On Monday, Tercentenary Theatre was treated to a little color outside Widener Library in the form of a flowering, yellow carnation. Students may have walked by a little surprised, but the tourists knew what to do, snapping pictures left and right. However, anyone returning to get another glimpse of the plant will find that it is gone, pulled from the ground. Indeed, it was never actually supposed to be there at all. It was planted during the night by some unknown green thumbs.

The quesion is: who so thoughtfully tended to Harvard’s gardening needs? Students have their suspicions. “My roommate Eva had the potential to do something like this,” Rita Parai ’07 says, “but I don’t think she did.”  Then again, one can never be too sure. “It may have been me,” Parai adds later. “It raised some deeply troubling questions, like where was I that night.”

Roxanna K. Myhrum ’05 has some ideas of her own. “Maybe it was those snow penis guys. They’re really into public art installations,” she says, referring to the notorious snow sculpture made two years ago by members of the men’s crew team. Could they be alluding to the other gender’s genitalia with an obscure reference to Georgia O’ Keeffe’s flowers? That might be a stretch. Students may not have been responsible at all.

In one scenario, Andrea M. Mayrose ’06 theorizes that “It could have been a disgruntled gardener who wanted to spread beauty outside the confines of Harvard’s predefined gardening system.”

The simplicity of it leaves the list of possible suspects very long.

All you really need is “someone with a yellow carnation, a shovel and trouble sleeping,” says Lila A. Fontes ’07. “I would say Lampoon people, but it’s not offensive enough to be a prank done by the Lampoon.”

No matter who did it, the some students wish that it was permanent. “I have to say, Harvard’s landscaping is horrible,” Fontes says. “If one lonely flower can brighten a few minutes of my day, imagine what a difference it would make if every Harvard student snuck into the Yard to plant flowers at night at some point during the year.”

Plant a flower, pass it on.