Eli Whitney Museum

Ask your mother for the first of your drawings she collected. You will have drawn a person, maybe a house, and likely some flowers: green stems with blobs of color for blooms. Flowers catch the eyes of new artists and of great artists.

Want to learn something complicated? Make it into a game.
Charles Darwin realized that because most plants can't move by themselves, they had to develop relationships with other species that could assist their survival.

Flowers surprise us. They appear mysteriously with improbable and playful colors and forms. Who can doubt us if we imagine that magical creatures must be at work?

Long before the beginning of modern chemistry, alchemists conjured with the chemistry of plants. They solved practical challenges: how to encourage growth, how to crossbreed plant lines to encourage sweeter fruits. Alchemists also looked for plant applications: bottling fragrance and extracting medicines. The most modern scientists at Yale now consider the molecular chemistry of plants. Their Botanical Gardens are the most exotic laboratory at Yale.

Each flower has its season. Blooms fade. Every culture has invented ways to remember and recreate the joy of flowers.

160 years ago, the youngest of Charles and Emma Darwin's 10 children were about your age. Charles Darwin was one of the world's great naturalists. Charles and Emma brought their children up to be bold explorers. Their household was lively and curious. The children helped with experiments including sprinkling flour on the backs of bumblebees to help track their movements from flower to flower.

On the southeast corner of what used to be the Whitney estate, there is a greenhouse. Frederick Brewster build that conservatory to collect and cultivate flowers to adorn his Edgerton Estate and mansion. That Greenhouse still shelters blooming flowers year-round.

Flowers catch our attention and make us smile. No wonder we make flowers part of festivals, celebrations and friendships. Flowers help us express things for which words can be hard to find.