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By Ross howell JR.

A heart shape signifying romantic love was already a popular symbol on Valentine’s Day cards way back in 1846, when botanist Robert Fortune returned to England after a three-yearlong expedition to the Far East.

As a youth, the Scotsman had apprenticed in local gardens, then taken a position with the Edinburgh Botanical Garden. He was serving as a superintendent with the Royal Horticultural Society garden in Chiswick when he was commissioned to search for plants in Asia.

During his trek, Fortune endured shipwreck, pirates and fever, entering China in disguise, since acquiring plant specimens for export to Europe was strictly forbidden.

Among the many plants that Fortune sent home to England were a beautiful tea rose called “Fortune’s double yellow,” a Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) and a Japanese anemone, along with various tree-peonies, azaleas and chrysanthemums.

Fortune also sent a kumquat (Citrus japonica) and a flowering plant that would become a Valentine’s Day tradition.

Lamprocapnos spectabilis had long been cultivated in the gardens of northern China, Japan and Korea and was also found in the wild.

The bleeding heart.

Fortune had brought to England nature’s living manifestation of the romantic heart, arranged in delicate, pendant rows of red or pink. Later in the 19th century, the bleeding heart made its way into American gardens.

The first blooms I remember seeing grew by the Dutch door that opened from the kitchen to the garden in the mountain farmhouse where my mother was born. The foliage of those plants reached about to my chin, and each pendant heart was considerably larger than my thumb.

The lobed shape of the bleeding heart was so different from oth-