Pilgrimage for Plants

 

Frank Kingdon-Ward

One of the most astute and remarkably industrious figures in horticultural history would describe Francis Ward (1885-1958), better known as Frank Kingdon-Ward.* He was an accomplished plant explorer and author who discovered and introduced garden-worthy species from Asia, and while at home in England between his 22 expeditions he penned accounts of his adventures headed by delicious titles such as The land of the Blue Poppy (1913), The Mystery Rivers of Tibet (1923), Burma's Icy Mountains (1949) etc., along with more plebian publications like Commonsense Rock Gardening (1948), Rhododendrons for Everyone (1926) and Berried Treasure (1954). For his efforts he received accolades such as the OBE (Order of the British Empire), VMH (Victoria Medal of Honour), Honorable Member of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, USA and, perhaps his most cherished, “Honourable Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners of the City of London.”

*His father's name was Ward, while his mother's maiden name was Kingdon, so his name at birth was Ward, Francis Kingdon; but from 1946 onward he preferred Kingdon-Ward, Frank.

Lilium mackliniae

I have acquired most of his literary works, some first editions, and I also possess a biography of sorts, Pilgrimage For Plants, published in 1960 by his surviving wife, Jean Macklin Kingdon-Ward. Therein I read: “During the First World War he served in the Indian Army, attaining the rank of captain. He was in Burma during the Second World War when the Japanese invaded the country, but, following routes known to him from his peace-time exploration, he escaped without much difficulty into India. Here he taught the armed forces about survival in the jungle. Immediately after the war the United States Government employed him to search for the wreckage of American planes and bodies of airmen who had crashed when flying from India to China. It was during one of these missions that in January 1946 he found the remains of a liliaceous plant on Mount Sirhoi in Manipur, which discovery led to the introduction of Lilium mackliniae.”

Frank Kingdon-Ward

Concerning Pilgrimage For Plants, William Stearn of the Department of Botany at the British Museum of Natural History, wrote:

“A series of essays mostly centring [sic] on a plant or a group of plants of special interest, it blends fragments of autobiography and speculations on plant-geography with first-hand accounts of the plants themselves in their natural habitats and their introduction into gardens. Kingdon-Ward's love of the high mountains runs through it all. Scarcely a week before his sudden unexpected death he was discussing with me the possibilities of a plant-collecting expedition into the Caucasus or northern Persia; he was also planning one to Vietnam. It is hard to believe that the rough hill trails will know his lean, tough frame no more.”

Jean Macklin

It is consoling to know that FK-W's second wife Jean, an accomplished botanist in her own right, accompanied him on his last five expeditions where she proved invaluable with the specimen collecting and processing. At the time FK-W was still rugged and virile, and photographs of Jean from the time help to explain why. Ms. Macklin's 1960 compendium includes the revealing essay by her late husband, One Long Holiday, where Ward relates that “I had just given a lecture on plant-hunting in Tibet” and after listening eagerly a woman came up to me and made the remark that “Your life must be one long holiday!” Ward didn't think so at the time, but he admitted to “showing slides of beautiful flowers unknown to Europe, of nameless snow mountains and glaciers, roaring rivers and aspiring forests; the people of the great hills too, smiling and friendly as they are – and it would ill become a lecturer to spoil such scenes with complaints of trials and tribulations, or accounts of endless uncongenial chores, and frequent disappointments and frustrations; I had not done so.”

FK-W then goes on to detail the luck and circumstances that evolved into his career as a “plant explorer.” He continues: “But where, in all these journeyings in the mountains of Southeast Asia, among tribesmen who spoke unintelligible languages, lay, exactly, the romance? I think very much in the untamed beauty of the landscape, in its form and colour, and also in the strong pull of untrodden ways – the ever-present hope that any day I might discover something – a flower, a mountain, a river or a lake – hitherto unknown, something new to science. There was always ample scope for such discovery.”

It is obvious that FK-W felt a duty, and was on a mission to deliver the goods, that the floral treasures of Asia – through his plant discoveries and their introductions...then accompanied with his adventurous prose – would win over the gardening public in England. Ward was urgent, or at least had an urge to dangle exotic delights, both visually and verbally, in front of us. About the earth's mantle of plants:

“The happy traveler [himself] must seek to convey some of that romance to others who have not had the good fortune to enjoy it; and what better means can there be of doing just that, than by introducing the plants which grow in these remote places into English gardens? One can describe and show pictures of sights seen in the far hills, but nothing is half so convincing as seeing the flowers which actually grow there; seeing them, not as specimens in a museum, but as living, breathing plants.”

That vision and purpose is what fueled FK-W as he trudged up and down the hills and through leech-infested forest even as he entered into his 70s.

Since Pilgrimage For Plants was a collection of essays, instead of reading it from beginning to end I first picked out the chapters that appealed to me most. I was intrigued by In Search of Tea, wondering what FK-W would add, especially since the Scotsman Robert Fortune had already swiped tea plants (Camellia sinensis) and tea-production techniques from the Chinese nearly one hundred years before. Ward relates: “From time to time I have been obliquely associated with the tea industry.”

The following chapter is interesting, but I wonder if Ward's assumption still holds true today: “So far as is known, all tea today is cultivated, or has at one time been cultivated. Neither Assam tea nor China tea has so far been found growing wild. The so-called 'wild tea' of Assam is only cultivated tea run wild after early village plantations have long been abandoned. But from time to time the Indian Tea Association, at the request of Dr. W. Wight, botanist at the Tocklai Experimental Station in Assam, has commissioned me to search for tea-like camellias. It was to be my business to collect material, including seeds, of any camellia found, and to report on its occurrence, and on its local use, if any.”

“Apart from the obvious utilitarian object of making a good tea better, the problem of the origin of a plant like Camellia sinensis is tantalizing to the geographical botanist. The unravelling of the tangled skein of evidence, incomplete as it is, is an enthralling exercise. Most people, who realize that the ceremony of tea-drinking has been carried on in China for three thousand years, naturally suppose that tea originated in China. So it may have done. But there is enough evidence – botanical, geographical, and even ethnological – to suggest that the art of making tea travelled not from east to west, but in the opposite direction. The first tea-drinkers may have lived on the borders of Assam, not in China at all. China has given us written records of tea-drinking from the earliest times, but none of the origin of the tea plant. More primitive people of course could not furnish any written records at all.”

Camellia sinensis

In the land of the Mishmi tribe, FK-W and his wife endured numerous hardships – adventures when later put to pen – and eventually in a jungle gulley they found their first camellia. “Nor was it just any camellia; it was definitely a form of C. sinensis, and as I thought at the time – and think still – very probably wild tea.” Later they discovered a group of tea-like plants with large three-celled fruits, and they collected the fruits and leaves, but FK-W's travelogue does not continue beyond that. He concludes: “It had not been a very satisfactory journey, having fallen far short of its objective. But at least the Mishmi hills had lived up to their reputation for strange plants, of which not the least strange was the large-fruited camellia.”

Certainly plant collecting has occurred in more recent times, and I would love to know the identity of FK-W's tea-like bush.

Chinese coffin

Another chapter that intrigued me is named Coffin Trees. FK-W writes: “The English, naturally enough, are concerned about the ever-rising cost of living. The Chinese, especially the rich Chinese, must be equally concerned about the ever-rising cost of dying. In China, good burial is more important than good birth. The most vital thing in life is to be buried well. The surest sign of a good burial is a grand funeral; and the symbol of a grand funeral is a grand coffin. The Chinese have a saying: 'The Best thing to look forward to in life is a good funeral'. Compared to the very large number of tree species native to China, those from which first-class coffins can be made are few. Forests, like other natural resources (and not in China only) are a dwindling asset; and coffin-trees disappear faster than most. Hence the ever-rising cost.”

Libocedrus macrolepis

“The best coffin-trees are conifers such as Libocedrus, Cunninghamia, and Taiwania, the latter a comparative newcomer. The resinous wood is durable under all conditions; and this is the quality which has top priority...The coffins themselves are of such good workmanship, and of such solid construction, that no harm is likely to come to them, or to the occupant; especially as they may never be put into the ground at all.”

Taiwania cryptomerioides

Taiwania cryptomerioides

Taiwania cryptomerioides

Taiwania cryptomerioides is native to Taiwan of course, but another population was discovered in the south Yunnan – north Burma (Myanmar) region, thousands of miles apart. That location was “discovered” – in the western sense – by J.H. Lace, a forest officer with a penchant for botany. However, the Chinese had known about the species and were using it for coffins long before. By the time that FK-W visited the area,“It was some time before I could persuade anyone to show me a full-grown tree. The Chinese were suspicious of my motives for wishing to see one.” FK-W speculates that unless anything is done soon – like replanting – Taiwania is likely to become locally extinct.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides

Metasequoia glyptostroboides

I don't have the date of FK-W's coffin article, but he does refer to the “Chinese discovery of the now famous Metasequoia glyptostroboides,” and adds that genus to the short list of possible coffin trees. “With willing Chinese cooperation, immediate steps were taken in the west to grow this lovely tree [Metasequoia] in Europe and in North America, where it is now well-established. Have the Chinese themselves taken any steps to cultivate it on a big scale? It would be ironic if, about the year 2200, Europe and America were exporting coffin-planks to China!”

FK-W was well-respected for his botanical exploits, even though he was described as a son-of-a-bitch for his territorial attitude about plant collecting in certain areas in China. He grinded out a career in his chosen remote lands, even while “being impaled on a bamboo spike, falling off a cliff (stopped by a tree growing from the cliff), lost for two days with no food, tent crushed by a tree in a storm, and he was close to the epicentre of an earthquake registering 9.6 on R. scale on 15 August 1950 during an expedition in Assam.”

Jean Rasmussen with Burmese boy

Jean Macklin Kingdon-Ward lived to 90, though she remarried after FK-W's death. Hopefully her heirs won't sue me for plagiarizing her former husband's work in my blog. I look forward to no more nursery ownership and no more blogs. I'll sit in my messy study with the dog warming my feet, and I'll finally have the time to reread all of Kingdon-Ward's plant exploration books.