When I announced to those around me that I was going to discover aroids at the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden in Villers-lès-Nancy, the response from neophytes was invariably: “Zaras what?” Araceae. In reality you know them, but you ignore it.
There are only two Botanical Gardens in France which have a collection of aroids labeled nationally: the Botanical Garden of Lyon and the Jean-Marie-Pelt Botanical Garden of Villers-lès-Nancy since 1991.
This is to say the rarity of such a collection. These are tropical plants of very different shapes and colors from each other. The garden has about 900 accessions divided into 70 different genera. The most represented genres are the Anthuriums, the Philodendrons and the Alocasia. A large part of the plants come from tropical America: Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Guyana and Brazil.
It is clear that the Araceae are not, at first sight, the most famous family of plants. At first glance only, because in reality, you know them all, these houseplants: the most famous of them being the anthurium with red inflorescence or the arum.
You had, for sure, a grandmother, an auntie or an uncle who pampered them in a corner of her dining room, placed just behind the transparent sheer curtains and slightly grayed out by the weather. These beautiful plants with large leaves in the shape of a heart or a palm or a dragon’s head, streaked or not, with august red or white inflorescences, have had a great time in vintage interiors.
You even remember that you sometimes attended, dumbfounded, cleaning sessions with a damp cloth of these large sheets, while your grandma, your aunt or your uncle whispered to them: “There, you’re going to be very beautiful, my cocotte, you’re going to shine like a new penny.”
Yes, because with grannies, aunts and uncles, we love our plants and we talk to them.
It is a time now over. Araceae are out of fashion. And like all fashions, they come and go. The younger generation has fallen in love with this family of plants that are both tropical and adapted to our interiors, in various shapes and colors, which are the delight of trend-setting graphic designers.
Like the famous Delicious monstera that we see everywhere. I invite you to type in your favorite search engine the following words: wallpaper and tropical leaf. You will immediately understand. Araceae are everywhere. Except, like Monsieur Jourdain and prose, you don’t know its name. On social networks it’s a festival, Internet users do not hesitate to pay small fortunes specimens with unique formats and contours, to put themselves on stage, sometimes tenderly entwined in the long leaves of their favorite aroids.
Madness is such that an extremely rare specimen of Philodendron Holy Spirit, which owes its name to the state of Espirito Santo in Brazil (where it was born and where unfortunately only about twenty copies remain), recently sold for $27,000 (article in English).
Behind the anecdote looms the specter of trafficking, in countries where poverty encourages some inhabitants to poaching, for their own survival. Plants are victims of their rarity and their beauty. The Botanical Garden derives all its usefulness from this from the preservation and conservation of plant species, in particular those which are in danger of disappearing from their original environment (twelve of them are listed on the IUCN red list).
Tattoos, decoration and botany, it is therefore the cocktail of nerds aroids. Or should I say aficionados. Because – let’s go back to the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden – it is Douglas Tavares-Lisboa, 30, a botanist gardener of Brazilian origin, who has been at the helm of the tropical greenhouses since July 2021, where they are preserved.
Since the departure of Genevieve Ferry, the aroid specialist from Nancy, who had worked at the Botanical Garden for years (and recently retired), Douglas Tavares has taken up the torch with contagious enthusiasm. Like all the Botanical Garden’s experts, the humble young man is part of a line of scientists to whom he pays homage. Geneviève Ferry who preceded him as head of the collection, but also Serge Barrier, Marc Pignal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, also David Scherberich of the Botanical Garden of Lyon, or Patrick White, known for its plant walls, which donated many specimens from Asia to the garden.
With a special mention for the outstanding specialist in aroids worldwide, Tom Croat, who is a herald of aroids with his 108,000 collections carried out around the world, including a certain number with Geneviève Ferry. Who says better ? here is an article to read in english in text on Indiana Jones qualified scientist of botany.
The Nancy collection, which began at the start of the 1980s, has grown through donations between botanical gardens, donations from private collections, and returns from expeditions and missions. Today, the garden is rich with 900 accessions, that is to say 900 specimens of aroids of various origins. Among these specimens are still some plants which have not received a baptismal name: it will be necessary for this, that after comparative studies, the experts agree on the novelty of the species and that a description in terms of botany is carried out, so that the newcomer is recognized, named, published and registered in the herbarium. A whole journey to get identified, which can take years. Average waiting time, ten to fifteen years.
The greenhouses have about fifty new unidentified living plants, waiting for a little name. They only carry provisional numbers for the moment. The person in charge of the collections refers to them under the endearing term of “nancy babies“.
You have to imagine these discussions between researchers, who, with the help of photos of their latest finds, focus on such and such a detail, to determine whether or not this plant is not already listed somewhere. Exchanges that would leave us speechless if we could attend.
Thus, Douglas Tavares evokes a plant brought back by Serge Barrier and maintained by the care of Geneviève Ferry, which she sensed to be of a new species. Following the exchanges with the specialists, by interposed photos, his hope is dashed, the species seems already known. A few years later, while Tom Croat was visiting Nancy, the determined expert presented him again, but in real life (face-to-face, I should say), the plant that was questioning her. And seeing it like this, up close, the world authority on Araceae admitted and determined that it was indeed a new species: it was baptized Anthurium barriers to pay homage to Serge Barrier who had unearthed it. To the great joy of Geneviève Ferry.
Later, in recognition of his colleague’s expertise, he assigned his surname and first name to two new species, one of which sits prominently in the exhibition greenhouses: Philodendron genevieveanum. Here are explanations from the specialist herself shot by a specialized magazine five years ago: really, take a few minutes to listen to it, you won’t be disappointed.
What is striking in the course of the discussions with the managers of the greenhouses of the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden is their great concern for the preservation of nature. A question of generation, perhaps? An awareness of the fragility of the world that welcomes us. Their objective: the protection of plants both in their natural environment, but also their conservation and multiplication in these places of preservation that are botanical gardens.
An example: while explaining many details to me about a seed of an aroid variety, the gardener instinctively puts the seed back in the ground. Above all, be careful not to lose anything. For Douglas, preservation requires knowledge: “If we know the plants by their name, we will not forget them, we will not lose them; a name gives importance to a plant. It is for example after the publication of the name of a species that it can be protected, either itself or the area where it lives.“Once they are known, we can study its specific characteristics: like this variety whose very young leaves are red to protect it from the slightest ray of sunlight which would be fatal to it. And whose leaves gradually turn green. of growth, having learned to protect themselves from the sun.In integrated sun protection mode.
Each plant has its particularities, its smells, pleasant (like that of the Philodendron fmost terrible) or not (like Dracunculus vulgaris that smells of spoiled meat), its streaks, its holes, its veins, its colors, its formats – oh the impressive size of the Delicious Monstera – the resemblance to “abdo de compet'” or “chocolate bars” of the Anthurium veitchii , the black and gold leaves of the Phildendron melanochrysum , the red, white spathes, and the discreet or imposing spadixes, sometimes bearing fruits with attractive colors which make Douglas Tavares say “That’s screaming: come and eat me!“As for this Philodendron bicolor, received in 1979 and appointed in 2012 “she begins to express herself.
We take full view, it’s true when all this fascinating world is explained to us by an enthusiast.
Douglas Tavares has however made advanced studies in geology, but he admits with a bit of reserve his passion was born in childhood, in his grandmother’s house in the middle of the plants that she pampered. He even shows a slightly yellowed photo where he poses proudly, at the age of 7 or 8, in front of a whole colony of potted plants, those he affectionately calls “Granny’s plants”.
Having arrived in thesis of geology, he has a click, it is not what he wants to do with his life. He then resumed studies as a botanist gardener in Besançon and one thing leading to another, from chance encounters, he found himself working alongside Geneviève Ferry in Nancy. The rest we know.
Expansion projects abound. “There is still a lack of bulbous aroids from the Mediterranean and aroids from Asia. We need to work on creating new educational panels“. And then there is this brand new basin, in progress, which will accommodate aquatic species with a small waterfall. And then there is this upcoming event in Missouri, the state where Professor Croat practices, and then this association of enthusiasts that must be animated, and then, and then… It is time to leave Monsieur Tavares to his devouring passion.
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