Douglas Fir: The Story of the West’s Most Remarkable Tree

There are many rare and unusual trees and shrubs in the Washington Park Arboretum. Standing aside (and sometimes out-competing) these wonderful exotics is the native matrix of trees, especially tall conifers. Perhaps the most iconic of these is the Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). “Douglas Fir: The Story of the West’s Most Remarkable Tree” is a comprehensive new book by Stephen Arno and Carl Fiedler about this tree native from northern British Columbia to the high mountains of Mexico.

There two distinct varieties of the Douglas-fir. The coastal tree (P. m. var. menziesii) that we are familiar with in Seattle and is found along the coast south to the California Bay Area. The inland variety (P. m. var. glauca) has an even wider distribution east of the coastal ranges and into the Rocky Mountains. The ecological success of both varieties highlights their adaptability, supported by an extra set of chromosomes when compared to most of the other West Coast conifers. In simple terms, this means the “Douglas-fir is nature’s all-purpose tree.”

This malleable nature has caused more than its share of nomenclature issues. Is it a fir? A pine? A spruce? The answer is none of the above. The genera Pseudotsuga translates as “false hemlock” – a rather unfortunate compromise. Even the common name has varied, although the Seventh International Botanical Congress in 1950 settled on “Douglas-fir” and that form is used throughout this book (although the hyphen is oddly missing from the book’s title).

The coast Douglas-fir is one of the tallest plant species in the world. Its loftiest example (at 327’) currently ranks number three behind the height champions of the Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens at 380.3’) and Eucalyptus regnans (329.7’) of southeastern Australia. An especially engaging part of this book discusses the credible possibility of historical Douglas-fir specimens, taken down for lumber one hundred or more years ago, that likely exceeded 400’ in height.

While Euro-Americans quickly recognized the value of Douglas-fir wood for building, the indigenous people throughout the tree’s vast range were the first to use its timber this way, but they had many other uses, too. All parts of the tree are valuable and were used for preserving and flavoring food, for medicine, for crafting tools, in sacred ceremonies, and most importantly, providing heat. “Both varieties of Douglas-fir historically fulfilled myriad roles for native peoples and were the overwhelming choice for one critical daily need: fuel for their fires.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

[Braiding Sweetgrass] cover

Braiding Sweetgrass makes for good reading about all of the topics listed in the subtitle. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes engagingly, drawing the reader in. The book is full of information about Native American connections to plants. Because the author is a biologist, the scientific relationship to her Indigenous background is always made clear. Kimmerer is a member of the Potawatomi nation and a professor of environmental and forest biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

She weaves the title elements together with her life as the mother of two daughters in a series of loosely connected essays. Her main themes are gratitude and responsibility, qualities valued highly among Native American peoples, values she argues are necessary if we are to save our planet from climate change and especially from our own greed. No one will find saving plants important enough to make sacrifices, she insists, unless they have a relationship with those plants.

Each chapter combines essay with narration. For instance, in “Maple Sugar Moon” she begins by telling an Anishinaabe creation story about Nanabohzo, the Original Man, diluting the sap of the maple tree, which originally had come directly from the tree as syrup. Now many hours of boiling down are required to make the same syrup. He did so as punishment after people became lazy and had not expressed gratitude or acted responsibly toward nature’s gifts.

Then Kimmerer tells how she had her daughters collect many buckets of maple sap and spend hours boiling them down, using Native American methods – a lot of very hard work. She believes part of being a good mother was teaching the girls their heritage through this work. Mixed into her narrative Kimmerer explains scientifically how the tree creates sap and how the process benefits the tree. She is blending the elements of gratitude, to the tree for producing sap, and responsibility, the work of making the syrup for people to enjoy.

Kimmerer doesn’t expect her non-Indigenous readers to follow her own practices of asking plants’ permission before harvest or giving them a tobacco offering in gratitude. By including these practices, she does illustrate ways of developing human-plant relationships. With her students, described in other chapters, as with her daughters, she shows that by taking them into nature she can help them make those connections. The rest of us will have to find our own paths, perhaps using her examples as models. This book makes a convincing case that those connections are necessary for the future of the plant world and therefore of our own.

Published in The Leaflet, March 2021, Volume 8, Issue 3.

The Sakura Obsession

[The Sakura Obsession] cover

In Japan, “the sakura, or cherry-blossom, culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries revolved around the flower’s short life and swift, predictable death. The cherry blossom was ephemeral, like life itself.”

Naoko Abe wrote about this tradition in her native Japanese in a book published in 2016. It was very well received and there was immediate interest in an English translation. She decided instead to do further research, especially on the British roots of her story. In 2019 she published the largely newly-written Sakura Obsession, the source of the quotation above, in English. For this more global audience, she included the history of many societal practices likely unknown outside of Japan.

She also describes the wild species and the many cultivars and selections of Prunus made over the centuries in Japan. By the late 1800s, these had largely been pushed aside from gardens by Prunus x yedoensis ‘Somei-yoshino’ that as a clone, provided the uniformity desired for Japanese ceremonies. This is the cherry tree of the University of Washington Quad and the dominant variety planted at the Washington, D.C. Tidal Basin.

In a parallel storyline, Abe writes the biography of Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram (1880-1981), who rescued many out-of-favor cherry selections by bringing them from Japan to his English garden, later reintroducing them to their home country. It is also the study of the close relationship between two island nations and colonizing powers, Japan and Britain, and how horticulture was a common language.

There is a somber side to this history. As is possible in any culture, the symbolism of the flowers changed, especially for Japanese children, including Abe’s father, in the 1930s. “Rather than focusing on cherry blossom as a symbol of life, the songs, plays and school textbooks now focused more on death.” During World War II, branches of cherry blossoms were used to wave farewell to kamikaze pilots as they took off in their planes, going to their deaths.

On the whole, however, this is a book of hope and international goodwill. I didn’t expect to get hooked by this story but I did, and recommend it for the engaging narrative of intellectual exchange and horticultural history.

Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, February 2021, Volume 8, Issue 2.

Nature Obscura

[Nature Obscura] cover

In this second year of seemingly never-ending plague, Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner speaks directly to our condition. What better time to learn the pleasures of urban nature? Even now with some formidable restrictions, we can walk in our neighborhoods and look closely. The book focuses on Seattle, but most of the species described can be found in any city.

Each chapter builds a biography of a different life form, some more obvious, like Anna’s hummingbird, and others harder to see, or to see as wondrous, like the algae and insects in Brenner’s backyard pond. She even makes slime mold appealing. For that example and several others, the budding urban naturalist will need a hand lens, or in some cases a microscope, to discovery the intricacy and beauty of the subject.

In the chapter on dragonflies, Brenner begins by describing an adult emerging slowly from the larva. The description takes you right in: “Then the yellow eyes, still a muted brownish through the skin, begin to move like marbles sliding under a piece of tissue paper. . . . Next the adult slides out of the skin as if being squeezed from a tube of toothpaste.” The chapter includes the author’s visits to wetlands in Eugene OR, discussion of the distressing loss of wetlands in the Puget Sound area, which dragonflies require, and more adventures with these insects at the constructed wetlands at Magnuson Park in Seattle.

Brenner urges readers to pay close attention to what they see around them, to “get their eyes in” to focus on nature. Dr. Seuss’s first picture book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, begins with a boy instructed to watch carefully for surprising things every day on his walk home from school. Seuss’s boy imagines fantastic rather than real discoveries. Kelly Brenner wants you to see the amazing in what is there in front of your eyes.

The book’s cover and a few well done but unlabeled black and white illustrations help the reader visualize Brenner’s subjects. Many more would be helpful. Instead, blossoming urban naturalists will need to pursue the excellent bibliography to find images and more information. Each of the sixteen life forms described in the book has its own list of reference works – a gold mine indeed.

Published in The Leaflet, February 2021, Volume 8, Issue 2.

Eagle’s Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand and Supplement

Audrey Lily Eagle (born 1925) was born in New Zealand, but spent her adolescent years in Oxfordshire, England. There she learned a love of plants and began to draw and paint them. She also took training in engineering drafting, a skill that is apparent in the precision of her later work. When she returned to New Zealand, it became her passion to illustrate almost all of the woody flora of New Zealand, “over 800 species, subspecies, and unnamed plants. It is assumed that the number of any new finds is certain to be small.”

This passion took 54 years to complete. During that time, samples of her work were published in smaller books, but the project culminated in “Eagle’s Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand. Published in 2006, this two-volume work plus a supplement, was a gift to the Miller Library by the Seattle-Christchurch Sister City Association.

Initially she used her art as a way of learning plants, figuring that the time it took to paint a plant would fix the name and its distinctive features in her memory. She also studied botany and wrote the painstaking descriptions and sources for her subjects that accompany her illustrations. She insisted on painting live specimens, often done on family camping trips with her husband and two children throughout the North and South Islands. “My children, Alison and Paul, have endured my preoccupation with painting all their lives: ‘Don’t jog the table’, ‘stop the car I want to look at a plant’, even to the present time.”

The illustrations are almost all of natural size, with separate, enlarged illustrations of tiny flowers. Maori names are included when known. The native ranges, often given in both latitude and altitude, create an appreciation for New Zealand topography. For most entries, there are bibliographic references for more information.

The supplement is especially fascinating, showcasing Eagle’s keen interest in her subjects through years of networking with the botanical organizations and individual botanists of New Zealand. Here are the notes that wouldn’t fit in the illustrated volumes. For example, the habitat of Fuchsia procumbens, an easily grown groundcover in Seattle gardens, is described from a personal communication with one of her colleagues: “On beach terraces, banks, small gullies, and creek beds behind the beach and at base of pohutukawa trees (Metrosideros excelsa). It also grows in the coastal forest, estuary margins and scrubland, preferring dampness or some shelter.”

Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Wild Flowers

Emily Carr (1871-1945) was a native of Victoria, British Columbia and lived much of her life in that city. She is best known as a painter, but was also an accomplished writer. Many of her works in both disciplines reflected her passionate interest in the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island and other parts of British Columbia.

She also had a great love for the natural world and would camp out on Vancouver Island in a trailer she named Elephant. While recovering from a stroke, she completed a manuscript in early 1941 about wild flowers, expressing her desire to end her convalescent and experience the rebirth of spring.

Titled “Wild Flowers”, this work was not published until 2006 by the Royal BC Museum. As Carr’s paintings do not feature close-ups, the editor chose to pair her descriptions with the art of Emily Henrietta Woods (1852-1916). An early art teacher of Carr, Woods was noted for her full-size water color illustrations of wild flowers.

Carr has a distinctive way of describing her subjects. This is not a traditional field guide in any way, but reading it will give you a very different appreciation of some of our most familiar plants. She described our native dogwood (Cornus nuttallii) as resembling a “badly cooked flapjack”, Fritillaria affinis as “brown tulips”, while a mock-orange (Philadelphus lewisii) is an “understudy to true orange blossoms.”

Carr also had her own ideas about punctuation, making her plant descriptions especially lyrical. Of our native flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), she writes: “This bare little bush begins to erupt little bumps all along her wood branches at the first burst of spring every glint of cool sunshine swells the bumps a little more till presently they burst and out squeezes a folded up rosy little tuft of blossom with a sweet, tart smell, very invigorating.”

Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Native Flora of Louisiana: Watercolor Drawings

Margaret Stones (1920-2018) was born in Australia but spent much of her career in Britain. She was the principal contributing artist to Curtis’s Botanical Magazine from 1958-1981 and illustrated three gardening books by the Scottish plant explorer E. U. M. Cox and his son Peter Cox in the 1950s and 1960s. She is perhaps most famous for illustrating the six-volume “The Endemic Flora of Tasmania” published between 1967 and 1978.

She came to America for the bicentennial celebration in 1976, when Louisiana State University commissioned her to illustrate the “Native Flora of Louisiana.” This project eventually included 200 watercolors of the native plants and wasn’t completed until 1990. The stunning, folio size, limited edition book of these images only became available in 2018.

Both of these massive endeavors are highlights of the Miller Library’s botanical art book collection, with design and printing qualities much higher than the average flora. These are huge books: “Tasmania” measuring 16” high by 12” wide and “Louisiana” just slightly smaller. This makes the detail and artistry especially vibrant. Stones insisted on drawing from live specimens and would often seek examples in the wild. Other subjects were freshly picked plants flown from their source to her residence near Kew Gardens.

Author Phillip Cribb wrote in her obituary for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Volume 36, 2019): “During her life, Margaret fought hard for botanical artists to receive the recognition and recompense that their work demanded. Her contemporaries revered her for her efforts to promote the discipline and the present generation of botanical artists, most who did not know her, have benefited from her determination.”

Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

The Endemic Flora of Tasmania

“I am glad that the month of October 1970 has been assigned to us for displaying the original artwork for The Endemic Flora of Tasmania.” This is the beginning of a letter written in December 1969 to Brian O. Mulligan, the Director of what was known then as the University of Washington Arboretum. The writer was Robert D. Monroe, the Chief of Special Collections Division of the University Library (now University Libraries) which would host the exhibit in the Smith Room of Suzzallo Library.

Monroe continues, suggesting an opening night reception for the exhibit. “We could sponsor this jointly, but all expenses would be met by the library. The guest list–50 couples being our limit–could be composed of 25 couples named by you and 25 by us. We should have a speaker for the evening.”

My research into this event was unsuccessful in determining who was chosen as speaker. Mulligan did not suggest any individuals in his reply letter. However, the exhibit of 40 water colors by Margaret Stones (1920-2018) did occur as part of a tour of ten North American botanical gardens and arboreta in 1970.

These paintings were chosen from the first two volumes of “The Endemic Flora of Tasmania.” This work eventually totaled six volumes published between 1967 and 1978. Stones’ precise illustrations presented a largely unknown flora to the world, with detailed text of both the botanical and ecological context by Winnifred Mary Curtis (1905-2005).

While Stones did not come to Seattle with her artwork, she was already well known for her botanical illustration skills. She illustrated three gardening books by the Scottish plant explorer E. U. M. Cox and his son Peter Cox in the 1950s and 1960s. She was the principal contributing artist to Curtis’s Botanical Magazine between 1958-1981.

This massive endeavor is a highlight of the Miller Library’s botanical art book collection, with design and printing qualities much higher than the average flora. These are huge books, measuring 16” high by 12” wide. This makes the detail and artistry especially vibrant. Stones insisted on drawing from live specimens and would often seek examples in the wild. Other subjects were freshly picked plants flown from their source to her residence near Kew Gardens.

Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Mexican Flowering Trees and Plants

Helen Fowler O’Gorman (1904-1984) grew up in Wisconsin but graduated in fine arts and architecture from the University of Washington. She began her career as sculptor and went to Mexico in 1940 to continue her studies with painter Diego Rivera. He encouraged her to concentrate on painting and over the next two decades, she developed a passion for illustrating the native and garden plants of her adopted country, leading to the publication of “Mexican Flowering Trees and Plants” in 1961.

At the time of their meeting, Rivera was married to painter Frida Kahlo. Together, they lived in a house designed by the Irish-Mexican architect (and painter) Juan O’Gorman, Helen’s future husband. Together, the O’Gormans designed and built Casa Cueva, their home and landscape that partially encompassed a natural cave.

Helen O’Gorman’s book demonstrates not only her skill as a painter, but in the text her knowledge of Mexican botany and horticulture. She was particularly interested in the gardening heritage of the Aztecs and other pre-Hispanic peoples. “Innumerable plants were sacred to the Aztecs and certain flowers were set aside by the priests for religious rituals.”

While she includes the ethnobotanical uses of plants for food, medicines, and dyes, she emphasizes the passion these civilizations had to grow flowers for ornamental purposes and as perfumes. The latter use was considered especially important for reducing fatigue or providing a mild stimulant. This practice was picked up by the conquering Spanish, a fact O’Gorman discovered in a surviving administration document on the “treatment of the weary office holder of the 16^th Century.”

The author regards this book as an attempt to introduce “the most noticeable flowering plants” to her readers. Most are natives, while a few are popular introductions. Each entry includes some botanically distinguishing features, but this is less a field guide and more an invitation to share the appreciation and various uses of these plants across the breadth of Mexico.

For example, most species of cosmos are native to Mexico. Referring to our common garden cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus), she describes: “In the state of Michoacán one sees a breathtaking sight: solid pink fields of them, often bordered with the yellow of wild mustard.” She also highlights how a decoction of another species found in North American gardens, C. sulphureus, “is employed to fight the effects of the sting of the scorpion” with small cup given the sting victim every hour.

Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

When Emily Carr met Woo

Emily Carr was known for her menagerie of animals. She bred dogs, had several cats, a parrot, and a pet rat, but she is perhaps most remember for the Javanese macaque she found at a Victoria pet shop in 1923. This story is captured in the Youth collection book “When Emily Carr Met Woo” by Monica Kulling and illustrated by Dean Griffiths. While tragedy nearly befell Woo in this story, in life he was a muse for Carr for some 15 years.

She named the monkey “Woo” after the sound he made while riding on Carr’s shoulders as she strolled the Victoria harborside, typically pushing an old pram filled with puppies and other pets. This scene is permanently captured in a 2010 sculpture of Carr, Woo, and the dog Billie by Barbara Paterson, sited prominently near the harbor.

Excerpted from the Winter 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin