Seamus O’Brien is another modern day plant explorer. Between 2012-2015, he led four tours of small groups to explore the rich flora of Sikkim, the tiny state of India wedged between Nepal and Bhutan, and butting up against the Himalayas. This landscape creates vast extremes in topography and climate, and an especially rich variety of plants in an area only slightly larger than King County.
Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was one of the prominent plant explorers of the 19th century with voyages to Antarctica, the Middle East, Morocco, and western North America. He is arguably best remembered for his three years in and around Sikkim from 1849-1852. At that time, it was an independent kingdom and the crossroads of several distinct cultures.
O’Brien wrote “In The Footsteps of Joseph Dalton Hooker” about his trips to Sikkim, skillfully weaving his travel stories around a biography of Hooker’s trip. “Unlike Hooker, our mission was not to collect, but to study and compare places he visited and to record how they had fared and appeared over 160 years later. In some ways Sikkim has changed little over the course of time.”
The main goal of each man was finding plants, and especially rhododendrons. Hooker discovered many, and confirmed and accurately described several other species for science. O’Brien’s group sought many of the same plants in the same locations where Hooker found them. Each was also interested in the people and the animals of Sikkim.
The result is a rich dialogue between two eras. Many of the physical and flora features of Hooker’s day are still there. An example is “Hooker’s Rock,” a gigantic boulder in the Lachen valley, probably deposited by retreating glaciers. Hooker sketched it in great detail and included a circle of seated villagers and a couple of enormous yaks in the foreground. O’Brien includes photos of the same rock, and even captured a large, black yak posed in front! Hooker also adopted a Tibetan mastiff named Kinchin to be his companion and fierce protector. Sadly, Kinchin perished during a river crossing, but O’Brien was able to find similar – if somewhat more placid – dogs of the same lineage.
Seeds of many of the Rhododendrons that Hooker sent home were planted at an estate south of Dublin. Conditions here closely match the climate, soil, and rainfall of Sikkim and the plants are still flourishing. This estate became the National Botanic Garden, Kilmacurragh of Ireland in 1996 (an annex to the gardens at Glasnevin). O’Brien took a position managing these gardens in 2006. The awe he felt for these “Hooker rhododendrons” every spring gave him the incentive to see them in their native land.
Excerpted from the Fall 2019 Arboretum Bulletin.