Vincent Van Gogh was a tormented artist, Known for his emotional struggles and mental health issues. However, for a short period of time he experienced some stability and great creativity. In 1888 Van Gogh rented a house in Arles and invited his friend Paul Gauguin to join him, hoping to found a community of artists. As a gesture of hospitality, and moved by a deep need for human connection and desire for friendship, Van Gogh painted a series of sunflowers to decorate Gauguin’s room before his arrival, because for him they represented luminosity and vitality. Unfortunately, Gauguin’s stay in Arles proved tumultuous, and the relationship between the two artists became increasingly tense, reaching a climax on December 23, when in the middle of an argument, Van Gogh threatened Gauguin and acted. He then cut off his ear with a razor and then took it to the Rue du Bout brothel. After this encounter, Gauguin left Arles, which plunged Van Gogh into a deep emotional state of anguish, his genius disappeared and he felt as if his creative energy had been sucked out of him and he had remained at a minimum. His famous sunflowers then came to embody frustration and the disappointment that came with the rejection of what he believed to be his friend.
An insidious plant parasite
Spring has arrived, and in the fields that served as inspiration, the sunflowers may also have been running out of energy, showing a stunted and withered appearance. The cause of the disease could be seen at the base of the stems. There stood a strange plant, looking like an asparagus and with its leaves turned into scales. But the drama happened underground. That unscrupulous vampire, commonly known as sunflower jopo and with the scientific name Orobanche Cumana, it is an insidious plant parasite which soon inserts drinking tubes, known as haustoria, into the vascular system of its host and begins to suck its sap without any consideration. The overwhelming fervor of this exploitative “sapsucker” can hinder the normal development of its supplier, to the point of endanger their survival. If circumstances are favorable, it can even become a destructive pest that compromises crop yields, revealing that even in the most bucolic and paradisiacal landscape a brutal and ruthless fight for survival takes place.
Plants are defined as autotrophs (from the Greek autos, “by itself”, and trophé, “food”), that is, capable of producing their own nutrients. We tend to overlook their prodigious ability to transform sunlight into sugars that sustain them. For that alone they would deserve our most absolute admiration and be considered far superior to us, since humans are absolutely dependent on them. Hence, self-sufficiency is also considered one of the distinctive qualities of the wise and in all cultural traditions stories are told of mystics who live without eating food. With obvious exaggeration, we could say that these holy men, those enlightened ones, are like photosynthetic humans, capable of nourishing themselves with light. In the same way we can find the opposite case, plants that seem to act like humans. Until a few decades ago we began to see the behavior of plants from another perspective and consider the possibility of experiencing pain, communicate with their conspecifics, manipulate members of other species, modify their physical environment and solve adaptive problems displaying surprising ingenuity; and we have a good example in the jopos. These parasitic plants are out of the norm because, since they do not have chlorophyll, they cannot carry out photosynthesis, and, therefore, they need a host, in this case the sunflower, from which they can feed by extracting water and nutrients. The bugs not only infiltrate the roots of sunflowers to eat uninvited, many other crops and wild plants are affected by various species of the Orobanche genus. At least twelve different types of jopos can be found in the municipality of Córdoba. Among them, Orobanche minor, which contains a chemical compound, acteoside, which is a potential remedy against Alzheimer’s, making it one of the strongest natural promises for the treatment of this disease.
But let’s return to the story from the beginning. What happened next with Van Gogh? Alcoholism and mental problems led him to periodic confinement in the sanatorium for the mentally ill of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. Finally, on the afternoon of July 27, 1890, during a period of internment, Van Gohn put an end to his existence by shooting himself in the chest. Although he was convinced that he had failed as an artist, he spent his last week in this world working with a perseverance not without desperation on an oil painting known as Roots. His creative and vital crisis is summed up in the phrase he wrote shortly before committing suicide: “my life is wounded at its very root.” More than a landscape, it was the testament of someone who suffered uprooting in multiple ways and, no matter how hard he tried, he could not get his hopes to take root. While he entertained the idea of ending his life in the bud, painted those tortuous plant shapes sinking into the clay soil of the forest, a disturbing image of tormented and perhaps also sheared roots, where the plundering that their beloved sunflowers could also have suffered because of the jopo resonates.
From May to early July it takes place the setting of the hammers, wading birds that usually form breeding colonies along with other species of herons. It is a mostly summer species in the Iberian Peninsula, whose numbers remain among us from March to October, to then undertake a migratory journey that will take them to their wintering areas in tropical Africa. However, the number of wintering specimens has been increasing in recent decades and, for example, in the Albolafia groves – which houses a breeding colony that can be comfortably observed in the very center of our city – they can be seen. practically throughout the year.
The name martinete refers to the tuft of white feathers it wears on its head; Although, even more curious, if possible, is its specific name. It turns out that the herons emit a harsh sound when they fly, which is reminiscent of the cawing of crows. For this reason, and given its nocturnal habits, this heron has been scientifically named Nycticorax, a Latin word derived from the Greek, which means literally “night crow”, surely in reference to that mythical bird called Nuktikorax, which Aristotle described as a bird of bad omen.
Throughout the day it usually remains hidden among the vegetation, although during the breeding season it is not unusual for it to also have to choose to hunt in broad light to satisfy the appetite of its eager offspring. Closely linked to the existence of well-preserved riverbanks and wetlands with abundant marsh vegetation, the kingfisher seems to show some symptoms of recovery after years of decline.
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