Who would have thought that flowers could be the inspiration for a new computer game?

Independent software developer Norbyte announced the release of Petal Palace, a 3D game which takes you to an enchanted palace, surrounded by beautiful scenery where flowers grow in great abundance. Unfortunately, there isn’t nearly enough space in the garden, so there’s only one thing to do. You have to pick the flowers by arranging them in lines. To keep the palace from being overgrown by the flowers you can use any tools you may find to overcome various obstacles.

Here is a screenshot of the game:

If you’re good at picking the flowers, you will achieve bonuses and rewards that will help you in your task. Petal Palace offers lots of boards with different surroundings and gameplay, with endless replayability. The game is almost like a flower picking Tetris. The game can be purchased from its official website here.

According to the Detroit Free Press, a weed you may see growing along the road in East Lansing, Michigan this fall is part of the world’s longest continuous botanical experiment to test how long seeds can produce flowers.

The flowering plant is called moth mullein. It has dark green leaves and bears yellow or white flowers on a stalk that reaches about 3 feet tall. Moth mullein is related to common mullein. You can tell the difference because common mullein gets taller, the flowering stalk is thicker and its leaves look like gray-green felt.
Mullein isn’t native to the United States; people brought it here from Europe and Asia many years ago and it now grows across the country.

When a mullein seed starts to grow, the plant makes a long root and a low-growing set of leaves called a rosette. It stops growing in winter. The next spring and summer, it begins to grow again and produces the flower stalk.

Many plants’ seeds are in the soil and able to grow if they are exposed to light. Mullein seeds remain viable, or able to grow under the right conditions, for more than 100 years.

Just how long they can grow is being tested in an experiment at Michigan State University in East Lansing. In 1879, a botany professor named William Beal started an experiment. He wanted to see how long seeds could remain viable. So Beal gathered seeds from 21 common plants, including the moth mullein plant. He got 20 glass bottles and put some seeds, in moist sand, in each one. Then Beal buried the open bottles, upside down.

Starting in 1884, Beal dug up a bottle. He took out seeds and exposed them to light to see how many would germinate. Some grew. Another bottle was dug up every five years through 1914. It was too cold to dig up a bottle in late fall of 1919, so the next bottle was dug in 1920.

Other people have carried on Beal’s experiment. They began waiting 10 years between digs, to make the experiment last longer. Starting in 1980, they decided to wait 20 years.

The 15th bottle was dug up in the spring of 2000. It contained 1,050 seeds. Of those, 25 plants of moth mullein grew. Within a few months, those 121-year-old seeds had grown into new plants with bright flowers.

In the Mansfield News Journal, Richard Poffenbaugh describes how to bring some spring cheer into your home by forcing spring flowers to bloom early. According to Richard, it’s an easy process with big rewards in late winter. The process of early flowering is called “forcing” where the bulbs are chilled early to produce early flowers.

Basically the same treatment is used for other hardy bulbs including crocus, daffodil and tulip. Select the largest bulbs for forcing. Use a 4-inch pot for one hyacinth bulb or a 6-inch pot for three bulbs. Often all-purpose potting soil is acceptable and no feeding is necessary. A single hyacinth bulb in a small pot is attractive and requires little space.

Place at least an inch of potting soil in a pot and position the bulbs. The soil surface should be a half inch below the pot rim. The bulb tip just above the soil surface. Add or subtract soil as necessary to get those levels.

To chill the bulbs requires a temperature around 40 degrees F. I use a very old refrigerator in the basement for the chilling. If you use a self-defrosting refrigerator, the air is dry and will require closer attention so the soil doesn’t dry out. It should remain evenly moist to promote good root formation. Also, no apples should be in the refrigerator as gas from the apples will interfere with flowering.

Last year I forced some Carnegie (white) hyacinth bulbs. The bulbs were potted on Oct. 21 and immediately transferred to the refrigerator. Make sure the pots are well-watered before placed in the cold environment. Check pots weekly to see if the soil is moist.

By Feb. 10 the pots displayed fat, yellowish sprouts with height of 1.5 inch. The holes in bottom of each pot showed dense growth of whitish roots.

On Feb. 14 the pots were removed from the refrigerator. Flowers were in full bloom by Feb. 27. They develop quickly after moving to an area with cool temperatures and bright light. A good spot is on a table near a window. Flowers remained in good condition for 10 days. The cooler the temperature, the longer the flowers will last.

Try to keep flowering plant in a spot that is cooler at night and at a temperature not to exceed 60 degrees during the day. Removal of pots from refrigerator can be staggered to extend the bloom period over several weeks.

After flowering, cut off thick flower stem and care for as a houseplant. Plant bulb outdoors when soil conditions are favorable. They hyacinth should return to a normal bloom cycle the second year after transplanting.

Pink, blue and white are showy bright colors for forcing. They add some spring cheer to the indoor environment. Why not plant some extra bulbs for gifts to friends?