflowers looks with new eyes. It is the national flower of Ukraine, a symbol of joy, pride and love, which has been brutally attacked.

I just put its seeds to germinate. Maybe you should also consider chicory on the balcony, just live. It would be blue and yellow.

And do I see right: the peonies nod in approval in their vases.

Sources include: Claudia de Brün, Kirsi Eskelinen (ed.) Linné and a small piece of paradise. Sinebrychoff Art Museum, 2022.

Laura Kuurne: The rooms we live in. Four Routes to the Art of Clare Woods, article in Clare Woods, Between the Past and the Future (Parvs, 2022).

Stefano Mancuso: The plant revolution, whether plants have already invented the future (Lobby, 2018).