While you’re browsing the tables at your favorite plant sale or nursery, you may notice that many of the plant treasures tempting you have “henryi” or some similar variation in their name. In most cases, these honor Augustine Henry, the Irish customs official who worked for the Chinese government in western China during the 1880s and 1890s.
Henry was not sent there to collect plant specimens, but that was his passion, and his day job allowed him far greater access than most outsiders had to the rich flora of the countryside. His discoveries and his tireless efforts to share those discoveries—through his letters and the seeds, bulbs, and dried plant specimens he sent back to Europe—led to many, many important plants being introduced to western horticulture.
My excitement over Henry was sparked by my recent reading of In the Footsteps of Augustine Henry and his Chinese plant collectors by Seamus O’Brien. The author not only tells the history of his fellow Irishman, he also tells of his own recent expeditions to the areas that Henry explored, especially those that were soon after destroyed by the rising waters of the Three Gorges Dam.
You can join in celebrating Henry by buying some of his plants, including Lilium henryi, Parthenocissus henryana (Silvervein Creeper), and Rhododendron augustinii. Other plants introduced because of his research—and the enthusiasm for the plants of western China that his research sparked—include Acer griseum (Paperbark Maple), Davidia involucrata (Dove Tree), and Hamamelis mollis (Chinese Witch Hazel).
In the Footsteps is also a winner of The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries’ Annual Literature Award for 2012, one of the highest awards for a book on horticulture or botany. Please come and take a look at this very special book in the Miller Library.
Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Fall 2012