Does the world need blue roses?

Whenever I hear the phrase “blue rose” I am reminded of Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie.” When the disabled teenager Laura tells Jim, a boy she has a crush on, that she was out of school for a time because she had pleurosis, he misunderstands her to say: “blue roses.” He takes to calling her “blue roses” after that.

I read the play in college in a course taught by a wonderful theater professor who recited the scene by heart, with melodramatic urgency.

Blue roses are an impossibility of nature. In some cultures, blue roses are associated with royalty. They are also associated with mystery and the unattainable, and some say that the holder of a blue rose will have his or her wish granted. For the poignant characters in Williams’ play, the blue rose is a potent symbol of unfulfilled yearning.

And yet, I recently came across an article in Horticulture magazine about a newly discovered gene-modifying technique that has the potential to create a truly blue rose. The scientific process is way too complex for me to fully understand, let alone explain, but according to Horticulture, it goes back to Monsanto and its notorious herbicide Round-Up. Apparently, the folks at Monsanto had been dumping glysophate, the active ingredient in Round-Up, into a holding pond. Not surprisingly, no living organism was able to survive in the pond. But eventually, a very hardy microorganism appeared that had developed a resistance to glysophate.

The Monsanto scientists were able to isolate the resistance gene from the microorganism and insert it into soybeans and other plants, thus producing crops that were resistant to the herbicide. This has led to the dubious agrobusiness practice of planting genetically modified seeds and then blanketing the growing plants with Round-Up, which kills everything in the vicinity except the GMO crops.

This doesn’t sit well with neighboring farmers who haven’t planted the patented GMO seed, a very expensive undertaking, in their fields, since the widespread spraying of glysophate kills their crops along with milkweed and other pollinator-friendly “weeds” that seem to have no place in agrobusiness.

It turns out that the same technology might be used to insert the blue gene “delphinidin” into the DNA of a rose. I find this profoundly disturbing. Without going into the pros and cons of GMO agriculture, do we really need to mess with Mother Nature just to create a novel horticultural phenomenon? Doesn’t nature provide enough surprise and delight as it is?

David Austin, the preeminent British rosarian has introduced more than 190 new rose cultivars in a wide range of eye-popping colors, including the apricot-yellow “Lady of Shallot,” the lush pink “Princess Anne,” the orange-red “Christopher Marlowe,” and the dark, velvety red “Mister Lincoln.” If you’re looking for color on a gray winter day, Google “David Austin roses.”

Austin is 92 this year. I can only guess what he might think about a genetically modified blue rose.

There’s a lot to be said for respecting the limits of attainability and cherishing what we have. Most of us love the rare blue flower in the garden. We have delphiniums, cornflowers, morning glories, lobelias and other “true blues” to satisfy that craving. Let’s leave the roses alone.

Gardening with mushrooms

On June 2, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge is hosting a hands-on workshop on how to incorporate mushroom production into your gardening practice. Willie Crosby of Fungi Ally in Hadley will show you how to use agricultural waste to grow your own food and medicine for your family and community. The workshop will focus on tree mushrooms in particular: wine caps, almond portobellos and oysters. Participants will become familiar with techniques of cultivating these mushrooms for food, medicine and mycoremediation purposes. (OK, I had to look this up: mycoremediation refers to the use of fungi to degrade or sequester contaminants in the environment.)

The workshop will include building a wood-chip bed of wine cap mushrooms (go home with myceliated chips to start your own mushroom bed), adding almond portobellos to your garden via compost, and growing oyster mushrooms in mulch. It will also cover transferring and expanding these mushrooms without buying spawn and using wine cap mushrooms in mycoremediation applications.

Willie Crosby has been growing mushrooms indoors and outdoors for over five years. He teaches online for Stockbridge School of Agriculture and Cornell as well as in person at his farm in Hadley and for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Cost: Members: $45/nonmembers: $55. Pre-registration is highly recommended, but walk-ins are welcome as space allows.

Go to berkshirebotanical.org for more information and to register. Dress for working outdoors; bring work gloves.