one of the things I like about my field of folklore is that it's somewhat interdisciplinary. (if you want to make your graduate experience more interesting get to know people outside your master's program, outside your department, outside your own culture and outside everything you know etc....)
one of my friends is doing her PhDs in plant biology studies (this is the general idea- I forgot the name of her program)... and she's Thai too (I met her through my first Thai roomie)... [I like plants (especially flowers), I might have inherited my father's green thumb (maybe?), plants can be artsy and metaphorical, I've had experience raising a few plants: Edel, Weiss, Sammy, Heart and Faux-Hawke, and for the most part I can follow scientific biology-talk]...
you wouldn't believe some of the interesting discussions I've had with my plant biologist-friend(s)... here are some of them
one of them is doing her thesis on this type of plant that grows well in dry and salty places (she wants to learn more about this so she can apply the knowledge to help improve her country and the world)...the other one is concerned with improving vegetation/plant in urban areas...
while talking to the latter, we started discussing ONIONS and modifying genes. She brought up square watermelons, seedless grapes and she was excited about removing the gene in Onions, which makes people cry. I was totally devasted (I wasn't bawling though) about the idea of tearless onions. (on the week of this discussion, I was teaching my english 1010 students about "showing versus telling" and using the senses)... to make the case that eliminating this tearing gene is detrimental, I argued that future generation who would grow up with tearless onions would miss out with this visceral example of association and personal experience. this generation wouldn't experience for themselves the feeling of their eyes swelling, getting filled with tears, tears rolling on their cheeks due to the smell of onions... they wouldn't understand the irony of a trapped housewife crying while chopping onions... what will happen to the story about onions (even though new stories will be formed)? Can you just imagine a footnote explaining why the onions no longer made people cry or a footnote explaining the irony in the housewife/ or a brokenhearted cook and the ONION? (progress- you gain some, you lose some...)... in the end, I remained pro-Onion for the sake of the IMAGINATION (the irony- the tearless onion idea is thinking outside the box)...
(my biologist-friend can usually tell if I understand what she's talking about or not and if I don't understand she just go on, most of the time I ask questions to clarify...)
another discussion I recently had with another friend dealt with Heart, the pothos... it started out when I noticed a yellow leaf. I told her and the first thing she said was that Heart was sick. Of course I got worried and started asking questions. She examined Heart; it wasn't an infection from a bug because the yellowing didn't occur in spots or patterns, the yellowing occured at the edge following the normal growth patterns of the leaf... she concluded that Heart was lacking her nitrogen. I had two options: to replace the soil or buy plant food (I will buy plant food in the near future)...
another incident with Heart occurred just tonight. I haven't seen Heart for 3 weeks because I was in Philadelphia (my biologist friend "plantsat" for me). Heart looked healthy; she was spreading out her vines with new additions. While combing through her leaves, I noticed a YELLOW mushroom growing on her soil. I panicked and told my friend. Her response further startled me. She didn't see the yellow mushroom on monday and I was alarmed at the fast rate at which the mushroom grew. In three days, one of the mushroom was passing the one inch mark. My friend came to two conclusions: the mushroom is either poisonous or beneficial to the plant. I let the plant-biologist take care of it (I'm an English major and I wouldn't know a poisonous mushroom from another, luckily today I learned a bit about poisonous mushrooms- most of the colorful ones are poisonous [I associated this with the brightly colored tiny frogs of the Amazon forest]- you have to digest dozens of grams of mushroom to get poisoned, skin contact can't absorb all those poison at once [maybe a rash will occur but not full poisoning])...
she took out the 1 incher, and it calmed me... I started exploring the other possibility that these yellow mushrooms could be beneficial for Heart. My friend told me that certain mushrooms grow with plants (they help each other like a symbiotic relationship- also mushroom remnants are in the soil- the enviroment, damp soil, and low light will encourage fungus growth). She hypothesized that if the mushroom belong in the 'mycorrhiza' family then it might be the good mushroom... we had to find out what type of plant Heart is and then google it to see if there's something in the internet about mycorrhiza and Heart...
the internet gave me a good start.... I totally forgot what type of plant Heart is so I typed in google image "heart-shaped leaf" and I tried to find the closest picture resembling Heart. I was reminded that Heart is a Pothos, not a rhodendron (the differences are the yellow-whitish variegated leaves and the subtle curve at the tip of the leaves)... the internet helped me to identify Heart but didn't explain directly the appearance of yellow mushroom... I found lots of personal stories from people with similar experiences...
I also found folklore on the Pothos, which is sometimes called Devil's Ivy (I wonder why?) and in some part of India,it's considered the "money-plant"... then I started thinking about mushroom folklore, in some part of the Caribbeans, the yellow mushroom is called the "Spirit Umbrellas", and in the Philippines, mushrooms are believed to be homes of magical beings such as "'dwende" and fairies...
we didn't find a clear answer (my friend might ask her adviser, who has a phD), but one personal story was comforting. the person pointed out that the yellow mushroom didn't harm her lavander. they co-existed peacefully so she just "let them be"...
Heart and her yellow mushrooms will just be... they'll exist side by side, and we'll just see what'll happen in the near future...
Posted by Michael Diezmos at May 29, 2008 2:42 AM