HORTICULTURAL GIANTS c. 2003, 2004, 2005

The history of plants is also the history of people. Here are some nibbles about a few of the people, places and garden styles that helped make our gardens what they are today.

Dioscordes (40-90 A.D.) A doctor in Nero’s Roman army. Around 77 A.D. he wrote De Materia Medica describing more than 500 plants and their medicinal uses. In 512 A.D. Byzantine princess Anicia Juliana had the book transcribed and it is now located in the library in Vienna. This book was the authority on pharmacological plants into the 1500’s.

 

Elizabethan cottage garden (1558-1603) This refers to English gardens during the reign of Elizabeth I, the current queen being Elizabeth II. This garden style was a jumble of plants, colors and fragrances, seemingly random. Elizabeth I ruled England for 45 years during the renaissance, the time of Shakespeare, Galileo, Sir Walter Raleigh and the plague.

 

John Tradescant the Elder (1580?-1638) and the Younger (1608-1662) The Elder, a very early plant explorer, traveled to Holland, France, Russia and Algeria. He joined military ventures to collect plants as he fought. Named by King Charles I “Keeper of His Majesty’s Gardens.” The son, the Younger, collected and introduced to European gardens many American plants from his 3 trips in 1637, 1642 and 1654. Upon his father’s death, John the Younger ascended to his father’s position as “Keeper of His Majesty’s Gardens.”

 

John Bartram (1699-1777) Explored from Maine to Florida and as far west as Ohio, collecting plants for his Philadelphia nursery. Introduced about 200 American plants to European cultivation and as many European plants to American garden cultivation. Appointed Botanist to King George III.

 

André Michaux (1746-1802) After studying plants at the King’s garden, the Jardin du Roi and testing that knowledge on trips in Europe and Asia Minor, Louis XVI named Michaux the royal botanist. Michaux then spent 11 years in North America discovering many new plants from Canada, south to the Bahamas and west to the Mississippi River. Sought out by Jefferson to explore west to the Pacific, that plan stalled when the new French Republic enlisted Michaux as a spy against Spanish interests in America. The Republic failed to finance his ventures and he returned to France penniless, shipwrecked on the coast of Holland. Due to poverty he accepted an assignment traveling to Madagascar where he died of yellow fever.

 

Meriwether Lewis (1775-1809) Chosen by Jefferson to organize and lead a 28 month, 8000 mile expedition over land from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean, America’s greatest exploration of itself. Lewis collected or discovered 173 different species, approximately 70 never before known to horticulture.

 

David Douglas (1799-1834) Son of a Scottish stonemason, Douglas began his horticulture career at age 11 when he left school and went to work in the gardens of the Earl of Mansfield. By 1823 the Royal Horticultural Society chose him to journey to America to locate America’s horticultural riches. He made 3 trips – to the east coast, the west coast and Hawaii, where a bull in a trap mauled him to death. He introduced hundreds of new plants.

 

Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859) Trained as a printer in England, Nuttall traveled to America where he first took up plant exploration. One of the most successful field botanists in America, Nuttall pursued plants from Pennsylvania, into the upper and central Midwest, the plains, southeastern mountains and Florida, Oklahoma, the northern Rockies, the west coast and Hawaii, taking time out to write books and be curator of Harvard’s Botanic Garden before retiring to England in 1836.

 

Philipp Franz von Siebold (1791-1866) Von Siebold, a German doctor, worked for the Dutch East India Company as its resident physician on Deshima Island, off the coast of Japan. He boldly became too knowledgeable about Japanese affairs and was imprisoned by the Japanese in 1826 and then banished in 1828. When he left he carried nearly 500 plants with him to Europe.

 

Asa Gray (1810-1888) Internationally respected, premier American taxonomist, classifying and naming plants (Do the blue foliage and indented petals make this plant different from all other previously discovered plants? Is this related to the alcea or is it closer to the malvas or the sphaeralceas?) Educated as a physician, Gray switched to botany at a time when plant collectors scoured western North America, finding thousands upon thousands of plants. As a Harvard professor Gray received many of these plants , making judgments about differences and naming the new ones for friends and discoverers, conferring botanical immortality upon them.

 

John Charles Frémont (1813-1890) Leading 5 exploring expeditions through and across the west from St. Louis to California, Frémont collected numerous plants never before discovered. Frémont instigated the uprising by California residents against Mexico resulting in California’s aligning with the U.S.; then appointed California’s 1st governor and California’s 1st U.S. senator. An abolitionist the nascent Republican Party chose Frémont as its 1st candidate for president. Lincoln appointed him General of the West in the Civil War. A fluke brought him acres in California filled with gold. Tragedy followed as well. The army court marshaled him for insubordination. 11 men died in the Rocky Mountains on one of his winter expeditions. His political positions lasted only months. Lincoln fired him. After living a life like a Vanderbilt, he lost the gold mines and died in poverty.

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