Rosettes — All the Wiser

Rosette in the dunes,
Horseneck Beach, Westport, MA. Photo: Alexey Sergeev.

Scorpions and Rosette seal, c. 3300 B.C. Gawra period. North Mesopotamia. Photo: Diane Christian.

Rosette plants stand up to winter’s brutality by standing low.

Roy Lukes admires the rosettes of his February yard, tough customers like yarrow, dandelion, hawkweed, and evening primrose. A fine observer, Lukes describes the symmetry of these “weeds”—how “the upper leaves are shorter than the lower leaves, which allows all the leaves to receive an equal amount of sunlight,” how grooves channel rain water (or snowmelt) “inward toward the taproot,” and how overlapping leaves form a gentle barrier against encroaching species.

You’ve got to hand it to Lukes for being out in the yard at all this time of year. He writes for the paper in chilly Appleton, Wisconsin. Who better to appreciate the simple ingenuity of what he calls “winter greens”?

Rosettes are plants that produce their leaves at ground level, radiating out from a central growing tip. There are a huge variety of such plants, several of them carnivorous, a number of others aquatic. Frederick J. Tyler, in this excellent article from Ohio Naturalist, writes that in the Buckeye State alone there are 155 species of Rosette plants.

“The advantage of the rosette habit is chiefly in the protection which it affords from extremes of temperature and from drying winds, browsing animals, etc. The typical rosette rarely projects more than an inch or so above the ground and the leaves are usually spread out flat upon the surface. In Winter the rosette is well protected by even a light blanket of snow and is often partially covered by the debris of higher vegetation which has been cut down by frost.”

Common teasel rosette. Photo: R. Uva.

Most rosettes, he writes, are biennials. They establish themselves in year one, girding up, if you will, for the big job of flowering and setting seed in year two. Some especially savvy plants, like turnips, abandon their rosette configuration in the second year to make room for more expansive flowering; like teenage girls, they change into “tall, branching herb(s).”

Another rosette devotee, Tyler admires how these plants protect themselves from the cold with “the geotropic curvature of the leaves and the development of red color. If a leaf of a rosette of Smooth Mullein, Verbascum blattaria, or of the common Teasel, Dipsacus sylvestris, be examined late in October it will be seen that it is pressed tightly against the surface of the ground, and if the entire plant is dug up and placed in a collecting case for a few hours the leaves will be found turned downwards so far that they are parallel with the tap root and form a cup around it.”

Would that we were all so sensible in adversity.

Scorpions and Rosette seal, c. 3300 B.C. Gawra period.
North Mesopotamia.
Photo: Diane Christian.

We’ve learned that one of the most ancient of known deities, Inanna, was represented by the 8-pointed rosette. She was revered in Sumeria @ 3500 B.C.E., a goddess of fertility and wisdom. According to myth, a carefree Inanna was called to the underworld by the groans of her sister. She went below decked out in a crown, lapis beads, a breastplate, and staff…but to pass through seven descending gates to find her sister, she leaves all this protective finery behind. At last, naked, she confronts and is murdered by her sister, who hangs Inanna’s corpse on a hook in hell.

Nobody has much sway in the Underworld, except Enki, god of wisdom and water. He cleans the dirt from beneath his fingernails and turns the soil into two insects who can crawl below, find Inanna, and return her to the world—the wiser for having endured cruelty and the dark.

The beautiful, terrifying seal of Inanna, a rosette surrounded by scorpions, speaks to the spirit of February. From winter greens, low-lying and bunched, will come the hardiest flowers: ox-eye daisy and Queen Anne’s lace.