In the Footsteps of Augustine Henry and his Chinese Plant Collectors

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

Native Trees for North American Landscapes: From the Atlantic to the Rockies

Native tree for North American landscapes cover
In Native Trees for North American Landscapes: From the Atlantic to the Rockies , the sub-title is very important as trees native only west of the Rockies are excluded. But almost all trees that are included can be found in the Arboretum, and many are widely planted in our region and are available in nurseries.

As the title suggests, authors Guy Sternberg and Jim Wilson address their book to gardeners and landscape designers, but there is also much here to interest those who love trees for their place in the natural landscape and as interwoven with human history. The quality and diversity of the photography is impressive, and well linked with the engaging text.

Excerpted from the Summer 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.

Bamboo for Gardens

Bamboo for gardens cover Bamboo for Gardens is written by Washington State resident, Ted Meredith. While most of the photos are close-ups of their subject, it’s fun to see rhododendrons or a Douglas fir lurking in the background of wider shots.

Wherever you live, this would be an important and useful book. While there is the expected A-Z encyclopedia of species, it is unusual that the introductory material–such as culture, propagation, uses in the landscape–fills more than half the book. Some unexpected treasures can be found here, including the use of bamboo in both traditional and modern economies, and tips on eating bamboo.

You will learn, for example, that the shoots of Qiongzhuea tumidissinoda “are considered exceptional.” The fun continues in the encyclopedia section as we learn that this same, nearly unpronounceable species, which hails from central China, is harvested for walking sticks, and “…is the subject of history, myth, and fable in Chinese culture, dating back to at least the Han Dynasty in the first or second century B.C.”

While the author keeps the writing interesting, the more mundane information is very solid, including his discussions of how to deal with “…an attack from the demonic plant that invaded unexpectedly and ceaselessly, and could not be stopped or killed.” With the voice of experience and fondness that one might expect to be used on an errant puppy, Meredith carefully explains the different methods of containment for running bamboo.

Excerpted from the Summer 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.

American Grown

book First Lady Michelle Obama’s new book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America (Crown Publishers, 2012) has much to say about gardening as a learning process. A novice gardener, she doesn’t hesitate to admit that not all of the Kitchen Garden efforts succeeded on the first try: there were raised berms that succumbed to foot traffic and were replaced with untreated wooden boxes, troubles with cutworms, and trials and tribulations with pumpkins. But her motivation to create a food garden on the South Lawn with the participation of numerous horticulturists, chefs, and schoolchildren, has resulted in a beautiful, productive example for every aspiring urban farmer (even someone without a staff of dozens or a large growing space!).

For readers who want to cultivate a closer relationship to the source of the food we eat (either by growing our own or by supporting small farms), this book is a good starting point. The book, which opens with a brief history of gardens at the White House, is arranged by season, and includes plans, descriptions of techniques and hands-on growing experiences, and recipes. Various experts on the garden staff contribute parts of the text. Seattle makes two appearances in the section on “How Our Gardens Grow Stronger Communities,” with a page on Picardo Farm P-Patch, and a historic photo of Pike Place Market. The book ends with a resource list and bibliography.

If you are curious about the source of initial hesitation/opposition to the first White House beehive ever, here’s a hint: the beehive is sited not far from the basketball court!

Conifers of California

Conifers of California cover Conifers of California is a delightful introduction to many of our native conifers, as well as the incredible diversity of these cone bearing trees to be found further down the coast. Author Ronald M. Lanner writes what could be best described as a biography of each tree, telling the natural history and the interaction of each with humans and animals. While there are helpful descriptions, (including “At a distance”, “Standing beneath it”, and “In the hand”), this is not primarily a field guide.

The photographs are excellent, but a bigger visual draw are the botanical paintings by Eugene Otto Walter Murman (1874-1962), which besides being beautiful, clearly show the distinctiveness of the cones, cone scales, seeds, needles in a single bundle, and a growing tip. Adding to the history are quotes by some of the great describers of trees, including Charles Sprague Sargent, John Muir, and, one of my favorites, Donald Culross Peattie.

I’m adding Lanner to this list. His descriptions of the relationship between the Clark’s nutcracker and whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), or the unusual combinations of factors that lead to the long, long lives of the bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), are detailed and lengthy but totally engaging.

Of incense-cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) he explains how forestry practices have led to a population explosion of this tree little valued by the timber industry. This is “…good for those Americans who eschew the use of greasy-inked ballpoint pens, because incense-cedar is the unrivaled champion of available domestic pencilwoods. It may not be so good for those…who must past through thickets…for those thin dead, lower limbs seem always positioned to welt a cheek or poke an unsuspecting eye.”

Many of the rarer California conifers can be found in the Arboretum and this book is a good introduction. Look for the Coulter pine (Pinus coulteri) but don’t stand under its eight pound cones
“with talonlike appendages”, while from the Siskiyou Mountains comes the weeping Brewer spruce (Picea breweriana) with “long, dark-foliaged, pendulous branches.”

The Brother Gardeners

Brothers gardeners cover Andrea Wulf, in The Brother Gardeners, starts at the beginning of the 18th century. Up to that time gardening was “traditionally the preserve of the aristocracy…now, amateur gardeners began to take an obsessive interest in their smaller plots.” Her focus is on the transformation in England, but much of this was fueled by the interchange with American gardeners and particularly the importing of American plants to English gardens.

Most compelling is the four decades of correspondence between Peter Collinson (1694-1768), a merchant and avid gardener in London, and John Bartram (1699-1777), a farmer and self-taught botanist near Philadelphia. Bartram regularly shipped boxes of seeds, pressed plants, and occasionally live plants, while in exchange Collinson would ship books and tools, and even clothes for Bartram’s family.

Collinson would use his connections to introduce Bartram wealthy and learned Americans, hoping to find new and different plants. These introductions came with specific instructions, “‘Pray go very Clean, neat & handsomely Dressed to Virginia’ and don’t ‘Disgrace thyself or Mee.'” As time passed, however, the roles changed as the farmer from the colonies began to assert his importance in these exchanges, forcing Collinson and his clients from the English learned class to recognize Bartram’s knowledge, skills, and importance to their endeavors.

Excerpted from the Spring 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.

The Naming of Names

Naming of names cover Anna Pavord’s The Naming of Names sets the groundwork for the system of nomenclature we use so freely today. More than just names, this book chronicles the development of human understanding of plants, how they live and propagate, but most importantly how we’ve come to identify and categorized them.

While beginning in the classical period, the core of this story is set in the revival of science during the Renaissance, from about 1400 – 1700. Pavord treats her human subjects as protagonists in a story of the development of the science of botany, and while supported with excellent scholarship, the writing is also very passionate.

The last hero of her narrative is the English scholar and plantsman John Ray (1627-1705), who she credits with the invention of the discipline of taxonomy. “No fireworks, no claps of thunder, no swelling symphonic themes mark Ray’s achievement. It is a quiet, lonely, dogged consummation, and, in its insistence on the importance of method before system, critical in shaping future thinking on the subject to which he had devoted the whole of his adult life.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.

Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime

Defiant Gardens cover Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime (2007) is not an easy book to read. The descriptions of the front lines, prison camps, Jewish ghettos, and Japanese internment camps from the first half of the 20th century are brutal, detailed, and very unsettling.

But this is also an important book to read. For those faced with the extremes of human suffering, “Gardens conformed to the expected cycle of seasons and growth and life; a garden was a demonstration of life in order, not a world turned upside down.”

Author Kenneth Helphand is a Pacific Northwest author–a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon. He was motivated to write this book by an image of French soldiers beside their small vegetable gardens created while dug in at the front of World War I. His extensive research led him around the world to visit many of the original sites, even if the gardens are long gone.

While these observations give perspective, the heart of this book are the many personal narratives the author found in his research. These tell of the efforts despite great odds to nurture a garden, of the importance these gardens gave both for sustenance and emotional well-being, and the amazing strength of the human spirit.

Excerpted from the Spring 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.

Fruits and Plains

Fruits and Plains cover Philip Pauly was a professor of history at Rutgers University. His book, Fruits and Plains , was published by Harvard University Press. These are high academic credentials for a book that at first glance appears to be about gardening. But this is no ordinary gardening book. As suggested by the sub-title, The Horticultural Transformation of America, this is a serious study of the importance of horticulture to all aspects of American life particularly from the founding of the country well into the 20th century.

The key here is the term horticulture. To Pauly, “In general conversation it is an upmarket synonym for gardening” and includes the design, selection, and maintenance of plants in private and public gardens. But he uses the term more broadly and claims that in the 1800s, “horticulture was equivalent to what is now call plant biotechnology.”

The early history he recounts is focused on utility of gardens, particularly fruit producing trees and shrubs. Later he turns to arboriculture, highlighting the arguments for and against native and exotics species; century old arguments that continue today.

But of perhaps greatest interest is chapter nine, “Culturing Nature in the Twentieth Century”. Here are some keen insights to focus of gardeners today and the cultural environment at the time of the founding of the Washington Park Arboretum.

Excerpted from the Spring 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker: Traveler and Plant Collector

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker cover Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker: Traveler and Plant Collector (2001) by Ray Desmond is a marvelous travelogue, masking as a biography. Our hero took two multi-year expeditions (to Antarctica, New Zealand, and Australia from 1839-1843; and to India and the Himalayas from 1847-1851) as well as shorter trips to Morocco, Palestine, and the United States.

All the while he was observing, documenting, and collecting plants, leading to the publications of the native floras of these regions. Even better for us today, he was sketching the plants, landscapes, native peoples, and many other attractions. These sketches, and the botanical illustrations made by others from them, make this a richly illustrated book.

The text is engaging, detailing the trials of travel for both man and plants. Hooker “coped remarkably well with the rigours of botanising in the Himalayas. This he attributed to abstinence…a diet of meat and potatoes, and never over-eating.”

“His problems as a plant collector did not cease with the boxing and parceling of plants and seeds. Sometimes they were lost or dropped into rivers on the journey to Calcutta; often they died before they reached the port.” He tried wrapping seeds in “tins, oilcloth wrapping, paper packets. Sometimes he posted them in letters. But…too often they reached their destination damp or rotting or eaten by insects.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2012 Arboretum Bulletin.