A beautiful 18 ½ foot tall Douglas-fir tree from Pennsylvania will be the Official White House Christmas Tree this season.
The Blue Room Christmas Tree will be officially presented to First Lady Laura Bush by Francis, Margaret and Chris Botek of Crystal Spring Tree Farm in Lehighton, Pa. The Boteks earned this honor by winning the National Christmas Tree Association’s (NCTA) national Christmas Tree contest held in August 2006 in Portland, Ore., and becoming Grand Champions.
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Christmas SPIRIT Foundation Delivers Holiday Cheer to Troops and Military Families .
Christmas Tree growers will donate more than 11,000 Christmas Trees to U.S. troops and their families this holiday season. The Trees for Troops Program, sponsored by the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation, kicked off on Nov. 14, 2006, with the collection of trees in Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Ind. These trees will be shipped overseas to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and sailors in the 5th fleet in the Gulf.
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About Anthurium
Anthurium Schott 1829, is a large neotropical genus of about 600- 800 (possibly 1,000) species, belonging to the arum family (Araceae). It is the largest and probably the most complex genus of this family. Many species are undoubtedly not described yet and new ones are being found every year.
They grow in the most diverse habitats, mostly in wet tropical mountain forest of Central America and South America, but some in semi-arid environments. Most species occur in Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
Anthurium grows in many forms, mostly evergreen, bushy or climbing epiphytes with relatively few roots. They occur also as terrestrials or lithophytes. Some are only found in association with arboreal ant colonies or growing on rocks in midstream (such as A. amnicola).
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THE price of Christmas trees may rise this year due to a shortage of firs in Denmark, Europe’s leading exporter of the trees.
“We see a 10-15 per cent price increase,” said Kaj Oestergaard, manager
of the Danish Christmas tree growers’ association.
The popular nordmann fir will cost approximately 130-140 kroner (?11.70-?12.60) per metre, he said.
Denmark exported about 85 per cent of the nine million Christmas trees felled last year in the Scandinavian country.
Britain, Germany and France top the list of countries importing Danish trees.
However, Denmark’s production has been declining since 2004, when many growers went out of business because of falling prices, Mr Oestergaard said
Source: www.scotsman.com
Lantana is a genus of about 150 species of perennial flowering plants, native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa. The species include both herbaceous plants and shrubs growing to 0.5-2 m tall.
They are widely cultivated for their flowers in tropical and subtropical environments and (as an annual plant) in temperate climates. Some species are invasive, and are considered to be noxious weeds in southern Asia, southern Africa, and Australia, with there being specialised services that you can call in to remove the plants. In the United States, some Lantana species are now naturalized in the southeast, especially coastal regions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and the Gulf Coast where it is often known as “ham and eggs”. Lantana species are used as food plants by the larvae of hepialid moths of the genera Aenetus, including A. ligniveren and A. scotti, and Endoclita, including E. malabaricus. Other Lepidoptera whose larvae feed on Lantana include Hypercompe orsa and Setaceous Hebrew Character.
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The mistletoe is a hemi-parasitic shrub which can be found on the stem of other trees. There are many species of mistletoe and one of them is Viscum Album which is the Latin name for that known as the European mistletoe.
I can say that the mistletoe had been the symbol of the Christmas (not the tree), at least in Romania. Our antiquity neighbors, the Celtic people, had thought that mistletoe was created by a lightning over an oak. Since then the mistletoe was considered a plant with magical properties. For its eternal green, it became the symbol of eternal life and, in default of regular root, it was loved as being sent by God. The legends of mistletoe’s apparition is known and appreciated in the entire Europe and only good things are now associated with this plant.
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Some brightly-coloured flowers appear to use a green glow to attract bees and bats to pollinate them, according to a study published yesterday.
To discover this signalling system, never before seen in plants, Prof Francisco García-Carmona and colleagues at the University of Murcia in Spain extracted and purified the pigments of Mirabilis jalapa flowers.
The flowers, found in South America, are also known as four-o’clocks, marvel of Peru and beauty of the night.
The team found that the flowers, which open in the afternoon, rely on fluorescence, so emitting green light rather than just reflecting it, a signalling system recorded before only in budgerigars and the mantis shrimp.
They report in the journal Nature finding that the fluorescence emitted by one pigment, a yellow betaxanthin, is absorbed by another pigment, a violet betacyanin, to create a green fluorescent pattern on the petals.
“Visible fluorescent patterns in flowers opens up the study of the relationships between plants and pollinators. To date fluorescence has not been considered a signal,” said Prof García-Carmona.
Source: www.telegraph.com.uk
Every time you order flowers, you could get ripped off instead. “Hank Investigates” a nationwide flower fakeout that’s set up to trick you into paying more and getting less. Will you be the next victim of the “Phony florists?”
Three feet tall and brimming with a dozen orchids, this is the impressive bouquet Randall wanted to send.
So how did he wind up with this? Just two orchids and half the size.
Hank Phillippi Ryan, 7News
“Did you get what you paid for?”
Randall
“No, I don’t think I did.”
Randall had searched the phone listings for a local florist and found a “florist in Quincy” at 816 Willard St. He called their “617″ Quincy phone number.
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Chrysanthemums are a genus (Chrysanthemum) of about 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, native to Asia and northeastern Europe. Amongst florists and in the floral industry, they are commonly referred to as “mums”.
HISTORY
Chrysanthemums were cultivated in China as a flowering herb as far back as the 15th century BC. An ancient Chinese city was named Chu-Hsien, meaning “chrysanthemum city”. The flower was introduced into Japan probably in the 8th century CE, and the Emperor adopted the flower as his official seal. There is a “Festival of Happiness” in Japan that celebrates the flower.
The flower was brought to Europe in the 17th century. Linnaeus named it from the Greek prefix chrys-, which means golden (the colour of the original flowers), and -anthemon, meaning flower.
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Christmas is when the carol singers are calling you at the door for the best wishes; is also when the entire image is white, all it sees being but the red or blue or golden or what color you want lights which means that we celebrate, are happy and excited. It’s when Santa Claus is coming to town!
In Romania there are carols played by the children dressed in the traditional popular suits, carrying in their hands pine branches which are symbols of the “youth without old age” and of the vigour and plenty. They carol through all the houses, joyful and blushing and loud singing and for their wishes the host gives them apples and pretzels and nuts. Therefore all the people in Romania have on the Christmas table such of things even though in arrangements as decorations, following the Christmas spirit.
This is one of those traditional Christmas arrangements, an easy to make coronet:
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The Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai launched a campaign yesterday to plant a billion trees next year (2007)- 32 every second - to highlight the need to tackle global warming. A global problem for all of us. Professor Maathai, who won the prize in 2004 for her work on reforestation in Kenya, pledged to plant 2m trees through her Green Belt Movement. She was speaking at the annual UN climate change convention meeting, which is taking place in Nairobi and was described by one delegate as “climate foreplay” because few binding decisions are expected.
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Hibiscus or Rosemallow is a large genus of about 200-220 species of flowering plants in the family Malvaceae, native to warm temperate, subtropical and tropical regions throughout the world. The genus includes both annual and perennial herbaceous plants, and woody shrubs and small trees. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to lanceolate, often with a toothed or lobed margin. The flowers are large, conspicuous, trumpet-shaped, with five petals, ranging from white to pink, red, purple or yellow, and from 4-15 cm broad. The fruit is a dry five-lobed capsule, containing several seeds in each lobe, which are released when the capsule splits open at maturity.
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A local chrysanthemum flower breeding company has unveiled the latest flower cuttings variety -Arctic Queen. John Rutten Fiduga his managing director said the cuttings produce large white flowers with a green centre. The flower is being bred exclusively for the Russian market. The cuttings, which are bred here, will be grown in Holland from where they will be exported to Russia. Rutten said Russia is expected to import over 500,000 stems of the Arctic Queen every week.
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Description
The original Bamboo is a grass of Gramineae family and Bambusoideae subfamily. Its size is from inches to over 100′ and can grow a foot or even more a day and there are running or clumping species. But what we’ll discuss about and have inside our houses or what is sold by the name of “bamboo” in flower shops, cut and arranged in different decorating ways, is not a real bamboo plant, but a kind of Dracaena sanderia plant native of Cameron.
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US floral designer and wholesaler’s representative Diana Westcott won a trip to Holland as part of a contest promoting the Flower Council’s USA newsletter. Although ‘Lady Luck’ certainly played its part, Diana - whose floral career began as an apprentice in a small flower shop in Maine in 1974 - was a deserved winner: “Dutch flowers have always been very near and dear to my heart.” Superior During her whirlwind tour of the Dutch flower industry, Diana visited Dutch grower ‘Ko Kolk Hortensia BV’: “Hydrangeas are my favorite flowers, so entering their greenhouse and seeing this huge ocean of hydrangeas was absolutely thrilling! The flowers were four feet tall, with huge heads the size of basketballs, and of far superior quality to the hydrangeas grown in South America and California.
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