Peace Lily, Don Pasquale, Equisetum.

2-11-11 SHORT HILLS: Thanks, Dee, for the first ID of what I now know is a Peace Lily, Spathiphyllum cochlearispathum. It is a tropical plant good for cleaning indoor air, tolerates low light, but now a lot of dryness. Ours spends summer outdoors and seems to like it.

We heard ‘Don Pasquale’ at the Met with the amazing and dazzling Anna Netrebko a few nights ago. It’s a charming, four voice opera by Donizetti with some beautiful duets and quartets and a happy ending. It’s a great piece for a beginning fan or child. If you can’t get to the Met, see it at one of those HD theater presentations.

Here’s a poem from a recent New Yorker [Feb. 14 & 21, 2011, p. 103]:

HORSETAIL

It grows anywhere.
This jointed stalk, with branches
Like green floating hair,

Thrives in ditches and
Trackside gravel, and even
In oil-spattered sand.

Careless of all that,
Its foot-high grace enhances
Any habitat.

Like a proud exile,
It will not boast that elsewhere
It lived in high style;

And who, after all,
Would credit what its vague head
Must in dreams recall-

How it long looked down
On the backs of dinosaurs
Shadowed by its crown?

-Richard Wilbur

Horsetail, Equisetum, is a favorite of mine because of its age and history. It is known from the Paleozoic Era at least as far back as the Carboniferous and is one of the first ever land plants. It has lived through the Permian Extinction, the Dinosaurs, the Cretaceous Extinction, the Ice Ages and is still here. It is found everywhere in the world except Antarctica, in one or another form. While it’s not a tree fern anymore, it’s got a 400 million year history. Anyone think H. sapiens will be around that long? Some place I have a Carboniferous rock with a horsetail fossil in it. When I find it, I’ll post a picture of it and of next years plants. Oh, BTW, horsetail is poisonous to horses.


Here's another mystery to ID. What and Where??