The Flora Wonder Blog Readership

I received uplifting praise for the Flora Wonder Blog recently:

Good morning Talon. I've marveled at your tenacity in producing these blogs for so many years. You've detailed information about the origins of species and cultivar names that obviously require significant research to document. And you clearly enjoy doing it, otherwise you wouldn't have devoted so many hours to accomplishing these results. Have you considered compiling all this detail and composing it into book form? All that you've researched and documented would be of major interest to many horticulturists and no one will likely invest as many resources as you have in this endeavor. Now that you're in the process of “retiring” from some of your duties, perhaps you'll have more time available?

Over the past year I've been writing a book to commemorate our WN 100^th anniversary, and I know how much devotion that process requires. But you've already invested so much in composing your blogs, compiling them into a format to create a book seems like an obvious (and simpler) next step. Hope your winter is going well. Best wishes for enjoying the upcoming year(s)!

Wayne Mezitt [of Weston Nurseries, Massachusetts]

Wow – I'm encouraged that someone wishes me the best to enjoy the “upcoming year(s)!” I hope he is right about the (s) duration, but you know the sayings “one day at a time, live in the present” etc. In any case thanks for the optimism, and I respond with the following:

Mr. Mezitt,

Thank you for your kind words about the Flora Wonder Blog. While not always fun to produce – such as finding time and motivation, and besides the expense of my requisite employee Seth – the primary purpose is to indulge in my own appreciation and understanding of plants, based upon both horticulture and biology, and always best with a dash of historical context.

Pseudopanax crassifolius

Basically the blog attempts to recognize and celebrate those who have preceeded me, and they range from nurserymen past and present to eminent botanists...all the way back to old, dusty ancients such as the Greeks Theophrastus and Aristotle. Also, one can always find inspiration from the enthusiasm and with the simplicity displayed by children when they encounter nature's wonders, as my 3-year-old grandson did the other day when I gave him an old hummingbird's nest. I filled it with a small conifer cone but encouraged him to find and add his own treasures, which he did with great excitement. In earlier years my daughter created “glamourous” fingernails from the lancious foliage of Pseudopanax crassifolius, and she also added to her beauty by taping fuchsia blossoms to her lobes as precious earrings. The Crown Jewels pale in comparison with nature's blessings, don't you think?

For me the blog is a wandering narrative, and along with the photos I consider the presentation to be my late-life autobiography: I think, I write, I photograph, therefore...

As a teen I was a parochial dud, never wandering far from my mother tree in Forest Grove, Oregon. Never wandering physically that is, but I did possess an exploratory mental urge via the public school library with its comprehensive collection of The National Geographic magazine. Man, then I could travel everywhere – to the Himalaya, the Andes, to Europe, and even into Outer Space; infinitely beyond my hillbillieville origin. Later I did (in reality) visit those locales (except outer space), and I managed to write off all the costs as a business expense: my middle finger to the Infernal Revenue Service.

Rudyard Kipling

I don't remember when I first encountered the Rudyard Kipling quote, but it really captured me:

“For the world is wonderous large,

Seven seas from marge to marge*,

And it holds a vast of various kinds of man.

And the wildest dreams of Kew

Are the facts of Khatmandu...”

*marge = “edge,border,” a shortening of “margin.”

Rhododendron from the Himalaya

I just had to see for myself, and now – nearly 50 years later – I still remember the first night I solo roamed Nepal's capital streets. The “facts” of K, however, were punctuated with cacophonous noise, foul odours and filth everywhere...but less than a week later I found myself at the foot of Chomolungma (Mt. Everest), having trekked through Himalayan foothills populated with ground-cover – up to tree-size rhododendrons. Perhaps there and then my sense of Flora Wonder originated.

Colobanthus quitensis from Antarctica

I mean literal business when I hype that Buchholz Nursery is a grower of Plants From The Best Corners Of The World; indeed from all 7 continents (which includes Antarctica). Those who knew me as a youth could scarcely imagine that this rustic Forest Grove cone-thrower would accumulate a world-class arboretum, a collection of rare and unusual plants. Would, could – Did!

Metasequoia glyptostroboides

Just 5 blocks from my boyhood home is Rogers Park, the local hangout where we teenagers coughed on our first cigarette, guzzled cheap wine, and rated the town girls as if we were other than virgins ourselves. Bordering the park you will find a couple humongous specimens of Sequoiadendron giganteum which were planted in 1873, possibly the largest in the world outside of their native California range. I grew up on a property with two of these monsters, and my first plant sale was redwood cones to florist shops in the 1950s. I felt incumbent – when asked to donate a tree from my nursery to the Forest Grove city park – to supply a Metasequoia glyptostroboides...which continues to thrive. So, the park that's now graced with a “dawn redwood,” and with “giant redwoods” in the near vicinity, I proposed to donate a “coast redwood” to complete the trinity, but my offer fell upon deaf (or overly-occupied) ears. But, I should know better than to attempt to elevate the dinky realm of local governmental functionaries. In a few years I will be long-gone anyway, but hopefully some of my trees will persevere.

Araucaria araucana in Forest Grove, Oregon

Rubus fruticosus

Rubus fruticosus

Denizens of the Grove are probably not aware of the world assemblage that surrounds them, that the city's trees and shrubs are mostly exotics. Within city limits we can examine a monkey-puzzle tree, Araucaria araucana from Chile (on B Street), a Camperdown elm, Ulmus glabra 'Camperdownii' from Europe on 18^th and Cedar, Acer griseums from China on 17^th Ave and Rubus fruticosus (common blackberry) from Europe which is located in nearly every abandoned lot. Also known as the feral blackberry.

Lilium regale

Saya and Joseph Rock at the Arnold Arboretum

So, via the blog I can travel to the “best corners,” and furthermore I am able to meet plant explorers past and present. Imagine my surprise when my daughter Saya and I encountered Joseph Rock at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Blog readers and I are humbled by the vast array of plants introduced to the West by E.H. Wilson, plants as diverse as Acer griseum, Lilium regale, Davidia involucrata, Clematis montana etc. And George Forrest with his rhododendrons, such as R. forrestii var. repens. I have accompanied Joseph Dalton Hooker in the Himalaya as he searched for plants, and William Lobb when he first gathered seed of Sequoiadendron giganteum from California in 1853. On and on...

The Flora Wonder Blog Readership

Anyway, thanks to the Flora Wonder Blog readers, except that I have received negative feedback as well as the positive. I'm not necessarily your plant tour guide, as I am still trying to find my own path. Owning and operating a wholesale nursery, at this point, is getting in the way of better blogs in the future, thus my “retirement” attempt.