The great GOd OoGLE's mixed blessings: finding treasures thanks to surveillance: Flora Graeca

Orchis tethredinifera

As a highly botanically inclined horticulturist of Greek ancestry, I'd heard of Flora Graeca, and hadn't really known much about it except that the name of the principal author attached to a number of plant names (sibthorpii).

Then this morning, as I browsed the "newsfeed" of my Google page--which contained a strange number of features that were strangely relevant to my life--including a link that led me to these images. There were features about plants (many interesting features I might add). There was a feature post on Chinese medicine--very relevant to me since I've become quite an advocate (and my daughter happens to be studying it). Feature pieces on public gardens, where I happen to work...in fact, almost every Google feature headline appeared to be tailor designed to catch my attention (which of course it was)...

Should I be flattered? insulted? delighted? annoyed? horrified? worried? impressed? I have to confess I have a touch of all these emotions blended within me, much as I did in China last summer when a random hotel in Guangdong refused payment after staying there on a 12 hour layover "your costs are covered", or later when I boarded the plane and was bumped up to Business Class on my transatlantic flight: I cannot prove it, but both smacked mightily of payola after I'd spent 3 weeks publishing very positive blog posts here on my 'Blog, but also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about the beauties of wild China and how impressed I was with the infrastructure of contemporary China. Accident? I doubt it. Both the Chinese Government and "American" Private Enterprise have vast networks of surveillance. Those leaning right decry "gummint" interference in their lives: I'm perhaps as much or more distressed that our private lives and thoughts are monitored as effectively by PRIVATE enterprises like Google, the vast network of right wing think tanks that increasingly control the Amerikan narrative and who knows who else?

That's the frontispiece of that remarkable Greek flora, by the way. To reiterate, the blog that Google led me to, incidentally, is extremely informative: https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2020/02/flora-graeca.html. I spell it out rather that simply link to it because not everyone follows up on links. They need to see the whole dang URL!

Do check it out: the story it tells is more than a little interesting...but let's look at a flower or two from inside the volume...

Pterocephalus perennis ssp, parnasiii

What a tale the Scientific name tells here! In Sibthorp's time, the obvious Scabious flowers indicated that this little groundcover I admired so much in 2015 on Mt. Parnitha above Athens. That trip was so breathtakingly action packed, I never blogged much about it, but I have ranted a bit about this Pteroceaphalus hitherto on a blog.   This will perhaps inspire me to do a blog soon on Mt. Parnitha and some of the plants I saw there....

But as I think, how utterly marvelous that Google allows me to look up those two blogs I cited above so easily.., not to mention a dozen other things I happen to research from time to time all through the day. And the great GOd who oOGLEs our computer usage and has probably summed us up pretty accurately doles out such gems as the link to this Flora--but meanwhile Alexa and Siri and who knows what other Goddesses are conspiring in the background and likely acting very much like the deities on Olympus or peering over the Trojan battlefield. Only here, there are two sides as well--not Greeks and Trojans, but who? Oligarchs and Dictatorial Governments? Mind Control and freedom? You tell me!

Serapias cordigera

Google has reassured me that this Scientific name (half of which IS Latin) is still accepted as correct.

I use "Scientific" name here and elsewhere on this post: although couched in a sort of Latin--a fairly large proportion of both Generic names and specific epithets derive from Greek--which adds yet another layer of interest to this amazing book.

Of course I can't help but wonder--should I resent a technology that provides us with these enormous intellectual riches with just a few keystrokes: imagine the power! The convenience! The truly inspiring access they provide: just like that, after a lifetime of flipping pages of books, of researching Greek plants in the garden, in nature, in literature, I can now access a book of which only a few dozen were ever produced of extraordinary artistic interest and scientific value that I could never possess even if I were as rich as our perpetually Impeached purported "president" pretends to be since these books simply aren't for sale. But you can download and print your own copy if you want to!

Now if you haven't clicked on the blog that inspired MY Blog--you should at least check out the masterpiece that you will never purchase, I can guarantee that!

Flora Graeca

We are all Fausts who have sold our souls for convenience. And sometimes we don't regret it.