Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes February is a good time to remember a small, practical kind of magic: willow water. Around this time of year, willows come into our homes in bundled armfuls — upright stems in a jar, catching the light like quiet fireworks. And then the best part happens after the display: don't pour that water down the drain. That pale, tannin-tinted water can be used to help root cuttings — slips of geranium, pieces of coleus, a twiggy hope of something you're trying to keep. A winter bouquet that turns into a rooting aid. February likes that kind of thrift. It's time for today's Botanical History. Today's Garden History 1780 Lewis David von Schweinitz was born. Lewis was a Moravian minister, a father to his congregation, and the man we now honor as the father of North American mycology — the study of fungi. Lewis was shaped by the Moravian faith, a tradition rooted in discipline, service, and order, and in the belief that the natural world was not chaotic, but something that could be understood through careful attention. Moravian ministers were expected to be learned, observant, to keep records, and to tend both souls and systems. So it's no surprise that botany became a second calling for Lewis — not a hobby, but a responsibility he took joy in. Lewis loved to tell how, at just seven years old, he passed a classroom at Nazareth Hall and noticed a lichen specimen sitting on a table. Nothing flashy. Nothing ornamental. A little odd. Something most children — most people — would walk right past. But Lewis stopped. That pause mattered. Because fungi reward that kind of attention. They live in the margins. They work underground. They don't ask to be admired. When Lewis came of age, he traveled to Niesky, Germany, a Moravian center where both theology and botany were already well developed. Europe was far ahead of America, and Lewis grew there, deepening his faith, refining his scientific eye, and helping complete a major work on German fungi. What's striking is what came next. When Lewis returned to the United States years later, he did the same work all over again — methodically, patiently — building knowledge of American fungi from the ground up. A second pass. A second chance. That's a shepherd's work. Lewis didn't crave novelty. He was content to walk the same ground, to grow his herbarium one specimen at a time, to make sure nothing important was overlooked. And so he became the country's authority — by cataloging what others ignored, by naming what others found unsettling or strange, and by helping gardeners and scientists understand that decay is not failure. It's a process. It's part of the cycle of life. Fungi, like willow water, work quietly — unseen — until their work becomes visible. Gardeners don't often think about fungi, but they are inseparable from our gardens. They support roots. They connect plants. They make life possible beneath the surface. Despite a lifetime devoted to fungi, Lewis is remembered in the name of a flower: Schweinitz's sunflower, Helianthus schweinitzii. It's a rare native sunflower of the Carolina Piedmont. A modest, lovely thing. And like all sunflowers, it turns its face toward the light. It's hard not to hear the echo. A Moravian minister. A careful botanist. A man devoted to the overlooked, orienting himself, again and again, toward illumination. If Lewis could whisper something to us now, it might be this: just as we look to the heavens for spiritual growth, pay attention to what's happening beneath your feet. That's where earthly growth begins — in the garden, and in life. 1825 Maria Tallant Owen was born. Maria became, in many ways, a living record of Nantucket flora. She grew up among women who shared a love of plants the way some families share recipes — mothers, sisters, aunts — passing along names, seasons, and what to look for. Maria had a mind for it: quick, exact, and quietly serious. After she married a Harvard-educated doctor, Varillas Owen, the couple settled in Springfield, Massachusetts. For decades, their home became a gathering place — for spirited conversation, for visiting minds, and for shelves that never stopped filling with books. Maria taught widely — botany, French, astronomy, geography — but the study of plants brought her the most happiness. In the 1880s, she began publishing what she knew of Nantucket's flora, and in 1888, she produced a thorough catalog of the island's plants. It's the kind of book that becomes invaluable over time, because Maria didn't only list what grew. She recorded where it grew and how long it had been there. Until late in her life, Maria kept up a long correspondence with other botanists, staying curious and alert to whatever was newly found on the island she always considered home. Those who exchanged letters with her often learned of some new discovery or lesson. 1894 In one letter, she began with a burst of delight: "Ecce Tillaea simplex!" A small plant, unseen for sixty-five years, had turned up again on Nantucket — as if the island itself had kept it tucked away until the right eyes arrived. Maria died in 1913, having returned to Nantucket late in life — a homecoming. Walter Deane wrote in Rhodora that she died "…on a bright morning in the room flooded with sunshine, which she always loved, and filled with iris, columbine, and cornflowers…." He added that she lived up to the Latin motto of her mother's family, Post tenebris, speramus lumen de lumine, which she loved to translate as "After the darkness, we hope for light from the source of light." Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear an excerpt from Géza Csáth, the Hungarian writer, musician, and physician, born on this day in 1887. In his short story The Magician's Garden, he tells a dark tale of obsession — and the flowers are not ornamental. They're a warning. Here's an excerpt about blooms that gardeners will immediately recognize as all wrong: "Rare flowers grew there. Long-stemmed, horn-shaped flowers with petals that looked as smooth as black velvet. In the corner, a bush, in full bloom with enormous chalice-shaped white lilies. Scattered everywhere were more short, slender-stemmed, white-petaled flowers, but one petal — just a single petal — was red. It felt like they emitted that unfamiliar, sweet scent, which, when smelled, makes you feel breathless. In the middle of the garden was a cluster of plump magenta flowers. Their fleshy, silky petals drooped down low into the tall, raging green grass. This small garden of wonders was, indeed, like a kaleidoscope; lilac irises opened their petals in front of my very eyes, the scent of a hundred different flowers combined to produce an intoxicating perfume, and were resplendent, too, with every color of the rainbow." To a non-gardener, this may sound lush. But gardeners know better. They hear combinations of color and scent that don't sing. They sour. Too sweet. Too close. Too wrong. This is a garden without restraint — one that overwhelms instead of sustaining. Book Recommendation The Gardener's Botanical: An Encyclopedia of Latin Plant Names by Ross Bayton It's a companion for anyone who's ever lingered over a plant label and wanted more than pronunciation — wanted meaning. Because botanical Latin isn't just naming. It's a kind of shorthand full of clues — place, habit, shape, story — all tucked right into the name. It's a way for gardeners across countries and centuries to point to the same plant and agree: this is what we mean. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1825 Julia Dorr was born. Julia was a poet who kept a close relationship with flowers — not as decoration, but as a vocabulary she could trust. She wrote from her home in Rutland, Vermont, at a place called The Maples, and from her desk she could look out at her garden — a refuge, and a constant source of imagery. Her poems are filled with lilies and violets, mignonette and larkspur, and always underneath, the quiet knowledge that choosing is part of living: one bloom gathered, another left behind. Julia feels like a February poet, because February is a month of choosing too — what to save, what to start, what to try again. Final Thoughts As we close the show today, remember: February gardening isn't loud. It's saving water. It's starting roots. It's keeping records — and rediscovering good ideas for your garden, even if they're just in your head. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.
