Scheele’s Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death
Spray of artificial flowers, 1898–1935.
According to folklore, one of the nineteen riddles the queen of Sheba posed to Solomon had to do with flowers. The queen brought garlands of cloth flowers or bouquets of wax blossoms—stories differ—and asked Solomon to pick the true flower hidden among the faux. Solomon couldn’t do it by sight alone (they were good fakes), and so he asked the queen whether he could throw open the windows and let some fresh air into the palace—to help him think, he said. As though he had been invited, a fat, drowsy pollinator came inside, and he was pulled, by instinct and hunger, to the true flower. And where the bee flew, so did Solomon’s finger point. “That one,” he told her. “That one is the real flower. The rest are facsimiles.”
This story isn’t in the Bible, though the Old Testament does allude to the episode. There’s a moral here (something about every animal having something to contribute), but I’m not interested in morals. Like the queen of Sheba herself, I’m interested in fake flowers and their equally fake foliage.
Two Riddles of the Queen of Sheba, c. 1500.
We’ve been creating dupes for our favorite blooms for as long as
