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I’ve got a good one for you guys, a joke I’ll give to you — for free! — to use as we get back into hosting and habiting friendly gatherings. Ready? April showers bring May flowers and what did the Mayflower bring...?  Historical rumor is that this twist on the classic childhood zinger holds true. It is thought dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) first came to North America in 1620 as passengers aboard the Mayflower, providing vital vitamins and minerals for the pilgrim settlers [1] once the plants took root in the ‘New’ World. It wouldn’t be hard to squeeze dandelions onto the menu of your next Thanksgiving meal now, either; the dandelion is edible from flower to root, bearing leaves of a “slightly astringent flavor prized by salad eaters, Canada geese, and porcupines” [2], alike. Among just a few of the recipes offered to The New York Times Cooking subscribers: a “generous bunch of dandelion greens,” alongside onion, mushrooms, garlic cloves, and Gruyère for a delicious tart; a dandelion salad with beets, bacon, and goat cheese toasts; dandelions puréed with fava beans; and one that particularly caught my eye, “Southern” Dandelion Greens with Crispy Onions. The flowers are said to be delicious fried in batter, the greens taste best blanched (to remove bitterness) or sautéed like a spinach or a kale.
Dandelions also became quite popular during America’s Prohibition era, so popular in fact that a report from Detroit in 1923, nestled among other notices in The New York Times, remarked on the city’s need for more garbage men just to handle all the dandelion mash being thrown away on nearly every city block. In 1919, proactive American soldiers in Germany picked up recipes for loewenzahnwein (dandelion wine) in anticipation of “difficulty in obtaining any sort of liquid refreshment of a cheering nature when they reach[ed] home” [see this article in my collection of NYT dandelion pieces, The Daily Dandelion, below]. No longer restricted to home brewing and speakeasies today, dandelion wines continue to delight.  There are truly enough dandelion articles in the New York Times for their own publication! Here's just a sampling. Note the year listed for each piece.
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 It’s 2021, and I miss crowds.
There are the reasons one might find themselves in a crowd, of course: to see a play, to grab a drink, to board a train bound for somewhere new. But I suspect I miss the mechanics of a crowd—any crowd—most of all. The crush, the chaos, the peculiar coziness of being caught up in a human herd. I take secret pride, as an avowed introvert, in loving the company of a mass of people, in the odd sense of companionship to be found alongside strangers on the subway when there’s no elbow room to be had. I miss noise, being bumped into on a crowded crosswalk, having the back of my shoe stepped on, hastily jamming my heel back in place while reassuring the offender that it is “no worries!” (even when it did hurt a little bit). The sensory overload of a city street or a popular park, it resets my brain. I feel reflective there: thoughtful, energized, and activated. And while I’ve sought out and waded through many-a-crowd in my day, there’s nothing quite like the one that goes to see Rockefeller Center’s beloved Christmas tree. As a Texan, the bar for my enjoying the experience is admittedly low (anything resembling “real winter” is de facto charming to those who grew up wearing shorts most Christmas afternoons, after all). But 45 Rockefeller Plaza in December is as classic-Winter-Wonderland as it gets. The first time I went—on a weekend critically close to Christmas—I probably spent just 20 seconds in front of the tree itself. I marveled over how big it really was and how many lights covered its branches (50,000 bulbs across five miles of wire, for the record [1]). I was struck by how imperfect it looked. Ice skaters circled the surprisingly small rink below, and I managed to catch a few laps before being issued a keep it moving! by one of the many police officers controlling traffic at the scene. I was swept by the current of the crowd, away from the tree and towards the plaza’s varied window displays. My audience with the tree at Rockefeller Plaza was up. I remember laughing at how out-of-my-hands the experience was, strategizing how best to get across the street to window shop at Saks, and wondering whether I’d be able to see (even on tippy toes?) over the heads of the many people aiming for the same. Heading for a street corner, the lights covering the storefront of the department store suddenly lit up, a castle dripping in icicles, its lights flashing dramatically in time with “Carol of the Bells” as speakers blasted overhead. I held my ground, best I could, to watch. One of hundreds, it felt special to be there. |
Welcome to Planted!
Hello, Katherine here! An ecologist and anthropologist by training, I am here to talk about plants: broadly, how they shape human spaces and persist within them, and, more personally, how they are helping me feel at home (one might say, rooted) as I adapt to life in NYC. Archives
May 2021
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