Flora Wonder Blog: Botanists of Yore: Ghosts in the Garden

Georg Kamel

Hosta sieboldiana

There are numerous people – well...characters – whom I've never directly met, yet they haunt (usually pleasantly) my Flora Wonder Arboretum. Sometimes they appear in generic plant names such as Hosta, coined for the Austrian physician Nicholas Thomas Host (1761-1834), or with Camellia named for the Jesuit botanist Father Georg Joseph Kamel (1661-1706), where the word camellia translates to “helper of the priest.” Kamel was known to practice botany for pharmaceutical purposed in the 1600s. Then, there are plenty of specific epithets that help praise the earth's flora and its chroniclers such as sieboldii, forrestii, wardii, delavayi etc., named for those plant pioneers who discovered or helped to systematize the trees and bushes that we take for granted today.

The general public would probably consider the names above as inconsequential, but the earnest gardener celebrates the human achievements in botany and horticulture. For you latter, come with me, then, into my Flora Wonder Arboretum where we'll acknowledge the luminaries* of the past and celebrate their contributions to horticulture.

Linnaea borealis

*Sadly, the greatest botanic documentarian of all time, Carl von Linne, (Carolus Linnaeus in Latin), is not represented today by any plant in my collection, except that I used to grow Linnaea borealis, a circumboreal groundcover in the honeysuckle (Caprifoliaceae) family, but thirty years ago a misguided Buchholz employee killed it with herbicide, considering it a mere weed.

Tsuga mertensiana 'Bump's Blue'

A favorite conifer of mine, which I discussed in last week's blog, is Tsuga mertensiana. The “Mountain hemlock” name honours Karl Heinrich Mertens (1796-1830), a German botanist and naturalist who explored the coasts of Russian America and Asia. Scientifically, German and Russian nationalities were once seemingly interchangeable, and today we try to figure out whom was working for whom. It ultimately came down to who sponsored the particular expedition, and I suppose to what purpose. In any case, the Mertens voyage included the ornithologist Kittlitz and the mineralogist Postels, and together they collected and described over a thousand new species of animal life, and two-and-a-half thousand specimens of plants, algae and rocks. After the American expedition Mertens sailed to Iceland but died two weeks later at age 34.

Picea smithiana

Picea smithiana 'Pakistan'

Sir James Edward Smith

Picea smithiana is the “West Himalayan spruce” and when young-to-medium age it is a graceful evergreen with drooping branchlets. It grows at altitudes between 7800-11800' (2400m - 3600m) together with other lax, soft-looking conifers such as Cedrus deodara, Pinus wallichiana and Abies pindrow. It is also known as “Morinda spruce,” where morinda means “nectar,” referring to the resin drops often beading on the cones. The species is listed as hardy to USDA zone 7 (0F-10F), so as an ornamental we found a limited market for it; however a sizable specimen exists at the US National Arboretum in Washington DC. We grew P. smithiana for a dozen years or so, but discontinued due to an insect pest that would lay eggs in the leader and the ensuing grubs would kill the top. My remaining specimens consist of one compact form that developed as a witch's broom – with the unfortunate name of 'Himalaya Hexe' – and a full-sized tree at Flora Farm which broods in the Upper Gardens. The species was described by Nathaniel Wallich in 1884, but we don't positively know who was the honoree; two choices include 1) James Edward Smith, the founding president of the Linnean Society and 2)a Mr. Smith, a Scottish gardener who raised the first trees from seed sent to him in 1818. But maybe it was Wallich's intention to kill two birds with one cone.

Pinus wallichiana

Pinus wallichiana 'Solburger'

Pinus bhutanica

And speaking of Nathaniel Wallich, he is honoured with the name of the Himalayan pine (“Blue pine”) P. wallichiana which occurs in the same general region as Picea smithiana. In its eastern range it grows into Bhutan, and I have seen it there at 5000-8000' elevation. In that locale it is known as the “Bhutan pine,” but should not be confused with the more tender P. bhutanica. P. wallichiana usually displays an open, airy canopy, but branchlets are clad with long, glimmering needles in fascicles of five. For me there was no market for the straight species, but I've never had trouble selling the variegated cultivars of 'Zebrina' and 'Frosty' – but be damn careful you don't mix up those two selections. The supposed cultivar 'Nana' is smaller in all respects, and with its much-shorter needles I wonder if it's a possible cross with Pinus strobus. I also used to peddle a particular clone, not really a cultivar, from the Otto Solburger collection that I identified as P.w. 'Solburger'.

Dryopteris wallichiana

Lilium wallichianum

Nathaniel Wallich

Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854) was a Danish surgeon and botanist who was stationed near Calcutta, and who eventually worked for the Danish East India Company and the British East India Company. He was in the right place (albeit in the hell-hole of Calcutta) at the right time to describe new species and accumulate a herbarium collection. He was appointed assistant to William Roxburgh, the East India Company's botanist. Wallich supervised the development of the Royal Botanical Garden, Calcutta, and on one hot muggy afternoon I explored those grounds when I was in my 20s. Wallich deserves a lot of credit, for while enduring the unhealthy Bengal atmosphere, he nevertheless prepared a catalog of more than 20,000 specimens, all collected by himself, or from others at the same time like Roxburgh, Griffith and Wight. Now known as the Wallich Collection, it is housed at the Kew Herbarium in London. There are dozens of species named for Wallich such as Schima wallichii (argentea), Dryopteris wallichiana, Sarcococca wallichii, Euphorbia wallichii, Lilium wallichianum, and many others besides the pine, so I frequently bump into the botanist of yore as I wander through the Flora Wonder Arboretum.

Pinus roxburghii

William Roxburgh

William Roxburgh (1751-1815) preceded Wallich in India, and the Scottish surgeon/botanist is considered the Father of Indian botany, in particular economic botany. In addition to the numerous species that he named, many were named in his honour by his peers, but the only one I have ever grown is Pinus roxburghii, the “Chir pine.” The long silver-green needles are borne in fascicles of three, while the trunk is a thick red-brown and deeply fissured. Its range is northern Pakistan, east throughout the Himalayan foothills...all the way to eastern Bhutan, a distance of over 1500 miles (2400km). Interestingly, P. roxburghii is closely related to the Canary Island Pine (P. canariensis) which occurs off the coast of Africa. According to Rushforth in Conifers: “Fossils indicate that the two species once formed a single population stretching from the Canary Isles across southern Europe to the Himalayas.”

Acer shirasawanum

A “Japanese maple” collection can contain many species, but usually three take precedence: Acer palmatum, A. japonicum and A. shirasawanum. Certainly from a commercial perspective, those three consist of 95% of our sales, with other species such as A. pycnanthum, A. micranthum, A. miyabei, A. nipponcium and many others relegated to “obscure” status. Of the big three, A. palmatum is produced in greatest numbers with A. shirasawanum being number two. Fortunately both species are graft-compatible, except that some propagators (like the late J.D. Vertrees) consider A. shirasawanum to be the more difficult. My experience is not that case, as long as one begins with a sharp knife, employs a good grafter and obtains healthy one-year scions. I will concede that growing-on the A. shirasawanum cultivars is more of a challenge than with most palmatum selections, as the former is usually more bush-like versus tree-like palmatums. A. shirasawanum branches zig-zag sideways and none seem to volunteer to form a leader. Staking the hell out of them is how most growers deal with the situation, but at Buchholz Nursery we prune vigorously, again and again as necessary, and eventually we can achieve a nicely-shaped tree. Our customers are happy with the product because the pruning usually leads to a heavier trunk caliper than those provided by our stake-whip competitors.

Acer shirasawanum 'JB-F'

I admit that when I began my nursery 42 years ago I couldn't pronounce shirasaswanum, and indeed some of my current customers struggle with the name. Furthermore I didn't even know what it meant; palmatum was obviously “palm-like” and japonicum was “from Japan;” but I didn't know if shirasawanum was a place name or a description for some botanical feature, or just what. A few years later I collected a Picea shirasawae, a species not recognized by The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs (2019), but is described in Rushforth's Conifers (1987) where it is considered “very rare on Mount Yatsuga-dake in Honshu Province...It may be a stabilized hybrid between Alcock [Picea bicolor] and Koyama [Picea koyamae] spruce. Zone 6.”

Homi Shirasawa

I later discovered that the Acer shirasawanum maple as well as the Picea shirasawae spruce were named in honour of Japanese botanist Homi Shirasawa (1868-1947) who worked with the famous Tomitaro Makino, the “Father of Japanese Botany,” at the University of Tokyo. Unlike for Makino, scant information is available for Shirasawa, and I'm somewhat confused because his first name is also known as Miho and also Yasuyoshi, but I presume that we're talking about the same botanist.

Tomitaro Makino

Rhododendron makinoi

It's obvious that Shirasawa toiled in the shadow of Makino (1862-1957), for not only is the latter known as the “Father of Japanese Botany,” but his country also celebrates Botany Day, an event that honours his April 24^th birthday. Makino was fascinated with plants at an early age, and as an adult he loved to collect specimens. Until he was bedridden before death, he would collect in the countryside, and his personal herbarium contained about 400,000 plants. In 1936 he published the Makino Book of Botany where 6,000 species are described, 1,000 of which he discovered. Using the Linnaean system of classification he published again, his Makino's Illustrated Flora of Japan (1940), an encyclopedic text that my wife used for her degree in Landscape Architecture. Before I even met Haruko I already was growing Rhododendron makinoi, a species I love for its long narrow leaves which reminds me of the Chinese Rhododendron roxieanum.

Polystichum makinoi

Another choice Makino plant is the fern Polystichum makinoi, “Makino's holly fern.” Sue Olsen in her Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns describes its “forest-green, luminescent blades,” and they certainly do shine in the shade garden. Olsen adds that the species grows in “humus-rich duff in the forests of Japan, China, Taiwan and the Himalayas,” and with such a range one wonders why it wasn't named earlier.

Rhododendron 'Yaku Fairy'

Keisuke Ito

Rhododendron cultivars are often – too often – named for people, so we're stuck with groaner names such as 'Dear Grandad', 'Creeping Jenny', 'Cutie', 'Dopey', 'Faggetter's Favourite', 'Swamp Beauty', 'Mrs. W.C. Slocock', 'Woodcock', 'Wee Bee' and many others. 'Wee Bee' is R. campylogynum 'Patricia' x R. keiskei 'Yaku Fairy', and while I've never grown the cross, R. keiskei 'Yaku Fairy' has long been on the Buchholz Ark. The keiskei epithet honours Keisuke Ito (1803-1901), another Japanese botanist. Besides botany, or in conjunction with botany, he was a medical practitioner and biologist, best known for developing a smallpox vaccine in 1852. He was initially known as Gofuku-cho, and maybe he changed his name to avoid endless ribbing (gofuku you). At age 25 he travelled to Nagasaki to study Western science under the famous botanist and physician Philipp von Siebold. At age 27 Keisuke Ito published his first book, Tasai Bonzou Meiso, a survey of plant names and their Japanese and Chinese translations. I can relate to him as our interests coincide, except that he was blessed with brains while I was limited to just a strong back.

Rhododendron augustinii

Rhododendron augustinii 'Smoke'

I can understand plant epithets that honour the last name of the discoverer or the botanist. Thus we have Picea wilsonii and Acer henryi, with the former referring to Ernest Wilson and the latter for Augustine Henry. It seems excessive, however, if the individual's first name is used specifically, such as Abies ernestii (now A. recurvata var. ernestii), named in honour of Ernest Wilson, or for Rhododendron augustinii which rewards Augustine Henry. I have grown all four – Picea wilsonii, Abies ernestii, Acer henryi and Rhododendron augustinii, with the Rhododendron being my favorite. Hillier celebrates the species: “A large, small-leaved shrub with blue flowers in April and May. In its best forms, this beautiful Chinese species is one of the finest of all rhododendrons...The name commemorates Augustine Henry who first found it. China (Hubei, E. Sichuan). Introduced 1899 by Farges.”

Paul Guillaume Farges

...Hmm, “introduced by Farges.” Father Paul Guillaume Farges (1844-1912) was a French Catholic missionary and plant collector, and I grow a fair number of fargesii specific epithets, but I'll spare the reader further verbiage. The point of the blog is that I can reminisce about numerous plantsmen and botanists as I wander through my gardens. For me their spirits lurk in the bushes, and not just in my botanic garden and nursery, but I also encounter the ghosts of yore as I drive through my home-town of Forest Grove, Oregon, or anywhere else for that matter. Horticulture must be a dreadful occupation for those unable or unwilling to enliven the endeavor with knowledge about plant names. As with people, every plant has a story...