Okay, I have committed to this title and description of my project:
TITLE: “The Herbology Greenhouse at Hogwarts”
INTENT: Pomona Sprout, Professor of Herbology at Hogwarts, usually keeps Greenhouse #3 under control. She tends the strange and vicious magical plants like Devil’s Snare, Wolfsbane, Bouncing Bulbs, Mandrakes, and Venomous Tentacula. But because the Slytherins fed them all a powerful dose of Dragon Dung, Sprout was now in terrible danger. Watch out!
The rest of the list includes Dittany, Devil’s Snare, Fanged Geranium, Bubotuber, Abyssinian Shrivelfig, Bouncing Bulb, Chinese Chomping Cabbage, Flitterbloom, Flutterby Bush, Gurdyroot, Honking Daffodil, Leaping Toadstool, Mimbulus Mimbletonia, Screechsnap, and Venomous Tentacula. Last time I forgot Dirigible Plums so I will add that here. I will talk about a few of those here.
The Bouncing Bulbs, Shrivelfigs, and the Leaping Toadstools are not real plants so I do not break any rules by making them out of clay. I hope to have the bulbs and toadstools animated (if I get the time). The bulbs will be in a cage bouncing about and the toadstools would be popping up and down in a tray of soil.
In the Harry Potter Wiki, the Bouncing Bulb is described as purple “with a bunch of leaves growing on the top.” Young bulbs can be held in the hand but “mature ones can reach the size of doorways.” Bouncing Bulbs are aggressive and so the cage should contain them. Most of the information on bouncing bulbs comes from Harry Potter video games and not the books or Pottermore.
Also in the Harry Potter Wiki, Leaping Toadstools are described as “a magical mushrooms which has the ability to jump.” The pictures throughout Pottermore show a mushroom with an orange/red cap with white spots. The plant also shows up in the HP card game and in some video games.
The Shrivelfig (called Abyssinian Shrivelfig in the book when the students are being taught to prune it) is also a magical plant. When the pods/fruits are cut up, they are an ingredient in several potions. Shrivelfig can be bought in the Apothecary Shop on Pottermore and shows up in games. It is also on the Harry Potter Wiki.
Today’s real-plant challenge: Bubotuber, Mimbulus Mimbletonia, and Dirigible Plum.
This is a magical plant that creates a thick liquid called bubotuber pus that can be collected by squeezing some part of the plant. They are described as resembling thick black slugs but since finding a plant like that is not likely, I thought this Crassula argentea would work because of its shape.
This is a cactus-like plant that Neville Longbottom gets for his 15th birthday from his Uncle Algie (a nice spoof on the name there). It apparently comes from Assyria and is very rare. He is see carrying it into Hogwarts his 5th year and it also shows up in the Room of Requirement which is being used by students right before the Battle of Hogwarts in the last movie.
My candidate for the Mimbulus Mimbletonia is this Opuntia sublet monstrose which I have in several sizes.
Luna Lovegood wears the fruit of the Dirigible Plum as earrings and in the 7th movie we see her house with a plum tree outside.
Luna’s father Xenophilius things the Dirigible Plum can enhance the ability to accept the extraordinary.” I don’t have a gnarly tree like this but I saw one last week at Home Depot so if I can get that, I can add the plums which look like little hot air balloons.
The challenge today is how to represent the magical plants from Harry Potter that will be part of Sprout’s Greenhouse for this year’s Flower Show entry.
First I started with a list of the magical plants that appear in the books, movies, games, and websites. The list and an explanation of the plants can be found in several places including at the Harry Potter Lexicon and the Harry Potter wiki, and a few muggle-world equivalents can be found at Dave’s Garden and Idiot’s Guide.
The challenge becomes finding real-world equivalents, in miniature, to the Harry Potter magical plants. Remember our rules are that we have to use all real plant materials (so I can’t, for example, design a Venomous Tentacula vine out of string or clay).
So far, I have chosen the following plants to include: Mandrake, Rue, Gillyweed, Wolfsbane, Dittany, Devil’s Snare, Fanged Geranium, Bubotuber, Abyssinian Shrivelfig, Bouncing Bulb, Chinese Chomping Cabbage, Flitterbloom, Flutterby Bush, Gurdyroot, Honking Daffodil, Leaping Toadstool, Mimbulus Mimbletonia, Screechsnap, Venomous Tentacula.
Mandrake is one of the plants that has many images in the HP universe. This makes matching it for the miniature setting harder because of the expectations of the audience who are familiar with these images. These are scenes of the repotting of the mandrakes in Greenhouse 3 in Harry’s second year.
This is an image of the repotting from the Pottermore site, a fan site developed by J.K. Rowling.
I am still working on whether to make the Mandrake root with clay or with 3D printing but for now the question is what plant to use to represent the foliage. The Mandrakes will be planted in both pots and on bedding benches so I need a lot of them. One choice is Blood Sorrel (Rumex) which I have been growing easily from seed. The veins are red rather than white (like in the movie) but in real life the plants to not have prominent veins.
The real Mandrake, which I am also growing, has no coloring in its veins:
Another possibility is the Kalanchoe daigremontiana known as Mother-of-Thousands because of the little baby plantlets it drops. If I can keep the size of these down, they could work:
They will stay alive in both the beds and on top of the heads of the marauding roots I am designing and I have plenty of them. Other possibilities include Hypoestes Phylostachya (the white version of the pink polka dot plant)
or Fittonia albivens (rather than this pink one):
I am favoring the Kalanchoe at the moment.
Rue is a real plant (Ruta graveolens) that has long been grown as an herb and as a medicinal plant. In Harry Potter it is mentioned as an antidote for poison when, in the Half-Blood Prince (book 6), Ron drinks poisoned mead and is given a rue mixture by Madame Pomfrey. I will use actual rue plant, taken from small cuttings, to stand in for the magical rue. Even though a plant with smaller leaves would be more accurate (this is a 2 inch pot) I think the unique bluish coloring of rue limits what plants can be used.
Gillyweed was explained in a previous blog but to summarize, it is a water plant that Harry uses to be able to breathe underwater for one hour in the Triwizard tournament. We don’t see the full plant in the movies or books but we do see the slimy parts that Harry has to swallow:
The movie suggests that Neville reads about it in a book Mad Eye Moody lends him in the movie: Magical Water Plants of the Highland Lochs. In the book, gillyweed is said to be mentioned in a similar book, Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean, but Harry does not manage to get that information from the book (Dobby gives it to him). Here is a replica of the Highland Lochs book designed by Betsy Coe for her Diagon Alley event in 2009:
It is likely that I will use Bacopa caroliniana to stand in for gillyweed because it is growing nicely in one of my tanks and has nice long stems like the ones Harry is holding.
Wolfsbane (often mistakenly named wolfbane) is a real plant (Aconitum, also called monkshood) that has been used in many cultures as a poison and as an ingredient in herbal medications. In Harry Potter, wolfsbane is an ingredient in the potion that Severus Snape mixes up to give Remus Lupin (in Prisoner of Azkaban, book 3) so that his transformation into a werewolf is more controlled.
In the 1941 movie, The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., wolfsbane is picked by one of the werewolf’s victims. Since most of the plant, including the flowers, are toxic to the touch, this is an unlikely scenario. Still, it connects the plant to the werewolf myth which was mostly developed in this early horror film.
You can see the clip of Jennie picking the wolfsbane (she calls it wolfbane) at this link:
Wolfsbane in The Wolf Man (1941)
This poem is recited throughout the film:
Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
Will become a wolf
When the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.
The plant I will use for wolfsbane needs to have the palmate leaves of the real plant:
One possibility is is Hedera helix ‘itsy bitsy.’ It does have a great leaf shape and is an erect plant, but I only have one.
Perhaps sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) is a possibility and I have just brought a few clipping into the greenhouse to see if they stay alive.
That is the end of Part 1. More to come.
My work is underway for the 2013 Philadelphia International Flower Show Miniature Settings. My project is a model of Greenhouse 3 from the Harry Potter books (and movies). Greenhouse 3 is used by second year students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry during their Herbology lessons. Taught by Professor Pomona Sprout, Herbology introduces students to the magical properties of plants and how to grow and care for them. Greenhouse 3 contains the more dangerous plant including the Mandrakes and the Venomous Tentacula.
My title and intent:
TITLE: Sprout’s Greenhouse: Revenge of the Mandrakes!
INTENT: Professor Sprout, Professor of Herbology at Hogwarts, usually keeps Greenhouse #3 under control. After all, it has strange and dangerous magical plants like Devil’s Snare, Fanged Geraniums, and Venomous Tentacula. But when the Mandrakes heard they were going to be chopped up for a magical potion, they revolted! Where is Neville Longbottom when you need him?
Here are some of the images that are inspiring my work. I don’t expect my greenhouse scene to resemble the greenhouse in the movies but I am getting some ideas on how to age the structure and how to place the plants. I am also creating my own Mandrakes and they will be influenced by the movies. These images are from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (HP2), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HP6), and the Pottermore website (Pottermore.com).
Anthropology of the World's Fairs 
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