Our Dr. Seuss Plants

Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodor Seuss Geisel, is known to and beloved by nearly every American who grew up before, in and after my generation. He was the author and illustrator of the clever and imaginative rhyming children's stories that shaped my early years and that continue to resonate for me to this day. It's thanks to Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose that I learned it was wrong to take advantage of another's kindness. And why are you always supposed to listen to your mother? Well, the Cat in the Hat knows all about that. It's from good old Horton, in Horton Hatches the Egg, that kids learn if you make a promise, you keep it.

"I meant what I said, 
And I said what I meant, 
An elephant's faithful, 
One hundred per cent!"

No, I'm not regressing back to my childhood, at least not too much. I just thought it was time to introduce the two plants on our property here in Brazil that I call our Dr. Seuss plants (or sometimes Plant One and Plant Two, in honor of Dr. Seuss's Thing One and Thing Two). I have no idea what the plants' real names are, and I don't particularly care. To me, they've jumped straight off Dr. Seuss's drawing pad, and I love them. 

And that's that.

Plant One, or perhaps . . .

. . . Gertrude McFuzz?

Plant Two, or perhaps . . .

. . . a Fiffer-Feffer-Feff ?

Brazil has its own Dr. Seuss, might I say,

Whose name is Monteiro Lobato, and they

Have made him an icon in much the same way.

His characters are entertaining, I grant,

They delight and amaze and surprise and enchant,

But it cannot be said they resemble a plant.