Gramineous Adornment. Chrysopogon aciculatus, Golden Beardgrass, Love Grass, and even Mackie's pest, KLCC Park, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The City Centre of Kuala Lumpur is an icon to (post)modernity, of course. Who hasn't seen countless and variegated images of the Petronas Towers? Behind those towers there's a marvellous park which was planted with many native trees of Malaysia. It's a veritable 'lung' of this traffic congested city. There are great green lawns, pools and fountains, and shrubs and flowering plants. Especially interesting for yours truly are the verges; those places lawn mowers can't get at, often on the edge of parking lots or in between the huge roots of majestic trees, or between pavement tiles, or near constructon sites. That's where weeds grow!
This is Chrysopogon aciculatus, Awn Grass, Love Grass, Mackie's Pest for Australians, Goldbeard and many other names. A really marvellous little plant - regardless of its being a pest to farmers in some parts of the world. This little flower stalk measures about 1 cm, and that makes its other anatomical structures around 1 mm each. Ah! The wonders of nature (and of cameras!).
The Swedish pharmacist, botanist and entomologist Anders Jahan Retzius (1742-1821) was the first to describes this grass - which hails from Southeast Asia - as Andropogon aciculatus (1789). He bases his description on Georg Eberhard Rumphius's Gramen aciculatum. Rumphius had seeen it most likely somewhere in what's today northern Indonesia, perhaps the Moluccan Islands where he lived and worked.
But the first scientific description of this grass under the name by which it is today known (Chrysogonon aciculatus) was by Carl Bernhard von Trinius (1778-1844). Trinius was the founder of the Botanical Museum at St Petersburg, and close to the Imperial Family. In fact, he was the teacher of two Czars: Alexander I and Nicholas 1. In 1828 he describes Chrysogonon under the general heading of Rhaphis trivialis, not able (yet) to prove its precise place in taxonomy. Anyone looking at Trinius's work will be happy to discover that he's made a drawing of our Grass as well. And he notes down that it's been done after a specimen he got from 'Owahu'. Indeed, you think right. That's O'ahu, one of the Hawai'ian Islands (Waikiki and all that!).
How did Trinius get that specimen? No doubt from his friend and 'pen-pal' Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot (= Adelbert von Chamisso) (1781-1836). Chamisso had been one of the two botanists of the second Russian exploration expedition 'round the world under the command of Otto von Kotzebue (1787-1846). Between 1816 and 1817 their ships had spent some time in Hawai'i and in particular at O'ahu. There were diplomatic exchanges with the royal family of Hawai'i, much ado about trade and trading posts and -exchanges; but also enough time for the naturalists to expand their collections of specimens. An herbarium was put together and it has survived until the present.
So in contemplating this minute grass, much history and exploration come together!
Gramineous Adornment. Chrysopogon aciculatus, Golden Beardgrass, Love Grass, and even Mackie's pest, KLCC Park, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The City Centre of Kuala Lumpur is an icon to (post)modernity, of course. Who hasn't seen countless and variegated images of the Petronas Towers? Behind those towers there's a marvellous park which was planted with many native trees of Malaysia. It's a veritable 'lung' of this traffic congested city. There are great green lawns, pools and fountains, and shrubs and flowering plants. Especially interesting for yours truly are the verges; those places lawn mowers can't get at, often on the edge of parking lots or in between the huge roots of majestic trees, or between pavement tiles, or near constructon sites. That's where weeds grow!
This is Chrysopogon aciculatus, Awn Grass, Love Grass, Mackie's Pest for Australians, Goldbeard and many other names. A really marvellous little plant - regardless of its being a pest to farmers in some parts of the world. This little flower stalk measures about 1 cm, and that makes its other anatomical structures around 1 mm each. Ah! The wonders of nature (and of cameras!).
The Swedish pharmacist, botanist and entomologist Anders Jahan Retzius (1742-1821) was the first to describes this grass - which hails from Southeast Asia - as Andropogon aciculatus (1789). He bases his description on Georg Eberhard Rumphius's Gramen aciculatum. Rumphius had seeen it most likely somewhere in what's today northern Indonesia, perhaps the Moluccan Islands where he lived and worked.
But the first scientific description of this grass under the name by which it is today known (Chrysogonon aciculatus) was by Carl Bernhard von Trinius (1778-1844). Trinius was the founder of the Botanical Museum at St Petersburg, and close to the Imperial Family. In fact, he was the teacher of two Czars: Alexander I and Nicholas 1. In 1828 he describes Chrysogonon under the general heading of Rhaphis trivialis, not able (yet) to prove its precise place in taxonomy. Anyone looking at Trinius's work will be happy to discover that he's made a drawing of our Grass as well. And he notes down that it's been done after a specimen he got from 'Owahu'. Indeed, you think right. That's O'ahu, one of the Hawai'ian Islands (Waikiki and all that!).
How did Trinius get that specimen? No doubt from his friend and 'pen-pal' Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot (= Adelbert von Chamisso) (1781-1836). Chamisso had been one of the two botanists of the second Russian exploration expedition 'round the world under the command of Otto von Kotzebue (1787-1846). Between 1816 and 1817 their ships had spent some time in Hawai'i and in particular at O'ahu. There were diplomatic exchanges with the royal family of Hawai'i, much ado about trade and trading posts and -exchanges; but also enough time for the naturalists to expand their collections of specimens. An herbarium was put together and it has survived until the present.
So in contemplating this minute grass, much history and exploration come together!