armmia

Volume 63 • Number 3 • 2005

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Copyright © 2005. The President and Fellows of
Harvard College

Page

2 Dipterocarps: Trees That Dominate
the Asian Rain Forest

Richard Corlett and Richard Primack

8 Chosenia: An Amazing Tree of
Northeast Asia

Irina Kadis

18 Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia
Peter Del Tredici

28 Verdant Letters: Hawthorne and
Horticulture
Marta McDowell

34 The Nature of Eastern Asia: Botanical
and Cultural Images from the Arnold
Arboretum Archives

Sheila Connor

Front cover: Chosenia arbutifolia growing near
the Yalu River on China's border with North Korea,
photographed by Peter Del Tredici.

Inside front cover: Betula ermanii clinging to a
rock face on Changbai Shan, photographed by Peter
Del Tredici.

Inside back cover: In October 1923, while collecting
plants for the Arnold Arboretum in Shanxi Province,
China, Joseph Hers photographed the roots of this
Thuja orientalis (now Platycladus orientalis, the
oriental arborvitae) growing out of a stone wall. The
image is one of 4,500 images in the Arnold Arboretum's
collection of historical photographs of East Asia.

Back cover: The leaves and fruits of Dipterocarpus
costulatus photographed by K. M. Wong in Malaysia.

y#i

Dipterocarps: Trees That Dominate
the Asian Rain Forest

Richard Coilett and Richard Primack

First-time visitors to the rain forests of
Indonesia and Malaysia will be amazed to
slowly turn around and realize that virtu-
ally every giant tree is a member of the diptero-
carp family, and yet that they belong to several
separate genera and dozens of distinct species.
The tree family Dipterocarpaceae (literally "two-
winged fruits") plays a dominant role in the
ecology and economics of Asian forests in a way
that no comparable family plays in other rain for-
est regions. Dipterocarp trees dominate forests
in Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Penin-
sula, and the wetter parts of
the Philippines, where the
majority of the large trees are
members of this one family
and account for the majority
of the biomass. Outside this
core everwet area, dipterocarps
gradually decline in diversity
and abundance. A secondary
center of dipterocarp diversity
exists in Sri Lanka. In total,
there are at least 500 Asian
species. Dipterocarp trees
also have excellent timber
qualities, and they are mar-
keted internationally as luan
plywood and as sawn timber
under names such as Philip-
pines red mahogany, meranti,
keruing, and kapur.

A few species of dipterocarp trees are found
in the African tropics and Madagascar, though
not in rain forests, and in the highlands of South
America, giving testament to the family's origin

Giant dipterocarp trees, such as this one in Borneo,
dominate the forests of Southeast Asia. Photo by
Richard Primack

and spread on the ancient southern superconti-
nent of Gondwana. The dipterocarps appear to
have reached Southeast Asia from Africa via the
Indian plate and did not arrive until the middle
Eocene (45 million years ago), when a moist
corridor between India and Southeast Asia
resulted in a major influx of plants with Gond-
wanan affinities. Despite this relatively late
arrival, the dipterocarps underwent a massive
evolutionary radiation in Southeast Asia.

Enumerations of research plots in Southeast
Asian forests show a conspicuous proliferation

of tree species within the individual genera Sho-
rea, Hopea, Dipterocarpus, and Vatica. In any
one forest in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, or
Borneo, it would be common to find 25 or more
species of Shorea, and six or more species of the
other three genera. Imagine going into a small
patch of forest in North America and finding 40
species of oaks and chestnuts. More recently, in

The ranges of dipterocarp genera illustrate that the center of distribution of this
tree family lies in Indonesia’s Sundaland region. Sri Lanka, just off the southern
coast of Africa, is a secondary center. Each line encloses the distribution of all
species in one genus.

FROM T. C. WHITMORE, 1984

4 Ainoldia 63/3

geological terms, a few dipterocarp species have
managed to disperse from island to island across
the narrowing water gap to New Guinea, where
they dominate in scattered patches.

This proliferation of closely related tree spe-
cies is found in a few other Southeast Asian
groups as well, such as Syzygium, in the myrtle
family, and Diospyros, in the ebony family. The
proliferation of distinctive but closely related

tree species growing together in one place is a
special feature of the Asian rain forests, not as
common in rain forests elsewhere. Scientists
are still debating the arguments to explain this
local abundance of closely related tree species.
One example of this phenomenon in the tem-
perate zone is the numerous species of morpho-
logically distinct oaks (family Fagaceae) found
growing together in the dry forests of southeast-
ern United States.

Why should the dipterocarps in particular be so
dominant in Asian rain forests? There is no obvi-
ous single answer, but certain common features
hint at the reasons behind their success. Dip-
terocarps tend to have smooth, straight trunks
rising to great heights without side branches or
forks until the canopy is reached. The base of
the tree is often buttressed. These growth char-
acteristics emphasize the strength and stability

of individual dipterocarp trees. Because of these
growth characteristics and the abundant year-
round rainfall, the dipterocarp trees often reach
heights of 50 meters (150 feet) or more, which is
higher than rain forests elsewhere. Also, trees do
not typically fall over or get blown over as is seen
in many Neotropical trees. Rather, dipterocarps
often die standing, gradually losing their branch-
es until only the trunk remains. As a result,
the dipterocarp forest tends to
be darker and more stable than
forests in Africa (where the trees
are shorter and are killed by
periodic drought) and the Ama-
zon (where trees may have a
greater tendency to fall over and
create large canopy gaps soon
occupied by sun-loving trees
and vines). Once dipterocarp
trees reach the canopy and
emerge from it, they produce
a characteristic crown that is
shaped like a cauliflower, with
clusters of leafy branches evenly
spaced around a dome. A ten-
dency toward lower wind speeds
in Southeast Asian rain forests
than in the other regions may
favor this growth habit.

Another possible key to the
dipterocarps' success in Asian
rain forests and the long lives of individual trees
is the presence in all plant parts of an oily, aro-
matic resin that presumably aids the plant in
defense against attack by bacteria, fungi, and
animals. This resin often accumulates where
the bark is bruised and is encountered as hard,
crusty, glass-like pieces on the trunk or on the
ground. This resin, called dammar, is collect-
ed by the local people and used in varnishes or
as boat caulking. The value of this resin is il-
lustrated by the kapur tree, also known as the
Bornean camphor tree (Dryobalanops aromat-
ica). Historically, this species has been one of
the main commercial sources of camphor, an
essential oil of importance for its use in medicine
and as a preservative. The crushed leaves have
a distinctive camphor or kerosene-like smell.

Dipterocarps also contain bitter-tasting tan-
nins as a further deterrent to attack. Although

Looking up at the cauliflower-like branching pattern of dipterocarp trees,
Borneo.

Dipterocarps 5

nondipterocarp trees also have chemical defen-
ses in their foliage, dipterocarp leaves do seem
peculiarly inedible, at least to vertebrates. This
is illustrated by the colugo, a leaf-eating, gliding
mammal that lives in dipterocarp forests and
forages widely in the tree canopy for new leaves
but does not eat dipterocarp leaves. The orang-
utan and proboscis monkey, which also eat young
leaves, again do not eat dipterocarp leaves.

The flowers of dipterocarps vary in size, some
being small and others being relatively large and
showy with five white, yellow, or pink petals
and often with numerous stamens. The flowers
are also often scented and are adapted for pol-
lination by a variety of insects — thrips, beetles,
bees, or moths — depending on the species. Fol-
lowing flowering, a fruit is produced consisting
of a single-seeded nut with a membranous wing-
like calyx that looks like a badminton shuttle-
cock. The ratio of the fruit weight to the total
wing area — known as the wing loading — is much
higher in dipterocarps than in most other winged
fruits, so they spin to the ground within a few
meters of the parent tree. At least this is what
usually happens. Certain dipterocarp species
have crossed major water barriers to reach New
Guinea and the Philippines, which suggests that
they sometimes travel long distances. The key to
their success must lie in occasional windstorms
plucking the winged fruits off the tall trees and
transporting them across rivers and seas.

A further reason for the success of the diptero-
carps in the everwet areas of Southeast Asia may
be the way most of the dipterocarp species over
a wide region flower and fruit simultaneously
only once every two to seven years. In an entire
forest only a few dipterocarp trees will flower in
an ordinary year, but during a so-called "mast"
year almost every large tree reproduces.

Individual plant species have mast years in
all rain forests, but only in Southeast Asia do
the mast years of so many species coincide over
such a large area. The trigger for the initiation
of flower development may be a brief episode
of low nighttime temperature caused by strong
radiative cooling under cloudless conditions
during a drought two months before flower-
ing. However, these meteorological conditions
do not always trigger mass flowering, showing
that other factors are also important, presumably

Flowers of a dipterocarp species, Hopea ponga, from
India.

including the amount of resources the trees have
accumulated since the last event.

Two main advantages to this type of mast-
ing behavior have been suggested. First, in the
Asian everwet climate, with no distinct wet and
dry seasons, plants need some cue to trigger the
onset of reproduction. In this way, all the indi-
viduals of a species can flower at the same time,
and cross-pollination among trees of the same
species can occur. The multiyear seasonality
of the El Nino cycle provides the distinct set of
conditions needed to coordinate reproduction,
and it is used by almost every species of diptero-
carp in these forests.

Second, and perhaps more important, mass
fruiting at long intervals may prevent the
build-up of the populations of insects, birds,
and mammals that would destroy the large and
highly nutritious, oil-rich fruits. Synchroniza-
tion of fruiting by many dipterocarp species
across large areas is necessary for this to work,
otherwise nomadic seedeaters, such as wild
pigs, could simply move to wherever the trees
were fruiting and destroy the whole crop. Thus,
it is only in the mast years that any seeds sur-
vive long enough to germinate and grow into
seedlings. And during these flowering years, dip-
terocarp trees make a full commitment to repro-
duction. Dipterocarps invest so much energy in
reproduction during flowering years that they

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Dipterocarp trees mass-flower once every two to seven years with little or no
flowering during the intervening years. This is illustrated by the export figures for
illipe nuts fShorea spp., section Pachycarpae), oil-rich seeds of a common group
of dipterocarp species, from West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, from 1968 to
1997. Years with El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events are shown in bold;
strong flowering years are associated with ENSO events. From L. M. Curran e)
M. Leighton, 2000.

stop growing; in practice, they often have several
years of growing without reproducing, followed
hy a heavy flowering year with no growth.

Producing successful crops of seedlings only
every two to seven years could be a major dis-
advantage in responding to the short-term
recruitment opportunities that occur follow-
ing the death of adult trees. Therefore, another
important element in the success of dipterocarps
is the ability of seedlings of some species to sur-
vive for many years under the dense, shady can-
opy of established trees. The resources provided
by a large seed are an obvious advantage here.
This effectively creates a "seedling bank" that
can respond to opportunities created by an open-
ing in the canopy overhead. In forests in Borneo,
the seedlings of some dipterocarp species last for
more than fifteen years on the forest floor after a
single fruiting event. The variation among dip-
terocarp species in how well the seedlings can

survive in deep shade and in
how rapidly they can increase
their growth rate in response
to an increase in light levels
allows the family as a whole to
take advantage of a wide range
of conditions.

Dipterocarp seedlings may
also have an increased chance
of survival as a result of a spe-
cial form of the mutualistic
relationship between roots
and the fungi called mycorrhi-
zae (literally, "fungus roots"),
in which the plant receives
mineral nutrients and water
from the fungus in exchange
for carbohydrates. Almost all
plants form mycorrhizae, but
unlike most other rain forest
trees, dipterocarps are ectomy-
corrhizal — that is, the fungus
forms a sheath over the out-
side of the roots. Ectomycor-
rhizal trees and their seedlings
are linked by a network of
fungal hyphae that trans-
fer nutrients from decaying
organic matter to the plants.
As soon as it germinates, a
dipterocarp seedling may be able to plug into
the existing network and may obtain resources
from its nearby parent, although this has not
yet been convincingly demonstrated. Whether
this suggested ectomycorrhizal advantage exists
or not, it is very striking that the same fungal
association occurs in the oak family, which often
dominates Southeast Asian montane forests, and
in legume trees in the subfamily Caesalpinioi-
deae, which form extensive stands dominated
by single species in parts of Africa and South
America. Ectomycorrhizal associations are also
the norm in low-diversity, temperate-zone for-
ests. It is striking too that many of these ectomy-
corrhizal tree species follow a pattern of heavy
fruiting at multiyear intervals — mast fruiting —
that is similar to that shown by the Southeast
Asian dipterocarps.

Many of these elements of the dipterocarp
strategy for rain forest success seem to fit

Diptewcaips 7

An assortment of dipterocarp fruits, Borneo. Species vary
widely in the size and shape of the wings.

together. Wind-dispersed fruits are only prac-
tical in the rain forest for very tall trees that
emerge from the forest canopy: there is too little
air movement inside the forest. Large seeds pro-
duce seedlings that can establish and survive in
deep shade. What is food for a seedling is also
food for a beetle, rat, pheasant, or a pig, but mast
fruiting at long time intervals can satiate these
seed predators so that many seeds escape con-
sumption to grow into seedlings.

Even in the rain forest, however, there are
exceptions to some of these generalizations,
including dipterocarp trees too small to emerge
from the canopy and species that flower every
year. Their strategies for survival must be dif-
ferent and require further research. Moreover,
in areas outside of the everwet zone, such as in
Thailand and the Western Ghats, a hilly region
of southwestern India, dipterocarps flower and
fruit on annual cycles in response to seasonal

weather changes. In the rain forest at Sinha-
raja, in southwest Sri Lanka, which has a brief
annual dry period, some dipterocarps have
annual cycles while other show synchronized
masting at multiyear intervals.

Over the last few decades, many scientists
have speculated about how one family of trees
could be so dominant in the forests of South-
east Asia. Careful comparisons are now needed
among rain forest regions to determine if dip-
terocarp trees really are different in their growth
habitats, masting behavior, and seed biology
from rain forest trees in other plant families. Of
special interest would be comparative studies of
the animal communities: do dipterocarp forests
really have lower densities of insects and other
animals due to the absence of flowers, fruits, and
seeds during the long periods between masting
years? Our ability to answer these questions is
being facilitated by the network of rain forest
plots being established by the Center for Tropi-
cal Forest Science, a joint project of the Smith-
sonian Institution and the Arnold Arboretum.
Perhaps in the years to come we will be able
to understand the amazing dominance of the
dipterocarp family.

Select Bibliography

Curran, L. M., and M. Leighton. 2000. Vertebrate responses
to spatiotemporal variation in seed production
of mast-fruiting Dipterocarpaceae. Ecological
Monographs 70: 101-128

Losos, E. C., and E. G. Leigh (eds.). 2004. Tropical Forest
Diversity and Dynamism: Findings from
a Large-Scale Plot Network. University of
Chicago Press

Primack, R., and R. Corlett. 2005. Tropical Rain Forests:

An Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison.
Blackwell Publishing

Turner, I. M. 2001. The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical
Rain Forest. Cambridge University Press

Whitmore, T. C. 1984. Tropical Rain Forests of the Far
East. 2nd edition. Clarendon Press

Richard Corlett, a professor at the University of Hong
Kong, is investigating the role of seed dispersal in rain
forest recovery after deforestation. Richard Primack, a
professor at Boston University, is currently conducting
research on the effects of climate change on plants and
birds. Both authors have worked and traveled in Asian
forests and are the co-authors of a recent book on rain
forests, cited above, from which this essay is adapted.

ALEXEY ZINOVIEV

Chosenia: An Amazing Tree of Northeast Asia

Irina Kadis

Many travelers to Northeast Siberia
return with fond memories of the
young chosenia groves they have seen.
These riverside communities harbor many
showy flowering herbs that stand out brightly
against the otherwise monotonous background
of the Siberian taiga. Even more striking are the
groves of mature chosenias with trees of a colos-
sal size that is unusual not only for Yakutia, the
coldest place on the continent of Eurasia, but
even for lushly productive regions like Manchu-
ria. The chosenia groves miraculously emerge on
lifeless river pebbles in just ten to twelve years.

The entire transformation from tiny seedlings
to majestic 60-foot trees on fertile soil normally
takes only sixty to seventy years. By then, the
total organic mass of the grove may equal the
amount accumulated by any other taiga forest
in one hundred fifty to two hundred years.

Chosenia arbutifolia (Pall.) A. Skv., one of the
fastest-growing trees of Northeast Asia, is close-
ly related to the willows. Indeed, it has often
been mistaken for a large willow even by experi-
enced botanists. However, a close look at its cat-
kins and flowers reveals clear differences from
willows. The nectaries, or glands — structures

Chosenia seeds typically germinate on fresh pebble deposits such as these along a tributary of the Kamchatka River.

Chosenia in Northeast Asia 9

A fruiting branch of chosenia.

that are found in any willow
flower — are missing. The sta-
mens, pistils, and bracts look
different from those found in the
flowers of both the willow and
poplar: the male flower of cho-
senia has five stamens hiding
under the bract, partially fused
with it in the lower filaments;
and the female flower has two
styles, each with a two-lobed
stigma. Like poplars, chosenia
is wind pollinated, whereas all
willows are insect pollinated.

These peculiarities alone were
enough for botanists to place
chosenia in its own, monotypic
(single-species) genus. But the
list of this tree's interesting
traits isn't yet exhausted. Cho-
senia also surprises us with a
distinctive root system featuring a taproot —
possessed by none of the willows — along with
unique anchoring structures. And whereas the
wood of willows has the so-called heterogeneous
rays, chosenia's wood has the more phylogeneti-
cally advanced homogeneous rays.

Chosenia's leaves are also quite special. Like
the xeromorphic (water-saving) leaves of the
primitive Turanga poplars and willows of the
section Longifoliae, they are somewhat fleshy
and covered with a bluish bloom, especially on
young plants. This bloom also covers the tender,
young twigs, which gives chosenias their pecu-
liar appearance. The twigs remain without hark
for a few years, contributing to the tree's pho-
tosynthesis. Later, they develop brownish bark
that darkens with age. The bark on the trunks of
old trees exfoliates much like that of shagbark
hickory (Caiya ovata) but unlike that of any
willow. (Granted, the bark of Salix triandra also
exfoliates but in a different pattern.)

Being strictly confined to a certain type of
habitat — sandy-pebbly deposits on the banks
of mountain rivers — chosenia, like many other
riverine plants, always finds itself in a rather
uniform environment of river valleys where
climatic and soil differences between zones are
alleviated. Because of this confinement, chose-
nia has been able to claim a huge geographic area

ranging from the broadleaf forests of Honshu to
the harsh tundras of the Anadyr River watershed
in Siberia and extending along rivers beyond the
Arctic Circle, where no other tree of such mag-
nitude can grow. This vast range — comparable
to the entire area of the United States west of
the Mississippi River — comprises a major part
of Siberian Russia east of Lake Baikal and the
Lena River, the Russian Far East, including
Sakhalin Island and the Kamchatka Peninsula,
northeastern China, northeastern North Korea,
and Hokkaido and Honshu Islands of the Japa-
nese archipelago.

The multipurpose tree: From sandals to
telegraph poles

The peoples of Northeast Asia have long known,
loved, and exploited chosenia for all kinds of
industries, from sandal-, clog-, and rope-mak-
ing to dwelling- and bridge-building. Chosenias
have been used for making dugout boats with a
displacement capacity of up to one ton; this fact
alone gives a sense of the impressive dimensions
these trees can attain. Among northern reindeer
breeders, chosenia is particularly valued as for-
age. In the wintertime, the reindeer dig diligently
under the snow for fallen chosenia leaves, which
contain unusually high amounts of calcium and
thus serve as a winter food supplement.

PETER DEL TREDICI

10 Arnoldia 63/3

30 0 30 60 90 120 150 180

The geographic distribution o/Chosenia arbutifolia. Redrawn
from Norin 1958, Makryi ei> Bardunov 1977.

The most ambitious commercial venture in
which chosenia played a role was a bold attempt
in the 1860s by the Western Union Telegraph
Company to build a telegraph line connecting
North America with Europe via the Bering Strait
and Siberia. When a competing company suc-
ceeded in dragging a telegraph cable across the
Atlantic, however, Western Union gave up the
entire project, and after several years of hard
work the indefatigable leader of the Siberian
expedition, George Kennan (a distant relative
of the later diplomat and historian of the same
name), had to abandon thousands of telegraph
poles that had been prepared along the proposed
telegraph line with great difficulty. Many of
those poles were made from the trunks of cho-
senia, which Kennan apparently considered to be
a kind of large willow or poplar. In the farthest
northeast portion of his route, along the lower
Anadyr River, it was probably the only suitable
tree he could find. By the time the construction
was canceled, this remarkable man had bravely
surveyed the wildest and most remote regions of
Northeast Siberia, notorious for their extremely
harsh climate and only sparsely inhabited by
nomadic tribes.

A new name for an old friend

Little wonder that Kennan mistook chosenias
for willows. Russian settlers of the Kamchatka
Peninsula, where chosenia grows abundantly,
have always called the tree vetla (a tree willow).
Topol (poplar), its other Russian name, is used
in Northeast Siberia, whereas real poplars are
called "aspens" there. The Yakuts call it tiiyakh,

which is also their name for a poplar (Populus
suaveolens) that often grows in mixed groves
with chosenia; for willows they have a differ-
ent word, talakh. Chosenia's colloquial names
also include seiakhta and sikhta, in Nanayan
and Udegeyan respectively — the languages of
some of the ethnic groups in the Far East. Leo-
mo and zhuantianliu (the willow that pierces
the sky) are Chinese names, and kesho-yanagi
(the beautiful willow) and karafuto-kuroyanagi
(Sakhalin black willow) are the names used in
Japan. The confusion about this tree's identity
lasted well beyond the time of the telegraph
project. By the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury chosenia had been observed by many bota-
nists. However, some mistakenly took it for a
willow species familiar to them, others described
it as a previously unknown willow, and no one
realized that the proliferating names all referred
to a single species.

The Japanese botanist Takenoshin Nakai was
first to recognize chosenia's uniqueness. At the
time of his first encounters with the tree, in
Korea from 1911 to 1918, he too had taken it for
a willow he already knew. He gradually came to
the conclusion that he was dealing with some-
thing unlike all willows, and in 1920 he proudly
introduced the tree to the scientific world as
a new genus of the willow family (Salicaceae),
Chosenia. The discovery of a new genus in such
a well-known family produced a sensation in
the field of botany. Educated Russians started to
call the tree koreyanka, a Russian translation of
the name Chosenia, which literally means "an
inhabitant of Korea." (This name didn't take,
however, and was gradually supplanted interna-
tionally by chosenia.) Nakai did not identify his
finding with all the scientific names previously
given to the tree, and it took nearly forty years
to completely clear away the confusion and to
choose the correct species epithet according to
the rules of priority.

Chosenia begins life: The first three hurdles

Let's now take a closer look at the tiny chosenia
seedlings and the intricate path they must fol-
low to survive and develop into majestic trees.
At the very beginning of its life, this remark-
able plant depends completely on the water
flow and sediment accumulation that occurs in

Chosenia in Northeast Asia 1 1

E. H. Wilson photographed this freestanding chosenia in Korea, August 1917. He recorded its height at fifty feet and girth
of trunk at nine feet.

river floodplains. The Far East is famous for its
spectacular floods — severe, abrupt, and over-
whelming, sometimes even catastrophic. They
occur in summer rather than in spring, usu-
ally two or three times during the season. As
the snow melts on the hills and mountains, it
adds to the drenching rains brought by the sum-
mer monsoon, turning each river into a power-
ful stream that soon leaves its bed and fills the
entire floodplain. Near the bottom of the
riverbed the water is filled with great numbers
of drifting pebbles that originate in the river's
upper reaches: the noise produced as the river
drags them along sometimes becomes so loud
that a person talking at the streamside can't hear
his own voice. Each flood forms fresh pebble

deposits along the riverbanks and may cause
the river to change its direction.

During late July to early August — often im-
mediately following a summer flood — chosenia
trees disseminate their abundant, minute seeds,
each weighing no more than 0.25 mg and bearing
a crown of white hair. The seeds cover the entire
surface of the water, crowd the riverbanks, and
accumulate along the water's edge. It is mostly
on newly deposited pebbles that the seeds suc-
ceed in taking root. They germinate right away,
and multitudes of seedlings appear on bare,
moist pebbles at the very edge of the flowing
water, where the most favorable conditions for
germination are found. Along the banks of mean-
dering rivers, seedlings of different generations

ARCHIVES OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM

OLEG KORSUN (HTTP //WWW.NATURE.CHITA.RU)

12 Arnoldia 63/3

The exfoliating bark of an old chosenia.

sometimes appear as distinct stripes; the older
the plants, the farther away from the water they
are located.

The young chosenia seedling is tiny: only
one centimeter tall. The root, however, extends
down between the pebbles as much as three to
four centimeters (just over an inch to one and
one-half inch). Most of these little plants do not
survive the next flood, but those that hang on
for at least a month become so firmly anchored
between the pebbles that you cannot pull or even
dig them out without breaking the root.

During the second year, the primary shoot dies
back, and another shoot, larger than the first,
starts growing. By the end of the second growing
season, this new shoot becomes prostrate, with
just the very tip extending above the pebbles.
Finally it too dies off to be replaced during the
third summer by three or four virgate (long and
flexible) shoots that avoid damage from severe
floods by lying flat on the pebbles, giving the
entire plant the look of a prostrate rosette.

A tree that provides for itself

Juvenile chosenia leaves are even more suc-
culent than adult leaves — fleshy and juicy and
covered with pruinose bloom as if they were
leaves of some desert species. There is nothing
strange about this resemblance, since during
the periods of drought between floods the bare
pebbles around the young plants may become as
hot as 50 degrees C (120 degrees F).

It is only during its third and fourth years that
chosenia gradually abandons the prostrate habit
and starts to grow as an upright shrub. By this
time, the young chosenia already finds itself a
few feet away from the flowing water's edge. Of
course, this happens because of the river's mean-
dering rather than any movement of the plant.

Yet another important process contributes to
"moving" the young chosenia plants away from
the running water. Their long, vigorous shoots,
especially the lower ones, are damaged during
floods and die, but they don't fall off. Instead,
they form a thick, brushlike network that func-
tions very much like whalebone, efficiently
catching alluvial material and forming large
sediment deposits around the tree. This nour-
ishing soil layer may grow as much as a foot or
more during a single flood. Generally speaking,
the older the plant, the higher its position is and
the greater its distance from the edge of the open
water where it began life. If you dig into the soil
in an old chosenia grove, you will find it to be
layered like a cake, with each layer representing
a single flood, its lower parts consisting of coarse
material and the upper ones of fine particles.

A chosenia seedling growing on pebbles in the
Maritime Province, Russian Far East.

ALEXEY ZINOVIEV

Chosenia in Northeast Asia 13

The champion of the
neighborhood

Every year the chosenia saplings
lose a large share of their branches.

Young branches are brittle and break
off easily, which is not unusual in
the Salicaceae. During the sum-
mer floods, many branches are
scratched by moving pebbles, but
even more of them — up to half of
all the branches — do not survive
the harsh winters. Anything that
protrudes from the snow dies back,
if it is not consumed by moose or
reindeer. This huge dieback doesn't
hinder the sapling's growth, how-
ever. During its early years, this
amazing tree performs rather like
a semishrub, producing one genera-
tion of branches after another. Every
year the new growth becomes more
and more vigorous, and the growth
rate accelerates accordingly. By the
age of five, a young chosenia may
be adding up to a full meter to its
height in a single season. About this
time, the sapling "realizes" that it
is destined to develop into a majes-
tic tree and produces a leader with
a crown of powerful virgate shoots
around it, all densely covered with
thin and slender pruinose leaves.

At this point the plant's habit is
intermediate between those of a
tree and a shrub.

A few years later, when the
crowns of the young chosenias
merge, the trees start to thin out
and develop into a grove typically consisting
of some thirty to one hundred trees. The grove
still endures floods, but since the trees are now
farther from the river, the water flows much
more slowly and deposits fine particles rather
than heavy pebbles. By the age of eight to ten,
trees normally reach 7 to 8 meters (22 to 26 feet)
in height, their stems 10 to 15 centimeters (4
to 6 inches) in diameter. The leader starts to
dominate; the only trace remaining of virgate
branches is the dense brush at the bottoms of

Chosenia arbutifolia in the wild at Changbai Shan, China.

the stems. These remnants continue to serve as
alluvium traps during floods.

A grove of young chosenias with its open can-
opy and fertile alluvial soil produces a showy
plant community that is brightened by abundant
grasses, flowering legumes, and other herbs —
plants not specific to chosenia groves but also
occurring in willow, poplar, and other riverine
woods. Some of them have a much wider dis-
tribution than chosenia and can be found even
outside the river valleys. In northern Yakutia, for

PETER DEL TREDICI

14 Arnoldia 6313

example, the legumes found in chosenia groves
(species of Astragalus, Oxytiopis, and Hedysa-
rum] are also widely distributed in sparse larch
forests and mountain tundras.

Chosenia's period of intensive growth lasts
until the trees are about thirty years old. By then
most attain heights of 25 to 30 meters (80 to
100 feet) and trunk diameters of almost half a
meter. Records exist of chosenias as tall as 40
meters (130 feet) and as thick as 1.5 meter (5
feet). The root system of an adult tree consists of
a central taproot that extends as far as 3 meters
to reach the underground water table,- its entire
surface bears scars left by moving pebbles. Many
thread-like roots grow downward from all sides
of this "carrot." In addition, at a depth of 30 to
40 centimeters (12 to 16 inches), the taproots
of adult trees develop three to five horizontal
appendages, each shaped like and serving as an
anchor. This system stabilizes the tree in its very
unstable environment: adult chosenias remain
standing even in strong winds and through the
majority of severe floods.

The lower branches of a young adult tree reach
upward at a 60- to 70-degree angle, whereas the
upper branches are more nearly vertical. This
branch arrangement, typical for a tree growing
in open space, makes the shape of the crown
pyramidal. When the trees grow in dense groups,
their crowns are umbrella-shaped. During the

winter the trees drop the tender top portions of
their branches. This enables them to conserve
water during extreme Siberian winters. The
deadwood brush at the lower trunks persists for
a long time, but as the trees "move" farther away
from the riverbed to the center of the floodplain,
it gradually loses its importance,- by then the
trees are situated as high as 1 .5 meters above the
water level and are flooded only once or twice a
year. It is dark and damp underneath the canopy
of a mature chosenia grove. Only shade-loving
grasses and herbs survive here.

The majestic trees are not long-lived: they
start to decline at the age of seventy to eighty.
First the top dies back. Then pieces of the trunk
start to break off, beginning at the top and work-
ing down. Ugly outgrowths caused by bacterial
attacks replace the brush at the bottom of the
trunk. On average, if a thirty-year-old grove con-
tains some 30 to 50 trees, then by the age of one
hundred there normally remain only three to five
venerable patriarchs that stand as far as 150 to
200 meters away from the river and almost never
experience floods. Poplar and larch trees tend to
take over and succeed the chosenia groves.

Cultivated chosenia: A very different story

Chosenia's life cycle in nature suggests that it
belongs to a certain type of plant called explerents,
R-strategists, or opportunists in accordance with

Chosenia in Northeast Asia 1 5

(b)

From Kolesnikov 1937:

(a) A young chosenia tree

(b) The adult habit of a solitary-growing chosenia

(c) The adult habit of chosenias growing in a grove

(d) An aged chosenia in decline

PETER DEL TREDICI

16 Arnoldia 63/3

A chosenia beginning to decline, Changbai Shan, China.

their biological strategy. Opportunists yield
favorable places to other, more competitive spe-
cies and thus avoid competition. Ruderal weeds
as well as species of the early successional
stages belong to this group. However, avoiding
competition requires a trade-off: opportunists
must face rather difficult growing conditions,
unsuitable for the majority of species. In order to
survive on the bare pebbles, chosenia has devel-

oped its peculiar traits: a root sys-
tem that features a strong taproot
along with anchoring structures;
a prostrate habit at a tender age
followed by semishrub-like
behavior for a few years; succulent,
water-saving foliage,- the ability
to collect and preserve nutritious
material for itself by means of
a brushlike network of dead and
broken lower branches.

Yet another distinctive character
of the chosenia is its plasticity — its
ability to suppress many of these
adaptations when they are not
needed. To grow a chosenia you
needn't provide bare pebbles, Sibe-
rian winter temperatures, or harsh
floods. With adequate moisture,
light, and good drainage, it will do
well in an average garden. When
it is not forced to meet the chal-
lenges of life in the wild, it demon-
strates its unique abilities in a very
subtle manner. In cultivation it
starts life as a "normal" tree seed-
ling: though the seedlings easily
become distorted, they never devel-
op a truly prostrate habit and tend
to produce a few weak roots rather
than one taproot. Their juvenile
leaves don't look much different
from the leaves of adult trees. The
young tree does retain a tendency
to cast off branches even in cul-
tivation, with new generations of
more and more vigorous branches
being produced yearly. However,
this tendency never reaches the
point where the plant acts like a
semishrub. It usually develops a leader and starts
to grow into a tree earlier in cultivation than in
the wild. Indeed, the most challenging part of
growing a chosenia in the garden is the propaga-
tion itself. Unlike most willows, chosenias are
difficult to grow from cuttings, and because the
seeds lose viability very quickly, there is little
hope for successful propagation when the seed
source is remote.

Chosenia in Northeast Asia 1 7

Sources

Little is known about this interesting plant in the West since most publications about chosenia are in
Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This narrative is based on the Russian literature and incorpo-
rates data on chosenia published in a few articles written over a period of more than half a century.

The earliest of the articles was written in 1937 by Boris R Kolesnikov, then a PhD student who
was to become a prominent botanist and a famous researcher in the forests of the Far East. Only
during his later years did he leave the Far East for the Urals, where he developed the Forest Science
Laboratory at the Institute of Biology in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg). Kolesnikov represented Russian
forest science at many international forums.

Vera A. Sheludyakova, who wrote about chosenia growing in Yakutia as early as the time of World
War II, founded the main herbarium depository in the Republic of Yakutia, for which she collected
thousands of specimens during her daring field trips across the territory of this wild, remote region.

Alexey K. Skvortsov, whose eighty-fifth birthday was celebrated in February 2005, is a world-
class specialist on the amentiferous plants (i.e., plants that produce catkins) and is also renowned
for his floristic studies. It was Skvortsov who found the correct species epithet for chosenia in 1957.
Skvortsov has worked for many years at the Main Botanic Garden in Moscow.

Boris N. Norin (1924-2001) is another prominent Russian botanist. He is credited with original
approaches to the study of the vegetation structure in the tundra and forest belt. Boris Nikolayevich
worked at the Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

A few articles produced by the younger generation of investigators have played an important role
in the contemporary understanding of the species' biology, life cycle, phytosociology, and distribution
details. The majority of articles were published in Botanicheskiy zhurnal, the chief organ for botani-
cal science in Russia.

I gratefully acknowledge the article by M. T. Mazurenko and T. A. Moskalyuk (1992) that has
largely made the spine of this story. Maya T. Mazurenko (born 1935), PhD in biology, works at Tver
University. Tatyana A. Moskalyuk (born 1947), PhD, works at the Montane Forest Station of the Far
East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Citations

Golysheva, M. D. 1973. [On the structure and formation
of the leaf in Chosenia aibutifolia (Pall.) A.
Skvorts]. Bot. zhmn. 58(12): 1764-1774.

Kennan, G. 1910. Tentlifein Siberia. A new account of an
old undertaking. Adventures among the Koraks
and other tribes in Kamchatka and northern
Asia. Gutenberg eBook Project. Release date:
12 May 2004.

Kolesnikov, B. P. 1937. [Chosenia and its communities in
the Far East). USSR Acad. Sci. Far East Branch
Proc., ser. bot. 2: 704-800.

Makryi, T. V., and L. V. Bardunov. 1977. [A discovery of
Chosenia arbutifolia (Pall.) A. Skv. (Salicaceae)
west of the Baikalsky Mountain Range (Cis-
Baikal Region)). Bot. zhurn. 62(11) 1669-1671.

Mazurenko, M. T., and T. A. Moskalyuk. 1989. Ontogeny
of Chosenia arbutifolia (Salicaceae) in the
Magadan Region. Bot. zhurn. 74(5): 601-613.

Moskalyuk, T. A., and M. T. Mazurenko. 1992. [An amazing
northerner — chosenia). Priroda 12: 52-59.

Norin, B. N. 1958. [Some characters of chosenia
communities {Chosenia macrolepis Ass.) at the

extreme northwest of their area). Bot. zhurn.
43(6): 847-850.

Sheludyakova, V. A. 1943. [Chosenia in the Republic of
Yakutia). Bot. zhurn. 28(1): 30-33.

Skvortsov, A. K. 1957. Commentationes de morphologia
et systematica salicarum. IV. [On the correct
species epithet for Chosenia]. Bot. materialy
Gerbariya Bot. in-ta AN SSSR 18: 42-47.

Trofimov, T. T. 1964. [Some interesting Far East plants in
the Moscow University Botanic Garden). Bot.
zhurn. 49(1 1): 1563.

Yegorov, A. D., and V. B. Kuvayev. 1958 [Chosenia and
broad-leaved fireweed — promising forage plants
for the reindeer). USSR Acad. Sci. Yakut Branch
Reports 1: 92-95.

Irina Kadis, a curatorial assistant at the Dana Greenhouses,
has been working at the Arnold Arboretum since 1994.
She is a graduate of St. Petersburg University with a
major in plant ecology. A student of the willow family,
she translated into English a major Russian monograph on
Eurasian willows, which was published in 1999.

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia

Peter Del Tredici

In the fall of 1997 I visited Changbai Shan
in northeast China with colleagues from
four other botanical gardens, all members
of the North American-Chinese Plant Explora-
tion Consortium (NACPEC), as well as botanists
from the Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecology
and the Nanjing Botanical Garden.* We were
there to collect a wide variety of woody plants
but were open to anything we came across that
was producing mature seed.

Changbai Shan is interesting for a number of
reasons. From the geological perspective, the
mountain is an active volcano that has erupted
four times since the fifteenth century, in 1413,
1597, 1668, and, most recently, in 1702. Botani-
cally speaking, the mountain is famous for the
diversity of its vegetation and the size of its
forest trees, which have never been heav-
ily logged. Recognizing this, the Chinese
established the Changbai Mountain Reserve in
1960 and, in 1979, expanded it to cover 190,000
hectares (475,000 acres) when it became part of
UNESCO's "Man and the Biosphere" program.

The mountain is located in the southern por-
tion of Jilin Province and stretches along the
border between China and North Korea. Chang-
bai translates literally as "eternally white moun-
tain" and refers not to its snow-capped summit
but to the layer of light-colored pumice that
shrouded it after its most recent eruption. Today,
this layer of pumice is covered by vegetation.

The entire Changbai Shan range covers an area
of about 8,000 square kilometers (742 square
miles) with altitudes that vary between 500 and
2,691 meters (1,640 and 8,825 feet). The highest

* Paul Meyer, Morris Arboretum of the University of
Pennsylvania; Kris Bachtell, Morton Arboretum; Jeff
Lynch, Longwood Gardens; Charles Tubesing, Holden
Arboretum; Wang Xianli, Cao Wei, Zhao Shuqing, and
Zhong Linsheng, Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecol-
ogy; Sheng Ning, Nanjing Botanical Garden; and Sun
Long Xing, Changbai Xian Forestry Department.

view of the surrounding countryside from the summit;
the lake in Baitou Shan’s crater-, the lake’s outlet.

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia 19

ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia 19

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia

Peter Del Tredici

In the fall of 1997 1 visited Changbai Shan
in northeast China with colleagues from
four other botanical gardens, all members
of the North American-Chinese Plant Explora-
tion Consortium (NACPEC), as well as botanists
from the Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecology
and the Nanjing Botanical Garden.* We were
there to collect a wide variety of woody plants
but were open to anything we came across that
was producing mature seed.

Changbai Shan is interesting for a number of
reasons. From the geological perspective, the
mountain is an active volcano that has erupted
four times since the fifteenth century, in 1413,
1597, 1668, and, most recently, in 1702. Botani-
cally speaking, the mountain is famous for the
diversity of its vegetation and the size of its
forest trees, which have never been heav-
ily logged. Recognizing this, the Chinese
established the Changbai Mountain Reserve in
1960 and, in 1979, expanded it to cover 190,000
hectares (475,000 acres) when it became part of
UNESCO's "Man and the Biosphere" program.

The mountain is located in the southern por-
tion of Jilin Province and stretches along the
border between China and North Korea. Chang-
bai translates literally as "eternally white moun-
tain" and refers not to its snow-capped summit
but to the layer of light-colored pumice that
shrouded it after its most recent eruption. Today,
this layer of pumice is covered by vegetation.

The entire Changbai Shan range covers an area
of about 8,000 square kilometers (742 square
miles) with altitudes that vary between 500 and
2,691 meters (1,640 and 8,825 feet). The highest

* Paul Meyer, Morris Arboretum of the University of
Pennsylvania; Kris Bachtell, Morton Arboretum; Jeff
Lynch, Longwood Gardens; Charles Tubesing, Holden
Arboretum; Wang Xianli, Cao Wei, Zhao Shuqing, and
Zhong Linsheng, Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecol-
ogy; Sheng Ning, Nanjing Botanical Garden; and Sun
Long Xing, Changbai Xian Forestry Department.

Changbai Shan, counterclockwise from above: A distant
view of the surrounding countryside from the summit;
the lake in Baitou Shan’s crater; the lake’s outlet.

ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

20 Ainoldia 63/3

peak, Baitou Shan, is a volcano rising from a lava
plateau. Inside the crater is a large lake, Tian
Chi — the "Heavenly Lake" — between 200 and
350 meters (655 and 1,150 feet) deep. The border
between China and North Korea runs straight
through the middle of this spectacular lake, the
outlet of which forms a 68-meter- (225-foot-)
high waterfall. Both the lake and its waterfall are
famous scenic spots in China and popular with
tourists from all over Asia, especially those from
South Korea, who consider the mountain to be
the epicenter of their ancestral homeland.

The South Koreans, who make the pilgrim-
age to Changbai Shan by coming up from the
Chinese side of the mountain, stay in fancy
new hotels and shop at the flourishing herbal
markets that sell every imaginable herb or ani-
mal product — with real or imagined medicinal
properties — that are collected or cultivated on
the mountain. The most popular medicinal
product is the ginseng root, which is considered
the best in all Asia. While the cultivation of
this plant on Changbai Shan goes back many
hundreds of years, its extent has increased dra-
matically in recent years, resulting in the clear-
ing of large tracts of land on the lower slopes of
the mountain. Such practices are ecologically
destructive, given that they involve the removal
of all existing vegetation, including the stumps,
followed by a thorough plowing of the land.

Because of disease organisms, only two five-year
crop cycles of ginseng can be grown on a typi-
cal site before it has to be abandoned for other
purposes. Since the land is usually not replanted
with trees, this pattern of use has led to serious
erosion problems throughout the area.

The NACPEC group selected Changbai Shan
as a target for collecting because of the richness
and hardiness of its vegetation, and we were
not disappointed. Our sampling strategy was
fairly simple: to more or less follow the course
of the Yalu River, which separates China from
North Korea, stopping wherever the vegetation
looked promising. On our very first day of col-
lecting, just outside the county seat of Changbai
Xian, we spotted a tree growing along the Yalu
that roused everyone's curiosity. It was early in
the morning and the sun was rising up over the
hills. The light was such that it was reflecting
off hundreds of tiny seeds blowing in the breeze.
Against the shady black background, the seeds
stood out like tiny silver fireflies. "Stop the
van," we all shouted, "there's a willow shedding
its seed." And out we piled to examine this tree
that none of us could quite identify. Clearly it
was a willow, but one with a tall, straight trunk
and a strong conical growth habit. It also had a
distinctive bark that was flaking off in long, thin
plates. We collected as many seeds as we could
find, along with some stem cuttings, hoping they

Above, clearing the land in
preparation for planting a new
crop of ginseng. Right, Panax
ginseng being cultivated under
polyethylene tents on
Changbai Shan.

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia 21

A view of the Yalu River looking
into North Korea from the Chinese
side. The river forms the boundary
between the two countries.

would root once we got them home. After all,
it was a willow and everyone knows how easily
they grow from cuttings.

We continued to see the mystery willow
throughout our trip, its distinctive conical
shape always along the river, which is around
700 meters (2,300 feet) in altitude. The largest
specimen we encountered had a ramrod-straight
trunk with a diameter at breast height of 1.1
meters (3 1/2 feet). But none of the assembled
collectors, including our Chinese hosts, could
say for sure what species it was, and we never
found another tree in seed after that first day.

The scientific identity of the mystery wil-
low remained unknown until 1 got back to the
Arboretum with my seeds and cuttings. In talk-
ing with the greenhouse staff about my collec-
tions I described the plant, at which point Irina
Kadis, a native Russian who has worked in the
far eastern part of that country, said matter-of-
factly, "Oh, that's Chosenia. I saw it a lot when
I was doing ecological work in Russia." A quick
check of the descriptions in various reference
books showed that Irina had nailed the identifi-
cation in an instant.

Unfortunately, none of the cuttings we brought
back rooted and none of the seed germinated,
having spent too long in transit. Now at least I
knew what the plant was even though I failed to
bring it back alive. But my imagination had been
fired up by the encounter, and I decided to learn

more about the plant that, along with Salix and
Populus, is the only other genus in the willow
family, Salicaceae. The plant is distinguished
from the willows and the poplars by the struc-
ture of its flowers, which bloom in early spring.
It typically sheds its tiny, plumed seeds any-
where from late spring to midsummer depending
upon latitude, a time when few plant collectors
are out and about. And finally, it doesn't seem
to root from cuttings, another trait that clearly
distinguishes it from the willows and poplars.

To my utter amazement, I also discovered
that the plant did not appear to be presently in
cultivation in either North America or western
Europe. The Arnold Arboretum once had a plant
labeled as Chosenia bracteosa that we got from
the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, in 1952
(#805-52-A). However, subsequent research in
1985 by George Argus of the National Museum
of Canada, Ottawa, showed that the plant was
not Chosenia at all, but Salix daphnoides, a
shrubby European species.

Here was a plant — a magnificent tree — that
had somehow fallen through a rather large hor-
ticultural crack. Not one to shy away from a
challenge, I determined to bring the plant into
cultivation. So I wrote to our Chinese collabora-
tor at Changbai, Sun Long Xing, and asked him
to collect seed when they were likely to reach
full maturity in early summer. Later that spring,
while doing a literature search on Chosenia,

22 Arnoldia 63/3

Propagation from Cuttings

while Chosenia is notoriously difficult to root from cuttings
of a mature plant, I experimented with taking cuttings from
the plants when they were only three years old, on March 29,
2001. The results of the experiment, evaluated on June 17, 2001,
indicated that cuttings taken from young plants are relatively
easy to root.

Treatment

# cuttings

Results

% rooting

control

24

1

4.2

HRB (powder)

75

15

20.0

2500 ppm KIBA
(quick dip)

50

13

26.0

5000 ppm KIBA
(quick dip)

24

6

25.0

I came across an article published in 1994
by a Japanese scientist, Shingo Ishikawa, who
described a series of experiments he had per-
formed with Chosenia that he had raised from
seed collected from an isolated population grow-
ing in the Azusa River floodplain in Nagano Pre-
fecture in central Honshu. I wrote to Professor
Ishikawa and asked whether it might he possible
to send me seeds for my introduction project.
Fortuitously, he wrote hack in the affirmative,
and seeds from the Nagano population arrived
by DHL express a month later.

The seeds — which were assigned the acces-
sion number 176-98 — were collected on June
15 and arrived at the Dana Greenhouses eight
days later, June 23. I immediately sowed them
in a coarse, sandy mix and placed them under
the intermittent mist system we use for root-
ing softwood cuttings. Within three days, the
cotyledons shot up above the soil surface and I
had seedlings growing as thick as dog's hair. Not
having much experience growing willows from
seed, I was amazed at this incredible burst of
germination energy.

About two weeks after the seeds arrived
from Professor Ishikawa, a second package of
seed arrived from Professor Sun (AA #184-98).
Unfortunately, these had spent more time in
transit than Professor Isikawa's. Consequently
they arrived desiccated and failed to germinate.
But at least I had Chosenia, albeit from a wild
Japanese population.

The seedlings grew extremely fast
throughout the summer, and when
they were several inches tall, I care-
fully transplanted them into indi-
vidual pots. Based on her experience,
Irina had warned me that Chosenia
produces a long taproot that, when
damaged, usually results in death, so
I treated them with kid gloves.

The seedlings were hig enough to
be planted outside in the nursery a
year later, during the spring of 1999,
and they were moved to their perma-
nent locations on the grounds in the
spring of 2001. From what I could
see, Chosenia was a plant that was
programmed to grow like crazy. In
the spring of 2004, the seedlings —
now six years old and between eight and twelve
feet tall — produced their first flowers, which
opened on April 21. Nine plants had been set
out and eight of them produced flowers in 2004;
three were females and five were males. To my
delight, the female plants set mature seed, which
I collected on June 9, 2004. After letting the
seed air-dry for a few days, I sowed them as I
had sown their parent's seed, under intermit-
tent mist in the greenhouses. And again, the
result was dog-hair germination within a few
days. So the cycle is complete with the produc-
tion of the second generation of seedlings in the
Arboretum and with the promise of many more
generations to come.

The Arnold Arboretum is pleased to offer to
our Friends plants of Chosenia arbutifolia.
The plants were raised from seed produced
by Arboretum plants and are between 2 and
8 inches tall. A donation of $40 per plant
or three for $100 will cover the cultivation,
handling, and postage. Shipment will be in
the spring of 2005. Send orders ASAP to:

Chosenia Distribution
Dana Greenhouses
The Arnold Arboretum
125 Arborway
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia 23

Chosenia seeds carried by the wind.

Chosenia seedlings growing like “dog’s hair” in the Dana Greenhouses.

24 Arnoldia 63/3

Two seedlings of Chosenia arbutifolia (AA# 176-98) growing side by side at the Arnold
Arboretum. They were sown from seed in 1 998 and photographed in February 2004.

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia 25

Betula platyphylla.

Next comes the conifer forest, from 1,150 to
1,700 meters (3,770 to 5,575 feet), where large
trees of Abies nephrolepis, Picea jezoensis,
Pinus koraiensis, and the rare Pinus sylvestrifor-
mis dominate, with Betula costata and various
maples in the understory. The subalpine birch
forest, between 1,700 and 2,000 meters (5,575
to 6,560 feet), is dominated by pure stands of
windblown Betula eimanii with Rhododendron
dauricum in the understory and R. aureum
growing in open, exposed sites. At the high-
est levels of the mountain, from 2,000 meters
to 2,300 meters (6,560 to 7,545 feet), is an al-
pine tundra covered with herbaceous plants
and dwarf shrubs, including Vaccinium vitis-
idaea, Phyllodoce coerulea, and Rhododendron
redowskianum.

Trees of Changbai Shan

The climate of Changbai Shan is continental and
dominated by monsoons, which means cold, dry
winters and warm, moist summers. Its vegeta-
tion includes 1,500 species of vascular plants
and 500 species of cryptograms. It is also famous
for the imposing stature of its trees, particularly
the Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis). Moving up
the north side of the mountain, botanists have
identified four distinct vegetation belts. At the
lowest elevations, starting around 550 meters
(1,800 feet) and extending to 1,150 meters (3,770
feet), is the mixed forest of broad-leaved decidu-
ous trees and conifers dominated by magnificent
specimens of Pinus koraiensis along with Acer
mono, Tilia amurensis, Fraxinus mandshurica,
Quercus mongolica, Betula platyphylla, and
Ulmus japonica with Acer pseudosieboldianum
and A. triflorum in the understory.

Pinus koraiensis and on the right, P. sylvestriformis.

26 Ainoldia 63/3

The author harvesting cones from Abies nephrolepis.

Windswept specimens of Betula ermanii below the summit of Changbai Shan.

Capturing and Cultivating Chosenia 27

740 meters

1250 meters

1900 meters

Annual Mean Temperature

10

n

- 0.22 c

-3.62C

Monthly Mean Temperature: July

18.52C

15.52 c

12.7

Monthly Mean Temperature: Jan

- 14.52 c

—

—

Maximum Temperature

31.52 c

24.52 c

21.7

Minimum Temperature

-322C

- 33.62 C

-36.5

Number of Days w/ Temps > 10- C

130

90

54

Annual Mean Precipitation

723 mm

840 mm

1057 mm

Temperature records for Changbai Shan between 1980 and 1983 (from Obeig and Back 1996).

References

Flora of China. 1999. Salicaceae, Chosenia, vol. 4, p. 162.

Fu, L.-K. 1992. China Plant Red Data Book: Rare and
Endangered Plants, vol. 1 . Science Press, Beijing.

Ishikav^a, S. 1994. Seedling growth traits of three Sahcaceous
species under different conditions of soil and
water level. Ecological Review 23(1): 1-6.

Oberg, E., and J. Back. 1996. A Vegetation Field Study
in Changbai Shan, Manchuria. Stiftelsen
Arboretum Norr, Umea, Sweden.

Sugaya, S. 1961 . An account of the propagation of Chosenia
macrolepis Komarov. Ecological Review 15(3):
149-154.

Tao, Y. 1987. Preservation of the forest resource of
Changbai Mountain in relation to human
activities. The Temperate Forest Ecosystem, pp.
21-22. Proceedings of the ITE Symposium no. 20,
5-11 July 1986. Institute of Terrestrial Ecology:
Grange-Over-Sands, Cumbria, England.

Woeikoff, A. D. 1941. What Can the Manchurian Flora
Give to Gardens. Privately printed: Harbin,
U.S.S.R.

Zhao, D. 1987. Preliminary studies on volcanic eruptions
and historical vegetation succession in the
eastern area of northeast China. The Temperate
Forest Ecosystem, pp. 27-28. Proceedings of
the ITE Symposium no. 20, 5-11 July 1986.
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology: Grange-Over-
Sands, Cumbria, England.

Peter Del Tredici is Senior Research Scientist at the
Vaccinium uliginosum under Larix olgensis. Arnold Arboretum.

Verdant Letters: Hawthorne and Horticulture

Malta McDowell

Writer's block is not a new thing. Once when addressing his editor,
Nathaniel Hawthorne explained his reluctant pen. "An engage-
ment to write must in its nature he conditional; because stories grow like
vegetables, and are not manufactured like a pine table." Throughout his
life Hawthorne both laced his writing with horticultural references and
grew actual vegetables.

Even his name has a horticultural ring to it. On reaching the age of
majority, Nathaniel Hathorne changed the spelling of his family name.
He chose an archaic spelling of a thorny tree, "hawthorne," common
name for Crataegus, a genus grown across England and America. In his
writings, Hawthorne grafted his own brand of nineteenth-century Tran-
scendentalism onto Puritanism. His novel-length romances, short stories,
and sketches use landscape imagery to evoke atmosphere, like the misty
quality of Hudson River School paintings. Flowers in his writing signal
beauty, innocence, and the ephemeral qualities of youth. Nature can be
mysterious or euphoric. If Hawthorne's houses are haunted, his New
England gardens are transcendent.

Hawthorne had a legitimate claim to a Yankee pedigree. Born on the
Fourth of July, 1804, his roots ran deep into Massachusetts soil. "The
spirit of my Puritan ancestors was mighty in me," Hawthorne declared,
still clinging "with oyster-like tenacity." His notorious great-grandfather,
John Hathorne, was a judge at the Salem witch trials; his grandparents
were farmers. His father was a sea captain who died of yellow fever in
Surinam when Nathaniel was four years old. He was raised by his mother
and her siblings, especially his uncle Robert Manning, a horticulturist and
nurseryman whose Book of Fruits (1838) was the standard text for mid-
century Americans. In a letter to her brother, Hawthorne's Aunt Priscilla
said, "Be so good Robert as to favour him with your advice (which I think
will not fail to be influential) with regard to attending to writing and some
of his lessons, regularly . . . However rich the soil, we do not expect fruit,
unless good seed is sown, and the plants carefully cultivated." Years later
in The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne acknowledged his uncle's legacy
in this description of an orchard.

There were apple-trees, and pear and peach-trees, too, the fruit on which
looked singularly large, luxuriant, and abundant; as well it might, in a
situation so warm and sheltered, and where the soil had doubtless been

Hawthorne 29

enriched to a more than natural fertility. In two or three places, grape-
vines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters already purple, and
promising the richness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice. The
blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees and
vines; the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and too early
intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay tropically
there, even when less than temperate in every other region.

Manning cultivated his nephew's future, creating a microclimate with
a steady education: tutors, boarding school, and a rich library. Hawthorne
was fond of travel books, including the writings of American botanist John
Bartram. His formal education culminated at Bowdoin College in Maine.
There young Hawthorne decided that being a minister was "too dull a
life" and "as to Lawyers there are so many of them already that one half
of them (upon a moderate calculation) are in a state of actual starvation."
Being a physician was out of the question since he "should not like to
live by the diseases and Infirmities of my fellow Creatures." Finally, he
preferred "becoming an Author and relying for support upon my pen."

His first major milestone was the publication of Twice Told Tales
(1837). This collection of short stories, originally written for magazines,
was well received by the critics. Of it, Longfellow, a Bowdoin class-
mate and already acclaimed poet, wrote, "A rose bathed and baptized in
dew — a star in its first gentle emergence above the horizon — are types
of the soul of Nathaniel Hawthorne." The tales included "The Hollow
of Three Hills," an early example of Hawthorne painting a landscape as
a backdrop for a plot.

Three little hills stood near each other, and down in the midst of them
sunk a hollow basin, almost mathematically circular, two or three hun-
dred feet in breadth, and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just
be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills, and
partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow, within which
there was nothing but the brown grass of October, and here and there
a tree trunk that had fallen long ago and lay mouldering with no green
successor from its roots.

Even after the warm reception of his first book, Hawthorne was
unsure about his ability to earn a full-time living from his pen. After a
stint as a political appointee to the Salem Custom House, he spent part
of 1841 as a member of the fledgling Brook Farm, a utopian experiment
in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, hoping to find a bucolic situation for
himself and his betrothed, Sophia Peabody. He arrived in spring with
snow falling. In the six months from April to October, he worked
the fields, milked cows, and spread mountains of manure. In the early
weeks, he signed his letters "Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ploughman." But he
quickly discovered that agricultural labor and intellectual pursuits don't

30 Arnoldia 63/3

necessarily mix. Writing to Sophia, he moaned, "A man's soul may be
buried and perish under a dung-heap or in a furrow of the field, just as well
as under a pile of money."

In the short months he spent at Brook Farm, Hawthorne did gather
much of the material that appears later as The Blithedale Romance.
Blithedale, a fictional but thinly disguised Brook Farm, is the stage
set for the novel. The poet-protagonist. Miles Coverdale, meets two
women there; Zenobia, daily adorned with an exotic hothouse flower,
and Priscilla, who reminds him of "plants that one sometimes observes
doing their best to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court, where
there is scanty soil, and never any sunshine." Weeds, symbolic and real,
grow at Blithedale, and Coverdale's enthusiasm for the project is "ex-
haled, together with the perspiration of many a hard days toil." Coverdale
concludes, "Burns never made a song in haying time. He was no poet
while a farmer, and no farmer while a poet." At the end of the story,
Coverdale packs his bags and departs from his tarnished Arcadia, just as
Hawthorne took his leave from Brook Farm.

After marrying in Boston the following year, Sophia and Nathan-
iel rented the Old Manse in Concord. The property boasted an ancient
apple orchard installed by Emerson's stepfather, a Unitarian minister.
They could hear apples falling, "from the mere necessity of perfect ripe-
ness." Their vegetable garden had been planted by Thoreau. Ralph Waldo
and Henry David were regular visitors, and the latter, describing the
Hawthornes' home, said, "They had taken their Eden furnished." Dur-
ing their Concord sojourn they had their first real garden. Their daughter
Una was born, the first of their three children. Hawthorne wrote many
stories, collected and published as Mosses from an Old Manse. It includes
"Rappaccini's Daughter," a tale in which evil, mad-scientist father Signor
Rappaccini hybridizes his daughter with a poisonous shrub. "Flower and
maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught with some strange
peril in either shape."

In the introduction to Mosses from an Old Manse, he gives us a glimpse
into his own garden routine, much more benign than Rappaccini's.

My garden, that skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of precisely the
right extent. An hour or two of morning labor was all that it required.

But I used to visit it and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep
contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could
share or conceive of, who had not taken part in the process of creation.

This fertile Concord ground also yielded Hawthorne's first and argu-
ably most famous novel. The Scarlet Letter. Action opens in front of the
seventeenth-century Boston prison door. A wild rosebush blooms. The
rose "may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom.

Hawthorne 3 1

A postcard rendering of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wayside, on Lexington Road in Concord, Massachusetts. His
portrait is inset.

that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale
of human frailty and sorrow." Hester Prynne, wearing her embroidered
scarlet A and carrying her daughter, Pearl, emerges from the prison to
encounter her cowardly secret lover. Minister Arthur Dimmesdale, and
her long missing husband, Roger Chillingworth. These four characters
are locked together throughout the novel. "Let the black flower blossom
as it may!" Chillingworth intones.

Hawthorne, ever critical of the Puritan hierarchy, pokes fun at it by
describing the Governor's garden, where Hester and Pearl encounter Gov-
ernor Bellingham in conversation with Dimmesdale and Chillingworth.

[T]he proprietor appeared already to have relinquished, as hopeless, the
effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid
the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental
gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at
some distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of
its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window, • as if to warn the
Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament
as New England earth would offer him.

After the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, the Hawthornes
moved west to the Berkshire Mountains to a small farmhouse "as red as
the Scarlet Letter" called "Tanglewood." It was on a Lenox estate, now

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, MINUTE MAN NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK

32 Arnoldia 63/3

a venue of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's famous summer music
festival. Hawthorne "planted vegetables enough to supply all Salem."
Sophia planted a flower garden overflowing with tiger lilies, peonies, and
columbine.

In Lenox, Hawthorne befriended Melville and began work on The
House of the Seven Gables. The gabled house with its elm "of wide cir-
cumference" holds a curse from the days of the early Puritan settlement.
Its inhabitants, retiring and impoverished sister and brother, are Hepzibah
and Clifford Pyncheon. They are joined by young, "blossoming," country
cousin Phoebe.

Phoebe finds the garden. It fascinates, with its ancient rosebush
and several "species of flowers growing there in a wilderness of neglect,
and obstructing one another's development (as is often the parallel case
in human society) by their uneducated entanglement and confusion."
But someone is tending an assortment of summer vegetables there. "It
being her first day of complete estrangement from rural objects, Phoe-
be found an unexpected charm in this little nook of grass, and foliage,
and aristocratic flowers, and plebian vegetables." She discovers that the
tenant, a daguerreotypist named Holgrave, is the secret gardener.
Her cousin Clifford, recently and of course unjustly incarcerated, revives
under the influence of the flowers, bees, and hummingbirds.

The House of the Seven Gables contrasts the garden with the decay-
ing house. Hawthorne, while writing the novel, also contrasted his mood
with the task at hand.

The summer is not my natural season for work; and I often find myself
gazing at Monument Mountain broad before my eyes, instead of the infer-
nal sheet of paper under my hand. However, I make some little progress,-
and shall continue to lumber along with accelerated velocity; so I should
not much wonder if I were to be ready by November. If not, it can't be
helped. I must not pull up my cabbage by the roots, by way of hastening
its growth.

Even with Monument Mountain and the attractions of the western
Massachusetts landscape, Hawthorne managed to finish his book that
year. But his wanderlust resurfaced. He missed the sea. "Oh that Provi-
dence would build me the merest little shanty, and mark me out a rood or
two of garden-ground near the sea-coast," he wrote to a friend. And so the
Hawthornes moved again, not, as it turns out, to the sea. Eventually they
bought their first property, "The Wayside," the former Concord home of
Bronson Alcott.

It turned out to be a temporary wayside, since the next year his friend
and fellow Bowdoin alumnus Franklin Pierce was elected President of the
United States and appointed Hawthorne U.S. Consul to England. Off the

Hawthorne 33

Hawthornes went, bag and baggage to Liverpool. In addition to his duties,
Hawthorne enjoyed excursions to English gardens such as Blenheim. But
for the next four years his literary output was almost nothing. Evidently
the diplomatic service sapped his pen just as much as farm labor. After
his term as Consul expired, Hawthorne chose the route of many artists
in midcentury and transferred his household to Italy.

In Florence, the Hawthornes occupied the ground-floor suite of the
Casa del Bello. It had a garden, "a little wilderness of shrubbery and roses,"
Sophia wrote, with a terrace and summerhouse where her husband could
sit "dreaming of a story." His study overlooked the garden. The next
year they lived in Rome and spent time strolling the villa gardens of the
Medici and the Borghese. In Italy, Hawthorne conceived his final novel.
The Marble Faun. In its introduction he notes, "Romance and poetry, ivy,
lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow."

The Marble Faun, like all of Hawthorne's Action, asks the reader to
suspend disbelief. In this case, we are asked to accept the young Count
Donatello as an actual descendant of a faun, a sort of demigod. This faun,
and the artist-expatriates that surround him, stroll through many famous
Italian sites, including the Medici garden:

The grounds are there laid out in the old fashion of straight paths, with
borders of box, which form hedges of great height and density, and are
shorn and trimmed to the evenness of a wall of stone, at the top and sides.
There are green alleys, with long vistas overshadowed by ilex-trees; and
at each intersection of the paths, the visitor finds seats of lichen-covered
stone to repose upon, and marble statues that look forlornly at him, regret-
ful of their lost noses. In the more open portions of the garden, before the
sculptured front of the villa, you see fountains and flower-beds, and, in
their season, a profusion of roses, from which the genial sun of Italy distills
a fragrance, to be scattered abroad by the no less genial breeze.

This description, written in the late 1850s, predates the observations
of Charles Platt and Edith Wharton, who popularized the Italian villa-style
garden in America at the turn of the century.

From Italy, Hawthorne moved first to England and then back to Con-
cord, rounding out the travelogue that is his biography. Still he enjoyed his
plants and gardens. In his final collection of stories and observations. Our
Old House, Hawthorne, whose language has always struck me as vaguely
archaic, sounds like an ecologist quoted on yesterday's New York Times
science page. "Perhaps if we could penetrate Nature's secrets we should
find that what we call weeds are more essential to the well-being of the
world, than the most precious fruit or grain."

Marta McDowell is a freelance garden writer and a lecturer at the New York Botanical
Garden. This article originally appeared in Hortus 70, Summer 2004.

The Nature of Eastern Asia: Botanical and Cultural
Images from the Arnold Arboretum Archives

Sheila Connor

The Arnold Arboretum's collection of
eastern Asian photographs represents the
work of several intrepid plant explorers
who traveled to exotic lands in the early years
of the twentieth century and returned with not
only seeds, live plants, and dried herbarium spec-
imens, but with stunning images of plants, peo-
ple, and landscapes as well. We owe these images
to the foresight of Charles Sprague Sargent, the
director of the Arboretum during its first fifty
years. In December 1906, when E. H. Wilson
signed an agreement to collect in China for the
Arboretum, Sargent set the precedent of asking
all his explorers to document their expeditions
with photographs: "A good set of photographs
are really about as important as anything you
can bring back with you," he wrote. He would
later urge William Purdom to "take views of

villages and other striking and interesting
objects as the world knows little of the appear-
ance of those parts of China which you are to
visit." And to Joseph Rock, the last of the great
explorers who would work for him, Sargent
wrote, somewhat peevishly, "I don't know how
you got the idea that we didn't want scenery.
These are always important and interesting
additions to our collection, and you may be sure
you cannot send us too many of them."

Sargent's repeated insistence that these plant
collectors document their travels in photographs
resulted in a collection of more than 4,500 his-
toric images of eastern Asia. With the exception
of the E. H. Wilson collection, which we have
just begun to process (and some of which can
already be viewed at arboretum.harvard.edu/
programs/eastern_asia/wilson.html), all of these

From left to right: J. G. Jack with one of his Chinese students, E. H. Wilson, and Frank Meyer.

Images of Eastern Asia 35

images are now available on VIA, the Harvard
University Library catalog of visual resources,
at via.harvard.edu. We invite all armchair travel-
ers who have become desktop explorers to see
Asia through the photographs of our earliest
plant collectors.

John George Jack (1861-1949)

167 images (1905)

J. G. Jack was already experienced in plant
exploration when he became the first staff mem-
ber after Sargent to visit Asia. Jack had joined
the Arboretum in 1886 and almost immediately
began collecting and photographing plants in
the U.S. and abroad. Between 1898 and 1900 he
spent summers working for the U.S. Geological
Survey, exploring and photographing the forests
of Colorado and the Big Horn Mountains of Wyo-
ming. In 1891, he visited botanic gardens and
nurseries in England and on the continent, and
in 1904, he and Arboretum taxonomist Alfred
Rehder collected specimens in the western United
States and in Canada. It is likely that his year-
long Asian journey was self-financed; although
Sargent's Annual Report for the Year Ending July
31, 1905, states that "Mr. J. G. Jack has started

on a journey to the East to obtain material for
the Arboretum in Japan, Korea, and northern
China," no record of the Arboretum underwrit-
ing this expedition appears in the archives. Jack's
introduction to an undated, unpublished manu-
script entitled "Notes on Some Recently Intro-
duced Trees and Shrubs" may explain why.

On the first of July, 1905, I left Boston for Japan
. . . The object of my trip was primarily rest and
recreation for three or four months, combined
with a desire to observe some of the interest-
ing arborescent flora of central and northeastern
Japan ... A short visit was also made to Korea
and to Peking in China.

Apparently Jack wanted to travel at his own
pace. Perhaps he also wished to spend time with
his younger brother, the Reverend Milton Jack of
the Presbyterian Foreign Ministry, who had long
been stationed in Taiwan.

Forestry was a lifelong interest for Jack. Cover-
ing some of the ground that E. H. Wilson would
later visit, Jack photographed the forest preserves
around Mt. Fuji and elsewhere in Japan, as well
as the forests of Taiwan and Korea. The scenes
he captured in Beijing include formal portraits
of people in traditional costumes.

William Purdom, Joseph Hers, and Joseph Rock.

:/v

36 Arnoldia 63/3

Chinese scholar trees (Styphnolobium japonicum) are
used extensively as street trees. Jack photographed
these in Beijing, where they had been planted in
immense pots for protection.

In 1905 when Jack photographed this camphor
tree (Cinnamomom camphora) at the Umi Hachiman
Shrine on Kyushu Island, he estimated it at 100 feet
tall and 45 feet in diameter at breast height. In 2001 a
national survey listed it as fapan’s seventh largest tree
(65-foot diameter at 4.3 feet from the ground). The
survey notes that fapan’s big trees “furnish regional
symbols and nourish the soul.

In addition to herbarium specimens represent-
ing 258 plants, Jack returned with 171 images,
many of them in a format especially useful for
him — lantern slides. Jack had been appointed
Harvard University lecturer on arboriculture in
1890 (the title was changed to lecturer in forestry
in 1903) and he continued teaching throughout
his career. In the fall and spring of each year he
taught courses in dendrology to students and
teachers using the Arboretum's living collec-
tions as his classroom, and he taught forestry
both at Harvard (often with Richard T. Fisher,
the first director of the Harvard Forest) and at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
he also held a lectureship.

Images of Eastern Asia 37

Ernest Henry Wilson

(1876-1930) 2,488 images (1907-09, 1910-11,
1914, 1917-19, 1920-22)

Born in England in 1876, Ernest Henry Wilson
received his training in horticulture at the Bir-
mingham Technical College and at the Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. His career as an explorer
began in 1899 when he traveled to China seeking
the dove tree, Davidia involucrata, for the Veitch
Nursery in England. A visit to the Arnold Arbo-
retum on his way to China initiated a lifelong
collaboration with Charles Sargent. As Wilson
was preparing for his first Arboretum journey,
Sargent insisted that he take along a large-
format, Sanderson whole-plate field camera
capable of recording both great detail and broad
perspectives without distortion. The rest of his
camera gear included a cumbersome wooden
tripod and crates of heavy, fragile, 6 1/2-X-8 1/2-
inch glass-plate negatives.

For three years Wilson explored western
Hupeh and western Szechuan. He returned to
Boston in 1909 via Beijing, Moscow, St. Peters-
burg, Berlin, Paris, and finally London, where he
spent several months developing the glass-plate
negatives and seeing for the first time his 720
images. The purpose of his second Arboretum
expedition, which began in 1910, was to collect
cones and conifer seeds in the central and south-
western parts of China. In September of that year,
while he was traveling between Sungpan and
Chengdu, a landslide hit the expedition group,
crushing Wilson's leg. After several months in
a hospital at Chengdu, Wilson returned to Bos-
ton in March 1911, much earlier than planned.
Before the accident, however, he had managed
to take 374 images and to collect and ship bulbs
of Lilium regale, the Easter lily.

We began the process of putting these photographs
online by digitizing both the print and negative of
several images in order to compare their quality. When
the glass-plate negative of E. H. Wilson’s “memorial
arch to the memory of a virtuous woman” (above)
was digitized, revealing the remarkable detail in
the stonework, it was clear that we should use the
original glass plates for all of his photos.

Wilson described the beautiful photograph at
right, taken during his first Arboretum expedition in
June 1910, as simply “Sandstone bridge with Cypress,
Bamboo, and Pistacia chinensis.

38 Arnoldia 6313

and collecting strategies. Occasionally their let-
ters touched on personal matters. In a letter from
Beijing in 1907 Meyer wrote, "This roaming
about, always alone, takes lots of energy away
from a fellow, don't you agree with me too, in
this respect?" On June 2, 1918, Meyer disap-
peared from a steamer and although his body

In January 1914, accompanied by his wife
and daughter, Wilson sailed for Japan, where he
would focus his attention on horticulture and
cultivated plants including conifers, Kurume
azaleas, and Japanese cherries. By the time the
Wilsons returned to Boston at the beginning of
1915, there were 619 new images to add to the
photograph collection. Wilson next undertook a
"systematic exploration" of Korea. Beginning in
1917 with the Japanese islands and Taiwan, he
then traveled along the Yalu River into the far
northern reaches of Korea, returning to Boston in
1919 with seeds, living plants, 30,000 herbarium
specimens, and 700 photographs. His last expe-
dition, a tour of the gardens of the world, took
place from 1920 to 1922 and included a stop at
the Singapore Botanical Garden in June of 1921.
Of the 250 images he shot during this journey,
15 were taken in Asia.

Frank Nicholas Meyer (1875-1918) 1,310
images (1905-08, 1909-12, 1912-15, 1916-18)
In 1905, the United States Department of Agri-
culture's Office of Seed and Plant Introduction
recruited Frank Meyer, a native of Holland who
had immigrated to America in 1901, to gather
economically useful plants in China. Through
an arrangement worked out between Sargent and
David Fairchild of the USDA,

Meyer was to send to the Arbo-
retum trees and shrubs of orna-
mental value along with images
of his travels. The photographs in
the Meyer Collection document
his four expeditions to western
China and Manchuria. Unlike
Wilson's highly composed pho-
tographs, Meyer's images have
an immediate and spontaneous
quality, perhaps because they
document daily life in this remote
region: farmers and other people
going about their work, manufac-
turing techniques, and markets
were all captured through his
lens. Even his images of plants
often include local people or
architectural backgrounds.

Meyer and Wilson correspond-
ed occasionally, trading informa-
tion on routes, travel conditions.

Images of Eastern Asia 39

was eventually recovered, the circumstances of
his death remain a mystery.

William Purdom (1880-^1921)

161 images (1909-11)

In 1909, with Wilson about to return from south-
ern China and the agreement with the USDA in
place to ensure that Frank Meyer's Asian col-
lections would be shared with the Arboretum,
Sargent was eager to dispatch yet another plant
collector to the largely unexplored northeastern
provinces of China. Hoping, in Sargent's words,
to "bring into our gardens Chinese plants from

regions with climates even more severe than
those of New England," William Purdom — the
most inexperienced of Arboretum explorers —
embarked on his first expedition in February of
that year. Like Wilson, Purdom had worked at
Kew and had once been employed at the Veitch
Nursery, which cosponsored this expedition as
they had Wilson's. For three years the shy and
retiring novice followed the Yellow River north,
his work always overshadowed by, and his mea-
ger results compared to, the successful exploits
of the gregarious, prolific Wilson. His collection
techniques improved, however, and he is now

Opposite above: These square, stamped tablets of persimmon sugar, photographed in 1 912, are rare today. Unlike
contemporary “moon cakes,” these were made from dried fruits of an exceptionally sweet variety that Meyer
described as Diospyros kaki ‘Pen sze sse'.

Opposite below: Meyer collected a specimen of this persimmon, which he labeled “Diospyros kaki. Siku,
Kansu, China. Persimmons strung on strong strings to dry in the sun and wind on the top of the inn at which we
stayed in Siku. This variety is locally called Fang sze tze or square persimmon. It contains considerable pucker
when fresh; when dried, however, all traces have disappeared. November 16, 1914. ”

Above: Meyer was as interested in how plants were used as he was in the plants themselves. This “strong
bamboo fence along a canal near Tang hsi” captured his attention in February 1906.

40 Arnoldia 63/3

At top: Purdoin visited the "palace grounds with wall and large temple in the distance” sometime between
1909 and 1911. His image of Chengde in Hebei Province captures part of the six-mile-long wall that encloses
the imperial fehol Summer Palace. Placed on the World Cultural Heritage list in 1994, the palace was begun in
1703, with construction continuing until 1790.

Purdom labeled the photograph below, “Strong men at August games. " Mongolian athletes in traditional
clothing were preparing for wrestling games at a harvest fair. Usually lasting several days, these fairs also
included archery and horse-racing.

Images of Eastern Asia 41

known for his later successes, when he worked
with Reginald Farrer. Eventually he accepted a
post as inspector of forests for the Chinese gov-
ernment. He must have been glad to be relieved
of Sargent's exacting photographic demands, for
although he never complained to Sargent him-
self, in 1909 he wrote to Veitch:

I am not a specialist at photography and do not
wish to infer that my camera is not a good one
but I do now believe that a camera to carry on
one's back with films is the most serviceable
thing out here on these rough roads for it is nearly
impossible to carry the plates. No end of mine
got smashed.

Joseph Hers (1884-1965)

63 images (1919, 1923-24)

It was Hers, a railroad engineer and administra-
tor of the Lung-Hai and Pien-Lo railways, who
approached Sargent with a proposal to collect

These photographs are of Beijing’s Central Park,
which dates from 1429. Hers’ photo below, dated
July 1923, shows potted ornamentals, most of them a
juniper — Juniperus squamata var. meyeri — introduced
into Western gardens by, and named for, Frank Meyer.
Three years later, in August 1926, Hers highlighted
a large oriental arborvitae, Platycladus orientalis
(formerly Thuja orientalisj. In 1928 the garden was
renamed Zhongshan Park, thus becoming one of 35
Chinese parks that commemorate Dr. Sun Yat-sen
(Sun Zhongshan)

42 Arnoldia 63/3

specimens for the Arboretum.

Stationed in Chengchow, a city
on the Huang Ho River that had
become an important railroad
center thanks to its position
at the junction of the Longhai
(east-west) and the Beijing-
Guangzhou (north-south) lines,

Hers was superbly situated,
with a job that enabled him to
range far and wide collecting
plants. In a letter of July 18,

1919, he wrote,

[Although my] own knowledge
of hotany is, I regret to say, very
limited, I happen to live in a part
of China where very few botani-
cal collections, if any, have been
made, and as I enjoy frequent
opportunities to travel in little
known districts . . .

Enclosed with the letter was a list of trees and
shrubs that included a number of new species,
and Hers offered to send "seeds, or cuttings, or
photos." After he had done so, Sargent wrote
him that "this is one of the most important col-
lections of Chinese plants which has been sent
to the Arboretum and I am extremely obliged to
you for sending it to us." Although we have only
63 of his images. Hers went on to collect seeds
and specimens of more than 2,000 species, most
of them sent to the Arnold Arboretum.

Joseph Charles Francis Rock (1884-1962)

320 images (1920-22)

Botanist, anthropologist, explorer, linguist, and
author. Rock was the last of the great plant
hunters employed by Sargent, who by then
was elderly. Rock had immigrated to the
United States from his native Austria in 1905,
but between 1920 and 1949 he lived in China
for extended periods, exploring, collecting plants
and animals, and taking pictures for various
United States agencies and other institutions,
including The National Geographic Society, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Arnold
Arboretum. He is still remembered by the older
villagers in the city of Lijiang, which was his
home base for many years. The 653 photographs
that Rock took during the Arboretum's 1924-27

Above: The plant collector spends as much time,
if not more, processing the fruits of his labor as he
does searching for them. The tedium of making lists,
annotating labels, cleaning and packaging seeds,
and drying and pressing herbarium specimens is
experienced today just as it was when Rock’s assistants
Lan Lee and Sin No worked in the courtyard of his
Moso house in Yunnan in 1922. According to Rock's
legend they are changing driers on plants collected in
the Lichiang snow range.

Opposite at top: Rock attributed the ruination
of these houses to raids by the Pei-lang, the White
Wolves. He took this haunting photograph of the
walled city of Tao-chow in July 1925.

Opposite below: Photographed in July 1925 by
Joseph Rock, this view of the densely forested Ta Ku,
or Big Gorge Valley (Da Gorge, Min Mountains, Gansu
Sheng), shows a spruce forest made up principally of
another conifer named for Frank Meyer, Picea meyeri,
one of China’s sixteen endemic spruce species.

expedition have already been digitized and are
available on the VTA website; the remaining 320
photographs document his 1920-22 expedition to
Thailand, Myanmar, and the Yunnan Province of
China and include images of plants, landscapes,
villages, architecture, and the ethnic minority
peoples of the region.

Sheila Connor is the Arboretum's horticultural
archivist.

Images of Eastern Asia 43

44 Arnoldia 63/3

Digitizing E. H. Wilson's Glass Plates

Digitizing and cataloguing the Arboretum's photographs is a multistep, multiperson procedure. In
the case of our eastern Asian collections, the image scanned was usually in the form of a print, often
the only available artifact. However, the clarity of detail captured in E. H. Wilson's glass-plate
negatives dictated that we digitize directly from these fragile, almost century-old plates, making the
process even more labor intensive and far more fraught with anxiety.

The first step is to catalog each Wilson image and document its many surrogates: the 6-x-8-inch
glass-plate negative; the print bound in one of sixteen chronologically arranged albums,- the mounted
print stored in vertical files arranged either by genus and species or, in the case of landscape views,
by place name. Duplicates as well as oversize prints are also counted, as are the black-and-white and
hand-colored lantern slides made from Wilson's photographs.

After assigning an accession number to the image, the cataloguer describes it online in Harvard's
database (OLIVIA), including enough detail to facilitate access. Villages are identified and located
within provinces, if possible, and plant nomenclature is checked and updated when necessary.

Each glass plate is then inserted — very gently — between pieces of rigid foam in one of twelve
special boxes, custom designed and built by our talented facilities manager. Each 14-x-10-x-8-inch
box is snugly padded and holds thirty glass plates. Two members of the library staff (carefully)
drive six boxes to the Digital Imaging Group (DIG) laboratory in Widener Library, located on Har-
vard's Cambridge campus, at the same time retrieving plates that have already been scanned. Once
scanned, the images and data are deposited in the Digital Image Repository (DIR) and linked to the
record previously created in OLIVIA. Once linked they are available online in VIA (Visual Information
Access) and searchable by photographer, location, date, and keywords.

The success of this digitizing project required the skills of many people. Lisa Pearson and Beth
Bayley organized, catalogued, and transported all of the material to the DIG, where David Remington
oversaw the actual digitizing. Dave Russo built the safe and sturdy (and beautiful) boxes for trans-
porting the glass plates. Wendy Gogel and Sue Kriegsman of Harvard's Library Digital Initiative gave
guidance and assistance, and Harvard College Library, an anonymous donor, and several generous
friends provided the funding.

Wendy Duan, the library's newest staff member, provided invaluable assistance by interpreting
Chinese customs and identifying Chinese place names for this article.

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