Latest news with #botanical
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Poem of the Week: Snail Notes
Whorley snail, terrifier in its botanical realm, ravager of leaves with its shearing jellied mouth. Its shell protects only against shrivelling desiccation in a drought. It scabs a snotty screen across its home's gaping floor. A shrew's milk teeth could crush the crisp of its armour. As a baby, poised on a daffodil stalk, it is a mobile brown globule slowly pouring itself, a muddy raindrop, an uphill-drip. Sometimes slow enough to appear still, like an inedible stone or flake of wind-dropped bark to a cloud-high crow. For all its ponderous existence it extols no philosophies, but provokes thought in others, not least daffodils who rasp at one another through their roots at times of ooze and prowl, after dews and wind howl. Patrick Cotter's fourth collection, Quality Control at the Miracle Factory, was published recently by Dedalus Press.
NHK
12-05-2025
- NHK
Vietnamese man arrested for allegedly stealing 'bonsai' from Tokyo shop
Tokyo police have arrested a Vietnamese man on suspicion of stealing "bonsai" potted trees from a botanical shop, possibly for sale abroad. The Metropolitan Police Department says Pham Minh Duc is suspected of taking 22 items from the shop in Tokyo's Akishima City in December last year. Some of the more expensive items are worth about 680 dollars each. Police say anti-theft wires were cut away and the total value of the 22 trees is nearly 4,500 dollars. The 30-year-old suspect is believed to have worked as a driver for a criminal group. Investigators think there were two other people who broke into the shop and another who gave them instructions. The suspect came to Japan as a technical trainee under a government-backed program, but had overstayed his visa by the time of the break-in. He reportedly told police that he was cash-strapped and had applied for a job as a driver that he found on social media. The horticultural art of "bonsai" is becoming popular outside Japan. Police suspect that the group has been continuously stealing bonsai items to sell them to overseas enthusiasts.
New York Times
07-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Care and Pruning of the Extravagant Lilac
In season, lilacs are an extravagance of color and fragrance — especially when you have something like 437 plants, representing 138 different species and varieties, as the New York Botanical Garden does in its Burn Family Lilac Collection. After they finish blooming, though, lilacs can present an extravagantly messy aftermath, nudging the gardener to intervene in the name of tidiness. Get out the shears (hint: the long-reach version with a telescoping handle is especially helpful for such an assignment). Sharpen your powers of observation as you head out for duty, too, said Melissa Finley, the botanical garden's Thain curator of woody plants. Deadheading may be the obvious task, but there are subtler clues to discover about fine-tuning your shrubs' performance — or maybe extending your lilac season and its color palette.
