Roses are related to strawberries. A strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) isn't technically a berry, it's a receptable and has its fruits on the surface. They are called achenes, each a small, one seeded fruit with a hard covering that doesn't dehisce when ripe. I find that fascinating and wondered for ages how the plant supplied the achene with its nutrition. Strawberries stop ripening when they're picked. No point picking them early. They are also related to peaches, apricots, plums, so many fruits. The proof is in their flowers. A single rose flower looks like a plum flower, like a strawberry flower and any other flower in the rosaceae family. Flowers are important in botany. It is with the flowers that species are determined. Male parts and female, it's fascinating. I'd like to be able to tell you I'm not a geek. Something happened when I was thirteen. It was important and my whole life was bound up in it.
Linnaeus was interested in erotica. One of the cleverest people ever, he worked out how to classify plants, put them into their kingdom, division, class, order, family, tribe, genus, species, variety and cultivar. Before him, lots of plants had more than one name, or one name could refer to many plants. It has changed a little over time but now we know what we're talking about and the value of erotica.
My proud possession is a pocket knife I've had almost all my life, an expensive one I paid a small fortune for when I was fourteen and keep honed to exquisite sharpness. I saved for it for a couple of years. The best Sheffield steel, I left it on the roof a few years ago and searched for it endlessly until I found it a year later. I grafted a lot of trees with it, and roses, all sorts of things. My take rate was good, ninety percent with peaches on almonds. For a while I was tempted to do it professionally, travel the world grafting. People do it. I figured I was too slow though. My rate was about a hundred a day if the sap was running. Not good enough. The technique is actually called budding. Sometimes I do whip grafting and whip and tongue grafting but not often. I don't like hurting trees and try to keep it simple.
From the age of thirteen I became serious. I rapidly read botany and gardening books. My library of books became huge, thousands of them. There wasn't enough space in my room to keep them so I put them in the ceiling, all catalogued so I knew where they were. They were valuable to me. Our house was wonderfully insulated with my books. When I ran out of space in the ceiling, I filled up the rest of my room with stacks of books, one on top of the other, from floor to ceiling. They were jammed against each other and soon all the floor space was taken. I created a tunnel through them from the doorway to my bed. There was another tunnel to my wardrobe. Mum and Dad weren't as thin as me and they couldn't get to my bed. I found some wooden planks and was able to use them to stack books above my bed. I loved my bed, it was special being surrounded by books. My Dad used to say not to be surprised if an old Pharaoh emerges from my room because it was a lot like the guts of an Egyptian pyramid.
Other people went to concerts, saw Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs or Lobby Loyde and His Coloured Balls or Captain Matchbox and his Whoopee Band. I never kept up with it. I went to open gardens, botanic parks and nurseries instead. I loved the smell and ambience of hot houses. They were beautiful and busy, I could feel the growth of things in them. People recognised me. They'd say hello and I'd pump them for information. I learned to love ferns. Their life cycle was amazingly different. The sexual union took place after the spore had grown into a small prothali. I loved watching the sperm swim around with my microscope. I also learned about orchids and pseudo pollination. The word orchid is Greek for testicle, like avocado is Mayan for testicle. One can't be a prude when interested in botany. The words hymen and sperm among others frequently crop up.
I kept my microscope in a cupboard in the shed, along with all the tools and chemicals I needed for my experiments. I had a camera that did macro and kept records of everything I did with it. Often I needed to use dyes that would show up on film when the pictures were taken. I researched the elasticity of the structure of plants at first. Then I examined hybrid plants trying to figure out what characteristics of the parent plants were kept and what were lost. Strawberries are hybridised.
When I was fourteen a lady offered me a job working in her garden for two hours every week. I was energetic and didn't need two hours for what she wanted. She insisted though and we worked together, weeding and doing what was needed. Slowly, I started doing other things for her. I put in a glade of ferns. I wanted it to be Polypodium formosum but we couldn't afford them and chose the Welsh polypody instead. She wanted good fruit trees. I visited people I knew who had good ones and got branches from their trees to graft her seedling apricots with. She was fascinated I could do it and told a lot of people, I know because I got a lot of job offers. I had no idea about money and she helped me with that. She told me what to charge and to quote for jobs, not work to be paid by the hour. I was quick, too quick to be paid by the hour.
My school work suffered. I wasn't interested. My head was too busy with botany, trying to solve the problem. I suffered from mathrheumatics, always failed it. Why does one plus one always add to two? I had no idea. One might be smaller than the other, why are they equal? It seemed stupid to me. History could have been interesting but they never talked about Linnaeus and so many more interesting people. Instead they talked about people having their heads hacked off. There's no fun in that and nothing beautiful, only misery. I would have been interested in geography but they didn't talk a lot about climates or soil types. I thought it a wasted opportunity.
I did Latin and excelled. I knew a lot of the words before I started and Mrs. Andrews was thrilled until one day I asked what a hymen was. The Principal wasn't amused either. Latin helped my botanical interest. Lycopus virginicus is also known as Gypsywort. I knew it was funny but didn't know why for a long time. I continued my study of Latin at home. I had a bigger vocabulary than Mrs. Andrews but none of the conjunctions and things like that. I was there to learn. There were secrets to unlock and one in particular. I didn't have enough time to devote to it.
I started researching meristems, bought nutrient agar to feed them and started growing ferns. It took a while to figure it out. The nutrient had to be agitated so it would be oxygenated and the little flecks of tissue would be able to thrive. I knew I needed something that would vibrate attached to the container. I asked around. Innocent me took the advice. Aged fifteen, I entered a sex shop and asked for a vibrator. The lady was trying not to laugh, I could tell, as I told her what I wanted it for and why. Because I was underage she sold me one that had the banana looking part of it removed. I was happy. I had a twenty percent success rate using it, much better than the zero I'd had previously.
I failed school. Dismally. My parents were disappointed. They sent me to psychologists. The first one I didn't like at all. The second inculcated herself into my life fairly quickly. It surprised me because I don't make friends easily. The first psychologist thought I was stupid and carefully pronounced words for me so I might understand. She wanted to test my IQ to see how stupid I was but I didn't cooperate. I had no interest in the subject matter. The second started talking about botany and soon she opened up my world and was able to peer in.
