The label after the bloom

Every six-inch annual in the bedding section carries one, angled into the soil at close to the same thirty degrees, a uniformity that owes more to muscle memory than to instruction. The tag is a single injection-molded piece: a spade-shaped blade below the soil line, a rectangle above it, printed on one side only in a typeface chosen for cost rather than for four months of direct sun. Common name in bold, botanical name in italics beneath it, spacing and sun requirements small enough that most buyers photograph the tag rather than remember it, then never look at the photo again. The ink fades unevenly. Black holds; the accent color, usually a red or a green matched loosely to the flower, bleaches out within a season, so a tag pulled in September reads like a name half erased rather than a name printed wrong. Growers use the identical blade across species, so a tomato and a petunia are told apart only by the print, and a mixed flat of six varieties can lose track of which is which in a single wrong gust.

Doreen Fitch