The Artichoke Blossom, an Exploding Castle

worldsensorium.com

15 points·dnetesn··2 comments

A humble vegetable flowering so spectacularly was bound to get the attention of H.C. Andersen, who was always interested in ugly ducklings, like himself, turning out to be beautiful and noble swans after all. From his story "Gartneren og Herskabet" ("The Gardener and the Noble Family"):

One day the gardener brought a large crystal bowl; in it floated a water-lily leaf upon which was laid a beautiful blue flower as big as a sunflower.

"The lotus of Hindustan!" exclaimed the family. [...]

"We have been looking for it in vain," they said. "We have been in the greenhouses and round about the flower garden!"

"Oh, no, it's not there," said the gardener. "It is only a common flower from the vegetable garden; but, look, isn't it beautiful! It looks like a blue cactus, and yet it is only the flower of the artichoke!"

> The artichoke blossom exceeds human design and desire, exploding its own battlements and thereby entering the symbiogenetic fray of interspecies collaboration. Perhaps in the blossoming of the artichoke I perceived, surprisingly enough, a revolutionary politics, one that foregoes the (always-classed, always-racialized) hierarchy of human privilege in favor of relationships of mutual care and, one might hope, healing.

yeah, man. I think they are pretty too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com