WASHINGTON — Agriculture researchers are reported to have found a little-known chemical that increases the life of cut flowers.
Fine. Now if they can find a chemical that also increases the life of uncut flowers, they really will perform a public service.
The chemical animooxyacetic acid -- AOAA -- is said to make cut flowers last longer by suppressing a hormone that causes aging in plants.
I suspect the hormone infests uncut plants in my flower beds as well, they age so quickly.
I am thinking in particular of some geraniums I planted last spring. They seemed to grow old almost overnight.
One day they had the bloom of youth about them. The next day they were wrinkled and doddering.
How nice it would have been to be able to douse them with a chemical that would suppress the production of ethylene, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture identifies as ''a hormone that starts the ripening and aging of flowers, fruits and vegetables.''
It was good of the department to explain what ethylene is. I would have guessed it was a petroleum additive that hastens the ripening of gasoline.
Anyway, I am not so sure of the need to delay the onset of senility in vegetables. Some carrots I know remained immature long past the time it said in the seed catalog they would ripen.
But flowers definitely need something that will prolong their actuarial callowness. And animooxyacetic acid looks like it.
''Tests of carnations showed that AOAA tripled the number of days after cutting that flowers stayed fresh and attractive, compared to leaving the cut plants only in water,'' says a department news release.
The question of whether carnations are attractive at any time is, of course, a matter of taste.
A neighbor suggested I failed to water the geraniums properly. But I think I can recognize senescence when I see it. And if those plants weren't suffering from superannuation, how come they needed artificial blossoms?
''Flowers are very sensitive to ethylene,'' horticulturalists tell us.
To that I can only add: Aren't we all?
The news release doesn't say how the preservative is applied -- whether added to the water, sprayed on or what.
When anti-ethylene chemicals are developed for outdoor use, I assume they will be available in pellets that can be buried in the soil.
It sure would be great to stick a few pellets into a flower bed and know the geraniums are going to stay young all summer.
As for cut chrysanthemums, let them look out for themselves.