Pitch Pine – The Daily Flower for 26 March
One gets the strong suspicion that, by the time they reached the pitch pine (having not long before attributed meaning to pine in general), the floriographers were clutching at the straw-like needles for suitable meanings.
Pitch pine, you see, is so named because it yields pitch, more commonly known as turpentine and more generally known as a solvent. Now, in the language of flowers, Pinus rigida connotes philosophy – a meaning that seems to bear little connection to the gnarly russet-coloured bark or long needles of the tree apart from the orthographic echo of ‘solver’ in ‘solvent’.
Derrida would surely approve.
Pinus rigida by Robert H. Mohlenbrock @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database
Good for giving to: Thinkers and thinners fans.
Great pitch pines in literature: Perhaps as inspirational to someone as the melted wax was to Descartes?
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees--
the flames--with the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling
and rising;
From 'American Feuillage' by Walt Whitman
Tags: flowers, Pinus rigida, pitch pine, floriography
Pin et philosophie? Derrida et Descartes? Pollen Nation serait-il déjà au-delà du blog postmoderniste?
Posted by: Ddz | 26 March 2007 at 17:26