For the Bunchberry
If the earth laughs in flowers, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, then Canada is on nitrous oxide. Our country is home to more than 3,800 kinds of flowering plants, an astonishing botanical bounty. Yet while America has its rose and France its lily, our richly floral nation is hurtling toward its150th birthday sadly without a national flower.
This is a shock and an outrage — or, at least, that’s the view of the Master Gardeners of Ontario. The august green-thumbs of that organization have selected three flowers they believe to be the most nationally emblematic and are calling on Canadians to choose.
The choice, we believe, is clear. It’s time to make the Bunchberry Canada’s national flower.
Each of the Master Gardeners’ selections has its charms. The Hooded Ladies’ Tresses, a white orchid, has the advantages of a sweet, pleasing scent, delicate visual appeal and an intriguing history involving a Russian count and the search for the Northwest Passage. But the flowers are sometimes called Irish Ladies’ Tresses, which is decidedly un-Canadian, and we can’t ignore that they are often covered in small hairs, which is just weird.
The Twinflower, or Linnaea borealis, is also appealing. Named after Carl Linnaeus, the genus was a favourite of the great Swedish botanist, who so admired the paired, pale-pink flowers that he adopted them as his personal symbol. Common in the North, the plants possess an unassuming beauty. But the flowers also grow widely in Scandinavia, which is a point against. And fatally, for our purposes, they droop. Not the signal our flower should send.
Each finalist is lovely in its own way and each, as it should be, is present in every part of the country. But only the Bunchberry has it all. Horizontally sprawling, alternately white-flowering and redleaved, common nowhere else in the world, the Bunchberry is truly all-Canadian. Its Latin name, Cornus Canadensis, leaves no doubt.
The voting is open until the eve of Canada Day. We urge you to pick the Bunchberry — or rather, to choose it. To pick it, after all, would be something like treason.