The word that won America's first spelling bee was 'gladiolus'
In 1925 Frank Neuhauser won the first National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling gladiolus, Latin for 'little sword' after its blade-shaped leaves. Those leaves hide a neat trick: a three-layer surface of grooves, bumps and waxy flakes that sends raindrops rolling off in one direction only.
Gladiolus is a genus of perennial flowering plants in the iris family, sometimes called sword lilies. The genus spans Asia, Mediterranean Europe and tropical and southern Africa, but its heartland is South Africa's Cape Floristic Region. About 260 species are endemic to southern Africa, roughly 76 grow in tropical Africa and only about 10 are native to Eurasia. Linnaeus first described the genus in 1753, crediting the name to Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. The plants grow from rounded corms wrapped in fibrous brown tunics, much like crocuses.
Wild flowers are modest, from tiny to about 40 millimetres across. The towering spikes sold by florists are the result of centuries of crossing and selection, mostly between four or five species. Most wild species carry 30 chromosomes, but the big Grandiflora hybrids have 60, because their chief parent, Gladiolus dalenii, is itself tetraploid. South African species were originally pollinated by long-tongued bees, and some have since shifted to sunbirds, hawk-moths or long-tongued flies. In European gardens, small wasps visit the huge hybrid blooms but pollinate them poorly.
In cooler climates, gardeners dig up the corms in autumn, store them frost-free and replant in spring, although some European and high-altitude African species, plus the small Nanus hybrids, survive down to about minus 26 degrees Celsius. New plants come from cormlets or seed and take several years to reach flowering size. Pests include thrips and a wasp that burrows into flowers until they collapse.
The flower has a colourful cultural life. Walkers who finish the Four Days Marches in Nijmegen are traditionally handed gladioli, probably echoing a victory custom once linked with gladiators. Morrissey swung yellow gladioli in the video for This Charming Man, Dame Edna Everage called hers 'gladdies', and Scott Joplin wrote a Gladiolus Rag. It marks fortieth wedding anniversaries and is the symbolic flower of Punjab.
Source: Gladiolus
