2- GRAYH X ) The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum VOLUME 69 • NUMBER 1 • 2011 Ainoldia (ISSN 0004-2633; USPS 866-100) is published quarterly by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts. Subscriptions are $20.00 per calendar year domestic, $25.00 foreign, payable in advance. Remittances may be made in U.S. dollars, by check drawn on a U.S. bank; by international money order,- or by Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. Send orders, remittances, requests to purchase back issues, change-of-address notices, and all other subscription-related communica- tions to Circulation Manager, Arnoldia, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130- 3500. Telephone 617.524.1718; fax 617.524.1418; e-mail arnoldia@arnarb.harvard.edu Arnold Arboretum members receive a subscrip- tion to Arnoldia as a membership benefit. To become a member or receive more information, please call Wendy Krauss at 617.384.5766 or email wendy_krauss@harvard.edu Postmaster: Send address changes to Arnoldia Circulation Manager The Arnold Arboretum 125 Arborway Boston, MA 02130-3500 Nancy Rose, Editor Andy Winther, Designer Editorial Committee Phyllis Andersen Peter Del Tredici Michael S. Dosmann William (Ned) Friedman Kanchi N. Gandhi Copyright © 2011. The President and Fellows of Harvard College CONTENTS 2 Tree by Tree, Yard by Yard: Replanting Worcester's Trees Mollie Fieilicher 14 Geographic Information Systems for the Plant Sciences Brian /. Morgan 23 Remote Sensing as a Botanic Garden Tool Ericka Witcher and Patrick Griffith 33 Book Review: Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants Peter Del Tredici 36 A Venerable Hybrid Oak: Quercus x sargentii Michael S. Dosmann Eront and back covers: New remote-imaging technology is being used to improve plant collec- tions at Montgomery Botanical Center in South Florida. Royal palms and date palms are seen here reflected in Royal Lake at MBC. Photo by Ericka Witcher. Inside front cover: White fir {Abies concolor] is one of the tree species selected for the tree replanting effort in Worcester, Massachusetts. Photo by Nancy Rose. Inside back cover: This magnificent specimen (accession 5883-A) of Sargent oak [Quercus x sargentii] crowns the State Lab Slope area at the Arnold Arboretum. Photo by Nancy Rose. Ti e ARNOLD ARBORETUM of HARVARD UNIVERSITY MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS Tree by Tree, Yard by Yard: Replanting Worcester's Trees Mollie Freilicher The trees of Worcester, Massachusetts, have had a hard time recently, as Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) [Anoplophora glahripennis] has decimated public and private trees there and in surrounding communities. What may he less well known is that the inva- sion of ALB is just the most recent blow in what has been a difficult century for trees in the Worcester area. Some of the issues that the city has faced, such as canopy defoliation from gypsy moth [Lymantria dispar) and tree death from chestnut blight [Cryphonectria parasit- ica) and Dutch elm disease [Ophiostoma ulmi), were not unique to Worcester, affecting many communities across the eastern and central United States. Other threats have been more localized. Worcester, along with much of New England, suffered major tree loss in the 1938 Disasters have hit Worcester's trees before, includinj; the devastatins 1953 tornado. Photo of tornado damage by Alfred K. Schroeder, )iine 1953. MICHAEL BOHNE, BUGWOOD ORG Replanting Worcester’s Trees 3 An adult male Asian longhorned beetle. ALB larvae tunnel into host trees, damaging essential conductive tissues. After pupating, adult beetles emerge from large, round exit holes, as seen on this maple trunk. hurricane, and a tornado in 1953 devastated parts of Worcester. More recently, the ice storm of 2008 damaged many trees, some heyond recovery, in the Worcester area. The ongoing onslaught has made it difficult for planting efforts to keep up with tree losses. Following the 1953 tornado and the already significant losses from Dutch elm disease, Worcester began growing maples and ramping up its planting efforts. Maples, especially Nor- way maple {Acer platanoides), known for its urban adaptability, became a mainstay of the planting program. Over the next six decades, maples came to comprise 80% of street trees, leaving many of the city's public trees vulner- able to a maple-specific insect or disease. Enter Asian longhorned beetle. This maple- loving insect was found in Worcester in August 2008 and has since been detected in four sur- rounding towns, spurring the creation of a regulated area in Worcester County that now measures 98 square miles. Like the hurricane and tornado, ALB quickly changed the land- scape of Worcester's northern neighborhoods. Residents felt bereft of trees and looked to state and federal authorities to come forward with a solution. Even in areas without ALB, communi- ties across the United States have been losing trees to development, to neglect over time, and to a lack of adequate replacement programs. Add up Worcester's experience with the hurri- cane, the tornado, the ice storm, and ALB, and the importance of replanting becomes clear. On a psychological level, replanting is also an important part of the healing process following the losses to ALB and the ice storm. Tree Benefits While urban residents have enjoyed shade and the aesthetic benefits of trees, in the last several decades researchers have studied the ecological, psychological, and social benefits of trees in urbanized areas. It is now known that trees are important for air quality, watershed health, car- bon dioxide reduction, soil quality, noise reduc- tion, property values, and psychological and PA DEPT. OF CONSERVATION AND NATURAL RESOURCES, BUGWOOD.ORG 4 Arnoldici 69/1 • July 2011 social well-being. Street trees alone in Worcester provide over $2.3 million in annual benefits such as those described above. That is not even counting the thousands of trees in parks, yards, and woodlots across the city. The replacement value for the 17,000 street trees accounted for in a 2006 street tree inventory was close to $100 million. Urban forests are valuable indeed. Tree Loss and ALB Protocol Granville Avenue in Worcester, Massachusetts, as removal of street trees begins, and the barren view afterwards. To examine the legacy of the past planting efforts in Worces- ter, we can look at street trees, often the most visible com- ponent of planting programs. The street tree inventory of Worcester identified the dis- tribution of street trees across neighborhoods throughout the city. Neighborhoods with the most street trees also had high numbers of maples: Burncoat, Greendale, Salisbury Forest Grove, and the Salisbury Street area. These areas have close to a thousand or more maple street trees and represent some of the areas with trees most vulnerable to ALB. With ALB in the maple-laden Greendale and Burncoat neighborhoods and with nearby industrial areas and major transit cor- ridors that can serve as entry points and modes for spreading ALB, there was a perfect storm for an infestation of ALB. Since the only way to deal with an infested tree is to cut it down and chip it, there is potential for sig- nificant tree loss when ALB is present in high numbers. The density of infested trees in the Greendale and Burncoat areas, and the density of egg sites and exit holes on the infested trees themselves, resulted in the removal of infested trees and surrounding host trees that were also high risk for ALB infestation. The number of infested trees has not reached the soaring lev- els seen in 2008, hut Worcester and the sur- rounding communities in the regulated area, (Auburn, Holden, West Boylston, Boylston, and Shrewsbury) have all been affected by the bee- tle and, as of May 2011, over 29,000 trees have been removed. In the heavily infested Greendale and Burn- coat neighborhoods, some residents lost most, if not all, trees from their lots. For many longtime residents, the loss of trees was an emotional Replanting Woicestei’s Trees 5 experience. Some streets that had been lined with maples quickly hecame barren. Residents felt the character of their neighborhoods had completely changed. Images of empty streets were reminiscent of pictures following the tor- nado, when some streets were stripped of all trees. With the losses to ALB and the ice storm, the opportunity arose to reshape the urban forest — to improve diversity by planting a vari- ety of non-host trees (trees that cannot sup- port ALB), to move away from monocultures of maples, to strategically place trees along streets, in parks, and on private property to ensure that they have adetiuate growing space now and in the future, to educate residents about the value of trees and how to care for and maintain them, and to keep track of the new trees over time. The scale of such a replanting effort was larger than in any of the other ALB infested areas in the United States (parts of New York, Illinois, and New Jersey). Planning the Plantings The lead federal agency in the Massachusetts ALB Cooperative Eradication Program is the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and the lead state agency is the Mass- achusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). Replanting has been a com- ponent of all ALB programs in the United States and the United States Forest Service (USES) is the lead agency for working with coopera- tors toward this end. Some cooperators in the Worcester area include municipalities and non-profit organizations that have stepped up Professional staff, volunteers, and property owners have all been involved in tree replanting efforts. Here a DCR team in Boylston plants trees. MOLLIE FREILICHER 6 Arnoldio 69/1 • July 2011 Trees at the holding yard are loaded for delivery to planting sites. planting efforts. Congressman Jim McGovern and Lt. Governor Tim Murray founded the Worcester Tree Initiative (WTI) in 2009 with the goal of planting 30,000 trees in the Worces- ter area over a five-year period. The WTI works toward this goal through tree giveaways, tree plantings, and training programs for volunteers. At tree giveaways, attendees learn how to plant and care for a tree properly before taking home a tree of their choice to plant in their yard. The WTI also works with school volunteers and students to plant trees on school properties and also holds "train the trainer" events to train volunteers in tree planting and care so that they can, in turn, train others and he part of WTI's outreach events. The City of Worcester has also increased its planting efforts. Since 2009, the city Forestry Division has planted hundreds of new trees along streets. In 2010, the city implemented an "adopt a tree" program to encourage resi- dents whose properties do not have trees, or who have trees vulnerable to disease or insect infestation, to accept a tree planted by the city. The Forestry Division has also worked with the WTI to assist with school and park plantings in Worcester. Municipalities and non-profit orga- nizations work together to ensure that efforts are not duplicated and that each entity reaches out to help replant trees in the area. In the Worcester area, there have been two government-funded replanting programs that the DCR has administered with federal funds. The two programs share the basic goals of replanting trees and improving diversity, how- ever the execution and scope of the programs differ. The first was a S.S00,000 program funded by the USDA that began in spring 2009 and Replanting Worcester’s Trees 7 wrapped up in spring 2010. The goal of the USDA-funded planting was to mitigate the impact to the communities where host trees were removed because of ALB infestations. The USDA-funded planting specifically targeted property owners who lost trees to ALB in the 2-square mile core area where most removals occurred in 2009. For a property owner to be eligible for a tree with the USDA planting, the owner had to have lost a tree over six inches diameter at breast height (dbh) from a main- tained area of the property. This put the focus on replacing landscape and specimen trees on properties in areas where natural regeneration could not be expected. Naturalized, unmain- tained areas that could regenerate on their own were not included in this planting. Already two years on, property owners are seeing these areas come back to life. By spring 2009, the funding was in place from the USDA to plant approximately 800 trees in the areas first affected by tree removals. Proper- ties that lost trees to ALB were identified from the USDA database and DCR foresters mailed information to property owners about replant- ing. Interested property owners responded and staff scheduled visits to select trees and loca- tions. Additionally, staff went door to door to reach property owners who did not respond. As the USDA planting program was wrapping up, the next program was just getting started. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided $4,487 million in funding for the second planting program that got underway in spring 2010. The ARRA planting will continue into 2012. It targets all property owners in the regulated area regard- less of whether they lost a tree to ALB. The only limit to the number of trees a property can have is the number of trees the property could support. In addition to increasing diversity and the number of trees on private property, the ARRA planting aims to restore public shade trees, to plant 15,000 trees on private property, to restore forest canopy and watershed func- tions affected by reduced canopy, and to create jobs. As of May 16, 2011, over 4,700 trees have been planted through the ARRA program. In addition to working with residents to site trees, DCR foresters also conduct inspections of trees planted in previous seasons to ensure that trees Though popular ornamental trees, mountain ashes [Sorbus spp.) were not offered in replanting programs because of their suscebtibility to ALB. S. aucuparia 'Michred' shown here. Host Genera for Asian Longhorned Beetle Acer Maple Aesculus Horse chestnut Albizia Mimosa Betula Birch Celt is Hackberry Fraxinus Ash Platanus Sycamore Populus Poplar Salix Willow Sorbus Mountain ash Ulmus Elm Cercidiphyllum Katsura tree Koelreuteria Goldenrain tree NANCY ROSE 8 Arnoldw 69/1 • July 2011 are establishing adequately. These inspections are also part of a larger data collection effort on the plant- ings, which will provide valuable information for other communities dealing with ALB and subsequent tree planting efforts. Selecting Species An early task of the replanting pro- grams was to determine a species list to offer. First and foremost, trees for replanting could not he host trees for ALB. The tree species also had to tolerate urban condi- tions and be relatively free of insect and disease problems. It was also important to have trees that ranged in size and character at maturity from small ornamental trees to large shade trees and included both deciduous and evergreen species. The species also had to be readily available in large quantities from the nursery, a factor that ruled out some otherwise practical candi- dates such as Kentucky coffeetree [Gymnocladus dioicus] and Serb- ian spruce [Picea omorika). Forest- ers selected a mix of native and non-native species (sec Table 1). Property owners wanted trees for a variety of reasons, including shade, ornamentation, and privacy, and a diverse list helped meet those needs. With demand high for some species on the list, occasion- ally some residents had to accept substitutes, especially in the case of cherries {Prumis spp.) and crab- apples (Mains spp.). Demand was so high for some selections that nursery supply could not keep up and these species, including Japa- nese tree lilac (Syringa reticulata] and ginkgo (Ginkgo biloha], had to be removed from the planting list. The initial list included 18 species and this list has evolved to include 22 species for the upcoming plant- ing seasons. ALB Regulated Area The map on the facing page shows the 98-square-mile regulated area for Asian longhorned beetle infestation in Worcester County. Firewood, green lumber, branches, roots, logs, debris, and nursery stock of host genera is Current Infestation Information The Asian Longhorned Beetle Cooperative Eradication Program is a partnership between the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and U.S. Forest Service, the Massachu- setts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, and the towns and cities of the regulated areas. Chart is current as of May 24, 201 1 . For up-to-date information on the program go to: http://www.massnrc.org/pests/alb/ Worcester Boston/ County Brookline 'Current Staff 147 9 Quarantine (Square Miles) 98 10 Infested Trees Removed 19,368 6 High Risk Trees Removed 10,250 0 Trees Planted 5,898 12 Regulated Area Lakes and Ponds L I Town Boundary • Interstate — U.S. Highway Regulated Area to Suppress and Control the Asian Longhomed Beetle May 9, 2011 10 Arnohiia 69/1 • July 2011 Outreach and Property Owner Visits The outreach from the ALH Cooperative Eradi- cation Program for both planting programs was similar. From the outset, it was important for staff from OCR and APHIS to visit property owners to discuss options for replanting. Many property owners were inexperienced with trees, so a personal visit was important not only to assess properties for tree species suitability but also to educate residents about trees and tree care. With personal visits, we could ensure that the right tree was selected for the right place and, just as importantly, that a tree selected was one that the property owner liked and would maintain. After all, these trees have to survive if they are going to provide enjoyment and ben- efits into the future. In addition to granting Its narrow, iiprij>ht form makes Serbian spruce [Picea omorika) a Rood elioiee for urban sites, but it was not readily available from nurseries so could not be offered in the replantinR programs. Flowering cherries [Prunus spp.) were popular choices for homeowners participating in replanting programs. permission for tree planting, property owners signed an agreement stating that they would maintain trees for two years including water- ing, mulching, and removing stakes if they were used. Residents also were eager to share their experiences with the tree removals and often used the site visits as part of their healing pro- cess in their discussions with staff. Learning from Other Replanting Programs In June 2009, Eric Seaborn, the Program Coor- dinator for DCR Urban and Community For- estry and Alan Snow, the DCR Community Action Forester, traveled to New York for a workshop on how New York and New Jersey ALR programs conducted their plantings. While Seaborn and others had already devised the basic strategy for the replanting and devel- oped the methodology for both plantings, the workshop granted the opportunity to hear about successes from the New York and New lersey replanting efforts and to view materials offi- cials there used in outreach. The Worcester Trees selected for the replanting effort include (left to right) seviceberry [Amelanchier spp.), tuliptree [Liriodendron tulipifera), red oak {Quercus rubra), and linden [Tilia spp.). Table 1. Replanting List for Massachusetts Regulated Area. This represents current and past species that have been offered in the replanting program. LARGE SHADE TREES Carpinus caroliniana American hornheam Cladrastis kentukea (syn. lutea] Yellowwood Fagus sylvatica European heech Ginkgo biloba* Ginkgo Gleditsia triacanthos Honeylocust Larix spp. Larch Liquidambar styraciflua Sweetgum Liriodendron tulipifera Tuliptree Metasequoia glyptostroboides Dawn redwood Nyssa sylvatica Blackgum Ostrya virginiana American hophornheam Quercus alba White oak Quercus bicolor Swamp white oak Quercus coccinea Scarlet oak Quercus palustris Pin oak Quercus rubra Red oak Tilia spp. Linden/hasswood ORNAMENTAL TREES Amelanchier spp. Serviceherry Chionanthus virginicus Fringetree Cornus spp. Dogwood Malus spp. Crahapple Prunus spp. Cherry Syringa reticulata* Japanese tree lilac EVERGREEN TREES Abies concolor Picea pungens Finns strobus Thuja occidentalis* White fir Colorado spruce Eastern white pine American arhorvitae *No longer offered NANCY ROSE (ALL PHOTOS) MOLLIE FREILICMER 12 Arnoldia 69/1 • July 2011 area replanting built on those efforts, espe- cially with regard to tree care information that was distributed to residents. Database and Information Tracking C^n top of the planting, diversity, and water- shed goals for the USDA and ARRA plantings, DCR is gathering information on the trees planted for a central database. The database includes data from the USDA and ARRA plant- ings as well as other organizations planting in the regulated area including the WTI and the City of Worcester. With so much planting in the Worcester area, there is a great opportu- nity to study the fates of newly planted trees in New England communities. Additionally, there will he chances to investigate many aspects of tree planting, establishment, and survival on a large scale. To keep track of trees, DCR foresters use tab- let computers enabled with GPS and sketch- mapping software . The Forest Service provided equipment and technical assistance to adapt software used for forest health monitoring in Massachusetts so that it could be used for the replanting. This software has eased data col- lection and facilitated the presentation of the planting data. When foresters are on site visits with property owners, the software enables the foresters to see the property on an orthophoto (a type of aerial image used in Geographic Infor- mation Systems [GIS]), and drop a point on the map where a tree is to he placed. Once the for- ester draws the point on the map, a window opens where the forester can enter informa- tion on the tree, the property, and the contact information for the property owner. The soft- ware then creates a file that is usahle in any GIS software. This file contains both the data the foresters have input as well as the spatial data. Foresters use this file to generate the tree order for the nursery. Foresters also use this software to conduct a post-planting inspection. It is this information, the data from the final inspection, that goes into the central database and that will provide a baseline of data on the newly planted trees. Foresters are also begin- ning to use the USDA Forest Service's i-Tree Trees are readied for planting at Quinsigainond Community College during 2009, the first year of the USD.'V replanting program. Replanting Worcester’s Trees 13 Data on these recently planted street trees on Fairhaven Road in Worcester will be gathered for a central database that will help evaluate tree establishment and survival. software to explore the structure of and the environmental services provided hy the newly planted trees. What's Next? As of May 24, 2011, the replanting program has planted nearly 6,000 trees and has found homes for over 9,000 trees for the spring and fall 201 1 plantings. It will he some years before the streets of Worcester are lined with large trees again, hut the diversity of trees that are being planted today will help buffer the city against future pests. Strategic placement of trees now can also help eliminate later con- flicts with infrastructure such as power lines. With the many partners involved, and support at the state and federal level, Worcester and the rest of the regulated area is poised for an exciting recovery. References E. G. McPherson, E.G., J.R. Simpson, P.J. Peper, S. L. Gardner, K.E. Vargas, and Q. Xiao. 2007. Northeast Community Tree Guide: Benefits, Costs, and Strategic Planting. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, General Technical Report, PSW-GTR-202. Herwitz, E. 2001. Trees at Risk: Reclaiming an Urban Forest. Chandler Press, Worcester. http://www.beetlebusters.info/ http://www.massnrc.org/pests/alb/ 1-Tree. n.d. http://www.itreetools.org/ M. Freilicher, B.C. Kane, Fi.D.P. Ryan, III, and D.V. Bloniarz. 2008. Trees in Peril: Responding to the Asian Longhorned Beetle. http://www. mass.gov/dcr/stewardship/forestry/urban/docs/ Worcester_Report.pdf Ric, P. de Groot, B. Gasman, M. Orr, J. Doyle, M.T. Smith, L. Dumouchel, T. Scarr, and 1. Turgeon. 2006. Detecting Signs and Symptoms of Asian Longhorned Beetle Injury: Training Guide. Available online: www.glfc.forestry.ca/VLF/ invasives/alhbdetecguide_e.pdf Worcester Tree Initiative: http://www.treeworcester.org Mollie Freilicher is a Forester with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. MCULIE FREILICHER Geographic Information Systems for the Plant Sciences Brian J. Morgan [ i The disciplines of the plant sciences and geography have been intertwined as far hack as circa 300 BCE when the Greek scholar Theophrastus, frequently referred to as the "Father of Botany," described the habitat and geographical distribution of plants 'in his first work on the subject titled Enquiry into Plants (Histoiia Plantarum). It wasn't until the sixteenth century and the establishment of the world's first botanical garden in Padua, Italy, that the leading icon of modern geography, the map, found its permanent place in the plant sci- ences by documenting the locations of woody plants in the garden for identification purposes. Today, location — the unifying theme of geog- raphy— has taken on an even more important role in the plant sciences where it is considered an essential attribute to record, and variable to consider, for the study of plants in fields ranging from agriculture to ecology. In the digital age that we live in, the catalog- ing of plants and the analysis of the influence that location plays on the growth and distribu- tion of them is increasingly performed using geographic information systems (CIS). CIS is commonly defined as a system of personnel, computer hardware, software, and data for cap- turing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced informa- tion. CIS merges the visual aspects of a map with the analytical power of a database, and allows plant scientists to view, question, under- stand, interpret, and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and * OijBfi Brook ' * HytfogriOfK Ln > ^ HydroqnpfK Pom* - = BiOKy Brook Sower T O WMtrSvnpte SwTVirOMe 1/23/2011 S«*vir UBrr Ng I Weagxr Condrttoro Simy «7 F GrotM Omlerabc None | UtMr Deampbon None I Monrtonng Pom Ty S»Mr^ I Menrienng Pom Cc Good J MoTMonng Pdm Or No Water Sower Steam knpabon I Water f>otwng [ Water Oocotor WaterOdor Water Flow Kate Water now Rate Un m3/y Water Oepth Water Depth Uwb. m Water Sarr^ Vok* Ftle Eddar>es i O Vistor Amenities a □ Infrastnictwe .t 8 Elevation * □ Natirai Boundvies :t 0 Base Map ft 8 Hydrograpny - 8 Soil s 8 Sod ■ Canton f>ne sandy loant. 1S-2S% si ■ Canton fine sandy loam. 3>B% stop ■ Canton fine sandy loam B-1S% Po ■ Otamon fine sandy toam 3-9% do ■ Owmorv-Hotlrt - Rock outcrop COT ■ Otartton-Hollis ■ Rock outcrop cor ■ Freetown n^ck ■ HiTKldey sandy loam lS-2S%slopi ■ HmeUey sandy toam 3 9% slopes ■ Hmddey sandy loam B-1S% slope ■ Hollii Rock Outcrop - Charlton cor ■ HoPd Rock Outcrop • Chartton cor ■ Memmac fme sandy loam 3-9% d ■ Newport Bit loam 1S'2S% dopes ■ Newport on loam 3-9% dopes ■ Newport lilt loam 9-15% dopes '1 CDS S leadObyectk- ^ •* H H Bloeoic • ^ S ^*3, i I i i Analysis of plant condition at the .Arnold Arboretum reveals a cluster of plants in poor condition (indicated by red dots), in this case mostly eastern hemlocks {Tsuga canadensis) damaged by hemlock wooly adelgids. Geographic Information Systems 15 ArcToolbox * * lit ArcToolbox •> ^ }D Arulyn Tools ^ Analysis Tools S O AfcPad Tools a 9 Cartography Tools a O Conversion Tools - 9 Data Interoperability Tools ^ % Data Management Tools a % Data Reviewer Tools 9 % Editirtg Tools 9 ^ Geocoding Tools ^ Geostabstical Arxalyst Tools 3 % Linear Referencing Tools % Multidimension Tools 3 % Nerwork Analyst Tools 9 % Parcel FabrK Tools 9 Public Garden Tools Plant Collections Calculate Latitude & Longitude ^ Calculate Reference Gnd Name ^ Load Collection Name Domain ^ Load Section Name Domain Tree Assessment ^ Calculate Tree Condition Rabng ^ Calculate Tree Hazard Rating li ^ Scbemabcs Tools 9 % Server Tools 9 ^ Spatial Analyst Tools 3 O Spatial Statistics Tcxils 3 % Tracking Analyst Tools I Arnold Art)oretum.mxo - ArcMap • Arclnfo File Edit View Bookmarks Insert Selection Geoprocessing Customize Windows Help D e3 B ^ e t • n.(M5 Table Of Contents * ■ j. j « « a 3 S Base Map Topology ' S Visitor Amenities S 3 Bench Q 3 Entrance & Exit 1^ a Waste Container n • S Planu t 3 Administrative Boundaries « S Infrastnicture S Elevation 3 Elevation Point * 3 Elevation Contour — Index Intermediate Suppiimental - Depression - UNKNOWN £ □ Natural Boundaries • 8 Base Map S 8 Hydrography 3 □ Soil r 8 District £ 8 Elevation Surface .1 8 Aenai Photography 2008 GIS is used to explore plant collections in public gardens. By linking maps with the collections database, details about accessions such as this white oak {Quercus alba) are readily available. trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. In our rapidly changing world, GIS gives scientists the power to quickly understand and formulate solutions to the problems pre- sented by our most complex issues such as population growth, resource consumption, and climate change. COMPONENTS OF A GIS Personnel and Equipment The foundation of a powerful GIS is built with the personnel required to develop and manage the system. GIS managers and analysts usu- ally have a strong background in the principles of cartography and database management sys- tems, and a number of graduate and certifica- tion programs have appeared in the last decade to support this education. Fortunately, recent advances in simple desktop GIS software like Esri ArcGIS Explorer for the visualization and analysis of any geographic data, and in web- based solutions like Google Maps, have made the use of GIS technology accessible to all. With expert personnel in place, the next item needed for a geographic information system is the computer software used to capture, manage, analyze, and display spatial data. Desktop GIS software packages like Esri ArcGIS Desktop or Quantum GIS are most commonly used to per- form the majority of GIS functions, but server- based systems like Map Server and Esri ArcGIS Server are increasingly being employed to share data, maps, and even analysis capabilities with users through their web browsers without the need for training or special software. These server systems even allow for the collection and use of GIS data and maps on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets that contain loca- tion sensors such as a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. The computer hardware used for a desktop GIS is largely dependent on the requirements of the software selected, the amount and intricacy of the data to be analyzed, and the complexity of the analyses to be performed. While a stan- dard desktop or laptop computer can he used for most systems, workstation-class desktop computers with fast processors, ample memory and storage, and high-performance graphics are most common. Server-based systems that allow multiple users to work with GIS data stored in a 16 Arnoklia 69/1 • Iuly2011 A prototype web application allows users to visualize occurrences of plants in their native environments with data from the Global [i Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). This map shows the native occurrence of umbrella masnolia [Magnolia tripetala), a spe- 1 cies noted for its large leaves that can reach nearly two feet long. ! database management system like Postgre SQL or Microsoft SQL Server typically require the addition of a server-class computer capable of hosting the database and serving data over the local network and internet. Spatial Data Perhaps the most important component of a GIS is the data it contains. A large percentage of research and organizational data that is col- lected has a spatial component and is thus suit- able for use with a GIS. This means that this data can be referenced to a location and visualized in the form of a map or globe and then analyzed to reveal relationships, patterns, and trends. Geographic data is most easily discussed in terms of the themes that it represents, such as topography, vegetation, soils, precipitation, etc. This thematic data can he compared by overlay- ing layers in GIS software. This quickly allows spatial relationships between the layers to he discovered, such as the correlations between precipitation, elevation, and vegetation types. Each thematic layer can he made up of one or more feature classes that are stored as sepa- rate files or tables in a spatial database. Feature classes are traditionally differentiated by the type of geometry used to represent real world features. For example, spot elevation measure- ments would he represented by points, contours of equal elevation would be represented by lines, flat water bodies like lakes would be rep- resented by polygons, and a continuous eleva- tion surface created from these features would he represented by a raster, or digital image, where each pixel represents the elevation value at that location. In addition to its type of geometry, a feature class can be defined by the attributes associated with it. For example, the location of a particu- lar plant that is represented as a point might have the name of the plant, the relative condi- tion of the plant, and the value of the diameter at breast height (DBH) measurement stored in the file or table along with the geometry' of the point itself. This combination of a map with a database allows for easy visualization of the data in GIS software, where the points repre- senting plants can be labeled with their names, assigned different colors depending on their condition, and scaled according to their DBH measurements. If a GIS is going to be implemented across a particular institution for long-term use, such i I i Geographic Information Systems 1 7 as a conservation organization for biodiversity assessment, or a botanical garden for plant collection curation, it is com- mon to design or employ an existing data model. A data model can be thought of as a database design or template that carefully considers how real-world features are repre- sented as geometry in feature classes, the attributes appro- priate for each feature, and any known relationships that exist between individual fea- tures or entire feature classes. In the plant sciences, user community designed data models for Esri ArcGIS exist Collecting GPS data for biodiversity assessment, forestry, and public gardens. These models can be downloaded for free and allow scientists to get started with their GIS projects quickly, without the need to design their own mod- els. Data models like the one developed by the Alliance for Public Gardens GIS (ArcGIS Public Garden Data Model) additionally pro- vide standardization across multiple organiza- tions, thus simplifying the exchange of critical biodiversity data. Whether using an existing data model or designing a new GIS from the beginning, one of the first things to consider is the availability of the data required for the project. A common starting point is to collect as much existing data as is readily available through internet data repositories like the United States Geological Survey Earth Explorer or local government spa- tial data clearinghouses. One of the primary sources of this data is from a technique called remote sensing which is formally defined as the collection of information about an object without making contact with it. [Ed. note: See next article for more on the use of remote sens- ing.] As it relates to spatial data, remote sensing usually refers to data captured from aircraft or spacecraft, and typically comes in the form of aerial photography, multi-spectral images that measure non-visible forms of electromagnetic radiation, or even LIDAR height data that is at the UC Davis Arboretum. Open Source vs. Commercial Software There is much debate within the GIS devel- oper and user community regarding the choice of commercial software versus open source software. Commercial products like those offered by Esri and Mapinfo are quite expensive to purchase and typically require annual maintenance fees for support and upgrades, but offer well-designed user inter- faces and sophisticated analysis tools. Con- versely, open source solutions such as those that are part of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) are free to use, but are more difficult to operate and get support for. Developers and scientists within academia generally tend to favor the use of open source software for GIS applications and research, while private companies and gov- ernments usually use commercial products. Ultimately, the choice is a tradeoff between cost and ease of use, but the same function- ality is available from either option. COURTESY REBECCA SUCHEP MISSOURI BOTANICAL C \RDEN 18 Arnolclia 69/1 • Iuly2011 collected with a laser. Remotely sensed imagery frequently serves as a base map or background that other data — location of roads, vegeta- tion types, etc. — can be extracted from using the techniques of supervised classification or heads-up digitizing. When this data is not suf- ficient for identifying features such as the loca- tion and species of plants, it is customary to collect additional data in the field by using GPS or traditional surveying techniques. Spatial Analysis and Information Products Once the necessary geographic and attribute data are collected for a project, the next step is to harness the true power of GIS to analyze this information in an effort to understand, ques- tion, interpret, and visualize it to reveal rela- tionships, patterns, and trends. One common type of analysis is to investigate quantities. Plant scientists may he interested in analyzing the quantity of a particular species or group of species in a given area. Most desktop GIS soft- ware packages provide a suite of tools for work- ing with this type of information in the form of densities, clusters, and distributions. Another common analysis is to look at what is nearby. If a cluster analysis shows a group of sensitive trees in decline, then buffering, flow analysis, and spatial statistics can be used to attempt to identify a cause hy looking at topography, geol- ogy, soils, hydrology, and other related data. Many of these analysis capabilities are built into most desktop GIS software packages in the form of geoprocessing tools. These tools can he used individually or grouped together into an analysis workflow called a model. This kind of model typically has a set of adjustable param- eters that influence the processing of the input data to produce a meaningful result. Once the phase of spatial analysis is com- pleted and a relationship, pattern, or trend has been revealed or confirmed, the final step is to summarize the results of the analysis as an information product that can be used to make decisions and take informed action. Most desk- top GIS software packages have the capacity to produce a variety of information products in the form of tables, charts, reports, maps, or a combination thereof. The plant scientists investigating the previously mentioned cluster of declining trees may have determined that increased earthquake activity on a nearby fault resulted in the release of sulfuric acid into a nearby stream, thus causing their decline. To make a case for proposed miti- gation, the scientists might pre- sent their findings in the form of a map showing the locations of the geologic, hydrologic, and plant features of concern along with a chart showing the increased sul- furic acid concentrations over time, and perhaps a second map detailing their proposed plan. If the results of this study need to be conveyed to a wider audi- ence such as stakeholders or the general public, a server-based solution might be employed to create another type of informa- tion product, a web browser application that allows users to explore and interact with the sci- entists' data themselves. This is just one hypothetical example of how GIS can he used in the plant Mapping a plant collection at the Missouri Botanical (iarden in St. Louis, Missouri. Geographic Information Systems 19 Global greenness (vegetation) can be evaluated with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from remote sensing i data gathered by satellites. sciences. The next section describes how it is being employed in real-world projects for both research and management. APPLICATIONS OF GIS Our ever increasing need for land and resources combined with the threat of climate change has pushed the assessment of biodiversity to the top of the list of plant science research priorities. The scientific literature is rich with articles on the subject, ranging from studies of parks and reserves to the entire planet. GIS is often cited as the primary tool used to perform many of these studies, which frequently employ species occurrence data from informatics sites like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and remotely sensed data from satellites like Landsat 7 TM to determine the relative species richness of a particular area. In one study of African vascular plant diversity, the investiga- tors performed a multivariate analysis to deter- mine the relationship between the number of species in well-known areas and the associated environmental conditions like topography, tem- perature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration. This relationship was then used to interpolate the species richness in lesser-known areas to produce a vascular plant diversity map for the entire continent (Mutke et al. 2001). Once the biodiversity of an area has been assessed, the spatial data generated from the assessment can he used to help prioritize which parcels of land should be designated as conser- vation areas. Since the study of land and the process of delineating boundaries are inherently spatial in nature, GIS is cited as the overwhelm- ing choice of tool for the task. In addition to biodiversity data similar to that produced in the previous study, conservation planning activi- ties usually include topography, precipitation, soil, geology, and land use data. In a forest con- servation study in Malaysia the investigators used a decision making approach that assigns weighted values to possible alternatives in an effort to prioritize areas for conservation. This study considered species and ecosystem diver- sity, the soil and water conservation functions of plants, and potential threats to the forest, and through a process called map algebra, hot spots for conservation were determined and used to delineate potential new protection areas (Phua and Minowa 2005). GIS can also he an invaluable tool when planning a collecting expedition. Traditional approaches to expedition planning have favored areas that were considered interesting or easily accessible, and tended to focus on species that were easily studied. GIS allows for the unbiased Reference Metadata Expert knowledge Table Property may have Institutions Not applicable None Plants Living plant collection management and analysis Aerial photography and local surveys Polygon and point Mass Planting must contain Plant Center Suitable for products of 1.24,000 and larger Categorized by growth habit and labled with name and accession Animals Living animal collection management Expert knowledge Table Barrier, Exhibit, and Structure may have Enclosures Not applicable None Boundaries Administrative and natural boundaries Aerial photography and local surveys Polygon Polygons must not overlap and must not have gaps Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by feature class and labeled with name Cultural Historic features and landmarks Aerial photography and local surveys Polygon, line, and point Lines must not overlap Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by feature type and labeled with name Facilities Facility inventory and asset management Aerial photography or local surveys Poison, line, and point Polygons must not overlap and lines must not intersect Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by feature type and labeled with name Transportation Infrastructure inventory and routing Aerial photography or local surveys Polygon, line, and point Polygons must not overlap and lines must not intersect Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by feature type and labeled with name Hydrography Cartography and hydrologic analysis Aerial photography, topographic analysis, or local surveys Polygon, line, and point Polygons must not overlap and lines must not intersect Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by feature type and labeled with name Climate Microclimate analysis including temperature and humidity Local weather sensors Polygon, point, and table None Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by microclimate type Topography Topographic analysis including slope, aspect, hillshade, viewshed, etc. Local municipalities and site surveys Line and point Lines must not intersect Suitable for products of 1:24,000 and larger Categorized by contour type and labeled with elevation Soils & Geology Soil and geologic surface overlays SSURGO, local soil surveys, USGS, etc. Polygon and point Polygons must not overlap or have gaps Suitable for 1:24,000 and smaller Categorized by soil or geologic unit Imagery Map background and reference Aerial photography Raster Pixels cover the im^e area Pixel size is 3' to 1'; useful for products of 1:300 and smaller Color or grayscale Laver Map O ' Date' -=^urce Repreif^ntapo ’ Spat:'! reiaponships Map icalc and accu^ r . ,%-:T:bnlogv *t>d annotaPi. Layer Map use Dau i-j.jfxe Rip.-- ---r.tation It rr jtion^hipv Map - ~:le and accuracy Symbology and annotaPo' Laye' Map use Data source Representation Spatial relations^' . Map scale and accurac r Symbology and annotatio' Layer Map use Data source Representation Spatial relationships Map scale and accuracy Symbology and annotation Layer Map use Data source Representation Spatial relationships Map scale and accuracy Symbology and annotation Layer Map use Data source Representation Spatial relationships Map scale and accuracy Symbology and annotation Layer Map use Data source Representation Spatial relationships Map scale and accuracy Symbology and annotation Laye’ Map use Data source Representation Spatial relationships Map scale and accuracy Symbology and annotation Map : Data sourct Rep.v*— •' Spatial ■itio:.-.’.:ps Map ■ ind ^.-Lufac , Sv " ■ . jnd annotation nship Syn.t Laye' Map'- Data -Hjrce Representation Spatial i^iationships Map cale and ‘Uf.- . Symb ' and annot.iro Geographic Information Systems 21 GIS data can be represented as points, lines, polygons, and rasters. Here spot elevations are shown as points, contours are shown as lines, ponds are shown as polygons, and an elevation surface is shown as a raster in part of the Arnold Arboretum. sampling of an area that not only maximizes heterogeneity, but can also assure that the larg- est gaps in the record of biodiversity are filled with the least amount of effort and resources. GlS-based expedition planning typically uti- lizes existing biodiversity data along with topography, geology, vegetation, temperature, and precipitation data to determine areas that have the greatest potential to provide the maxi- mum amount of new information and speci- mens. In a survey gap analysis study in Guyana the investigators used museum and herbaria specimen data to locate geographical gaps in the existing data in an effort to determine can- didate survey sites for each taxonomic group of interest. These candidate sites were then compared with weighted abiotic variables to determine a final set of collecting sites that had the greatest chance of producing new informa- tion and specimens for each taxonomic group (Funk et al. 2005). Once plant specimens have been collected and cultivated in a botanical garden or arbore- tum, GIS is commonly used to curate the col- lection and to help make management decisions throughout the entire lifetime of the plant. GIS is commonly used for creating collection maps and planting plans, identifying problems and threats, planning mitigation, and performing research. In addition to data about the living collection, a typical garden GIS employs data on topography, soils, hydrology, land use, facilities, transportation and more. In a tree conservation study at the UC Davis (University of California, Davis) Arboretum the investigators used data on the location, species, size, and condition of each specimen in conjunction with data on site characteristics and conflicting urban infra- structure to determine a condition rating and a hazard rating for each tree in the collection. These ratings were then used to identify areas of concern and to produce prioritized mitiga- Facing page: Thematic layers in the ArcGIS Public Garden Data Model allow comparisons and correlations of databases from soils and topography to plants and animals. 22 Arnoldia 69/1 • Iu}y2011 «<1 ^l•0■lTVM uujwmu^ Cvrto*nlum fortwnei RJ^r*sft C*n [^StAictures y. Hants a Pfant Canttr • Mass Planting Spaomcn • Indrvidwai Plant Canter » 2 Tree Sv»nboi$ 8 Hats Planting Shields Oak Grove Pachnrayt OPnmarv Bsecondary Bunun proved Planting Areas ■Sod Shields Mound^f; C3010 Regents of the Universitv of m y 5«4we*A HM Center Type Tree Aoc«M«n Number MOS.bOll ^•k^er 19704 Soentrfk Neme Seovoia sempervirena Common Nem# coast redrvood H-ovenence UNKNOWN Cebfomie Netive Yet Arboretum Al-SUr No LOW Weter u»e Yes Shade Tolerant UNKNOWN Plant saa loe Plant Sae Unite mchca Section Name T. Efl«t water Redwood Crove Planting 6ed Number 0 RefererKe Gnd Neme S-C4 . Latitude 3«.S>9067 Longitude -121.746191 Survey Date 9/S/2007 Plant Images Ceoafe Imaaes Plant Research Gsoole Scholar a y Seeue*a tempervirens c GQSeouoia sempervirens r y. SeQuoia scmpervircrv UC Davis Arboretum Collection Mapper allows users with no GIS experience to explore plant collections. tion plans that considered the safety of visitors and impact on the rest of the living collection (Ingolia 2010). THE FUTURE OF GIS Studies such as these would he difficult, if not impossible, to complete without the use of a GIS. Not only are the results of these studies valuable to the scientific community, hut the data generated during the process can be shared and employed by researchers in future efforts. As our world continues to evolve at a quicken- ing pace, and threats to plants in their native environments rise, our ability to quickly under- stand and formulate solutions to these complex issues is essential to plant conservation. Geo- graphic information systems provide us with a platform to accomplish this and much more, and as our society becomes increasingly loca- tion aware, this technology is likely to become one that we question how we ever lived with- out It. Do you know where your plants are? References Funk, V., K. Richardson, et al. 2005. Survey-gap analysis in expeditionary research: where do we go from here: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 85(4): 549-567. Ingolia, M. 2010. UC Davis Arboretum Tree Long Range Conservation Plan. UC Davis Arboretum, Davis, CA. Mutke, 1., G. Kier, et al. 2001. Patterns of African Vascular Plant Diversity: A GIS Based Analysis. Systematics and Geography of Plants 71(2): 1125-1136. Phua, M.-H. and M. Minowa. 2005. A GIS-based multi- criteria decision making approach to forest conservation planning at a landscape scale: a case study in the Kinabalu Area, Sabah, Malaysia. Landscape and Urban Planning 71(2-41: 207-222. Brian I. Morgan is a Putnam Research Fellow at the ! Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Director of the Alliance for Public Gardens GIS. i I I I Remote Sensing as a Botanic Garden Tool Eiicka Witcher and Patrick Griffith Remote sensing is a tool already in use for plant explo- ration, ecology, forestry, hab- itat restoration, and other related fields. It also has great potential in botanic gardens for botany, horti- cultural science, and management purposes. At Montgomery Botani- cal Center, located in Coral Gables, Florida, we were able to improve our assessment of the property with the addition of new software that provided the capability for deeper evaluation of the collec- tions and natural resources using remote sensing imagery and data. By adding LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) imagery to maps and employing techniques normally used at larger regional scales, new information was discovered about the garden and its collections. Garden maps serve multiple purposes. Their primary use is as a location catalog — what a garden has and where it is. People who use the garden, whether staff or visi- tors, will want to know where cer- tain features are at some point. The information displayed in this kind of map can reflect the vastly differ- ent purposes of, say, a researcher examining different subspecies of Coccothrinax niiragvama (mira- guama palm), an irrigation techni- cian repairing a break, or a visitor looking for the restroom, but all three of their garden maps would need to show what things are and where they are located. On the other hand, maps can also be used for more dynamic purposes in the garden. New areas of horticul- tural and scientific interest can be illuminated A 2008 aerial photo of Montgomery Botanical Center property in south Florida. through the addition of a spatial or geographic component — where things are in relation to something else. Spatial relationships in a botan- ical garden, for example, can examine how close vulnerable plants are to open spaces or high-use visitor areas, how tree canopies change over ERICKA WITCHER 24 Arnoldiii 69/1 • July 201 1 time, or the density of plantings. Expanding beyond the property, considerations regarding latitude and regional topography can he taken into account. Integrating a garden map into a Geographic Information System (GIS) is a way to keep and readily analyze a lot of data about a lot of different things in a garden. A Garden for Conservation and Research Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC) is a non- profit research institution. With 120 acres in a sub-tropical latitude, we are able to specialize in palm and cycad taxa that would have difficulty growing elsewhere in the United States (Calonje et al. 2009, Noblick et al. 2008). MBC's liv- ing plant collections are well-documented and population-based in order to reflect the genetic diversity found in the wild, and they have great research and plant conservation value. People of all backgrounds — from students to hobbyists to commercial growers — can observe and examine unusual, rare, or endangered specimens they might not have the opportunity to see in the habitats of origin, or in side-by-side compara- tive collections that would not occur in the wild (Husby et al. 2010). Because of the exotic Shade and soil needs are affected by what is overhead and underfoot: for example, the dappled shade and natural mulch provided by this Ficus racemosa counteracts the stress of alkaline soil on the Chamaedorea stolonifera now thrivinj’ at its base. Similar conditions must be found for future plantings. Definitions Remote sensing data: Quantifiable information collected from a distance about something, such as measured elevations or the hue of vegetation, usually referring to aerial or satellite signal collectors. Remote sensing imagery: The composite pictures created from the collected data. Remote Sensing 25 Vegetative and geologic characteristics, like canopy and elevation changes seen here along the Palm Walk, are quantifiable with LIDAR-integrated maps. origins or sensitive nature of many plants in our collections, we must work to create and main- tain an environment that provides for their individual needs for life and growth. To that end, we are continually looking for new ways to assess the garden property and analyze both its biological and geological resources. Legacy Imagery For several years we had utilized aerial photo- graphs to examine tree canopy and other fea- tures at MBC that were difficult to thoroughly evaluate from ground level. Orthophotographs (planimetrically-corrected aerial photographs) and uncorrected aerial photos are frec^uently used in many different industries, including botanic gardens, for many disparate purposes, and are readily available through a variety of sources (e.g., the USGS website http;//www. usgs.gov/pubprod/, or state or county websites). These photos provided a good general sense of how areas were developing, but we experienced a fair amount of difficulty integrating them with our AutoCAD (a computer-aided-design software program)-based maps, so their utility was somewhat limited. We wanted a way to view the photos and the maps at the same time as well as use other types of imagery, then be able to perform spatial analysis. New Systems Add Capability A software grant for botanical gardens and zoo- logical parks provided an all-in-one solution. Two MBC staff members had prior experience with the software, and with the help of an addi- tional intern, by late 2009 we had completely converted the old maps and their CAD lay- ers to a CIS (geographic information system). The local coordinate system was replaced with geographic latitude and longitude so the con- 26 Arnoldui 69/ 1 • Iuly2011 verted CAD layers would relate to Earth's surface. MBC was then able to add one more tool to their gar- den shed: remote sensing data and imagery. The ability to use remote sensing data in conjunction with map files opened up entirely new ways of visu- alizing the garden property. Tree canopies were accu- rately identified by species by overlaying the mapped plant points onto the ortho- photos. Map files of road edges and lake boundaries from 10 years before were adjusted to align with their current locations. Instead of looking at information imposed on a representation of the property, the informa- tion was examined in view of the property as a whole in the real world. MBC also lacked an accu- rate elevation map. The landscape in South Florida is flat enough that a gain of even one foot (0.3 meters) is a substantial difference in regard to the water table and underlying soil, which are of great importance to plants (Kitaya et al. 2002), but such a subtle variation is often difficult to detect while performing field- work. To remedy this, in 2010 we made our own contour map with the CIS software, using a hare-earth LIDAR image of the property. LIDAR imaging uses measurement of the time it takes a laser pulse to he transmitted from and reflected hack to an overhead receiver (like an airplane or satellite) to generate a visual data- set. In other words, while aerial photos create a two-dimensional horizontal image, LIDAR adds a third dimension: elevation. LIDAR also is increasingly freely available from local. First-Return LIDAR yellow is the highest image of MBC property showing topmost surfaces, where bright elevation and deep blue is the lowest. State, and federal government agency websites (e.g., the uses website http://lidar.cr.usgs. gov/ ). A hare-earth LIDAR image displays ground-level data as opposed to treetops and rooflines. With this height information added to the maps, we could concretely see geologi- cal aspects that we could only intuit before. Important inland low-lying areas as well as property high points were clearly identifiable, and the labeled contour map provided practical delineations for field work. Remote Sensing 27 Bare-Earth LIDAR image of MBC property showing ground level surface geology; lower (darker) areas west of the escarpment are important for planting, as they are more likely to contain sand and silt, in contrast to the surrounding alkaline limestone bedrock, or the clay marl to the east. A first-return LIDAR image also offered a lot of utility for other vegetation-assessment projects. First-return images illuminate all the topmost surfaces of the study area,- in this case, canopy height and coverage. In one project, an undeveloped section of the property filled with both an invasive exotic plant, Schinus terebin- thifolius (Brazilian peppertree), and protected mangrove trees needed a thorough evalua- tion so we could determine the most efficient course of action for managing the land. Canopy height and density were exam- ined in the LIDAR images and transects were distributed and performed accordingly. The invasive plant was not found to be as pervasive as feared, and as a result, eradication efforts were scaled down proportion- ally (Edelman and Griffith 2010). Using LIDAR imagery to better visualize the dense plant growth beforehand gave us a more complete picture prior to entering the area, sav- ing time and effort. For another project we adapted a conventional for- estry analysis using first-return LIDAR images to appraise height and breadth informa- tion (Sumerling 2010) to estab- lish potential candidates for national or state champion tree status. (Champion trees are the largest known individuals of a species based on measure- ments of height, trunk circum- ference, and canopy spread.) This was done by simply over- laying the plant layer over the image and visually identifying the tallest canopies. The plant curators also applied their in- field knowledge of the various species' usual growth habits to propose more individu- als for assessment, the height and spread of which were also checked in the LIDAR map. At writing, 27 trees had been awarded state champion status by the Florida Division of Forestry, and 2 trees received national cham- pion status from the conservation organization American Forests. Future Development With the successful completion of these proj- ects, we have become more familiar with the uses of both aerial photography and LIDAR for horticultural purposes, and subsequently the BY ERICKA WITCHER FOR MONTGOMERY BOTANICAL CENTER 28 Arnoldia 69/1 • Iuly2011 MBC staff created their own topoKrapliy map with a LIDAR image and GIS software. Note the allee in the escarpment running through the northeast quadrant, seen in detail on facing page. This point on the escarpment was one of the liighest points on the property until Robert Montgomery excavated the rock to create the allee in the 194()s, in order for his wife, Nell, to view the lakes from the main house (Anderson and (iriffith, in press). Remote Sensing 29 i 1 I ! I Structures ^ V / ^ . ( / l\' / \ ' V / • ^ 7 J ' 1 / y 1 R r J\ {[ V ^ ■ f 1/ // f ^ / / * 1 ' t ^ / > y — h BY ERICKA WITCHER FOR MONTGOMERY BOTANICAL CENTER 30 Ainoldia 69/1 • luly 201 1 LIDAR helps make informed property management decisions at MBC. Thirty-meter transects were per- formed to the north and west at each point to assess approximately how much of overhead canopy consisted of invasive Brazilian pepper (BP). Large circles show percentage BP found to the north, and small circles show percentage BP to the west. Due to mangrove protection laws, greater caution must be used during removal w herever a transect was not solid red. A map of the results indicates areas of the most worthw hile effort. Remote Sensing 31 This Florida champion tree, Pterygota alata (Buddha coconut), has endured dozens of hurricanes, and at 89 feet tall is one of the tallest trees on our property. We first identihed it as a candidate through examination of LIDAR imagery. . LIDAR imagery provides clues to planting conditions at MBC for staff biologist, Chad Husby, looking for future plant sites near the allee. potential applications for this kind of data. We are also exploring additional applications currently in use by other landscape-level industries that have a good deal of potential for use in botanic gar- dens (Perroy et al. 2010, Suinerling 2010). For example, we are now working on cre- ating contours from a first-return LIDAR image that will provide new informa- tion about the canopy coverage and bio- mass density in the garden. This type of three-dimensional data can amplify cur- rent knowledge about shade structure, wind protection, and plant growth and expansion within the property and cre- ate an operational image of the "vegeta- tive topography." Coupled with 15 years of database records tracking the growth and reproductive activity over time of our plants, we anticipate new insights to spur in-depth research. LIDAR also lends itself to three-dimensional modeling and creat- ing fly-throughs, leading to comprehensive visual aids for online garden "explorers" and researchers, as well as garden manag- ers looking to gain new perspectives on their collections and resources. Meanwhile, maximizing survival rates of invaluable scientific plant collections with analysis of current collections and records, both spatial and temporal, is an ongoing objective. By employing imagery in our GIS and adapting some of the more basic and conventional uses of LIDAR for regional landscapes to the localized, relatively small-scale botanical garden, we have been able to save many hours of laborious fieldwork and gain a ntianced understanding of the property and plants under our care. Acknowledgements: We thank Brian Witcher and Judd Patterson of the National Park Service SFCN program for their GIS assistance and consultation, MBC GIS Intern Jonas Cinquini and MBC Intern Sara Edelman for their project assistance, the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust for all GPS equipment funding, and the ESRl Botanical Garden/ Zoological Park Grant program for providing all GIS software. ERICKA WITCHER 32 Arnoklia 69/1 • July 2011 Chukrasia tabularis (Burmese almondwood) is prized for its beautiful hardwood. This specimen at MBC is the Florida state champion tree and was first identified as a candidate through examination of LIDAR imagery (right). LID.\R scale is in feet. References and Further Reading Anderson, L. and M. P. Griffith. In press. Principles and Principes: William Lyman Phillips and the Palm Collection at Montgomery. Studies in the History of Gardens &> Designed Landscapes 3 1 . Calonje, M., C. E. Husby, and M. P. Griffith. 2009. The Cycad Collection at Montgomery Botanical Center. Public Garden 24: lS-17. Edelman, S. and M. P. Griffith. 2010. Mangrove and Brazilian pepper in the garden: A case study of vegetation change over 80 years. Davidsonia 20(2): 51-64. Husby, C. E., H. Liu, S. H. Rcichard. 2010. Weed risk assessment for botanic garden decision making. Proceedings of the 4th Global Botanic Gardens Congress at http://www.bgci.org/files/ Dublin2010/papers/Husby-Chad.pdf (accessed December 2010) Kitaya, Y., V. Imtan, S. Piriyayotha, D. laijing, K. Yabuki, S. Izutani, A. Nishimiya, and M. Iwasaki. 2002. Early growth of seven mangrove species planted at different elevations in a Thai estuary’. Trees - Structure and Function 16: 150-154 Noblick, L. R., C. E. Husby, and M. P. Griffith. 2008. The Palm Collection at Montgomery’ Botanical Center. Public Garden 23: 26-29. Perroy, R. L., B. Bookhagen, G. P. Asner, and O. A. Chadwick. 2010. Comparison of gully erosion estimates using airborne and ground-based LIDAR on Santa Cruz Island, California. Geomorphology v. 1 18. pp. 288-300. Sumerling, G. 2010. Lidar Analysis in ArcGIS 9.3.1 for Forestry Applications. ESRl White Paper, at http:/7w ww.esri.com/ library/whitepapers/ pdfs/ lidar-analysis-forcstry.pdf (accessed December 2010) Ericka Witcher and Patrick Griffith are Collections Supervisor and Executive Director, respectively, at Montgomery Botanical Center in Coral Gables, Florida. BOOK REVIEW: Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants Peter Del Tredici Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants Richard Mabey. Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 324 pp. 2010 (United States publication 2011) ISBN 978-0-06-206545-2 In his new book Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants, Richard Mabey presents a refreshingly non-judgmental look at some of the most vilified plants on earth. While acknowledging the prob- lems that some of these notori- ous plants can cause for both gardeners and ecosystems, he also presents their not insubstantial positive contributions in terms of recolonizing derelict land in cities, restoring war-ravaged landscapes in Europe, and, over the millennia, providing abun- dant food and medicine for peo- ple. In short, the author takes a balanced approach to the sub- ject of weeds and he puts the focus where it belongs — on their intimate association with human culture going back to the dawn of agri- culture itself. As Mabey presents it, the subject of weeds is nothing less than a microcosm of human culture, an observation that he reinforces with numerous quotations from famous writers including Shakespeare, Ruskin, and Thoreau, and, of course, from the Bible. Not stopping here, he also provides a lengthy discussion of the significance of weeds in visual arts, as exemplified by a discourse on the significance of Albrecht Diirer's famous painting from 1503, Large Piece of Turf, which he describes as, "... not only the first portrait of a community of weeds, it is the first truly naturalistic flower- painting in Europe, and the herald of a new humanistic attitude towards nature." A more modern example is his discussion of the science fiction classic The Day of the Triffids (first published as a book in 1951 and released in 1962 as a movie, now a cult favor- ite), which Mabey presents as a metaphor for 34 Arnoldia 69/1 • Iuly2011 Great Piece of Turf (also known as Lar}(e Piece of Turf), 1503, by Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528). Graphische Samnilung Albertina, Vienna, Austria /The Bridgeman Art Library. Book Review 35 aggressive invasive species such as giant hog- weed {Heracleum mantegazzianum] and kudzu [Pueraha montana). It should also be noted that the book is up-to-date in its discussion of the modern, scientific data on weeds, discussing in detail how the increased use of herbicides over the past fifty years has influenced weeds' evolution, and how genetically modified (GM) crops are interacting with weeds to make them hardier and more difficult to eradicate. In short, Mabey masterfully weaves the disparate fibers that constitute the cultural and natural history of weeds into a colorful tapestry of a book that few nature writers can match. Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants is not without a few flaws however, one of which (for American readers) is its exclu- sive use of the British common names of plants throughout the text. There is a glossary at the end which provides the Latin equivalent to the common name, but the fact that many of the plants discussed in the book have different common names in North America than they do in England leaves the inquisitive Ameri- can reader who doesn't know the Latin names of plants with little choice but to turn to the internet or reference books to figure out identi- ties. In addition, the book is overwhelmingly focused on weeds that dominate the landscapes of the British Isles and on British writing on the subject, making the book somewhat less relevant to North American audiences than it perhaps needs to be. Certainly the history and behavior of North American weeds is dis- cussed in the book, particularly the subject of their early introduction from Europe, but their treatment is minimal compared to the space devoted to weeds in Britain. There's also a sur- prising absence of any mention of the extensive pioneering German literature on the subject of urban ecology, particularly that done by Herbert Sukopp and his colleagues in post-war Berlin. Despite the British focus of Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants, I found it a fascinating read — which is no small accomplish- ment given the fact that I have a large library of well-studied weed books at home. Mabey is an engaging writer with long-standing, highly per- sonal interest in weeds that shines through on Dandelion {Taraxacum officinale). every page. He deserves kudos for his masterful integration of the scientific and cultural aspects of weed ecology and his fluid, often poetic, use of language. Here he describes watching weeds grow at an active construction site: "When I look at their comings and goings, as hectic as the movements of the bulldozers, I grope for metaphors to understand their mean- ing. I think of ants, but they're too organized, too determinedly earth-changing, like the exca- vating machinery itself. Then it occurs to me that they are like a kind of immune system, organisms which move in to repair damaged tis- sue, in this case earth stripped of its previous vegetation." While this book has something for everyone, I suspect that its greatest appeal will not he to down-in-the-dirt gardeners hut to those of the armchair persuasion who like their weeds with a touch of literature, humor, and taste. Peter Del Tredici is a Senior Research Scientist at the Arnold Arboretum. NANCY ROSE A Venerable Hybrid Oak: Quercus x sargentii Michael S. Dosmann Scores of plant taxa — species, infraspe- cific variants, and hybrids — commemo- rate Charles Sprague Sargent with their epithets. They range from the cherry palm of the Caribbean, Pseudophoenix sargentii, to the vase-shaped Sargent cherry of East Asia, Prunus sargentii. In 1915, yet another plant was given the Sargent moniker when Arbore- tum taxonomist Alfred Rehder recognized the Arboretum director by providing a name for the hybrid between the English oak, Quercus robur, and the American chestnut oak, Quer- cus montana (formerly known as Q. prinus). While hybrids between these two members of the white oak subgenus [Lepidobalanus] had been known since the 1830s, this was the first time the taxon was recognized officially with its own name, Quercus x sargentii, the Sargent oak. From Q. robur, the hybrid attains a certain nobility and majesty, not to mention a girthy trunk, broadly spreading canopy, and distinc- tive auriculate (earlobe-shaped) leaf bases. From Q. montana come the crenately toothed leaves, smaller-stalked acorns, and, with age, coarsely furrowed hark. The Sargent oaks that grow in the Arbore- tum's living collections can all be traced to the initial lot of acorns collected from a magnificent tree at Holm Lea, Sargent's estate in Brookline, Massachusetts. The seeds arrived at the Arbore- tum on October 6, 1877. They germinated and yielded multiple seedlings that were planted in the permanent collections and cataloged under accession number 5883. Currently, three plants (A, B, and C) remain in the collection, each looking exceptional for being over 130 years old. Perhaps the most spectacular is 5883-A, a majestic specimen located near the junction of Bussey Hill Road and Beech Path, at the base of the Forsythia and Syringa collections. With a current height of 84 feet (25.6 meters) and DBH (diameter at breast height) of 55.7 inches (141.5 centimeters), this tree commands attention. Visitors strolling down Beech Path often pause in awe to admire the tree's massive limbs and rounded crown. Recent landscape renovations to this area, known as State Lab Slope, will not only maintain the health and vitality of this specimen and the surrounding plantings, but also improve visual access. I should note that its siblings (plants B and C) may be slightly smaller, but are also notable and worth a visit. Both are located further along Beech Path, near the edge of the Fraxinus collection. Q. X sargentii is extremely rare in cultiva- tion, and our understanding of it is essentially limited to the specimens grown in our collec- tion as well as those of a few other botanical gardens and arboreta. Certainly, our three trees are exceptional and have stood the test of time, but it would be premature to say much more without further study. I am particularly inter- ested in this hybrid's potential use as a tree tol- erant of the vagaries of the managed landscape, especially in urban areas where soils are prone to drought and other limitations. As Q. mon- tana is an upland species typically found grow- ing in dry and rocky habitats, one could hope that the Sargent oak is similarly tough. Oaks are difficult to propagate clonally, and attempts over the years to clone the Arboretum's trees have been in vain. However, because Q. robur is a species that can sometimes be rooted from cuttings. Manager of Horticulture Steve Sch- neider and I are conducting several experiments to see if ease of propagation from this parent was passed along to the hybrid. If that is the case, it opens up a great deal of potential for additional study and, perhaps, the Sargent oak's use as a street tree near you. Michael S. Dosmann is Curator of Living Collections at the Arnold Arboretum For additional information on this hybrid and its interesting history, see: Hay, I. 1980. Outstanding plants of the Arnold Arboretum: Quercus x sargentii. Arnoldia 40(4): 194-199. I The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum J,s, M/R 0 5 pritj arnoldia The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum VOLUME 69 • NUMBER 2 • 2011 CONTENTS Arnoldia (ISSN 0004-2633; USPS 866-100) is published quarterly by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts. Subscriptions are $20.00 per calendar year domestic, $25.00 foreign, payable in advance. Remittances may be made in U.S. dollars, by check drawn on a U.S. bank; by international money order; or by Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. Send orders, remittances, requests to purchase back issues, change-of-address notices, and all other subscription-related communica- tions to Circulation Manager, Arnoldia. Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130- 3500. Telephone 617.524.1718; fax 617.524.1418; e-mail arnoldia@arnarb.harvard.edu Arnold Arboretum members receive a subscrip- tion to Arnoldia as a membership benefit. To become a member or receive more information, please call Wendy Krauss at 617.384.5766 or email wendy_krauss@harvard.edu Postmaster: Send address changes to Arnoldia Circulation Manager The Arnold Arboretum 125 Arborway Boston, MA 02130-3500 Nancy Rose, Editor Andy Winther, Designer Editorial Committee Phyllis Andersen Peter Del Tredici Michael S. Dosmann William (Ned) Friedman Kanchi N. Gandhi Copyright © 201 1. The President and Fellows of Harvard College 7), c ARNOLD ARBORETUM o/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY 2 One Hundred Years of Popular Information Peter Del Tredici; with additional text by William (Ned) Friedman II Can Taxodium Be Improved? David Creech, Lijing Zhou, Yin Yunlong, and Teobaldo Eguiluz-Piedra 21 The Writing of New Trees; Recent Introductions to Cultivation John Grimshaw 29 A Year With the Apples of the Arnold Arboretum Miles Sax 40 The Royal Azalea: Rhododendron schlippenbachii Nancy Rose Front cover: This specimen of Malus sargentii (acces- sion 20408-D), collected by Charles S. Sargent during his 1892 expedition to lapan, has no single leader but instead has several trunks and a uniquely intertwined branching structure. Photo by Miles Sax. Inside front cover: Eucalyptus leucoxylon subsp. megalocarpa. seen here in flower at the Chelsea Physic Garden, London, is one of the trees featured in New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation. Photo by lohn Grimshaw. Inside back cover: A mass planting of royal azalea {Rhododendron schlippenbachii] in the Arboretum's Explorers Garden displays lovely spring bloom and colorful autumn foliage. Photos by Nancy Rose. Back cover: The bright red fruits of Malus sargentii provide color (and food for birds) in autumn and early winter. Photo by Nancy Rose. One Hundred Years of Popular Information Peter Del Tredici PUBLICATIONS HISTORY On May 2, 1911, the Arnold Arboretum published the first issue of the Bulle- tin of Popular Information. Arboretum director Charles Sprague Sargent was the edi- tor, and he stated that its specific goal was to meet the complaints of people who "... do not know when the trees and shrubs in the Arbore- tum bloom and therefore miss flowers which they want to see." These first bulletins came out once a week during the spring, early sum- mer, and fall and were "mailed without charge to anyone interested in trees and shrubs and their cultivation." They were four pages long and without illustrations. The intention of the publication was to tell people who lived in the area what exciting things were happening on the grounds of the Arboretum and to provide some basic facts about selected plants, includ- ing their history of cultivation and suitability for New England gardens. The fact that the Bul- letin came out thirty-nine years after the estab- lishment of the Arboretum in 1872 suggests that public outreach to visitors was not origi- nally very high on Sargent's to do list. By 1911, however, he apparently felt that the time was ripe to connect with the gardening public who wanted to know more about the collections. Despite its tardy introduction, the Bulletin of Popular Information established an Arbore- tum tradition of outreach through publications that continues today. After four years of publication, Sargent initi- ated a "New Series" of the Bulletin on April 28, 1915. Unlike the first series, this one had volume numbers and an index and established a subscription rate of one dollar. The first issue of the second series concluded with the rather quaint note that, "Automobiles are not admit- ted to the Arboretum, but visitors who desire carriages to meet them at the Forest Hills entrance can obtain them by telephoning to Charles S. Sargent, first director of the .Arnold Arboretum, photographed at the Arboretum in 1904. P. 1. Brady, lamaica 670, or Malone ik Keane, lamaica 344." From the perspective of today's digitally connected world, it's hard to imagine a time of when entire telephone numbers rather than just area codes consisted of three digits. Series Three of the Bulletin began in April 1927 — a month after Sargent's death — edited by Ernest H. Wilson. It was printed on coated paper for the first time, which allowed for the inser- tion of a full page black-and-white photograph in each issue. Following Wilson's untimely death in an automobile accident on October 15, 1930, long-time Arboretum staff member I Bulletin of Popular Information 3 J. G. Jack took over tire task of producing tire Bulletin withi contributions from Oakes Ames, W. H. Judd, and the young Edgar Anderson. Anderson took over full responsibility for the publication in 1932 and initiated a fourth series in 1933. In 1935, Anderson left the Arboretum to work at the Missouri Botanical Garden and horticulturist Donald Wyman took over the Bulletin, publishing his first article on "Tree Troubles" in March 1936. Elmer Drew Mer- rill had been appointed director of the Arbore- tum in 1935 and in March 1941 he made the decision to change the name of the Bulletin to Arnoldia. He had two reasons for doing so: first, he thought that the title Bulletin of Popular Information was too cumbersome, and second, that it was difficult to cite in scientific papers because it had been published in four separate series without sequential volume numbers. He also felt that changing the name to Arnoldia would not only "reflect proper institutional credit on its sponsoring institution." Merrill retained Wyman as editor of the newly chris- tened publication, a post Wyman held until 1969 — a 34-year record of longevity that no one is ever likely to top. During the entire period of Wyman's editorship, Arnoldia came out more or less twelve times per year with each issue being of variable length. Following Wyman's retirement in 1969, Richard Howard, who served as director from 1954 through 1977, changed Arnoldia from its pamphlet format to a magazine format in 1970. A card-stock cover with a full-bleed (printed Bound copies of every issue of the Bulletin of Popular Information and Arnoldia are housed in the Arboretum’s library. All issues are also available through the Arboretum’s website (http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu). 4 Arnold in 69/2 • November 201 1 The first full-color Arnoldia cover appeared in 1981, featuring a photo- graph of Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ by A1 Bussewitz, a long-time Arboretum volunteer. all the way to the edges) photograph was added, and it was published six times per year (including the Director's Report) with a subscription price of $3. SO per year. Interestingly, no one was listed as editor in the front of the magazine, but in the staff list at the end of the 1972 Director's Report, leanne S. Wadleigh was listed as "Editor of Arnoldia," a position she held until 1979. During this period of time, the content of the magazine changed considerably from what it had been under Wyman's leadership. For one thing, many of the articles were written by non- Arboretum staff and for another, there were a number of "theme" issues that were later republished as stand-alone hooks, including "Low-Maintenance Perennials," "Colonial Gardens," and "Wild Plants in the City." Dr. Howard himself wrote many articles for Arnoldia covering many aspects of the Arbore- tum's history, including the important two-part "E. H. Wilson as Botanist" (Volume 40, Numbers 3 and 4, 1980). Shiu-ying Hu, who first came to the Arboretum as a graduate student in 1948, brought the Arboretum's China connec- tion up to date with some fascinating articles about her return to mainland China in 1975 (Volume 35, Number 6, 1975; Volume 37, Number 3, 1977). When Peter Ashton became director of the Arboretum at the end of 1978, he was determined to have Arnoldia reflect the broader research mission not only of the Arboretum hut also of the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Department of Harvard University. He also wanted Arnoldia to reach a broader audience of readers. To this end, he added color covers to Arnoldia in 1981, reduced its publication cycle from six times per year to four in 1982, and increased its dimensions (from about 6 by 9 inches to about 7'/2 by 10) in 1983. In addition to these stylis- tic changes, the magazine expanded its former focus on plant collections, botany, horticulture, and landscape history to include articles about cutting-edge research on ecology, molecular biology, rare plant conservation, and tropical forest biodiversity. Ashton felt that scientists affiliated with the Arboretum needed to he able to explain the relevance of their research to the greater public, especially the Arboretum's membership. Since then, Arnoldia has contin- ued to publish articles on a wide range of topics that embody the mission of the Arboretum, and to provide a means for scholars to share their research with interested readers. Bulletin of Popular Information 5 WRITERS AND CONTENT It is worth noting that the editors of the publi- cation during its first fifty-eight years — Sargent, Wilson, Anderson, and Wyman — were also its principle writers. This aspect gave it both a highly personal and authoritative tone. The people who were writing about the plants knew what they were talking about and, because the Arboretum was a research and not a commercial institution, they could be counted on for unbiased information. All of these botanists wrote with a high level of confidence based on the completeness of the Arboretum's collections and on the soundness of their observations and judgment. Issues of the Bulletin from the Sar- gent years, in particular, make for fascinating reading because they tell the story of the early introduction of many now-familiar plants. Sargent was also very adept at capturing the essence of plants, sometimes in completely unexpected ways, such as his description of Populus tomen- tosa leaves, which "hang on long flattened stalks and, fluttering in the slightest breeze, make, as the blades come together, a noise like drops of rain in a heavy shower falling on a tin roof" (July 2, 1915). Many of the plants that were first described in the Bulletin have gone on to become famous ornamentals, and a few have become infamous invasive species. To illustrate the latter category, I found this quote about Amur cork- tree in the June 14, 1911, issue of the Bulletin: " Phellodendron sachali- nense [now classified as P. amu- rense], which is a native of Saghalin [Sakhalin] and the northern island of Japan, has grown in the Arboretum into a tree about thirty feet high, with a tall, straight trunk, and wide- spreading branches forming a shapely flat-topped head. The seed- lings springing up naturally near the old trees indicate that it is likely to hold its own in New England. The hardiness of this tree, its rapid growth, and the fact that it is not injured by insects, suggest that this is a good subject to plant in narrow streets. Seeds will be sent from the Arboretum in the autumn to anyone who may desire to grow this tree." This fascinating quotation reveals much about the early history of the Arboretum that, had it not been written down, would have been The picturesque forms and thick, corky bark of the mature corktrees along Meadow Road often draw the attention of Arboretum visitors {Phellodendron amurense var. lavallei seen here). NANCY ROSE 6 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 2011 forgotten. To begin with, the observation that Amur corktree is capable of spreading on its own is the earliest record of the species' inva- sive tendencies, which landed it on the Massa- chusetts Prohibited Plant List in 2009. Second is Sargent's unequivocal, but somewhat mis- guided, recommendation to plant it on nar- row streets. And finally there is the offer of free seeds for anyone who wants to grow the tree. Taken together, these statements provide a stunning example of the role that botanical gardens have played in popularizing and dis- tributing plants. The rules seem to have been, first test it, then evaluate it, and then distribute It. What's remarkable is that it only took one hundred and twenty-seven years for Amur cork- tree— which the Arboretum introduced from St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1882 — to go from its initial introduction in Massachusetts to being banned by the state. This quotation illustrates the treasure trove of information that these early bulletins contain about the plants grown and introduced by the Arboretum. Since the Bulletin was written as a running narrative of seasonal events (rather than separate articles! it takes a little more effort to sort through the information contained in the issues, but read- ing through them page by page leads to the dis- covery of many buried gems. (All past issues of the Bulletin and Arnoldia are available on the Arboretum's website at http://arnoldia. arbore- tum.harvard. edu) The Bulletin issues written by E. H. Wilson are as fascinating as those of Sargent because he describes the origin and cultivation of many of his Chinese plant introductions with words that generations of horticultural writers have shamelessly copied without proper attribu- tion. It's particularly interesting to read how excited he got about the first blossoms of his newer introductions, many of which he had not seen before. In a verv' real sense, Wilson's Bul- letin entries contain the raw observ'ations that became the basis of his later articles and books. From Bulletin — May 16, 1927 (Series 3, Volume 1, No. 6) "Exochorda Giraldii Wilsonii. In the Shrub Garden and on Bussey Hill large plants of this vigorous growing Pearl Bush are now rapidly opening their flow- ers. These are pure white, each one and a half inches across, and borne on erect six- to eight-inch long racemes. It is native of central China and has been growing in the Arboretum since 1907, when seeds were received from Wilson. So far the plant has never suffered winter injury and it blooms more abundantly each succeeding year. It is a shrub of almost tree-like dimensions and easily the finest of the tribe." — Ernest H. Wilson Noted .\rboretum taxonomist .\lfred Rehder photographed this large specimen of Exochorda giraldii var. w ilsonii growing by his home in lamaica Plain, .Massachusetts, in .May 1921. Weather Talk ONE THEME that runs through the Arboretum publications is a thorough discussion of weather and its effects on the collections. This seemed to be especially true for the Bulletin, which was aimed primarily at a local audience and often emphasized the immediacy of the growing season. Take, for example, the October 16, 1929, entry by E. H. Wilson, "The phenomenal drought which Massachusetts in common with other states has endured will long be remembered for it caused grave anxiety among all who garden. In late June the Arboretum enjoyed one good rainfall but not another worth mentioning until October 2nd. For fully two months supplying water to suffering trees and shrubs was the principal work engaged upon. Fortunately, there was no great heat but at the height of the drought it looked as if a great many plant must die. Thanks to the water stored from the heavy rains of spring the trees suffered but little and as autumn arrived a general freshening among all woody plants was noticeable. Today it is difficult to realize that extreme drought has been experi- enced. The power of resuscitation enjoyed by plants is, indeed, marvelous." Perhaps the most famous weather event to affect the Arboretum was described by Wyman in the October 7, 1938, Bulletin: "Rain had been falling rather consistently for four days when on September twenty-first, over large areas in New England, the downpour assumed the proportions of a deluge. Rivers in western Massachusetts were at flood stage, and everywhere the ground was soggy from excessive rain. By late afternoon the rain slackened and the wind increased to a gale. At 4:50 p.m. when the lights went out in the Administration Building staff members expected a "blow", but certainly did not anticipate the hurricane which caused frightful damage throughout New England. The Arboretum lost approximately 1500 trees, and a recent newspaper estimate of the number of trees lost in Massachusetts — only one of the New England states touched by the storm — reached the appalling figure of 100,000,000. There is no way of checking such an esti- mate, but with definite information concerning the number of trees destroyed in a few Boston suburbs, this figure seems possible... Hemlock Hill in the Arboretum is one of the higher points between Boston and the Blue Hills. With wind velocities at times approximating 125 miles an hour it is understandable that great damage was done to the particular plantings on the southern or exposed side an the top of that hill. To the older friends of the Arboretum, this damage will seem the most serious." (The tradition continues with an annual report in Arnoldia recapping the previous year's weather and its effects on Arboretum collections.) Science at the Arboretum: Seeing the Forest Through the Trees William (Ned) Friedman THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM is all about science, and has been since its founding in 1872 by Harvard University. The Arboretum's mandate as stated in the original deed — to grow all of the trees and shrubs from anywhere on Earth that could be grown here — was a long-term research proposal in itself, one that continues to this day. Over the decades research in many fields has been conducted at the Arboretum by our scholars as well as colleagues from institutions around the world. The opening of the Weld Hill research building early this year brings a new era of science to the Arboretum. Weld Hill's state-of-the-art facilities include laboratories, greenhouses, and spectacular teaching equipment for undergraduates. Microscopes with lasers allow scientists to peer into the microscopic world of plants; molecu- lar biology equipment allows us to unravel the DNA that codes for the processes that make each plant and plant species unique and exquisitely responsive to its environment; and highly sophisticated banks of growth cham- bers permit botanists to study the effects of climate change on plants under controlled condi- tions. Importantly, Weld Hill allows Arboretum researchers formerly based at Harvard's Cam- bridge campus to expand their work at the Arboretum. It also provides great new opportunities for students, scientists, and visiting scholars to conduct research using the living collections and the Weld Hill facilities. In essence, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is poised to become a worldwide hub for the study of plant biodiversity. With over 15,000 curated living organisms, there are unlimited and unique opportunities to conduct botanical research at the Arboretum. Research has limited value until it is shared with others, of course. A vital part of the Arbore- tum's mission over the years has been to translate the science of the Arboretum to a wide audi- ence. Arboretum publications, especially Arnoldia and its predecessor, the Bulletin of Popular Information, have been important vehicles for disseminating information about the fascinating world of plant science to Arboretum friends and colleagues around the world. As research grows at the Arboretum we will continue to share it through Arnoldia as well as our much expanded website and education programs. William (Ned) Friedman is Director of the Arnold Arboretum and Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Bulletin of Popular Information 9 While these later publications were more complete and formal, the original Bulletin observations provide a more intimate connec- tion to the seasonal cycles of the Arboretum. For me, the most reiuarkable thing about the Sargent and Wil- son contributions is their time- lessness. Having worked at the Arboretum for over thirty years, I can read their words and get the feeling that I can go right out onto the grounds and see the exact same scenes (or close to them) that they were describing. "Bussey Hill, where the new and rarer plants from the Orient are quartered, is perhaps the most interesting place in the Arboretum at the moment [May 16, 1927]... From the overlook itself looking toward the south, the Hemlock Grove looms majestic,- westward across the Oaks, over and beyond the steely gray, misty, cloud-like clump of American Beech, Spruce, Fir, and Pine stand conspicuous. Everywhere wholesome scented air, opening bud, blossom, and green grass — everything fresh and clean — the Arboretum in spring is rich in charm and beauty." When it comes to writing arti- cles, no one was more prolific — in both the Bulletin and Arnoldia — than Donald Wyman. He published hundreds of pages of observations on the Arboretum's collections covering an amazing array of topics including crahapples (his specialty), rhododen- drons, lilacs, winter injury, hurricane damage, trees with interesting bark, the order of bloom of Arboretum plants, seashore gardens, hedges, vines, and a number of arcane topics such as the use of spent hops for mulch (in Arnoldia Volume 7, Number 12, December 12, 1947). More than any other of the Arboretum's hor- ticulturists, he had no qualms about passing judgment on the suitability of plants for spe- Bussey Hill still provides magnificent views and beautiful plants, includ- ing this 102-year-old sand pear [Pyrm pyrifolia) in the open area just below the summit. cific purposes, based on his notes on the per- formance of the collections over the years. In horticultural circles of the 1940s and 1950s, Wyman was the voice of authority in the northeast when it came to recommending (or condemning) plants. THE FUTURE In reading through Arboretum publications from the past hundred years it's interesting to note how some things change and some stay the same. Many horticultural recommenda- tions published in the Bulletin and Arnoldia UlCHARD SCHULHOF 10 Arnoldici (>9/2 • November 201 1 are still valid today, though a few (like planting Oriental bittersweet [Celastnis orhiculatus]] no longer hold, given the luxury of hindsight. Modern ecological challenges including cli- mate change, urhanization, and globalization have increasingly become part of plant research and, subsequently, topics of Arnoldici articles. Concern over invasive plants and pests, greater emphasis on global plant conservation, and the need to improve our urban forests are some of the themes seen more often in the magazine in recent years. Arnoldici has also reflected some of the changes within plant science in recent decades, such as the use of molecular genetics to identify plants and new thinking about how plant groups are related. The opening of the Arboretum's Weld Hill research facility brings many exciting new research opportunities (see page 8) and Arnoldia will be a major venue for sharing new scientific knowledge with the public. And, as always, Arnoldici will feature articles on the plants of the Arnold Arboretum, the very thing that inspires so many of the the Arboretum's staff members and visitors to appreciate nature and care about the environ- ment all around the world. Peter Del Tredici is a Senior Research Scientist at the Arnold Arboretum. He served as editor of Arnoldia from 1989 through 1992. Through the pages of Arnoldia and our website, we will continue to share the magnificent plants of the .Arnold .Arboretum with all. Seen here in autumn color, a three-flowered maple [Acer triflorum) and lapanese stewartia {Steu artia pseudocamellia) in front of the .Arboretum’s Hiinnewell X’isitor Center. Can Taxodium Be Improved? David Creech, Lijing Zhou, Yin Yunlong, and Teobaldo Eguiluz-Piedra Growing in wetland conditions, this stand of baldcypress {Taxodium distichum) displays the distinctive knees (pneumatophores) characteristic of the species. Degradation of coastal forests and asso- ciated wetland habitats by excessive flooding and saltwater intrusion is a global problem, and may become even more so if predicted climate changes and consequent rises in sea level occur. In the United States, there's been great concern about the degrada- tion of the entire Mississippi River Delta biotic system, much of which can be traced to man- made changes in the nature and flow of the Mississippi river. One example of this degrada- tion is the loss of coastal forests south of New Orleans, which has left this city more vulnera- ble than ever to the impact of hurricanes. (Allen 1992; Earles 1975; Krauss et al. 1999) These circumstances make it increasingly important to identify, select, and even improve tree species that have some innate tolerances to flooding and salinity. Such trees will he valu- able for restoring degraded coastal areas as well as for urban landscapes and other greening proj- ects. For this reason, we are particularly inter- ested in Taxodium distichum. TAXODIUM TAX A Of all native swamp forest tree species in the southern United States, Taxodium distichum (baldcypress) has long been recognized as being among the most tolerant to flooding and salin- ity. This long-lived and generally pest-free COURTESY OF STE\ EN ). BASKAUF, HITT’: BIOIMAGES.VANUERBILI EDU 12 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 201 1 deciduous conifer is a popular landscape tree in many parts of the world. Once established, Taxodium is tolerant of flooding, salt, alkalin- ity, and strong winds. The precise nomenclature for Taxodium remains a matter of some debate. Once consid- ered three species — T. distichum (baldcypress), T. ascendens (pondcypress), and T. muciona- tum (Montezuma cypress) — we believe there's enough consensus in recent literature to list Taxodium distichum as a single species with three botanical varieties: • Taxodium distichum var. imbricarium (Nutt.) Groom (pondcypress) • Taxodium distichum var. mexicanum (Carriere Gordon) (Montezuma cypress) (Arnold and Denny 2007) While baldcypress and pondcypress natural ranges overlap in many areas across the South, the commingling of baldcypress and Monte- zuma cypress natural ranges is less apparent. Hardin (1971) was the first to speculate on the nature of intermediates where baldcypress and pondcypress ranges overlap. The same is per- haps true for baldcypress communities in cen- tral and southwestern Texas. They are often Montezuma cypress-like, leading many to believe this is the result of natu- ral introgression present between baldcypress and Montezuma cypress in this transitional zone. Baldcypress is native to much of the southeastern United States, from Dela- ware to Texas and inland up the Mississippi River to southern Indiana. It occurs mainly along rivers with alluvial flood depos- its. Baldcypress is a durable conifer particularly well adapted to wetland habitats. It is easy to grow from seed and is relatively free of pests and diseases. The tree is modestly to highly resistant to cercosporidium needle blight and tolerates com- pacted soils and low-oxygen or swampy soil conditions. It stands strong in the face of hurricanes, is amazingly long lived ( 1 ,000+ years) and, with time, can become quite large (70+ feet [21+ meters] tall). Baldcypress produces knees (pneumatophores), which arc considered a neg- ative in most landscaping situations since they can Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich. var. disti- chum (baldcypress) [?nni Baldcypress Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich, var. distichum Pondcypress Taxodium distichum var. imbri- carium (Nutt.) Croom Montezuma cypress Taxodium distichum var. mexi- canum (Carriere Gordon) Range maps for Taxodium. Taxodium 13 "Arbol del Tule,” the giant Montezuma cypress at Oaxaca, Mexico, is con- sidered to be one of the world’s largest trees. Pondcypress occurs in the southern portion of the range of baldcypress and only on the southeastern coastal plain from North Carolina into Louisiana. While southeast Texas is not normally included as part of the pondcypress natural range, an approximately 1,200-year-old pondcypress at Shangri La Gardens, Orange, Texas, appears to broaden the range. Pondcypress occurs in blackwater rivers, ponds, bayous, and swamps, usually without allu- vial flood deposits. Pondcypress is relatively easy to distinguish by its feathery foliage, which is ascendant, rather than more splayed and flat as in baldcypress, but this may not always he consistent. Landscapers often use pondcypress as a specimen, particularly when moist soil conditions exist and a smaller stature (40-1- feet [12-1- meters]) is desired. Montezuma cypress should probably he named Moctezuma cypress because by all accounts it has the name of the fifth Aztec King, Moct- ezuma (1466-1520), whose reign included the first contact between the Mesoamerican civi- lization and Europeans. It is popular in Mexico among pre-Hispanic cultures and is widely planted in public parks and gardens in most major cities in Mexico. A Montezuma cypress near Oaxaca, Mexico, the famous "Arhol del Tule," features a trunk over 56 feet (17 meters) in diameter and is estimated to he over 2,500 years old. interfere with routine maintenance such as lawn mowing. While their exact function is unknown, knees may contribute substantially to wind throw resistance (Conner et al. 2002). Baldcypress in the western part of its range (central and western Texas) is generally more salt and alkalin- ity tolerant, and is less prone to pro- duce knees than baldcypress from more eastern sources. East Texas genotypes of Taxodium planted in San Antonio, Texas, where soils are highly alkaline, often turn chlorotic and perform poorly. As with pond cypress and baldcypress, botanists and horticulturists speculate that baldcypress in central to western Texas are perhaps commingled with Montezuma cypress and represent transitional genetics (Lickey and Walker 2002). This very large, old pondcypress grows at Shangri La Gardens, in Orange, Texas. While outside the normally accepted range for the species, this pondcypress appears to be spontaneous, not planted. 14 Arnoldici 69/2 • November 201 1 A 10-ycar-old Montezuma cypress from the Viveros Genfor nursery being transplanted into a landscape near Texcoco, Mexico. Montezuma cypress is native to Mexico (in 27 of the 32 states), some areas of Guatemala, the tip of South Texas, and, per- haps, a few populations in New Mexico. It typically grows next to water sources such as creeks, rivers, lakes, and ponds and performs better in deep loamy soils than in volcanic soils where firs, pines, and oaks are found. While it will grow in a hot tropical climate, it does not perform best there. Montezuma cypress differs from baldcypress and pondcy- press in several ways: it is sub- stantially evergreen, produces smaller seeds, never produces Pasco dc los Ahuchuetes,’' a beautiful allec of Alontezuma cypress near Texcoco, Mexico. Taxodium 15 distinct knees, is generally more tolerant of salt and alkaline soils, and is less tolerant of extended flooding. At Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens in Nacogdoches, Texas, Montezuma cypress forces new growth early in the spring and continues to grow late into the fall. Observations of Montezuma cypress in USDA plant hardiness zone 8 (average annual minimum temperature 10 to 20°F [-12 to -7°C|) and lower suggest that there may he hardiness and winter damage issues, particularly with trees derived from lowland, subtropical Mexi- can genotypes. This may be a seed source prov- enance problem, and there is good reason to believe that Montezuma cypress can be grown much further north if the proper genotypes are selected as seed sources. Montezuma cypress is not usually considered a superior landscape tree in the southern United States since it often fails to form a strong cen- tral leader and is generally more susceptible to Cercospoiidium needle blight than haldcypress, especially when grown in humid areas. Flow- ever, there are exceptions, and further breeding and selection may bring better choices. At Ste- phen F. Austin State University Gardens there are several Montezuma cypress specimens worth noting, including one that survived the December 23, 1989 freeze (0°F [-17.8°G]) with no damage. Over the years, Montezuma cypress has withstood droughts of considerable magni- tude at Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens. In fact, we note that Montezuma cypress can shed almost all its foliage in a summer drought, yet it will push new growth when rain or irrigation finally returns. Mon- tezuma cypress kept in a high state of vigor often keeps foli- age through mid-winter. In Mexico, Montezuma cypress is much appreciated, but little genetic improvement has been undertaken. Goau- thor Teobaldo Eguiluz-Piedra is supervising a large planting of genotypes near Texcoco, Mexico, that includes ten prov- enances. While just in the first year, there are already apparent differences in foliage color, tree form, growth rate, and branch- ing characteristics. In Mexico, Montezuma cypress is considered quite variable from one provenance to another and nursery conditions can greatly impact growth rate and form. The Viveros Genfor nursery in Texcoco has grown Montezuma cypress for the last twenty years and reports that it requires no more water than ash, oaks, or other conifers, contrary to what might be expected from Montezuma cypress's natural preference for a riparian habitat. Most of the nursery's propagation is by seed collected from mature trees that are more than 500 years old. Viveros Genfor is also cloning the oldest Montezuma cypress trees nearby using juve- nile tissue from rooted cuttings with a modest success rate. TAXOD/iy/MCULTIVARS While most Taxodium plants sold in the United States are seedlings, there are a number of culti- vars available, primarily of haldcypress. Mostly available as grafted trees through specialty nurseries, haldcypress cultivars vary in form, ultimate size, and foliage color. For over twenty years, Stephen F. Austin State University Gar- dens has acquired a wide array of cultivars from specialty nurseries, arboretum and botanical garden collections, and private conifer enthu- siasts. haldcypress cultivars at the Gardens The "Treehenge" planting of 'Cascade Falls’ haldcypress at Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens. ROBERT MAYER 16 Arnoldici 69/2 • November 2011 Foliage and cones of the baldcypress cultivar ‘Pendens’. include 'Sofine' (Autumn Gold’^''), 'Pendens', 'Mickelson' (Shawnee Brave'^''), 'Fastigiata', 'Contorta', 'Secrest', 'Fdurley Park', 'Peve Min- aret', 'Pevc Yellow', 'lim's Little Guy', 'Cody's Feathers' (synonym 'Wooster Broom'), 'Cave Hill', 'Cascade Falls', and 'Falling Water'. Only two pondcypress cultivars are listed — 'Prairie Sentinel' and 'I.B.' — and two cultivars of Monte- zuma cypress, the mounding weeper 'McClaren Falls' and modestly weeping 'Sentido', can also be seen in the collection. In addition to culti- vars, Stephen F. Austin State University Gar- dens has numerous specimens of baldcypress, pondcypress, and Montezuma cypress from a wide range of documented provenances. 7AXOD/L//W HYBRIDS Controlled Taxodium hybridization (crosses between botanical varieties of Taxodium disti- chiim] can combine the best characteristics of superior parents and allow for selection of supe- rior clones from the progeny. Much hybridiza- tion work has occurred at the Nanjing Botanical Garden, where selection criteria for controlled cross and open pollinated seed crops include growth rate, salinity and alkalinity tolerance, flooding tolerance, Cercosporidium needle blight resistance, form, and ease of cutting prop- agation. In several studies in China, Taxodium hybrids often demonstrated improvements in growth rate, salt tolerance, form, and vigor. One Taxodium hybrid was given the culti- var name 'Nanjing Beauty' and was coopera- tively introduced in 2004 by Nanjing Botanical Garden and Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens. A baldcypress x Montezuma cypress cross, this clone was originally selected in 1988 from the breeding work of Professor Chen Yong Hui at the Nanjing Botanical Garden. Chen and others report that the selection's attributes include 159% faster growth than baldcypress, longer foliage retention in fall and early winter, and no knees. It also tolerates alkaline soils and fairly high salt concentrations. Cuttings root at good percentages and the clone is commer- cially available in China. 'Nanjing Beauty' is currently under evaluation in over 30 locations in the southern United States and is offered by several nurseries across the South. Additional crosses made at the Nanjing Botan- ical Garden in 1992 used pollen from a supe- rior selection of Montezuma cypress applied A row of the Taxodium hybrid cultivar ‘Nanjing Beauty’ growing at a nursery near Jinjiang, Jiangsu, China. Taxodium 17 Planted at the Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens in March 2010 as small one-gallon-container plants, these specimens of "merit" clone T406 from China had a very fast growth rate. This photograph is from July 2011. Peter Raven (left), President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, views the Taxodium advanced selection blocks with Yin Yunlong at the Nanjing Botanical Garden, Nanjing, China. to female flowers of 'Nanjing Beauty' (then known as selec- tion T302). Fifteen selections were made in 1995, with the main characteristics for selec- tion being fast growth rate, dark green leaf color during the growing season, and red-orange leaf color in the autumn. Sev- eral of these clonal selections are now widely used in China. Additional Montezuma cypress X baldcypress hybrids have been selected, including four "merit" clones that have been verified by molecular iden- tification, and tested in the field for salt tolerance, growth rate, form, etc. (http;//sfagar- dens.sfasu.edu/UserFiles/File/ PLANTS/Taxodium%20breed- i n g % 2 0 b r o c h ti r e % 2 0 f e b % 2 0 20100.pdf). These selections are rapidly multiplied by cut- ting propagation, with high rooting percentages the norm. Acceptance of "merit" clones by the industry in China indi- cates that more and more Taxodium cultivars will enter the commercial market in the future. With great potential for use as timber, energy bio- mass, carbon sinks, and water conservation forests, Taxo- dium hybrids can he widely used for urban and rural green- ing, shelterbelts for farmland, and forests for coastal areas in southeastern China. ASEXUAL PROPAGATION OF TAXODIUM For superior Taxodium clones to make a substantial impact on nursery numbers, it is important to propagate asexu- ally. While grafting is common (especially for ornamental cul- tivars such as those with dwarf or weeping forms), it is expen- Baldcypress Montezuma cypress 'ym M Pondcypress Taxodium in China TAXODIUM varieties and hybrids play a very important role in the southeastern China coastal vegetation plan, particularly in the floodplains of the delta and associated bot- tomlands and estuaries of the Yangtze River. The planting of coastal windbreak forests in this area was initiated in 2005. There are many reforestation projects under way on the main- land side of dikes that run along the sea, both north and south of the mouth of the Yangtze. These projects have received massive provin- cial and federal financial support and millions of trees will be planted by midcentury. Taxodium hybrids have also found a place in many of the large parks being constructed in the major cities of southeastern China. As grand allees or individual specimens, many Chinese foresters feel that in this region of China baldcypress is indeed a special tree. It has become more and more popular in the nursery industry, competing primarily with Metasequoia, Glyptostrobus, and others. 1 sive. Cutting propagation of Taxodium is gener- ally reported as difficult, but rooting success is influenced by genotype, tbe physiological age of the clone, rooting hormones, substrate, and the vigor of the cutting wood. (Pezeshki and DeLaune 1994; St. Hilaire 2003; Zhou 2008). Young trees generally root with greater ease than older trees. Coauthor Yin Yunlong reports that the original plant of 'Nanjing Beauty', selected in 1988, has over time become more difficult to root, a condition attributed to chron- ological and physiological age factors. To counter lower rooting percentages, a strict protocol for achieving cutting propagation suc- cess has been developed. Small well-rooted lin- ers are field planted at close spacing and grown for one year, with trees often reaching 3.3 to 6.6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in the first growing season. Then, in that first winter, they are cut back to 1 foot (0.3 meters) tall. These pollarded trees produce vigorous upright shoots in the spring. Cuttings are collected in early summer and one upright shoot is left on the stock tree to grow for the rest of the season into a straight tree, 6.6 feet (2 meters) tall, ready for sale in the winter. Yin Yunlong notes that collecting cuttings from upright shoots produces upright growing plants of better form than trees produced from cut- tings taken from side branches, a technique to avoid the problem of plagiotropic growth. Early summer cuttings are rooted under part shade to sun, using intermittent mist and a well drained mix in deep rooting beds. While root- ing hormones are utilized, cutting wood qual- ity and maintaining good turgor are recognized as critical factors for high rooting percentages (80+%). Four cutting trials in 2006 at Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens indicated that a high concentration of K-IBA (5,000 to 10,000 ppm) improved rooting as did slightly wounding the basal portion of the stem. Other studies indicate better rooting with hormones, very well drained substrates like perlite, and no wounding (Zhou 2007, King et al. 2011). Taxodium 19 IMPROVING TAXODIUM Several Taxodium germplasm collections exist in the southern United States but they remain relatively unexploited. In addition to the Tax- odium collection at Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens, Dr. Donald L. Rockwood, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, man- ages a large planting of varied genotypes, many of which serve as seed sources for superior seed- lings, with plantings that target tolerance of fly ash, salinity, or polluted soils. Dr. Ken W. Krauss, at the United States Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, Louisiana, is collecting seed from survivor trees m the Mississippi Delta that have been exposed to increasing inundation and salt surges (Krauss et al. 2000; Conner and Inabinette 2005). By cruising the massive "ghost cypress forests" (large stands of dead or declining haldcypress) of the southern delta, individual survivor trees can be found that perhaps have good resistance to subsidence and high salinity. Their progeny may offer promise for reforestation projects in marginal sites, and the opportunity for selecting superior clones is immense. Finally, Dr. Mike Arnold, Texas A St M University, College Sta- tion, Texas, has planted a large collection of haldcypress genotypes from across the South; the collection includes central and western Texas provenances, as well as a collection of Montezuma cypress from Mexico and southern Texas (McDonald et al. 2008) At the government nursery near Jinjiang (Jiangsu, China), I viewed over a million Taxodium cuttings in the one-acre field of propagation beds during a visit in September 2011. The nursery manager, Mr. Zho, employed a half-dozen ladies who used high-pressure hoses to hand mist the cuttings. Every day, for 8 to 12 weeks, each worker managed her own long run of propagation beds, dragging her hose and wand and waving a stream of mist over the crop. After each run, the ladies would rest and visit with each other, waiting until the beads of water on the cuttings had evaporated, the signal that it was time to repeat the process. When 1 asked why he used this strategy, Mr. Zho reflected that he had previously used automated boom misters on a timer, but he had found that the ladies knew better when the cut- tings needed water — they had a feel for the crop — and rooting percentages were now very high. — David Creech 20 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 201 1 Taxodium has many positive environmental attributes as a wetland species and as a land- scape plant. It is fortunate that there is such great diversity available in the haldcypress, pondcypress, and Montezuma cypress gene pool, since with great diversity comes great opportunity for selection. No doubt superior Taxodium clones can be found in the progeny from controlled cross and open pollinated seeds. Improvements in salt and alkalinity tolerance, growth rate, resistance to Cercosporidium nee- dle blight, drought resistance, and form could be expected from a breeding program. I-n the United States and Mexico, where Taxodium is used primarily as an ornamental, the market for improved Taxodium cultivars is relatively small in comparison to China, where Taxo- dium has a huge market built on hundreds of "greening" companies vying for government contracts. Millions of trees are needed for a wide array of development projects: large gar- dens and parks, highways, railroad lines, canal edges, and the coastal windbreak forest project. We have much to gain by connecting the native Taxodium germplasm resources in the United States and Mexico with the many Taxodium improvement projects under way in China. Literature Allen, I- A. 1992. Cypress-tupelo swamp restoration in southern Louisiana. Restoration Management Notes 10: 188-189. Arnold, M. A. and G. C. Denny. 2007. Taxonomy and nomenclature of Baldcypress, Pondcypress, and Montezuma Cypress: One, two, or three species? HortTechnology 17(1): 125-127. Conner, W. H., I. Mihalia, and I. Wolfe. 2002. Tree community structure and changes from 1987-1999 in three Louisiana and three South Carolina forested wetlands. Wetlands 22: 58-70. Conner, W. H., and L. W. Inabinette. 2005. Identification of salt tolerant haldcypress (Taxodium disticimm (L.) Rich) for planting in coastal areas. New Forests 29: 305-312. Craig, N. I., R. E. Turner, and 1. W. Day, Jr. 1979. Land loss in coastal Louisiana (USA). Environmental Management 3: 133-144. Daniels, R. C. 1992. Sea-level rise on the South Carolina coast: two case studies for 2100. fournal of Coastal Restoration 8: 56-70. Hardin, I. W. 1971. Studies of the Southeastern United States Flora. II. The Gymnosperms. Journal of the Elisa Mitchell Scientific Society 87: 43-50. King, A., M. A. Arnold, D. F. Welsh, and W. Todd Watson. 2011. Substrates, Wounding, and Growth Regulator Concentrations Alter Adventitious Rooting of Baldcypress Cuttings. HortScience 46(10): 1387-1393. Krauss, K. W, ). L. Chamber, |. A. Allen, D. M. Soileau, Ir., and A. S. DcBoicr. 2000. Growth and nutrition of baldcypress families planted under varying salinity regimes in Louisiana, USA. Journal of Coastal Restoration 16: 1.53-163. Krauss, K. W., R. I. Howard, and T. W. Doyle. 2009. Is there evidence of adaptation to tidal flooding in saplings of baldcypress subjected to different salinity regimes? Environmental and Experimental Botany 67: 1 18-126. Lickey, E. B., and G. L. Walker. 2002. Population genetic structure of baldcypress (Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich. var. distichum) and Pondcypress (T. distichum var. imbricarium (Nuttall) Croom): Biogeographic and Taxonomic Implications. Southeastern Naturalist 1(2): 131-148. McDonald, G. V., G. C. Denny, M. A. Arnold, D. L. Bryan, and L. Barnes. 2008. Comparative Canopy Damage among Provenances of Baldcypress Associated with the Presence of Cercosporidium sequoia (Ellis and Everth.) W.A. Baker and Partridge. HortScience 43: 1703-1705. Pezeshki, S. R. and R. D. DeLaune. 1994. Rooting of baldcypress cuttings. New Eorests 8(4): 381-386. St. Hilaire, R. 2003. Propagation of Taxodium mucronatum from softwood cuttings. Desert Plants 19(1): 29-30. Zhou, L. 2007. Salt tolerance, propagation and provenance evaluation of Taxodium as landscape and coastal wetland tree. M.S. Thesis, Department of Agriculture, Stephen F. Austin State Univ., Nacogdoches, TX. Introduction of merit Taxodium clones of the Nanjing Botanical Garden http://sfagardens.sfasu. edu/UserFiles/File/PLANTS/Taxodium%20 breeding%20brochure%20feb%2020100.pdf For a more extensive literature review, aecess the MS thesis and PhD dissertation of coauthor Lijing Zhou under "Arboretum" then "Links" on the Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens website http://sfagardens.sfasu.edu David Creech is Director of the Stephen F. Austin State University Gardens in Nacogdoches, Texas; Lijing Zhou is a Graduate Research Assistant at Stephen F. Austin State University; Yin Yunlong is a Professor at the Institute of Botany in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and fiangsu Province, Nanjing Botanical Garden, Nanjing, China; and Teobaldo Eguiluz-Piedra is a forest geneticist and owner of Viveros Genfor nursery in Texcoco, Mexico. The Writing of New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation Editor's note: New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation is an extensive new reference manual published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in 2009. In this essay, co-author John Grimshaw describes the process of putting such a detailed publication together. New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation John Grimshaw and Ross Bayton Kew Publishing, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 976 pp. 2009 ISBN 978 1 84246 1730 John Grimshaw In 2002 I was living and working in the Nether- lands. One afternoon the phone rang and a richly Eng- lish voice identified its owner as Giles Coode-Adams. Might I be interested in writing a book about recently intro- duced trees? Following early retirement from a career in finance, Giles had devoted his time to horticultural causes, first fund-raising for Kew and later becoming Treasurer and then President of the Royal Horticultural Society. Among his numerous commitments he was also Chairman of the International Dendrology Society's Scientific and Education Committee, reflecting his per- sonal interest in trees and woody plants in general. While involved with Kew he had been the occasional recipient of young specimens grown from seed collected on expeditions, and indeed had taken part in a seed-collecting trip to Japan. The only problem was that, for so many of the recently introduced trees he was encountering, there was no useful literature to look them up in. His proposal to the committee that a book on such trees would be valuable was accepted and they started looking for authors. I am still not quite sure how they found me, as I was then by no means dendrological, but I had recently co-authored and edited a well-reviewed book on snowdrops [Galanthus] that may have had something to do with it. To cut a long story short, the committee decided I was the right person for the job. Generous sponsors provided funding and the task could begin. SETTING PARAMETERS The assignment was to produce a book about all the tree species introduced to cultivation in recent decades, or those that had been in cultivation for longer but for which there was no good description. The standard reference in Britain is the venerated W. J. Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, first pub- lished in 1914 and last updated in the 1970s to form the eighth edition. Its botanical descrip- tions are complemented by readable discursive text about the plant and its cultivation require- ments, rather than the terse encyclopaedic format of, for example, Kriissmann's more comprehensive but less informative works {Manual of Cultivated Conifers and Manual of Broadleaved Trees and Shrubs). But Bean's book obviously fails to cover any introductions made since the 1970s, and many species, then poorly known, were covered in a footnote only. There are surprising omissions, too: the famil- iar American East Coast natives Pinus taeda (loblolly pine) and Quercus muehlenbergii (chinkapin oak) were first introduced to Europe ERICM C VALLEKY USDA FORE5, SERVICE BUCWOOn ORJ 22 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 201 1 New shoot and youns cones of Pinus taeda, loblolly pine. in the seventeenth century, hut are not covered hy Bean, probably because they have never been very successful in the British Isles. It was therefore decided that the text should follow the format of description and discussion, and that any tree not discussed fully by Bean and now established in cultivation should he included in the new book. Its working title was New Trees, and as nobody could think of any- thing better, that stuck, with the addition of the subtitle Recent introductions to cultivation. But there were many other thorny issues for the Editorial Subcommittee. What geographical area should it cover? What is a tree? On paper the last is easily answered. We applied the definition "a woody plant, normally with a single trunk reaching or exceeding 5 meters (16.4 feet) in height, at least in its native habitat," thus excluding shrubs with multiple stems developing from below or close to the ground. In reality, of course, the distinction is much less simple and some things sniick in that are on the shrubby side, while some large shrubs are omitted. The difficulty is well- illustrated by Heptacodium miconioides (seven-son flower), a shrub that can achieve 10 meters (32.8 feet) or more in height and be pruned to a single trunk: it was excluded. The book was to cover trees already in cul- tivation, rather than possibilities in the wild, so its coverage was determined by which spe- cies were established in collections in public and private gardens (ascertained by comparing accessions lists). Unlike Bean's coverage, how- ever, the new book was to be international in scope, reflecting the nature of the International Dendrology Society (IDS), but retaining the view that the trees should be hardy in temperate cli- mates such as that of Britain. Where to draw the boundaries was less easy, but in Europe there is a clear distinction between the continental and Tree or shrub? Heptacodium miconioides (seen here display- ins showy pink calyces in early autumn) was deemed too shrublike to fit into New Trees. New Trees 23 maritime climates of the north and the Med- iterranean climate to the south. An obvious vegetational difference is the commercial cul- tivation of olives in the Mediterranean and this matches, with remarkable precision, the area of southern Europe experiencing USDA Zone 9 winter temperatures (average annual minimum temperature 20 to 30°F [-6.6 to -1.2°C]). Mari- time areas further north may also have Zone 9 winter averages, but it is impossible to grow the subtropical species that thrive in the Mediterra- nean basin here. We also excluded such remark- able "hotspots" as the Isles of Scilly (Zone 10) whose diversity of species otherwise ungrow- able in northern Europe would skew the book too far away from its core audience. North America, with its diversity of climates, presented a different challenge. The south- eastern corner of the United States, southern California, and the southwestern deserts all have a very distinct garden flora appropriate to their climatic conditions, again deviating from the key sense of temperate. So we decided that we'd include collections north of San Francisco on the west coast, and anything from North Carolina northwards in the east, and just strike boldly across the continent between those two points in defiance of geography, hardiness zones, etc. I don't think we missed many sig- nificant collections by this approach. RESEARCHING NEW TREES With these parameters set it was possible to go through collection lists and work out what we would be covering. I forget how many names were on the original list but in the end we cov- ered about 850 species in full, and mentioned many others that had a toehold in cultiva- Drawing of Magnolia laevifolia by Hazel Wilks (Figure 56, p. 477, New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation). Picture This ILLUSTRATING a book of this nature is a challenge. Many of the species covered are very little known in cultivation, and then are usually rather young specimens. In addition, taking a good picture of a tree is not very easy: the light must be right and there needs to be a vantage point for the photographer. A wide appeal for images was made and resulted in a diverse haul showing either details or the whole tree, in cultivation or in the wild, enabling us to produce (eventually) a well-illustrated book. In addition to photographs, the book includes a series of 100 exquisite line drawings to illustrate species covered, all drawn by artist Hazel Wilks. She was also based in the Kew Herbarium and worked from dried and living specimens sourced from the Kew collection or further afield. Some complicated arrangements had to be made for receiving fresh material from elsewhere — I recall some anxiety when a precious box of fresh Magnolia flowers was delayed in the post. 24 Arnoldici 69/2 • November 201 1 tion. At this point I was joined by Ross Bayton, who was completing his Ph.D. at the University of Reading. With a horticultural as well as botanical back- ground he was ideally suited to his task of preparing the botanical descriptions for each species. He worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where the author- ities generously provided us with desk space in the herbarium (in Suh-hasement A — which was better than it sounds) and all facilities, and so was able to tap the unique resources of Kew for information.' Much came from published sources, hut herbarium and living material was con- sulted for many descriptions. Each description covers the morpho- logical characters in detail, and provides notes on the tree's geographical distri- bution, its habitat, conservation status, hardiness zone, and sources of useful illus- trations. The taxonomy was taken from recent authoritative sources and where there are issues (such as differing opin- ions on correct name) a note was provided. A unique feature of the book is its cross- referencing to the works of Bean and Kriissmann, which enables the reader to locate a description of an "old" tree quickly, and the opportunity was taken to supply up-to-date names for these taxa where there has been a change. New Trees therefore acts as an index to descriptions of almost all temperate cultivated trees, under almost any name. When using the book, please take time to read the intro- duction carefully. In addition to directing the whole enterprise, my task was to produce the horticultural com- mentary for each species. This entailed gather- ing information about the tree from growers across the area on provenance and perfor- mance, then trying to make sense of it. That makes it sound easy! In reality it required a huge amount of traveling and endless emails and phone calls, as well as online and library research. In the process, however, I had a won- derful time, visiting arboreta all over North America, Europe, and the British Isles, meeting a host of interesting people. The generosity The V at the cnerable 1900 accession of Larix sibirica in the conifer collection Arnold Arboretum. with which contacts gave their time to help with the project was remarkable. Traveling to see collections was the high- light for me. I usually had a list of specimens to see, so I'd concentrate on those, but of course one can't just ignore good trees, so I quickly gained a comprehensive education in all sorts of woody plants, not just recent introductions. Unfortunately, the only chance I had to visit the Arnold Arboretum was on a foul wet day in {Line 2006 when I and my guide Eric Hsu, then a Putnam Fellow at the Arboretum, got soaked to the skin. These were not conducive conditions New Trees 25 for recording details of trees, but one that really interested me was a large specimen of Larix sibiiica whose label recorded that it had come from H. J. Elwes in 1900: I connected with this tree on several levels. Henry John Elwes (1846-1922) was an impor- tant landowner in Gloucestershire, where he lived on the family estate at Colesbourne Park, where I now manage the gardens for his great- grandson, Sir Henry Elwes. With ample finan- cial resources, Henry John Elwes was able to travel widely, and developed interests in many areas of natural history. He was a noted orni- thologist and lepidopterist and a keen big- game hunter, hut gardeners principally remem- ber him for his discovery of Galanthus elwe- sii (in Turkey in 1874). A quest for wild sheep took him to the Altai mountains of central Siberia in 1897 (where I followed his route, by chance, a hundred years later), but while there he saw magnificent forests of Larix sibirica and arranged for seed to be sent to him. About this time he became seriously interested in trees, having plans to plant large areas of woodland on the Coleshourne estate, and he started corresponding with notable dendrologists, including Charles Sprague Sargent at the Arnold Arboretum. This, presumably, is how the Arnold Arboretum received a seedling of Larix sibirica. Exchanges were mutual: a speci- men of E. H. Wilson's collection of Paulow- nia tomentosa W769 made in Hubei in 1908 still grows at Colesbourne. Larix sibirica, on the other hand, was a failure here. Despite the local opinion that Colesbourne lacks a d in its first syllable, our climate is in reality not cold enough. Eike most Siberian conifers, Larix sibirica comes into growth too early in mild maritime climates, and then the young shoots get frosted. In consequence of its general uselessness in the British Isles Larix sibirica was given only a cursory note by Bean, but in other countries it is much more successful — in the United States, as evidenced by the Boston tree, and, for exam- ple, vigorous, healthy specimens in Minnesota; in Scandinavia; and in Iceland and Greenland, where it is the best tree for forestry planting. So, although not a recent introduction, it was an important species to cover in New Trees. WHERE IN THE WORLD? Once all the accounts were complete I counted the species that had come from different geo- graphical regions. Introductions had come from all over the world, but as expected, nearly 50% were from China and the Sino-Himala- yan region, which seems to be an inexhaust- ible source for garden plants of all kinds,- one sometimes wonders what Wilson, Forrest, et ah, were doing, when so much was missed! That, of course, is unfair. They had different targets, searching different areas and altitudes, and the difficulties of travel must have meant that many collections simply failed to arrive in a viable state. We also know, from the analy- sis made by Michael Dosmann and Peter Del Tredici of the survivorship of the collections made by the Sino-American Botanical Expedi- tion (SABE) in 1980, that many species collected New foliage of Liquidambar acalycina is attractively flushed with bronze to red tones. lOHN C.RIMSHAW 26 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 201 1 on any expedition soon fall by the wayside, or become represented by very few individual specimens in cultivation. The SABE trip of 1980 remains one of the most significant of expeditions to China in terms of the species it brought back; Liquid- amhar acalycina is outstanding and so are Sorhus hemsleyi and Sorhus yuana, although the latter is still poorly known and needs to be more widely distributed, preferably in pairs of unrelated clones to ensure a good set of its spec- tacular fruits. The stamp-collecting habit of only planting one individual is a great problem in arboreta across the world; we really need to encourage people to plant groups to maximize genetic diversity, especially as conservation in cultivation is one of the iustifications for many a collecting trip. The thirty-year run of mild winters in the British Isles has encouraged us to broaden our horizons into genera that would previously have been considered too tender for all but the mildest of gardens, with explorers trawl- ing lower and lower altitudes, especially for broad-leaved evergreens. Among their haul in Asia have been a mass of evergreen magnolias (formerly in the genera Michelia and Manglie- tia), diverse oak relatives such as Castanop- sis and Lithocarpus, evergreen maples and a whole string of genera that are unfamiliar at best and previously unknown to horticulture: Bretschneidera, Dipentodon, Exbucklandia, Huodendron, Sinopanax, and Sloanea, to name a few. Other genera such as Daphniphyllum have had their diversity in cultivation greatly increased, while genera known as indoor plants have produced some surprisingly tough hardy species, Schefflera being a notable case. The Sino-Himalayan region is vast, providing many frontiers on which to explore. In recent years Taiwan has been a popular destination, yielding both evergreen and deciduous spe- cies of great garden value, while Vietnam has become recognized as another hotspot. The mountains in the north, such as Fan Si Pan and elsewhere in the region round Sapa, are just Lithocarpus kawakamii, an evernrecn species native to Taiwan, growing at Tregrehan in Cornwall. New Trees 27 high enough and just far north enough for their plants to have a sporting chance of being hardy in milder areas. One of its special trees is what is known as Aesculus wangii, although the name is technically invalid, which produces nuts 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) across — they are a trophy in themselves. Upon germination, seedlings rocket up to over a meter (3.3 feet) within weeks. Its hahit of coming into leaf early may he a problem, but the tree itself seems to be winter hardy in Britain, at least. Strange though it may seem, Australia was the next most prolific source for recent tree introductions. This apparent anomaly can be explained by the single genus Eucalyptus, although there are several Acacia and Callitris species plus odds and ends from other genera too. Although of negligible interest in much of the area covered. Eucalyptus has a devoted fan club in the milder parts (maritime Europe, the Pacific Northwest). These enthusiasts have been searching out populations in the coldest part of each species' range, a classic example of intelligent plant-hunting, unlike the usual grabbing of material from the first population found. Whether or not such sourcing has done them any good after a series of hard winters in both of these regions remains to be seen — many eucalypts have been devastated. As they grow so fast, however, it won't be long before we see another crop appearing. Eucalyptus nitens, the shining gum, holds the record for the fastest- growing tree in Britain, achieving 20 meters (65.6 feet) in six years in Oxfordshire, making a splendid-looking tree in that time, but alas, it was killed last winter. Mexico has also been an important destina- tion for plant explorers in recent decades. With its huge diversity of ecosystems this is hardly surprising. Conifers and oaks are the two most important groups of Mexican trees for tem- perate gardens, but there are hardy Cornus, Crataegus, Fagus, Platanus, and Tilia too. It is always astonishing to think of "temperate" genera occurring in the tropics, but there is a huge diversity of Magnolia in tropical America, and rainforest maples and oaks are diverse in southeast Asia. Half the diversity of fuglans (walnut) is found in the Neotropics! Most of these tropical species are too tender for tem- An impressively large nut from the tree known as Aes- culus wangii (the name has not been validly published), native to Vietnam. perate horticulture, but this shouldn't prevent experimentation with species along the tropical fringes. Many Mexican evergreen oaks are prov- ing to be remarkably tough, and even if they are defoliated by a severe winter will usually resprout next spring. Of all the new trees I stud- ied for the book I was most impressed by Quer- cus rysophylla, an evergreen oak with big leaves that emerge red or bronze, and which forms a stately and handsome tree, hardy in western Europe, the southeastern United States, and the Pacific coast. Experts continue to discover new species of oaks in the United States and Mexico, usually isolated on obscure mountain ranges. One such is Q. acerifolia, from a few mountains in Arkansas, a handsome red oak with excel- lent autumn colors. Liberated from its native habitat it is proving to be versatile, succeeding across the northern and eastern United States, including in the Arnold Arboretum. In general, trees from Chile and New Zea- land are for specialist growers in mild moist climates, and one has to be bold to grow any African woodies: even species from the most temperate parts of South Africa and the high mountains of East Africa are very tender. But in the right conditions it is fun to try — and even lOHN GRIMSHAW lOIIN ['.RIMSHAW 28 Arnoldici 69/2 • November 201 1 Eucalyptus chapmaniana (left) and Eucalyptus macarthurii (right). outside the right conditions too. Only by push- ing the boundaries can we ascertain true hardi- ness limits, and although there will be many failures there will he some very welcome suc- cesses. In this period of climatic uncertainty and increasing pest and disease problems we need diversity to ensure our gardens remain vibrant with interesting trees and constant experimentation is the way forward. New Trees, published in 2009, documents a period of inten- sive exploration for plant material that at least equals the efforts of earlier generations, and provides a reference point for the future from which success or failure can he judged. Working on this project and writing the book was an immense privilege and the appreciation It has received makes it even more worthwhile. 1 am only one player in the team, though, and the hook could not have been written without the help of dozens of dendrologists around the world, the support of the sponsors and the IDS and the sterling efforts of my co-author Ross Bayton and artist Hazel Wilks. The editing and layout were done by the incomparable Sarah Cannon, with technical assistance from Lloyd Kirton at Kew Publishing. These latter-end stages are when the really hard part of writing any book comes, when it is being edited and put together as a volume, and deadlines are flying towards one. The ultimate deadline was the launch, a grand reception in London planned by the IDS with a set-in-stone date of May 19, 2009. The last changes were made to the text on March 30, and the finalized proofs were deliv- ered to Kew next day, giving us six weeks. I call that brinkmanship, hut the German printers stuck to their timetable and the books reached England with a week to spare. That was a relief. Dr. lohn Grimshavv is a gardening botanist based at Colesbournc in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. He documents his horticultural activities in his blog John Grimshaw's Garden Diary Ihttp:,.^ johngrimshawsgardendiary.hlogspot.com/) A Year With the Apples of the Arnold Arboretum Miles Sax I have spent the past year as a horticultural appren- tice working in the Malus (apple and crabapple) collection of the Arnold Arboretum, a collection that has long been recognized for its importance to the horticultural and scientific worlds. Because of the Arboretum's many introductions and broad distribu- tion of both cultivars and previously undiscovered Malus species from wild origin, it has been hailed as the '"Mother Arboretum' for flowering crabapples" (Fiala 1994). Once celebrated in an annual event known as Crabapple Saturday, this collection remains popu- lar with Arboretum visitors, especially during spring bloom and fall fruit display. The dynamic nature of arboreta, including ongoing change in the fields of taxonomy, nomenclature, and research technology, inevitably leads to the need for periodic large scale review of the plant collections. Although historically the Arboretum's Malus collec- tion has been a high priority, in recent decades hor- b.'r> % A0 I? visit the ARNOLD lARBOPETUM % BOSTON ELEVATED TAKE CAR TO FOREST HILLS STATION See the Crabapple Tree's^ An old poster touts the Arnold Arboretum’s crabapple collection. Part of the Arnold Arboretum’s Malus collection in spring bloom, including white-flowered Malus hupehensis (accession 324-55-B) at left. PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR EXCEPT WHERE NOTED ARCHIVES OF THE ARN> \LD ARBORETUM 30 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 201 1 ticultural maintenance had been deferred. In addition, the collection was in need of an infu- sion of new plant material. With the goal of pro- viding an elevated level of plant care along with an in-depth collections review, my task as the Arboretum's horticultural apprentice became defined. Working within both the horticulture and CLiration departments, I jumped into the job of evaluating and renovating the Malus collec- tion of the Arnold Arboretum. COLLECTIONS AND THE CURATORIAL REVIEW PROCESS Collectors of all sorts often collect items in sets, and it is this action that gives the collections defined parameters and scope. At the Arnold Arboretum the objects we collect are woody plants, but the question of how we define our "sets" is one that is not so easily answered. Since the Arboretum's inception in 1872, this idea of collections has always been at the heart of the institution's mission. A phylogenetic planting order (Bentham and Hooker's then- new taxonomic system) was used in the original landscape design; Charles S. Sargent understood that placing plants in the same genus together would allow scientists to observe different spe- cies concurrently. Far-flung plant explorations introduced a steady flow of new plants to the Arboretum's collection, but as time passed it became clear that simply having a large col- lection of plants wasn't enough. With finite resources and space, a more focused approach must he utilized in order to answer the ques- tion of scope, that is, "What does a compre- hensive collection look like?" To answer this fundamental question of scope we use curato- rial review, a process by which a collection is examined to quantify its value and determine goals for its development. Curatorial review is an important step in making sure that the Arboretum's mission is being achieved. Specimens within a living collection have finite life spans, so the collection development process must be ongoing. At the Arnold Arbo- retum this process is primarily driven by the framework of the Living Collections Policy, which defines and prioritizes the scope of our collection. Guided by the Living Collections Policy I conducted my review of the Malus based on two subcategories within the policy, those for Core and Historic collections. The Core Collection of the arboretum is made up of accessions that are central to the mission of the Arnold Arboretum; plants that fall into this cat- egory are of highest importance for collection expansion and acquisition of new material and represent the heart and soul of the Arboretum's collections. The Historic Collection subcat- egory holds groupings of plants that are associ- ated with the Arboretum's past expansion and influence in the horticultural world. These col- lections, which include his- toric (pre-1953) cultivars and cultivars that originated from the Arboretum, are maintained but not usually expanded. Subcategories within the Liv- ing Collections Policy are not mutually exclusive and some accessions, including many in the Malus collection, fall into multiple categories. My review process for the Malus collection started with a taxonomic review, which included verification of iden- tity. In autumn 2010 all of the Malus on Peters Hill (the loca- tion of the Malus collection) The trabapple ciiltivar Af. x purpurea ‘Aldcnliainensis’ (accession 303-50-B seen here) orisiiiated in England and was introduced to the United States by the .Arnold .Arboretuin in 1923. Apples of the Arnold Arboretum 31 were examined and data were taken on size, shape, and color of the fruit. In spring 2011 a similar review was done hy recording the size, shape, and color of flowers along with other morphological characteristics. This informa- tion was compared to existing descriptive refer- ences. For cultivars, the late Father John Fiala's book Flowering Crabapples: The Genus Malus was the primary resource used in determining identity and exploring the ornamental history of the genus. Because there is no current mono- graph of Malus, for accessions of wild prove- nance we used the flora pertinent to the region in question, e.g.. Flora of China. This initial review was done to verify the plant material and confirm its correct taxonomic identity, allow- ing us to update nomenclature and ultimately make sure our plants are correctly labeled. The petaloid stamens of this Malus sieboldii ‘Fuji’ (accession 418-68-C) flower are an example of the impor- tance of field observation in a curatorial review. These petal-like structures, viewed from afar, make the flowers appear to be double. This curious discovery was not noted in Fiala’s previous descriptions of this selection. n n Plant Detectives OBSERVING physical characteristics (flower color, leaf shape, etc.) is the most common way of identifying plants but it's not the only way. A trip to the Arboretum's cura- tion department can give a researcher access to records detailing the origins or place of collection for many plants located on the grounds. Another resource is the cache of maps — many hand drawn — detailing the exact locations of plants come and gone. The herbarium in the Arboretum's Hunnewell building and the main Harvard University Herbarium yield pressed specimens of wild plants that we enjoy as landscape ornamentals today. A trip to the Arboretum's library may uncover volumes of floras spanning the world, or historical horticultural periodicals detailing the latest plant introductions that were in vogue at the time. The library's extensive archives provide a wealth of original documentation such as Ernest H. Wilson's Journals and letters to Charles Sprague Sargent from his many far-flung plant collec- tors. To have these resources condensed in a single place allows for research and discovery to be made in a way that is unique to the Arnold Arboretum. But sometimes even all these resources are not enough to make a definitive conclusion on a plant's true identity or origin. In recent years the ability to look at a plant's genetic makeup has proved to be a very power- ful tool in plant systematics. To that end, the USDA Plant Genetic Resource Unit in Geneva, New York, has graciously offered to genotype a handful of the Arboretum's mystery Malus. When the results are returned we can look forward to some answers from this unique plant identification technology. The archives of the Arnold Arboretum hold a treasure trove of documents, including many examples of Ernest H. Wilson’s correspondence. 32 A mold ill 69/2 • November 201 1 New Cultivars for the Malus Collection WHILE typically collections at the Arnold Arboretum aren't built with a strong focus on cultivars (cultivated varieties, which are plants that have been selected for a particular trait, named, and clonally propagated), an exception is made for the Malus collection because of its unique history and its role in the dissemination and promotion of the flowering crabapple. But many of the currently accessioned cultivars originated prior to the 1960s, so in the curatorial review process we have identified an infusion of newer cultivars for collection expansion. Here are a few of the cultivars that are of high interest to us and that Arboretum visitors may be able to see on Peters Hill in the future: Malus 'Louisa' A small tree with a weeping habit, llower buds rose, opening pink. The small fruits are yellow with a red cheek. This disease resistant crab apple is a Polly Hill introduction and named in honor of her daughter. Malus ‘Molten Lava’ A broadly weeping tree that features good disease resistance, lots of eye-catching orange- red fruit, and interesting winter bark. A )ohn L. Fiala introduction. Malus sargentii ‘Select A' (Firebird®) This cultivar is of note because of its low, spreading form and the small, bright red fruits that are retained well into the winter months. A lohnson Nursery introduction by Michael Yanny. Malus ioensis 'Klehm's Improved Bechtel' A cultivar of the North American native prairie crabapple. This selection features large, fragrant, double pink flowers and sparse fruit production. It is somewhat more disease resistant than M. ioensis but is susceptible to cedar-apple rust. Selected by Clyde Klehm. Malus 'Satin Cloud' A small rounded branching tree that has spicy fragrant blooms that lead to a profusion of small yellow fruit. It has exceptional disease resistance and striking fall foliage color of purple, red, and orange. This unique octoploid was hybridized by (ohn L. Fiala and introduced by Klehm Nurseries. ‘SATIN CLOUD’ NANI Y IU)Sl Apples of the Arnold Arboretum 33 Knowing what the collection actually com- prises was the first step in being able to ask the question, "What is the collection missing?" There was no way to assess what additions would he required without first understand- ing all the options. The Arboretum's collec- tions focus primarily on plants of documented origin, in particular wild provenance, so that became the framework for the assessment. We assembled a list of all known Maliis species and their infraspecific taxa (e.g., subspecies, varieties) from around the world and compared it with our existing accessions, with the goal of identifying key areas where the collection lacked diversity. Armed with this information, the curation department now has a desiderata (wish list) of plants and we can request material from other botanical institutions and germplasm reposito- ries. The list will also be useful when determin- ing goals for future plant collecting expeditions. HORTICULTURAL CARE OF THE COLLECTION Horticultural care and maintenance of the Malus collection was a major part of my appren- ticeship. One of my primary goals was to take a hard look at "best practices" for growing apples in order to develop an action plan that would reflect some of the new thinking on orchard cultural practices. The Arboretum collection grows primar- ily ornamental crabapples rather than eating apples, but many of the horticultural concerns are shared. Eating apples have been cultivated for centuries in a variety of settings, so apple orchards provide an interesting model system for understanding how we manage human created plant ecosystems. Consumer interest in organic products has increased, as have demands that growers utilize better practices that are more environmentally friendly. What initially started with farmers is now spilling over into The author pruning in the Malus collection. 34 Arnuldici 69/2 • November 201 1 Detailed information was collected on each accession in the collection. Seen here, the colorful fruit and fall foliage of Malus 'Henry Kohankie’ (accession 604-61 -A). the fields of commercial and public horticulture. Integrated pest management (IPM) practices, including using products that are more environ- mentally friendly (and many of which use biol- ogy to outcompete pests), are used increasingly by commercial orchardists as well as by public gardens such as the Arnold Arboretum. In recent years some apple growers have gone beyond the principles of IPM to develop holistic manage- ment practices that not only produce desirable fruit but also healthy trees in a robust environ- ment. Holistic management practices see the orchard environment as a series of intertwining cyclical systems, each of which are evaluated and management practices are devised to work with their unique characteristics. After learning more about this holistic approach 1 wanted to incorporate it into the management of the Arboretum's Malus col- lection. The goal is to end up producing high quality ornamental fruit, but as a secondary benefit of growing healthy trees. My initial step involved looking at the landscape on Peters Hill as a whole: the flora and fauna that inter- act there, the soil's physical structure, water movement, and other environmental factors that affect the site. Then during my curatorial review I visited each Malus specimen and made phenological observations relating to fruit development, pest and disease pressure, com- peting weeds, and overall tree health and vigor. All of these observations were entered into our BG-BASE, the Arboretum's plant records database; having this informa- tion readily available allowed us to develop management pri- orities and gave structure to a process that could otherwise be overwhelming. As the next step, I attempted to view each specimen as a whole and then break it down to the individual parts that allow it to function. So when observing a single specimen I don't just see a "tree," I see the trunk, branching structure, differences in vigor and type of growth (e.g., normal, water sprouts, or root suckers), leaf canopy (or lack thereof), leaf biology, disease presence and extent, observable roots, and understory plant communities. All of these factors may play a part in disease, pest, and health issues for individual specimens, and we can then use individual tools to assess the details of needed plant care. Finding out about the soil — its physical prop- erties, chemistry, biology — was an essential step in determining care for the collection. I conducted a traditional soil chemistry test to assess pH, organic matter, and micro- and mac- ronutrients. Soil tests can be useful in plant management, but having optimal pH and avail- able nutrients doesn't ensure that plants can fully utilize the resources, especially if there are other factors, such as soil compaction, that inhibit the plants' roots from being able to access the nutrients. Taking this into consid- eration, we used a soil penetrometer to test for compaction and found that soil in the main Malus collection on Peters Hill had a compac- tion layer at roughly 6 inches deep. Compaction is a common phenomenon in urban and rural environments where years of machine use, driv- ing, grazing of animals, or even walking can put pressure on the soils. The air spade, a tool that uses a stream of compressed air to physi- cally loosen the soil, is used regularly at the Arboretum to improve root health, but to treat the more than 350 specimens of Malus in the collection would be impractical. My Favorite Malus THE ECLECTIC mix of wild germplasm, hybrids, and early cultivars in the Arnold Arboretum's Malus collection gives inquisitive visitors a chance to see crabapples rarely found in the commercial trade. Here are a few of my favorites: Malus 'Mary Potter' FEATURES: A medium height, wide-spreading tree with high disease resistance, offering abundant white flowers and small (0.4 inches [1 centimeter] diameter) red fruits. DESCRIPTION: This specimen is the original selection of the cultivar. Introduced by the Arnold Arboretum, this Karl Sax selection is considered by many to be his best Malus hybrid. Named in honor of C. S. Sargent's daughter, this hybrid is a result of cross between M. saigentii 'Rosea' x M. x atrosanguinea. ACCESSION NUMBER: 181-52 B LOCATION: 51-SW ORIGIN: Arnold Arboretum Malus kansuensis var. calva FEATURES: Rare in cultivation, its small stature and unique flowers and fruit make this an interesting apple in the collection. DESCRIPTION: Small, slow-growing tree; flowers are creamy white and fruits develop a caramel yellow color with a red cheek. The fruit is some- what flattened on the top and bottom and has vertical ridges around it, giving it a pumpkin-like appearance. ACCESSION NUMBER: 134-43 A LOCATION: 49-SE ORIGIN: China Malus tschonoskii FEATURES: Silver-white, tomentose undersides of leaves, attractive orange to red fall color, tall (40+ feet [12+ meters]) upright-pyramidal shape. DESCRIPTION: This accession is the Arnold Arboretum's oldest apple in the collection as well as one of the tallest. Collected by C. S. Sargent in 1892 during his expedition to Japan. The flowers and fruits of this specimen are insignificant, but the unique leaves and form look unlike any other apple. To the casual passerby it would be difficult to identify it as an apple tree at all. ACCESSION NUMBER: 3678-A LOCATION: IT-SW ORIGIN: Japan Malus hupehensis FEATURES: The fruits are yellow with a red cheek and provide a nice contrast with the crimson to purple fall leaf color. DESCRIPTION: Wide-branching, vase-shaped tree. Leaves and copious fruit develop out of short branch spurs, giving a distinctive appearance. Leaves have reportedly been used as a tea substitute in parts of China. The species was introduced by the Arnold Arboretum and was first collected from China by E. H. Wilson in 1908. ACCESSION NUMBER: 324-55 B LOCATION: 50-SW ORIGIN: China Malus X robusta 'Arnold-Canada' FEATURES: A rare cultivar that is a towering giant of an apple tree. By far the tallest specimen in the collection. DESCRIPTION: Primary scaffolding branches alone are larger than the main trunks of many other Malus. The distinctive bark has an appearance somewhat similar to Prunus (cherry). This specimen features copious fruits that are orange-yellow with a bright red cheek. Rarely found in other collections outside the Arnold Arboretum ACCESSION NUMBER: 172-52 B LOCATION: 50-SE ORIGIN: Hybrid NANCY ROSE NANCY ROSE 36 Arnoldia 69/2 • November 201 1 Instead, to deal with soil compaction on Peters Hill we've recently started an experi- ment using forage radishes {Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus] in four 1 /8-acre plots. These radishes (also known as daikon) are noted for their extensive taproots— the thick upper por- tion grows up to 20 inches long and the slender lower section can extend several additional feet (Weil et al. 2009). Sown under trees and in fields in late summer or early fall, they develop roots and eventually are killed hy freezing tempera- tures. In the spring the roots decompose, adding nitrogen to the soil and leaving deep fissures that allow water, air, and nutrient infiltration. If results in our trial plots are positive this low time- and resource-use solution could he an appropriate option for the Maliis collection. We are also looking deeper into the collec- tion's soil ecology through analysis of the "soil food weh," a system involving a variety of soil organisms including protozoa, nematodes, mycorrhizal and other fungi, and bacteria (Ing- ham 2009). (The relative ratios of fungi and bac- teria can be quite important to soil health.) The results of this analysis may lead us to options such as introducing beneficial predatory nema- todes to control existing damaging nematodes or applying specific mycorrhizal fungi. This is the benefit of a holistic perspective and having the technologies available to view and interpret these complex life systems. As I discovered through my curatorial and hor- ticultural work, there are many interesting stories — and even a few mysteries — among the plants in the Malus collection. One of these stories involves an unusual specimen (acces- sion 10796-2-A, a Malus spontanea previously listed as Malus halliana var. spontanea] that sits at the bottom of Peters Hill. The main trunk and scaffolding branches of this speci- men lie horizontal to the ground with smaller branches reaching skyward. On first glance it appears this apple has developed a low, spread- ing form with a well-developed branching sys- tem, hut closer inspection reveals a hollowed tree base, indicating that this tree once stood upright. The records are inconclusive as to how this specimen reached its unusual position but theories range from hurricanes to head-on colli- sions with stolen cars pushed down Peters Hill. THE TALE OF MALUS SPONTANEA Fire blight killed this speciinen of Malus yunna- nensis (accession 915-88-A) on Peters Flill. FIRE BLIGHT (caused by the bacterium £riv/n/a omy- lovora) in the Malus collection has become a disease of particular concern because it can kill trees quickly. In the last few years over a dozen specimens were severely damaged or killed by the disease including the type specimen of Malus toringoides. Managing this disease has been a primary focus for me. To address this bacterial pathogen the majority of my pruning efforts have been aimed at systematically removing the cankers this disease creates. By remov- ing these sources of inoculum from the environment the hope is to reduce the bacteria to a manageable level. Additionally, in the spring an organic copper j spray was used to prevent new infections this year. ' This spray worked as a preventative from fire blight ' on the trees and also had the added benefit of supply- ing the soil with copper, which tests indicated was on I the low side. This treatment will be conducted for two j years in tandem with the pruning efforts to knock down j the disease to a manageable level. In subsequent years regular monitoring and sanitation pruning should | prove adequate for control of the disease. Apples of the Arnold Arboretum 3>7 This specimen of Malus spontanea (accession 10796-2-A, previously listed as Mains halliana var. spontanea) has an interesting shape and an interesting history. Perhaps because of its provenance or its status as an E. H. Wilson-collected lineage it was pre- served and is now growing perfectly well in its new orientation. Initially struck by its unusual form, I came to realize that this Malus had an interesting tale to tell. While conducting my curatorial review I was searching through our plant records in an effort to verify the identities of the Malus in our collection. My research brought me upon four living specimens of Malus halliana var. sponta- nea. all of which are the Wilson lineage and one of which was the Malus in repose. Looking at the provenance information I noticed that the original accession ( 10796-A) was wild-collected from lapan by Wilson during his 1918 expedi- tion. Although the taxonomy of Malus halliana is a bit unclear, what struck me as odd is that this species is reported as a native of China. My initial thought was that this was an acci- dent in nomenclature and so I began to pursue the tree's true identity. Accession information stated that the plant was wild-collected by Wil- son, hut without providing an exact location. Malus halliana has been cultivated as an orna- mental in Japan for generations, hut since the Arboretum's specimens were supposedly from wild origin I realized something wasn't adding up and exact provenance information would have to he unearthed to get to the true identity of this specimen. Weeks later, while conducting the conser- vation portion of my curatorial review, I was searching Malus on the Botanic Gardens Con- servation International's (BGCI) website. To my surprise I saw that on the 1997 lUCN Red List of Threatened Plants Malus spontanea (as a species, not a variety of M. halliana) was flagged as vulnerable. Realizing that the Malus in ques- tion might he of conservation value, I decided I had to give another go at this mystery apple. I figured that if our records indicated that this plant was wild collected from Japan, somewhere buried in the archives there must he conclusive evidence of the true identity of this tree. After multiple searches in our herbarium, archives, and historic records, I eventually found the information I had been looking for in an article on new taxa by Alfred Rehder in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum (Rehder 38 Arnoldict 69/2 • November 201 1 [ • ' m Historic Eating Apples FEW CULTIVARS of eating apples are currently in the Arboretum's Malus collection. Pomologist and apple explorer John Bunker of Fedco Trees nursery in Maine kindly shared his biogeographic review of significant heirloom varieties in New England. These heirloom apples are both delecta- ble and well suited for our region's climate. As the Arboretum's Malus collection expands, visitors may one day be able to stroll Peters Hill and explore the apples that once defined the Northeast's early orchards and fruit heritage. Listed below are some apple cultivars originating in individual New England states. See Bunker's book Not Far From The Tree for detailed cultivar descriptions and a historical perspective of New England orchards. CONNECTICUT 'Black Gilliflower' 'Chandler' 'Hurlbut' 'Pumpkin Sweet' NEW HAMPSHIRE 'Granite Beauty' 'Milden' 'Nodhead' 'Red Russet' MAINE 'Black Oxford' 'Cole's Quince' 'Starkey' 'Winthrop Greening' RHODE ISLAND 'Dyer' 'Peck's Pleasant' 'Rhode Island Greening' 'Tolman Sweet' MASSACHUSETTS 'Baldwin' 'Huhhardston Nonesuch' 'Roxbury Russet' 'William's Favorite' VERMONT 'Bethel' 'Malinda' 'Northern Sweet' 'Scott's Winter' Color plates from The Apples of New York, 1905, by horticulturist S. A. Beach, show ‘Rhode Island Greening’, ‘Hubbardston'lsynonym ‘Hubbardston Nonesuch'), and 'Roxbury’(synonym ‘Roxbury Russet’). Apples of the Arnold Arboretum 39 The Malus collection holds many unusual crabapples including this cultivar, 'Redford' (accession 277-42-A), which has large fruits with bright pink flesh. 1926). In his brief description of Malus halliana var. spontanea (which was his lumping based upon 1914 species determination of M. sponta- nea by Makino), Rehder gave details about Wil- son finding and collecting this tree on volcanic Mount Kirishima on Japan's southern island, Kyushu, where Malus spontanea is known to be endemic. With this piece of information I could now confirm the provenance of the Malus in question. Additional review of more recent literature led me to recommend that the Arbo- retum disregard Rehder's lumping of the variety into M. halliana and elevate it to the species rank that it deserved. Considering that this plant is of conservation value I realized simply confirming its identity wasn't enough. A review of other institutions' collections inventories revealed that the Arnold Arboretum, the USDA National Plant Germ- plasm System, and the Holden Arboretum were the only three collections with holdings of Malus spontanea. All three of these holdings are from the same Wilson-collected lineage. After bringing this to the attention of Arbore- tum curator Michael Dosmann, he put me in contact with Dr. Hiroyuki Iketani of Japan's National Institute of Fruit Tree Science. Dr. Iketani is the head of the genetic resource labo- ratory and has an interest in the relationships of Japanese Malus and Pyrus of wild and cultivated origin. He informed me that Malus spontanea is considered to be a national treasure in Japan and that fewer than 300 wild individuals exist. Recent volcanic activity in the area is putting further stress on these rare plants. In an effort to preserve this species at risk of extinction. Dr. Iketani offered to collect seed from the remain- ing wild populations and send them to both the USDA and the Arnold Arboretum. Once this plant material clears the importation process we look forward to the infusion of these plants of high conservation value into the collection. CONCLUSION Working as an Arboretum apprentice for the last year has been a fulfilling experience that has pushed me both intellectually and physi- cally. The chance to engage with both the horticulture and curation departments led to many synergistic benefits. In 2010 I made 369 observations that resulted in data entries in BG- BASE, and in 201 1 I added another 560 obser- vations, for a total of 929 observations on 479 individual plants. These data will be valuable for long-range curatorial planning as well as current horticultural maintenance, and may also be of benefit to fellow botanical institu- tions who hold Malus collections. My appren- ticeship has been extended for another year so I will be able to continue my efforts to push this collection toward the highest levels of care and curatorial value. Bibliography Bunker, J. P. 2007. Not Far From the Tree. Waterville, Maine: (self published]. Dosmann, M. S. 2009. Malus at the Arnold Arboretum: An Ongoing Legacy. Arnoldia 67(2): 14—22. Fiala, I. L. 1994. Flowering Crabapples: The Genus Malus. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press. lies, J. 2009. Crabapples. ..With No Apologies. Arnoldia 67(2): 2-14. Ingham, E. 2009. The Soil Food Web Approach, http:// www.soilfoodweb.com/sfi_approachl .html Iwatsuki, K., T. Yamazaki, D. E. Boufford, and H. Ohba. 2001. Flora of Japan. Vol. Ilb.Angiospermae, Dicotyledoneae. Archichlamydeae (b). Tokyo, Japan: Kodansha LTD. Phillips, M. 2005. The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co. Rehder, A. 1926. New species, varieties and combinations from the herbarium and the collections of the Arnold Arboretum. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 7: 12-37. Weil, R., C. White, and Y. Lawley. 2009. Forage radish: A new multi-purpose cover crop for the Mid- Atlantic. Fact Sheet 824. University of Maryland Cooperative Extension. Miles Sax is a horticultural apprentice at the Arnold Arboretum. The Royal Azalea: Rhododendron schlippenbachii Nancy Rose hododendion schlippenbachii is perhaps most noted for its lovely spring bloom, but this deciduous azalea is also a stand- out in the autumn garden when its leaves turn striking shades of yellow, orange, and red. In addition, royal azalea displays attractive summer foliage and a handsome winter silhouette, mak- ing it that object most desired by gardeners — a plant with all-season ornamental interest. Royal azalea has long been a favorite of mine, so I was tickled to find out that several illustri- ous Arboretum horticulturists have also writ- ten glowingly about this species. As Peter Del Tredici mentioned in the first article in this issue, many timeless bits of information and opinion can be gleaned by reading through old issues of the Bulletin of Popular Information and Arnoldia — here, Charles Sprague Sargent, first director of the Arboretum, describes royal azalea's native range and growth habit: R. Schlippenbachii is one of the commonest shrubs of Korea and often forms the dominant undergrowth in open woods. From Korea it crosses into northeastern Manchuria where it grows on the shores of Possiet Bay; it occurs, too, in two localities in northern Japan. Wilson found it extraordinarily abundant in Korea on the lower slopes of Chiri-san and on the Dia- mond Mountains, which were where he visited this region in lune "a wonderful sight with liter- ally miles and miles of the purest pink from the millions of flowers of this Azalea." In Korea this Azalea on the wind-swept grass-covered cliffs of the coast grow[s] less than a foot high but flow- ers abundantly. In the forests of the interior it often grows to a height of fifteen feet and forms a tall and slender or a broad and shapely shrub. {Bulletin of Popular Information, May 5, 1921) Typically blooming in mid-May at the Arbo- retum, royal azalea is covered with large flowers in clear shades of pink, somewhat resembling a mass of pink butterflies resting on the branch tips. In the same Bulletin article quoted above, Sargent wrote, "The pale pink fragrant flowers, which are about three inches in diameter and marked on one of the lobes of the corolla with red-brown spots, are perhaps more beautiful than those of any other Azalea, certainly of any Azalea which has proved hardy in the Arbore- tum." And Ernest H. Wilson wrote in the May 16, 1927, issue of the Bulletin, "The blossoms on this lovely Korean Azalea are now open on the Bussey Hill. A sturdy bush of upright habit, bearing on naked twigs terminal clus- ters of large pale to pure pink blossoms. This is a very hardy and satisfactory Azalea." (Cold hardy through USDA Zone 5 [average annual minimum temperature -10 to -20°F/-23.4 to -28.8°C], and possibly into Zone 4.) Royal azalea also has distinctive foliage. The large, broad-obovate leaves are arranged alter- nately, but they are crowded together at branch tips, giving a whorled appearance. Foliage color is medium green during the summer and, as Donald Wyman reported in the May 14, 1937, Bulletin, "One of its valued characteristics is the fact that in the fall the leaves turn from yellow to orange [and] crimson, thus enabling landscape gardeners to utilize it for autumn as well as spring color." There are several accessions of Rhododen- dron schlippenbachii growing at the Arbore- tum, including several mass plantings in the Explorers Garden on Bussey Hill. One of the easiest and most impressive to view is a large group of plants of accession 465-70 nestled under towering oaks just off of Bussey Hill Road (seen in photos at right). If visiting at any time of the year (though especially spring and fall) be sure to see this lovely azalea species that has a long history of appreciation at the Arboretum. Nancy Rose is a horticulturist and the editor of Arnoldia. ' ' MAR 0 B 2012 The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum VOLUME 69 • NUMBER 3 • 2012 CONTENTS Ainoldia (ISSN 0004-2633; USPS 866-100) is published quarterly by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts. Subscriptions are $20.00 per calendar year domestic, $25.00 foreign, payable in advance. Remittances may be made in U.S. dollars, by check drawn on a U.S. bank; by international money order; or by Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. Send orders, remittances, requests to purchase back issues, change-of-address notices, and all other subscription-related communica- tions to Circulation Manager, Ainoldia, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130- 3500. Telephone 617.524.1718; fax 617.524.1418; e-mail arnoldia@arnarb.harvard.edu Arnold Arboretum members receive a subscrip- tion to Ainoldia as a membership benefit. To become a member or receive more information, please call Wendy Krauss at 617.384.5766 or email wendy_krauss@harvard.edu Postmaster: Send address changes to Ainoldia Circulation Manager The Arnold Arboretum 125 Arborway Boston, MA 02130-3500 Nancy Rose, Editoi Andy Winther, Designei Editoiial Committee Phyllis Andersen Peter Del Tredici Michael S. Dosmann William (Ned) Friedman Kanchi N. Gandhi Copyright © 2012. The President and Fellows of Harvard College The ARNOLD ARBORETUM of HARVARD UNIVERSITY 2 Picking Up the Pawpaws: The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program at the University of Guelph Arboretum Sean Fox 14 Land Bridge Travelers of the Tertiary: The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Floristic Disjunction David Yih 24 A Rare Find: Yellow-Fruited Spicebush [Lindera benzoin forma xanthocarpum) Richard Lynch 29 Book Review: A Landscape History of New England Phyllis Andersen 36 Plainly Unique: Schisandra chinensis Sam Schmerler Front cover: Japanese cornel [Coinus officinalis) blooms in early spring, typically March at the Arnold Arbore- tum. Photo by Nancy Rose. Inside front cover: Trilliums [Trillium spp.) are part of the disjunct flora of eastern Asia and eastern North America. Trillium eiectum. seen here, is a woodland native in much of eastern North America. Photo cour- tesy of Tom Barnes, University of Kentucky. Inside hack cover: At first glance the fruit of Schisan- dra chinensis appears to be a raceme of berries, but in fact each fruit consists of numerous fruitlets, each developed from an individual carpel within an elongate floral receptacle. In this photo, some carpels have matured into fruitlets (large, red) while others have not (small, greenish). Photo courtesy of Peter K. Endress. Back cover: Harvested fruit from yellow-fruited spicebush [Lindera benzoin forma xanthocarpum], an unusual variant of the typical red-fruited form of spicebush [Lindera benzoin var. benzoin). Photo by Richard Lynch. Picking Up the Pawpaws: The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program at the University of Guelph Arboretum Sean Fox It might surprise you to learn that, in Can- ada, species such as Magnolia acuminata (cLicumhertree), Betula lenta (sweet hirch), and Morus rubra (red mulherry) are among those that are listed as endangered in the wild (see Table 1). You may be thinking, "Really, Betula lental It grows all over the place in the eastern United States!" It's true that the major- ity of woody plant species at risk in Canada are quite secure in the United States, so why the concern? Is there really a need for conservation? Conserving an organism at the species level is generally regarded as the most immediate and crucial objective of many conservation pro- grams. In the case of a species that is critically endangered on a global scale, simply ensur- ing the survival of a few individuals is often a significant challenge. But even many glob- ally common plant species have conservation needs. Often these species do not have a very high representation of diverse genetic material archived in ex-situ collections simply because they are not considered to be a high priority for conservation. To compound this, the limited germplasm that is archived is often accessed from similar populations from the core of a spe- cies geographic range. By collecting from more provenances, including those at the extremes of a species' range, we can come closer to fully conserving and representing the genetic diver- sity of the species. After the Laurentide Ice Sheet began receding nearly 12,500 years ago, the forests of eastern North America began their march northward. Species migration is a dynamic and ongoing process, and while many species have already pushed into the tundra region in the far north of Canada, most other species have only extended into southern Canada far more recently. These regional populations, on the forefront of a long migration into northern latitudes, must adapt to an array of environmental conditions that are often very different from those found at the core of the geographic range. Adapted gene com- plexes enable a plant to adjust to the timing of the local annual growth cycle, including bud break, root growth, shoot and leaf elongation, bud development, diameter growth, and cold acclimation. The genetic variation present in Notable for its bright yellow fall foliage, sweet birch [Betula lenta) is a rare find in Canada. The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program 3 Flowering dogwood {Cornus florida) blooming in Ontario. these range extensions is very significant from a conservation standpoint since these particular genotypes may provide crucial genetic material to allow a species to migrate and fill various regional niches. The Ontario populations of woody species, at the northern extent of their natural range, represent adaptations to our northern condi- tions. Liriodendron tulipifera from Ontario are more likely to he suitable for forestry planting in that province than seedling stock from a Vir- ginia source. Cornus florida from Ontario-based provenances have proven, in cold hardiness tri- als, to be more winter hardy in Canada than nursery stock sourced from farther south. As migration pressures increase due to a rapidly changing climate, it may become even more critical to conserve these northern genotypes. Unfortunately, the pace of abiotic change in the environment is likely to be far ahead of biotic survival for many species. The continued exploitation and segregation of suitable habitat adds another dynamic to an already challenging scenario for in-situ conservation. UNDERSTANDING SPECIES AT RISK IN CANADA Taking the time to thoroughly understand the legislative conditions regulating species at risk in Canada, as in many other parts of the world, can be an exercise in patience. The federal gov- ernment of Canada's National Strategy for the Protection of Species at Risk is composed of the National Accord for the Protection of Species at Risk (NAPSR), established in 1996; the Habi- tat Stewardship Program (HSP), established in 2000; and the Species at Risk Act (SARA) estab- lished in 2003. The National General Status Working Group (NGSWG) was formed in 1996 to support the mandate of the NAPSR, and is charged with establishing status rankings for all species in ALL PMOTGS BY I ME AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED 4 Arnoldia 69/3 • February 2012 Table 1. At-risk woody taxa listed federally in Canada (2011) Taxon Canadian Range COSEWIC Status SARA Status Betiila lenta Ontario Endangered Endangered Castanea dentata Ontario Endangered Endangered Celtis tenuifolia Ontario Threatened Threatened Cornus florida Ontario Endangered Endangered Fraxinus quadrangulata Ontario Special Concern Special Concern Gymnocladus dioicus Ontario Threatened Threatened Hibiscus moscheutos Ontario Special Concern Special Concern fuglans cinerea Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick Endangered Endangered Magnolia acuminata Ontario Endangered Endangered Morus rubra Ontario Endangered Endangered Pinus albicaulis Alberta, British Columbia Endangered No Status Ptelea trifoliata Ontario Threatened Threatened Quercus shumardii Ontario Special Concern Special Concern Rosa setigera Ontario Special Concern Special Concern Salix brachycarpa var. psammophila Saskatchewan Special Concern Special Concern Salix chlorolepis Quebec Threatened Threatened Salix jejuna Newfoundland and Labrador Endangered Endangered Salix silicicola Nunavut, Saskatchewan Special Concern Special Concern Salix turnorii Saskatchewan Special Concern Special Concern Smilax rotundifolia Ontario, Nova Scotia Threatened (Great Lakes Population) Threatened (Great Lakes Population) Vaccinium stamineum Ontario Threatened Threatened Canada. The species that are assessed as poten- tially at risk are suggested as candidates for further review to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). COSEWIC was officially established in 1977, hut was legally implemented as the authority for species at risk assessments under SARA in 2003. COSEWIC maintains a list of wild- life species in need of conservation initiatives and also a candidate list of species in need of further evaluation. The role of COSEWIC is advisory and the ultimate decision to place an organism on the Species at Risk List falls upon SARA and the federal government. SARA pro- I Cucumbertree (Magnolia acuminata): Canada's First Endangered Tree Magnolia acuminata was the first tree in Canada to be listed as endangered by COSEWIC in 1984. In 2003, this species was re-evaluated as endangered under the SARA and plans for a recovery strategy were developed. Cucumbertree has always had a very limited distribution in Canada and is currently only known to occur in two areas of southwestern Ontario. In total, only 283 naturally occurring individuals are known to survive in 12 small, extant populations. These individuals represent an extreme northern extension for a species that forms its most abundant core population in the central Appalachian range of the United States. The cucumbertrees remaining in Ontario are generally in good health; however, the habitat that supports them is highly fragmented. This segregation has not only reduced the reproductive fitness of the remaining populations (perhaps due in part to a reduction in pollinator-supporting habitat), but it has also eliminated suitable conditions for seedling regeneration. The range of cucumbertree also happens to lie within the most heavily populated area of human settlement in Canada and one of the most rapidly-developing regions in North America. In-situ conservation efforts to identify and protect individual trees in isolated woodlots have had some success. However, further steps are required to ecologically connect these remaining sites in order to allow this magnificent species to continue its natural migration within Ontario. Canada’s largest cucumbertree [Magnolia acuminata) is about 18 meters (59 feet) tall and has a trunk dbh (diameter at breast height) of 143 centimeters (56 inches). The very limited natural Canadian range of cucumbertree [Magnolia acuminata) in the southwestern Ontario. vides federal legislation aimed at preventing wildlife species from becoming extinct and to aid in their recovery. COSEWIC only suggests species for listing after a detailed report is written, so only a lim- ited number of rare species have been formally assessed. Therefore, a reduction in natural pop- ulations remains a strong concern, even with SARA in place. To add even more confusion, SARA does not apply to plant species on public land under provincial jurisdiction, so as signato- ries to the NAPSR, all provinces and territories are mandated to oversee their own programs to protect species at risk. In Ontario, the Endan- gered Species Act (ESA) was officially imple- mented in 2007. 6 Arnohlid 69/3 • February 2012 The unusual flower and ripening fruit of pawpaw [Asimina triloba) THE RARE WOODY PLANTS OF ONTARIO PROGRAM Back in 1978, well before terms such as climate change and global warming were used with any regularity, Dr. lohn Ambrose, curator of the University of Guelph Arboretum, embarked on a mission to begin evaluating and protecting rare woody flora in Ontario. His goal was not simply to cultivate an ex-situ accession of each species from an Ontario provenance, but to actually capture as much representation of the wild populations in Ontario as possible. With this target m mind, the Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program was born. The first phase of the program was lovingly dubbed "Picking up the Pawpaws" in reference to one of Ontario's most unique and seem- ingly out-of-place native plant spe- cies, Asimina triloba, which looks more suited to the tropics. The aim was to conduct extensive surveys of all of southern Ontario's rare woody species to better understand their distribution and relative abundance. This also doubled as an outreach program to educate the general pub- lic about some of Ontario's unique plant species that they had never even heard of before, let alone knew existed in Canada. Many property owners were excited to learn that the inconspicuous green shrubs in their hack forty were actually rare and sig- nificant species. As a sense of pride and stewardship began to develop, some of these citizens moved for- ward in the following decades to become active members in non- governmental conservation and nat- uralist organizations. Some of these groups continue to play a prominent role in spreading the initial message of the program: the importance of in-situ conservation. Much of the information gath- ered during the initial surveys also continues to prove invaluable in the ongoing development of legisla- tively-important COSEWIC assess- ments. Even after his retirement from the botanical garden world. Dr. Ambrose continues to play a leading role in protecting rare species in Ontario, including surveying and writing COSEWIC reports for at-risk species. AN EXCELLENT SITUATION FOR EX-SITU CONSERVATION The second phase of the Rare Woody Plants of Ontario program revolved around develop- ing a strong ex-situ conservation program at the University of Guelph Arboretum, which spans 165 hectares (408 acres) with over 1,700 The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program 7 Be Aware of the Rare/ Kentucky Coffee-tree Gymnocladus dioicus This tree has the largest leaves of any tree in Canada; they may be almost 1 metre long. The trees spread by underground stems to produce isolated colonies of male or female plants that rarely produce fruit. Current Status COtfMC - nwoimd fUnt» CoflW xnt in Oninrlo A series of interpretive plaques were created for Ontario's rare woody plants with support from BGCI Canada's Investing in Nature: A Partnership for Plants program. Here, Kentucky coffeetree [Gymnocladus dioicus) is highlighted in the Univer- sity of Guelph Arboretum's World of Trees collection. John Ambrose (right), with botanists Lindsay Roger and Gerry Waldron, upon their discovery of a new species to Canada, swamp cottonwood [Populus heterophylla), in 2002. The Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis): O Canada — Its Home and Native Land? A specific epithet like “canaden- sis” might lead one to helieve that eastern redhud floods the under- story of the great northern forests. But, despite its seeming patrio- tism to Canada, this beautiful species is not quite as common in the north as one might think. In Gerry Waldron's wonder- ful book, Trees of the Carolinian Forest (2003), he quotes the great Canadian botanist, John Macoun, as he recounts his first and only sighting of eastern redbud on Canadian soil in 1892: These flower buds of eastern redbud [Cercis canadensis) show the species' inter- 1 was informed that a remark- esting trait of cauliflory (flower and fruit production from woody stems). This 11^ ^7 accession (1988-0284.002) in the World of Trees collection at the University of able tree grew on the south end i u a u . • t u u a • H7 /- . aa- u- ° Guelph Arboretum is from a cold-hardy provenance m Wayne County, Michigan. of the island, that many years ago produced an abundance of lovely red flowers in early spring before the leaves came out . . . the next day I examined the south point and found the tree. It had been undermined by the waves and fallen inland, and more than half its limbs were dead, but it still bore leaves and what remained was quite healthy. It will soon disappear, but the record of its existence will remain. This tree that Macoun happened across remains the only naturally-occurring individual ever discovered in Canada. This plant grew at Fish Point, Pelee Island, in Lake Erie — the most southerly point in all of Canada, and, as he predicted, was eventually swallowed by the lake as the shoreline eroded away. While there are naturalized populations established in parts of southwestern Ontario, as escapees from cultivated stock, eastern redbud is now officially ranked as extirpated in Canada. 8 Arnoldici 69/3 • February 2012 Locations surveyed by the University of Guelph Arboretum for the presence of naturally-occurring, at-risk species are displayed in this map of southwestern Ontario. taxa of woody flora represented in its collections. The major empha- sis is on the woody flora of east- ern North America, with special attention being given to the rare woody flora of Ontario. After initial surveys were com- pleted, provenance-based germ- plasm collections were made in order to capture as great a repre- sentation of a species' provincial population as possible. Vegetative propagules were gathered for the establishment of a germplasm repository at the University of Guelph Arboretum, in the form of living gene banks. The gene banks at the Arboretum are arranged as seed orchards and serve two main purposes: (1) To provide ex-situ back up for failure at in-situ conservation This pumpkin ash [Fraxinus profunda] accession (1994 0010. 001) in the World of Trees collection at the Uni- versity of Guelph ■■Vrboretum was cultivated from seed collected in Essex County, Ontario, very shortly after the discovery of the species in Canada in 1992. Here, the blue ash [Fraxinus quadrangulata) gene bank at the University of Guelph Arboretum provides a secure site for a faculty research project. The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program 9 Table 2. Accessions of known, wild, Ontario-based provenance for selected rare woody taxa under cultivation at the University of Guelph Arboretum. Taxon Risk Ranking* Total Number of Accessions Total Number of Individuals Aesculus glabra G5, SI 5 20 Asimina triloba G5, S3 8 12 Betula lenta G5, SI 9 44 Campsis radicans G5, S2 3 4 Carya laciniosa G5, S3 6 25 Carya glabra G5, S3 3 7 Castanea dentata G4, S3 2 3 Celtis tenuifolia G5, S2 5 13 Cornus drummondii G5, S4 5 26 Cornus florida G5, S2 8 17 Euonymus atropurpurea G5, S3 6 16 Fraxinus profunda G4, S2 1 3 Fraxinus quadrangulata G5, S3 20 26 Gleditsia triacanthos G5, S2 7 38 Gymnocladus dioicus G5, S2 26 87 Hibiscus moscheutos G5, S3 1 2 fuglans cinerea G4, S3 12 32 Firiodendron tulipifera G5, S4 11 15 Magnolia acuminata G5, S2 16 37 Morus rubra G5, S2 5 21 Morelia pensylvanica G5, SI 3 3 Pinus rigida G5, S2 4 5 Platanus occidentalis G5, S4 10 18 Ptelea trifoliata G5, S3 22 43 Quercus ellipsoidalis G5, S3 2 2 Quercus muehlenbergii G5, S4 16 64 Quercus prinoides G5, S2 2 9 Quercus shumardii G5, S3 4 9 Rosa setigera G5, S3 6 8 G-global, S-provincial Gl-extremely rare, G2-very rare, G3-rare to uncommon, G4-common, G5-very common Sl-critically imperiled, S2-imperiled, S3-vulnerable, S4-apparently secure, S5-secure 10 Arnoldici 69/3 • February 2012 The first crop, in 2006, from the shellbark hickory (Carya laciniosa) gene bank at the University of Guelph Arboretum. Pawpaw [Asimina triloba) seedlings growing in the nursery at the University of Guelph Arboretum. efforts related to habitat loss and natural calamities. This is especially critical for many hardwood species that possess recalcitrant seeds that are difficult to store under conven- tional seed hanking practices. (2) To produce enough seed, through open or controlled polli- nation, to take the seed collecting pressure off of natural populations in Ontario. Seed produced will pro- vide a valuable and readily accessible resource for restoration efforts, in addition to supplying material with promising horticultural attributes with respect to cold hardiness. Today, a number of species that are at risk in Ontario have their germplasm archived within the Arboretum's gene hanks and plant collections (see table 2). Much of the research conducted to develop germination and cultivation recjuire- ments for these rare species was pub- lished in 2008 in the hook Growing Trees from Seed by Henry Kock, late University of Guelph Arboretum horticulturist. The accessions estab- lished at the Arboretum represent a significant portion of the genetic diversity for these very rare species at the northern extreme of their geo- graphic range. Several of these acces- sions are from provenances that have already been lost in the wild. In addition, many of the early provenance-based seed collections were distributed internationally to botanical organizations for more hroad-hased ex-situ archiving. A look through the plant inventories of many botanical gardens and arboreta will display cultivated material of species from these Ontario provenances. PLANTING SEEDS FOR THE FUTURE The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program was first initiated at the University of Guelph Arboretum over 30 years ago, and conserva- tion efforts focusing on Ontario's native woody flora continue to this day. In addition to the endeavors already discussed, the Arboretum is currently engaged in several activities to build upon our conservation programs. In 2006, after the early passing of our beloved horticulturist, Henry Kock, an endowment was established to help provide long-term, sustainable funding for our conservation pro- grams. Henry's mission — to archive naturally- occurring Dutch elm disease-tolerant Ameri- I Kentucky Coffeetree {Gymnocladus dioicus): Distribution within the University of Guelph Arboretum WHILE gene banking various acces- sions within seed orchards makes archiving and maintaining plant material simpler, a strong effort has also been made to establish acces- sions in suitable botanical and hor- ticultural collections throughout the Arboretum. Distributing our con- servation collections in this fashion serves several purposes: • Accessions throughout our 165 hectare (408 acre) site provide insurance measures against localized disturbances (e.g., weather events, vandalism). • The incorporation of rare native flora into various formal collections increases the value of our interpretive programs and provides visitors with the opportunity to see important species that are unlikely to be spotted in the wild. At-risk species planted throughout the site provide strategic long-term protection for the Arboretum property itself against any potential outside development activities in the future. A view from within the Kentucky coffeetree [Gymnocladus dioicus) gene bank at the University of Guelph Arboretum. A well-established Kentucky coffeetree seed orchard is now starting to bear fruit, but you can also find accessions of known, wild provenance in other locations within the Arboretum. Table 3. Accessions of Gymnocladus dioicus under cultivation at the University of Guelph Arboretum of known, wild, Ontario-based provenance. Collection or Area Number of Represented Accessions Number of Represented Individuals Gene Bank Seed Orchard 26 65 World of Trees Collection 1 7 Leguminosae Family Collection 6 6 Native Trees of Ontario Collection 1 5 Gosling Wildlife Gardens; Native Plant Garden 1 1 R1 Hilton Center Accent Planting 1 1 Arboretum Nursery Archival Plantings 2 2 12 Arnoldio 69/3 • February 2012 The accessioned plants in the cucumbertree [Magnolia acuminata] sene bank at the University of Guelph Arboretum bear mature fruit on an annual basis. Late University of Guelph Arboretum horticultur- ist Henry Kock standing next to Canada's largest eastern flovv'ering dogwood [Cornus florida). Over the past ten years, several bumper crops have been produced in the sweet birch [Bctula lenta] gene bank at the University of Guelph Arboretum. can elm {Ulmus americana] germ- plasm at the Arboretum — provided the incentive to refer to this as the Henry Kock Tree Recovery Endow- ment. This endowment provides the opportunity to work with not only elm, but also with any other woody species m Ontario that are in need of recovery efforts in the future. Ontario's Elm Recovery Proiect is currently operated out of the Univer- sity of Guelph Arboretum with an archival germplasm repository in the beginning stages of development. The provin- cial Butternut Recovery Program was initiated several years ago by the Forest Gene Conserva- tion Association (FGCA) with the Arboretum serving as one of their archival planting sites. The Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG Ontario) is currently undertaking a program to breed pure, non-hyhridized red mulberry (Morus rubra], a species endangered in Ontario because of white mulberry (Morus alba) invasion. The University of Guelph Arboretum serves as a partner and site for a future ex-situ conservation collection. Provincial field studies and seed collection trips are ongoing for species at risk in Ontario, The Rare Woody Plants of Ontario Program 13 with a particular emphasis on recently dis- covered species such as Quercus ellipsoidalis (1978), Fraxinus profunda (1992), Quercus ilici- folia (1994) and Populus heterophylla (2002). These are important species that we hope to further incorporate into our ex-situ collections at the Arboretum. As our existing seed orchards continue to produce increasingly sound crops, we are now in the position to better distribute this seed to nurseries and local conservation authorities to aid in their restoration activities. Large crops of seed will also be archived at the National Tree Seed Center in Fredericton, New Bruns- wick, and the Ontario Tree Seed Plant in Angus, Ontario. Seed will continue to be available to other botanical institutions for conservation and research purposes. In this modern era, and with an unstable economy, most botanical gardens and arboreta are facing tough challenges with budget and staff cuts. As the years have progressed at the University of Guelph Arboretum, we've also had to make diffieult decisions regarding the activities that we have the capacity to engage in successfully. While we've had to scale back several of our display-based horticultural col- lections, we've found that our conservation programs have helped to provide a niche that further defines the mission of our organization. It must always be remembered that ex-situ conservation programs, as valid and critical as they are, don't hold a candle to ecosystem con- servation, expansion, and linkage. These in-situ conservation activities must be represented in our highest aspirations as citizens and nations. However, the important role that botanical gar- dens and arboreta can play must not be under- estimated either. Whether it is the education, outreach, research, stewardship, or conserva- tion hat that is being worn, public gardens are in a unique position to be meaningfully engaged m rare flora programs both locally and globally. References Ambrose, J. and D. Kirk. 2006. Recovery Strategy for Cucumber Tree {Magnolia acuminata L.) in Canada. Prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources by the Cucumber Tree Recovery Team, Toronto, Ontario. Beardmore, T., J. Loo, B. McAfee, C. Malouin, and D. Simpson. 2006. A Survey of Tree Species of Concern in Canada: the Role of Genetic Conservation. The Forestry Chronicle 82-3: 351-363. Canadian Endangered Species Council (CESCC) 2011. Wild Species 2010: The General Status of Species in Canada. Natural General Status Working Group (NGSWG), Ottawa, Ontario. Cannings, S., M. Anions, R. Rainer, and B. Stein. 2005. Our Home and Native Land: Canadian Species of Global Conservation Concern. NatureServe Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. Environment Canada. 2011. Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC): Wildlife Species Search Database. http://www. cosewic.gc.ca/eng/sctl/searchform_e.cfm Environment Canada. 2009. COSEWIC: A Brief History. http://www.cosewic.gc.ca/eng/sct6/sct6_3 _e.cfm lUCN. 2001. lUCN Red List Categories and Criteria: version 3.1. lUCN Species Survival Commission. lUCN-World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland, and Cambridge, United Kingdom. Kock, H., with P. Aird, J. Ambrose, and G. Waldron. 2008. Growing Trees from Seed: A Practical Guide to Growing Native Trees, Vines and Shrubs. Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, Ontario. NatureServe. 2011. NatureServe Explorer: An Online Encyclopedia of Life. http://www.natureserve. org/explorer/ Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. 2011. Ontario Species at Risk List, http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/ en/Business/Species/2ColumnSubPage/276722. html#glossary Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. 2011. Natural Heritage Information Center Biodiversity Explorer. https://www.biodiversityexplorer. mnr.gov.on.ca/nhicWEB/main.jsp Waldron, G. 2003. Trees of the Carolinian Forest. Boston Mills Press, Erin, Ontario. Sean Fox is the Assistant Arboretum Manager and Head Horticulturist at the University of Guelph Arboretum in Ontario, Canada. Land Bridge Travelers of the Tertiary: The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Floristic Disjunction David Yih The eastern Asian-eastern North Ameri- can Horistic disjunction is a curious phe- nomenon that has fascinated botanists for over 200 years: the existence of an entire catalog of species and genera shared hy two vastly separated regions and found nowhere else. It has inspired generations of researchers and given impetus to such fields as hiogeogra- phy and paleobotany. Scientists now recognize many different disjunct patterns around the world, hut the eastern Asian-eastern North American was the first to he discovered, and remains the classic disjunction. It continues to stimulate new scientific papers, with each suc- cessive generation applying new research tools to its mysteries. Recognition of the disjunction began in the 1750s with botanists making lists of spe- cies found in both regions. By the mid- 1800s botanists had collected enough materials to lead them to the astounding conclusion that the flora of eastern North America (ENA) had more in common with eastern Asia (EA) than it did with western North America. Most of EN.A meets E.'\: A. garden path separates the eastern North .\nierican speeies .\lleghenv spurge [Pachysandra procum- hens, left) from tlie eastern Asian speeies lapanese spurge [Pachysandra terniinalis). The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Floristic Disjunction 15 what were once thought to he identical spe- cies are now considered congeners (distinct species belonging to the same genus), so the disjunction is more about shared genera than shared species, and it is now clear that east- ern North America has more in common with western North America than with eastern Asia. However, it is also clear that eastern Asia and eastern North America have more in common than eastern Asia and western North America and that a remarkable disjunction phenomenon exists. Today, the list of EA-ENA botanical "dis- juncts" (shared taxa peculiar to the two regions) includes about 65 genera, a handful of closely related genera, and a few species (Wen 1999). Most of the genera are temperate; only a few come from subtropical or tropical zones. And most disjuncts are woody plants. Many of the herbaceous ones are early-leafing species adapted to thrive on the forest floor. Some EA- ENA disjunct genera that have familiar repre- sentative species in the Northeast are listed in Table 1 (Li 1952), along with generalized com- mon names for the species. DISJUNCT REGIONS The majority of eastern Asian disjuncts grow in the Sino-Japanese Eloristic Region, which extends from China's western Yunnan and Sichuan provinces through central, eastern, and most of southern China to Korea and Japan. The richest association of disjunct genera occurs in central China, along the longest river in Asia: the Yangtze (Li 1952). On the American side, the richest disjunct area is along the Appala- chian Mountains. The two areas are the only instances globally of the mixed mesophytic for- est, one of the most biodiverse temperate forest types in the world. Western botanists have reported experienc- ing a sense of deja vu in the forests of China. Add to the disjuncts the more wide-ranging spe- cies that also occur in both regions, and the level of similarity becomes C[uite high. A recent study found that 67% of the seed plant gen- era in Maine occur on Japan's Honshu Island (Qian 2002). The similarity was even greater in ages past. Several genera that are now endemic to eastern Asia occur in fossil form in North America, e.g., the familiar Ginkgo and Metase- quoia (dawn redwood), while fossil remains of Sequoia (redwood) and Taxodium (baldcypress), genera now confined to North America, have been found in eastern Asia. At present, the similarity is limited by pro- nounced differences in biodiversity. Disjunct genera tend to have more species in Asia than in America. The extreme example is Lindera, with 80 species in eastern Asia but only 2 in North America. Indeed, eastern Asia, with its 2,753 genera of seed plants, has a biodiversity far greater than that of eastern North America, which has only 1,230. According to one expla- nation, the Paleocene forests of both regions were equally rich in species until severe cli- matic fluctuations in North America resulted in many extinctions. Another possibility is that the complex topography of eastern Asia pro- moted a greater rate of speciation there due to Table 1 WOODY Campsis Trumpet vine Cary a Hickory Cat alp a Catalpa Cornus Dogwood Gleditsia Honey locust Hamamelis Witchhazel Liquidambar Sweetgum Liriodendron Tuliptree Lyonia Maleberry Mitchella Partridgeberry Nyssa Tupelo Pachysandra Pachysandra Parthenocissus Virginia creeper Sassafras Sassafras HERBACEOUS Panax Ginseng Phryma Lopseed Podophyllum Mayapple Saururus Lizard's tail Symplocarpus Skunk cabbage PETER DEL 1 REDICl 16 Arnoldia 69/3 • February 2012 The Sino-Japanese Floristic Region. PETER DELTREDICI The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Eloristic Disjunction 1 7 Showy flowers are a feature shared by Chinese trumpet creeper ^Campsis grandiflora], left, and the familiar trumpet creeper [Campsis radicans] of North America, right. o >- U z < z lindera obtusiloba (seen here in fall color at the Arnold Arbore- :um) is one of the many Lindera species native to eastern Asia. the abundance of varied habitats and natural barriers that could allow different populations of a species to evolve separately (Sargent 1913; Qian and Ricklefs 2000). The EA-ENA disjunc- tion is now recognized not only among plants, but among taxa of fungi, arachnids, millipedes, insects, and freshwater fish, as well (Wen 1999). But botanists can take credit for being the first to notice and document the phenomenon. A THEORY BLOOMS The earliest hint came in the 1750 dissertation of Halenius, a student of Linnaeus. It mentions nine species found both on Siberia's Kamchatka peninsula and in North America, including members of genera familiar to New England botanists: Asplenium, Lycopodium, Anemone, Heuchera, and Spirea. Commercial exploitation of the phenomenon had already begun. Pere Lafitau, a French fesuit, had discovered Ameri- can ginseng [Panax quinqiiefolius) growing near Montreal in 1716, and French Canadians were neglecting their farms in the rush to collect wild ginseng for export to China (Kingsford 1888). In 1784, C. P. Thunherg, a Swedish botanist, included in his Flora faponica twenty species first described for North America (Boufford and Spongberg 1983). The following year, the Ital- ian botanist Luigi Castiglioni began a two-year sojourn in the United States. Castiglioni's mis- sion was to bring hack useful seeds to Italy, and he is credited with introducing to continental Europe such trees as black locust (later to show invasive tendencies), catalpa, and arborvitae. In 1 790 he published his Viaggio negli Stati Uniti dell’ America, with elegant botanical drawings of such American sights as the franklintree, already rare in the wild and soon to he extinct outside of cultivation. It also contains the first explicit discussion of the floristic similarity of eastern North America to lapan, the only part of eastern Asia for which published floras were then available. Overlooked by nearly all who would later treat the disjunction, he received scant credit for his role in its discovery (Li 1955). Brief comments in the work of Pursh and then Nuttall reveal little beyond an incipient recognition of the disjunction, though Nuttall 18 Arnohlia 6913 • February 2012 Though their flowers look similar, Chinese witchhazel [Hamamelis mollis), left, blooms in late w inter or very early spring while common w itchhazel {Hamamelis vir^iniana), rij;ht, blooms in late fall or early winter in eastern North America. Cultivated Chinese Kinsenj; {Panax Kinsen)i), left, and a fruiting specimen of American ginseng [Panax quinquefolius), right The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Floristic Disjunction 19 undertook to note the geographical distribu- tions of North American genera. It remained for Asa Gray, the preeminent American bota- nist of the nineteenth century, to focus atten- tion on the disjunction, bringing it to the notice of the wider scientific community in a series of articles beginning in 1840 and spanning nearly 40 years. Charles Darwin, who began an extensive cor- respondence with Gray in 1855, encouraged him to study the global distributions of the North American flora. In his second letter to Gray he wrote, "The ranges of plants, to the east and west, viz. whether most are found in Greenland and Western Europe, or in E. Asia appears to me a very interesting point as tend- ing to show whether the migration has been eastward or westward" (Darwin 1855). In 1859, after studying new collections from Japan, Gray published his classic "Diagnostic Characters" paper that included a list of 134 species shared by eastern North America and Japan. On the list were such northeastern plants as blue cohosh {Caulophyllum thalictr aides], fox grape [Vitis labrusca], ditch stonecrop [Penthorum sedoides], honewort {Cryptotaenia canadensis), hobblebush [Viburnum lantanoides), wild gin- ger [Asarum canadense], red trillium [Trillium erectum], large twayblade [Liparis liliifolia], and rose pogonia [Pogonia ophioglossoides). All were later shown to be distinct from their Asian counterparts — belonging to the same disjunct genus, but different species. The two ferns on Gray's list, sensitive fern [Onoclea sensibilis) and cinnamon fern [Osmunda cinnamomea), turned out to be too widespread globally to qualify as disjunct species (Li 1952). In addition to comparing the flora of Japan to various other regions, Gray's "Diagnostic Characters" con- tains an extended discussion of the EA-ENA dis- junction. "It will be almost impossible to avoid the conclusion," he writes, "that there has been a peculiar intermingling of the eastern Ameri- can and eastern Asian floras which demands explanation" (Gray 1859). It was the eve of the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, dur- ing a ferment of interest in the natural world, and there was no shortage of theories on such topics. "Schouw's hypothesis" held that there had been multiple geographic origins of many species. At a time when naturalists were strug- Rose pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides), seen here, is native to bogs in much of eastern North America. Pogonia japonica (formerly listed as P. ophioglossoides var. japonica) is a very similar-looking species native to Japan and parts of China. gling to reconcile scientific rigor with cherished beliefs. Gray was also conversant with such hybrid approaches as Maupertius's "principle of least action," according to which it was "incon- sistent with our idea of Divine wisdom that the Greator should use more power than was necessary to accomplish a given end" (quoted in Gray 1859). By applying this principle, one could argue (without sacrificing piety) that once created, the far-flung species had migrated on their own, rather than requiring further divine intervention. With characteristic grace. Gray gave dispassionate consideration to all points of view. J. D. Hooker, the prominent British bota- nist and a close friend of Darwin, had recently proposed, in relation to southern-hemisphere taxa, "the hypothesis of all being members of a once more extensive flora, which has broken up by geological and climatic causes" (quoted in CC'UKTESY OI- Tt -M BARNES, UNIVERSITY OE KENTUCKY 20 Arnohlia 69/3 • February 2012 Often the genetic analyses match nicely with the prior work of traditional taxonomists. The genus Sassafras, for example, is monophyletic. That is, its three species constitute a clade. The eastern North American S. albidum is "sister" to the smaller clade made up of its two eastern Asian counterparts. Molecular data subjected to statistical methods put their inter- continental divergence time at around 13 mil- lion years ago (Nie et al. 2007). Sassafras also illustrates several frequent patterns; diversi- fication in one or both continents following the time of separation is common, and disjunct genera tend to have more eastern Asian than American representatives. The upshot of all the investigations into geology, the fossil record, climate studies, taxonomy, and the molecular clocks and phy- logenetic analysis of modern genetics is still a necessarily tentative picture of the disjunc- tion's history. But there is agreement on the broad outlines. Most scientists do not consider Boufford and Spongberg 1983). In the end. Gray applied a similar hypothesis to the Asian and American floras. With various refinements, it remains in effect to this day. THE ONGOING PUZZLE With the general adoption of cladistics in the latter part of the twentieth century and rapid advances in molecular genetics, new tools have emerged for studying the disjunction. Most sci- entific papers from the last twenty years use molecular data and focus on a single disjunct genus. There are several sorts of molecular- level data to choose from (the most popular has been ITS — short for sequences of internal transcribed spacer regions of nuclear ribosomal DNA). Though their relative merits are still being assessed, the information they yield per- tains not only to phylogeny (how disjuncts are related in terms of evolutionary descent), but also to dating divergence times and inferring pathways and directions of migration. Asa (Jray listed sensitive fern [Onoclea sensibilis) as a disjunct species, but it was later determined simply to be a very globally widespread species. The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Eloristic Disjunction 21 Native ranges of Sassafras species in eastern North America and eastern Asia. u Foliage of Sassafras albidum (left), a familiar native tree in much of the eastern United States, and of S. tzumu (right), native to China. The entire genus Sassafras, which constitutes a clade. The eastern North American S. albidum is "sister” to the smaller clade made up of its two eastern Asian counter- parts, S. tzumu and S. randaiense. S. tzumu CHKIS EVANS RIVER I O RIVER CWMA, BUCWOOD ORG MICMAE' IX)SMANN 22 Arnoldia 69/3 • February 2012 The Eastern Asian-Eastern North American Floristic Disjunction 23 long-distance dispersal to have played much of a role. The prevailing view is that most disjuncts are remnants of genera that were once widely distributed in the northern tem- perate zone during the Tertiary period. These hroad distributions in the northern hemi- sphere were made possible by recurring land bridges. Bering land bridges connecting Asia to North America were present at several times since the Mesozoic era. North Atlantic land bridges connected North America to Europe via Greenland beginning in the early Tertiary, and by the mid-Tertiary, Europe and Asia were connected by a land bridge along the Tethys Seaway. After the establishment of the north- ern Tertiary flora, the formation of the Rocky Mountains brought profound changes in cli- mate and rainfall patterns, causing the gen- era to disappear from western North America during the late Tertiary and Quaternary. Dur- ing the Quaternary glaciations, they were also extirpated from Western Europe. Drawing on fossil, geologic, and climatic evidence, B. H. Tiffney proposed five different time periods during which migrations over the land bridges may have occurred between the two regions (pre-Tertiary, early Eocene, late Eocene-Qligocene, Miocene, and late Tertiary to Quaternary), with different types of plants featured in each migration (Tiffney 1985). A multiple-origins view is also supported by molecular evidence. Molecular clock data from Cornus, Boykinia, and Calycanthus suggest that the disjunction could have involved mul- tiple events at different geological times in different genera (Xiang et al. 1998). Ultimately, the EA-ENA disjunction is part of a broader picture that will occupy biogeog- raphers for years to come. Studies of northern hemisphere intercontinental disjuncts point to complex biogeographical relationships among taxa in five major regions, including not only eastern Asia, eastern North America, and western North America, but western Asia and southeastern Europe as well. Darwin's desire to determine whether migration happened "east- ward or westward" has grown into a multi- faceted field of study. Cited Works Boufford, D. E. and S. A, Spongberg. 1983. Eastern Asian- Eastern North American Phytogeographical Relationships — A History from the Time of Linnaeus to the Twentieth Century". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 70: 423-439. Darwin, Charles. 1855. Letter to Asa Gray, June 8. In Francis Darwin, ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 2. 1959. New York: Basic Books. Gray, Asa. 1859. Diagnostic Characters of New Species of Phaenogamous Plants ... Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Series 6|2). Kingsford, William. 1888. The History of Canada. London: Triibner & Co. Li, Hui-Lin. 1952. Floristic Relationships between Eastern Asia and Eastern North America. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42(2): 371-429. Li, Hui-Lin. 1955. Luigi Castiglioni as a Pioneer in Plant Geography and Plant Introduction, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 99(2): 51-56. Nie, Z.-L., J. Wen, and H. Sun. 2007. Phylogeny and biogeography of Sassafras (Lauraceae) disjunct between eastern Asia and eastern North America, Plant Systematics and Evolution 267: 191-203. Qian, Hong. 2002. Floristic Relationships between Eastern Asia and North America: Test of Gray's Hypothesis. The American Naturalist 160(3): 317-332. Qian, Hong and Robert E. Ricklefs. 2000. Large-scale processes and the Asian bias in species diversity of temperate plants. Nature 407(6801): 180-182. Sargent, Charles S. 1913. Introduction to E. H. Wilson's A Naturalist in Western China. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. Tiffney, B. H. 1985. Perspectives on the origin of the floristic similarity between eastern Asia and east North America. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 66: 73-94. Wen, Jun. 1999. Evolution of Eastern Asian and Eastern North American Disjunct Distributions in Flowering Plants. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 30: 421-455. Xiang, Qiu-Yun, Douglas E. Soltis, , and Pamela S. Soltis. 1998. The eastern Asian and eastern and western North American floristic disjunction: Congruent phylogenetic patterns in seven diverse genera. Molecular Phylogenetics eP Evolution. 10(2): 178-190. David Yih, Ph.D., is a musician, writer, and naturalist. A Rare Find: Yellow-Fruited Spicebush (Lindera benzoin forma xanthocarpum) Richard Lynch There are as many differ- ent harbingers of spring as there are fond memories in the minds of the people who look for them. For some, the last of the snow melting off a northern slope fits the bill. For others, the first chorusing of spring peepers [Hyla crucifer] in the still-cold ponds of late March provides hope for the warmer seasons to come. For those with a more botanical bent, and especially for lovers of the deep woods across the eastern United States, the opening of the tiny yellow flowers of spicebush [Lindera benzoin) clearly marks the tipping point from winter to spring. In many parts of the Northeast, spicebush is the first shrub to flower and is often timed with the arrival of mourning cloaks [Nyinphalis antiopa] and spring azure butterflies [Celas- trina ladon). Spicebush also plays a role in alerting nature lovers that the fall season approaches. By the middle of September, female plants begin to display some of the brightest red fruit found in nature. Plants growing in deep woods will be a bit sparse in fruit, but those grow- ing along the forest edge or near wetlands can produce a great pro- fusion of colorful fruit. There are a great number of resident and migrating bird species that take full advantage of the bounty, and often within a week or two the The typical bright red fruit of spicebush (Lindera benzoin). AM rMoiosHYiiii Annum UNiissoiin Kwisi iniik atid Yellow-Fruited Spicebush 25 A view across the lowland sweetgum-red maple forest in the Staten i Island Greenbelt. fruit have been harvested and carried off by wildlife. Though bright red is the typical fruit color, there is also a yellow-fruited spicebush [Lindera benzoin forma xanthocarpum). The story of this unusual variant begins in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in 1913, where it was discovered by Mrs. Frank E. Lowe. A description of the plant written by G. S. Torrey was published the following year in Rhodora (note that the species name was then Benzoin aestivale rather than the current Lindera benzoin): "On October 4, 1913, Mrs. Frank E. Lowe collected in Shrewsbury, Mass., specimens of the Spice Bush, Benzoin aestivale Nees., which differed from the common form in having the drupes orange-yellow, instead of bright red. Several bushes were found, some grow- ing with the typical form in low, damp places; some alone, in drier ground in a rocky pasture. They all hore yellow fruit, which were ripe and falling. The material was sent by Mrs. Lowe to Mrs. E. L. Horr of the Worcester Natural His- tory Museum, by whom it was referred to the Gray herbarium. The plant may be characterized as follows: BENZOIN AESTIVALE (L.) Nees., forma xantho- carpum, forma nova, fructus flavis." There seems to be no record of the progress of the plant after its first find in Shrewsbury, at least until the dis- covery by propagator Alfred Fordham of a plant at the Arnold Arboretum in 1967. It was recorded as spontaneous The old hand-written accession card for the yellow-fruited spicebush found at the Arnold Arboretum reads: "Old plant found in A.A. by A. Fordham. No record of one ever being planted in A.A. Possibly another nearby but it did not fruit in 1967.” The plant’s nomencla- ture had been changed several times over the years. The last note from 1985 indicated that the plant was in "very poor condition" and it presumably died sometime after that. 26 Arnohlia 69/3 • February 2012 (not purposely planted), but given how rare the plant seems to be in nature, one could conjecture whether the Arbo- retum plant might not have had its genesis from the seeds that were col- lected from the Shrewsbury population in 1913 or perhaps sometime later. Sadly, the plant that was known at the Arboretum went missing itself some- time after 1967. The story of the yellow-fruited spice- bush continues in New York City (of all places!) where, in 2007, seeds were col- lected in the Staten Island Greenbelt — an 1,800-acre nature reserve that is part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The Greenbelt Native Plant Center (begun in 1986) employs 22 full-time staff in the produc- tion of hundreds of thousands of native plants that supply native plant resto- ration projects throughout the region, and they had asked me about good sites for collecting spicebush seeds. 1 recom- mended an area in the Greenbelt that 1 knew contained many thousands of spicebushes and brought some of the staff (including nursery manager Tim Chambers and woody plant propaga- tor Sam Pattison) on a collecting trip to the site. While having a conversation with Tim about the status of endan- gered native plants of the region (my favorite topic of conversation), Sam returned with a collecting hag full of bright red fruit. Scattered among the red fruit were a number of yellow ones. Before Sam had a chance to add his to a much larger container filled with many hundreds of fruit, 1 asked to see his yel- low fruit and began to marvel at what he had discovered. We retraced the steps he had taken in collecting the fruit and found a single small shrub growing in a thick lowland grove of red maples [Acer Spicebush grows in full sun in this succes- sional meadow in the Staten Island Greenbelt. ( Yellow-Fruited Spicebush 27 Green milkweed [Asclepias viridiflora], left, and globose flatsedge [Cyperus echinatus], right, are two of the rare (in New York) plants found growing in a sunny meadow within the Staten Island Greenbelt. rubrum], where a few of the golden-yellow fruit still remained. After the discovery of the first specimen, we made a greater effort to look for the yellow-fruited plants in the vicinity of the first one, but found none. Further up the trail and into a sunny meadow, we discovered two more plants heavily laden with yellow fruit. The meadow is part of a successional grassland growing over serpentine-derived soils and con- tains other New York State rare plants such as green milkweed [Asclepias viridiflora], purple milkweed [A. purpurea], and globose flatsedge [Cyperus echinatus]. We collected these addi- tional yellow fruit and added the fruit from the first collection; these became a separate cohort of seed from which we could propagate. It turns out that the yellow-fruited spicebush is a rarer taxon than first believed. According to Charles Sheviak, the state botanist for New York, the plant had not previously been recorded as growing in the state. In Massachusetts, state botanist Brian Connelly has no records for any extant populations in the state. Although it is likely that other populations for the plant do exist, there are no other confirmed populations known in these two states. The ciuestion then arises as to what conserva- tion efforts, if any, need to be taken to ensure the continued existence of the plant in the wild. In using the term "forma" in describing the plant, G. S. Torrey seems to convey the belief that the plant is a random mutation, not sustainable over time, occurring within a larger population. In general, the term "variety" would be used to describe a plant that is self-sustaining or repre- sents a variant that covers a portion of the range of a larger species description. Given that we don't know either the genetic differences that separate the yellow-fruited spicebush from the more common red-fruited 28 Arnoldici 69/3 • February 2012 plant, or the potential adaptive differences of the two plants in nature, there remains the outstanding question as to the true taxo- nomic status of the plant. The first yellow- fruited spicehush seedlings grown from the seeds we collected are reaching flowering size, so we may know within a year or two if the fruit color is inherited from one generation to another (though this might he complicated hy the obligate out-crossing nature of spice- hush in the wild, as the yellow-fruited plants grow within a colony of several thousand red- fruited plants). We may also consider undertak- ing experiments to determine if yellow-fruited plants are as attractive as red-fruited plants to wildlife that act as dispersers of the seeds in the wild (though, in general, it is believed that red-fruited plants are favored over other colored fruit by many migrating bird species). It may take some time to unravel the true nature of this elusive plant. At the very least, we can feel fortunate that the rediscovery of the yellow-fruited spicehush allows a much broader horticultural audience to grow and appreciate the plant. Like the beloved Franklin tree [Franklinia alatamaha], the yellow-fruited spicehush might not be the best "fit" for Nature, but at least generations of nature-lovers can enjoy the plant in a more horticultural setting. Richard Lynch is a hotanist and president of the Sweethay Magnolia Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the study and preservation of rare plants in the vicinity of New York City. The author with a three-year-old seedling of yellow-fruited spicebiish growing at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center on Staten Island. Book Review Phyllis Andersen A Landscape History of New England Edited by Blake Harrison and Richard W. Judd. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. 413 pages. ISBN 978-0-262-01640-7 Coeditors Blake Harrison and Richard W. Judd challenged a group of senior and young scholars to produce essays that capture myriad aspects of the New England landscape: the material landscape of forests, upland farms, stone walls, inland rivers, and rocky coast lines, and the symbolic landscape of picturest]ue villages, bucolic pastures, and the stock pieties of hard-working farmers with backs to the plow and eyes on the horizon. Methodologies deployed by the authors vary from the new disciplines of environ- mental and ecological history to lit- erary narrative and to the politics of gender, ethnicity, and environmental change. The twenty essays are book- ended by the editors' introduction and conclusion — dissimilar threads skillfully woven to form compre- hensive case studies of landscape and cultural changes over three cen- turies. The essays engage both the essence of regional character and the theatrical promotion of magnetic scenery created for the seduction of tourists to visit New England and support local economies. Old England was a refuge for New England's early settlers, so newly settled places were often named after mother-country places (the Berkshires, Portsmouth, Worcester, New London) and topographic terms (brook, pond, marsh, fens) coinciden- tal to mother country terms. This offered familiarity amidst what some early settlers called the emptiness of the place and others called the howling wilderness. The fact that the "emptiness" contained areas of cultivation by Native Americans was ignored in the jeremiads of early Puritan ministers who needed a transformative narrative to motivate their flocks to both stay and spread out. As waves of settlers came to understand the intrin- sic capacities of the landscape, the wilderness became a land of cultivation and harvesting: pastures, orchards, and gardens; forests for fuel and building material; rocky and sandy coastal waters offering access to a rich diversity of fish and crustaceans. Joseph Conforti opens the roster of essays hy setting a theme for the entire volume: regional identity as both historically grounded and cul- turally invented. Conforti projects New Eng- land identity as flowing from Native American A LANDSCAPE HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND edited by Blake Harrison and Richard W. Judd afterword by John Elder t ! 30 Arnoldici 69/3 • February 2012 v^/i fr A Landscape History ot New England 31 "Fishermen and weir, Passamaquoddy Bay region near Eastport, Maine, circa 1880. This photograph was part of broader study by the U.S. Fish Commission for the 1880 U.S. Census. It shows fishermen using a traditional brush weir to take herring for the burgeoning canning industry." tribes such as the Algonquians, with their sea- sonal settlements and cultivation of crops, to the formation of isolated towns and villages dis- tributed across farmland and along the seacoast, a land-planning method still visible today. The New England landscape was physically reconstituted in the nineteenth century with a surge of industry, especially shoe manufactur- ing, textile mills, and ship building. The current evolutionary stage of development includes a topology of leisure and recreation: heritage sites, houtique-lined waterfronts, ski slopes, athletic fields, and the indigenous clothier of fishers and hunters, L. L. Bean. Conforti quotes Dona Brown, a historian at the University of Vermont, to describe that tourist landscape as "a commodity peddled and consumed like the notions of an itinerant Yankee trader." In his essay, Kent Ryden finds the well-worn argument of nature vs. culture a useless bit of rhetoric in understanding the New England landscape. Everything we see is the result of land use, he insists, recorded in the ways that human minds and hands worked in tandem with natural opportunities and constraints. He cites a little-known essay by Thoreau, "The Succession of Forest Trees," first delivered as a lecture in 1 860. From years of observing "Tourists in Franconia Notch, l')20s. Franconia Notch was one of the most popular sites in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Here, tourists by the shores of Profile Lake gaze upward at the Old .Man of the .Mountain." Source; From Automobile Blue Book. W SMULU . N.H lONAL ARCHIVES moiD ii VD 32 Arnoldia 69/3 • February 2012 . -32 T './Vv ■rxe)r ui rju citi uj jjoa-fon Lt-OTC..(«v» ‘Robert Havell, 'View of the City of Boston from Dorchester Heights,’ circa 1841. Views of Boston Harbor like this one provide in incomplete picture, because they show only the landscape visible to the human eye. Some of the harbor’s most indispenable eatures, such as its ship channel and anchorage, were part of an underwater landscape that lay out of sight beneath the waves." the transformation of abandoned farm fields back to forests, Thoreau became aware that the species mix of the New England forest in the mid-nineteenth century was as much a result of human interventions as natural succession. Ryden adds to Thoreau's observation that New England's famous fall foliage is as much deter- mined by human intervention as by natural process. His evidence is that when first-growth forests were cleared for timber and farmland by the middle of the nineteenth century, three- ejuarters of the region had been deforested and the fields derocked. With the diminishing of agricultural use, the forests returned as old fields were taken over by white pine [Pinus stro- bus], which thrives in sunlight and can survive in poor soils. As the pine forests matured, an understory of deciduous species, mainly oaks and maples, established themselves below the evergreen canopy. At the turn of the twentieth century, pines were cut for wood products and the young deciduous species could then domi- nate, producing colorful autumn foliage that was of little value to farmers hut was essential to establishing the ritual of autumn visitors (leaf-peepers) to New England. Despite the difficulty of subsistence farming in New England, by the early twentieth century’ the farm complex of pasture, cultivated fields, orchards, and picturesque barns and outbuild- ings offered symbolic value to visiting urban- ites fatigued by lives over which they had little t I C i lDNS RAYMOND H. r-OGLfck LIBRARY, UNIVLRM “tll MAINE A Landscape History of New England 33 control. Attracted to a life of self-sufficiency, writers in particular were drawn to the back country of New England where they docu- mented their survival tactics in numerous pub- lications. Dona Brown describes a little known back-to-the-land movement of the 1930s; she notes that an "imaginative reconfiguration" of New England was underway as the image of a region full of "dour puritans and antiquated blue laws" was refigured. In a 1932 editorial in Harper’s Monthly, the noted writer and historian Bernard DeVoto observed that the Great Depression was not as severe in New England because long years of trials and tribulations had given the people great moral strength: "By the granite they have lived for three centuries, tightening their belts "Henry Red Eagle on the shores of Moosehead Lake, circa 1940. Red Eagle often drew inspiration from the Moosehead ! Lake region, incorporating its recreational and its working spaces into his writing.” Source; From Bangor & Aroostock ! Railroad, In the Maine Woods (1941). and hanging on." Brown uses as an example the writer Elliott Merrick and his wife who gave up urban life for a back country farm in Vermont where Merrick wrote From This Hill Look Down (1934). He stressed self-reliance and hard work in taming nature as a way to revital- ize the urbanized mind and body. The couple was followed by another pair of writers, Helen and Scott Nearing, who relocated first to rural Vermont and then Maine. Their book. Living the Good Life (1954), became a manual for dis- affected youth of the 1960s and 1970s. Elizabeth Pillsbury investigates Long Island Sound on New England's southerly shore, val- ued first for its oysters and later for boating rec- reation. The Sound became a waste depository and ended up as a dead ecosystem. Moving up the coast line, Robert Gee brings his reader to Maine's "drowned coast" created by the rising and then receding sea level revealing land fea- tures: dramatic inlets of eroded tide pools and island clusters accommodating a rich variety of sea and shorebird life. Gee tracks the devel- opment of Maine's fish canning and blueberry industries in tandem with its growing popular- ity for tourists and summer homes. Moving back down to Boston, Michael Rawson traces the concern for the environmental health of Boston Harbor today back into the nineteenth century, when extensive filling of brackish tidal flats dramatically altered the shore line. The topic of alternative ways of writing about the New England landscape is covered by two essays on lesser known individuals, each dealing with the ambiguity between documentary and fantasy writings. Under the pen name Henry Red Eagle, the Native American writer and wil- derness guide, Henry Perley, wrote numerous stories about Maine's north woods. Written for a popular audience, his tales of adventure and romance highlighted his Native culture. Perley also participated in tourist activities, and like many other Natives took roles in national per- forming troupes such as P. T. Barntim's, coop- erating with displays of stereotypical Indian behavior demanded as entertainment by "white man" audiences. Similarly, the Maine travel writer George H. Haynes, who, in the words of contributing author David L. Richards, spe- v^4 Arnoldici 69/3 • February 2012 cialized in the two social dimensions of land- scape in general: timeless antiquity and rushing modernity; he blended literary romanticism with journalistic realism that he referred to as "a hit of realistic fairy-land" writing. Haynes prodigious output included books, articles, historic treatment of scenic areas, and promo- tional brochures. Across New England, tourism filled the gap when the utility of lumber and crop-produc- ing landscapes moved on. The landscape that had made agriculture so difficult on rocky upland pastures changed in people's minds to a topography of gentle mountains and valleys cut through by rivers and streams — romantic scenery documented by artists, photographers, and souvenir postcards. Tourism also responded to picturesque scenes of villages with white painted houses, church spires, and town greens. John Cumbler describes how the landscape of Cape Cod, described by Thoreau as the "bared and bended arm of Massachusetts," evolved from the productive but fragile land- scape of fisheries, salt works, and grain fields to pleasure grounds for summer visitors. The sandy and nutrient- poor soil and overgrazing by sheep and cattle led to depopulation of the area by the turn of the century, while tourism grew from early guest houses and cottage com- munities to golf courses and seaside hotels on manicured lawns. The editors admit that more work needs to be done on the urban landscape of New Eng- land. Two useful articles in this volume take up the urban story in the late nineteenth century. Phil Birge-Liberman reveals that the Boston park system was created as much by the values of the reigning Yankee upper class as it was to satisfy a genuine need for leisure spaces on behalf of the city's burgeoning population. The annexation of neighboring towns to the city of Boston and the growing number of immigrants compelled the Yankee leaders to do a hit of social engineering by developing a park system that could control behavior and ease social ten- sions. Birge also treats real estate speculation and its link to park development — an area that needs much more investigation not only in Bos- ton but other American cities, lames O'Connell examines the Boston metropolitan landscape in the twentieth century: the linkage of suburbs, highway development, and a regenerative way of life in expanded urban areas. European academics use the idea of terroir, a French term based on terre (land as place), referring to an area where soil and microclimate conditions produce distinctive qualities in food products, especially wine. An expanded defini- tion of terroir includes the customs and tradi- tions of a people. A closer reading of the New England landscape that integrates the work of earth scientists is in the future of environmen- tal history. It would serve to deepen and enrich the current discourse that continues to take much for granted. This book offers a distinctive base for this dialogue to continue. Additional Reading (books by some of the essay authors) Brown, Dona. Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Conforti, Joseph A. Imaging New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Cumbler, John T. Reasonable Use: the People, the Environment and the State, New England 1790-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Harrison, Blake. The View from Vermont: Tourism and the Making of an American Rural Landscape. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2006. ludd, Richard W. Common Lands. Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. O'Connell, lames. Becoming Cape Cod: Creating a Seaside Resort. Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2003. Rawson, Michael. Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Ryden, Kent C. Landscape with Figures: Nature and Culture in New England. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 200 1 . Wood, loseph S. The New England Village. Baltimore: lohns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Phyllis Andersen is a landscape historian and former director of the Institute for Cultural Landscape Studies of the Arnold Arboretum. This image of Meadow Road and the Fabaceae (legume family) collection was made on January 13, 2011, after yet another heavy snowfall. Read a summary of 2011 weather events at the Arboretum in the next issue of Arnoldia. 36673667 U.S. POSTAL SERVICE STATEMENT OE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION (Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685) 1. Publication Title: Arnoldia. 2. Publication No: 0004-2633. 3. Filing Date: October 26, 201 1. 4, Issue Frequency: Quarterly. 5. No. of Issues Published Annu- ally: 4. 6. Annual Subscription Price: S20.00 domestic; $25.00 foreign. 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, Suffolk County, MA 02130-3500. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters of General Business Office of Publisher: Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, Suffolk County, MA 02130-3500. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Address of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Arnold Arbo- retum, 125 ArborM.-ay, Boston, Suffolk County, MA 02130-3500, publisher; Nancy Rose, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130-3500, editor. 10. Owner: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, 125 Arborway, Boston, Suffolk County, MA 02130-3500. 1 1. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: none. 12. The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding 12 months. 13. Publication Name: Arnoldia. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below; July 8, 201 1. 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation, a. Total No. Copies. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months; 2,950. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 2,500. b. Paid and/or Requested Circulation. (1) Paid/ Requested Outside-County Mail Subscriptions. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 1,377. No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 1,37] . |2| Paid In-County Subscriptions. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 383. No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 400. (3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, and Counter Sales; none. (41 Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS: none. c. Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 2,035. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 1,771 . d. Free Distribution by Mail. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 153. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 149. e. Free Distribution Outside the Mail: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 675. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 500. f. Total Free Distribution; Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 828. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 649. g. Total Distribution: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 2,683. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 2,420. h. Copies Not Distributed. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months; 267. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 80. i. Total. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months; 2,950. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 2,500. i. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months; 76%. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date; 73%, I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. Nancy Rose, Editor. &. Plainly Unique: Schisandra chinensis Sam Schmerler The plants of the Arnold Arboretum dis- play incredible floral diversity. Magnolia macrophylla's huge waxy blooms open twice, partly closing in between for an over- night sex change. Helwingia japonica sprouts tiny green umbels in the center of otherwise unremarkable leaves. Davidia involucrata for- goes petals entirely, but shelters its reproductive organs with massive white bracts. Even wild Viola sororia, flagging down bees with its iconic violets, surreptitiously sends out discrete, self- pollinating flowers underground. With all this bizarre and beautiful reproduc- tion going on, most of us overlook the most evolutionarily distinctive flowering plant in the collection: Schisandra chinensis. An unas- suming woody vine, it represents a unique and ancient lineage that parted ways with most other flowering plants at least as far back as the early Cretaceous, before even "living fossils" like Magnolia. This ancient group, the Austrobai- leyales, is now recognized as the third-oldest remaining branch on the phylogenetic tree of flowering plants, diverging after only Amhorella (a strange New Caledonian shrub) and the Nym- phaeales (a group of herbaceous aquatics that includes water lilies). This means that all the other flowering plants in our collection — from creeping crowberries to towering tuliptrees — are more genetically similar to each other than any of them are to Schisandra. We can't grow the other Austrobaileyales here, since they hail from warmer forests in North America, Asia, and Oceania, but Schisandra chinensis, from temperate northeastern Asia (China, Korea, northern Japan, eastern Russia), can reliably survive Boston winters. This dioe- cious vine doesn't appear particularly primitive. Visually, it doesn't stand out much at all. Our two specimens (343-97-B, a male plant from Changbaishan, China, and 409-97-B, a female from Chiaksan, South Korea) twine unobtru- sively up his-and-hers trellises in the Levintritt Shrub and Vine Garden and tend to blend in with their neighbors. Their simple, medium-green leaves are perfectly innocuous, eventually turn- ing a bland butter yellow. In late spring, small, white, sweet-smelling flowers droop on thin pedicels in a passable impersonation of nearby Actinidia (kiwi). The female's flowers develop into elongated fruits with numerous bright red, berrylike fruitlets. Winter will reveal exfoliating bark resembling that of climbing hydrangea. Evolutionary biologists (including Arboretum director Ned Friedman) have discovered that Schisandra and the other Austrobaileyales can offer insight into many key events in the his- tory of flowering plants. Aspects of Schisandra's vascular system may represent an early step in the development of vessels, the structures that allow most flowering plants to rapidly trans- port water and ecologically dominate hot and dry habitats. .Schisandra also retains a relatively simple anatomy during its haploid stage, with only four nuclei and one developmental module in each female gametophyte (almost all flower- ing plants have eight nuclei and two modules). The endosperm of Schisandra seeds conse- quently contains only one complement of genes from each of its parents, while most flowering plants acquire an additional copy of their moms' genes. Schisandra likely shares these character- istics with the extinct ancestors of all flowering plants, a living link to the distant past. But while it retains many archaic anatomi- cal features that are long lost in most flower- ing plants, Schisandra has evolved a unique and medically promising biochemistry. Traditional Chinese herbalism prescribes S. chinensis for a whole host of ailments and as a general tonic and adaptogen. Recent science has isolated sev- eral new types of lignans (a class of polyphenols) from the fruits; these have anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Schisandra lig- nans have been shown to protect brain cells from glutamate and liver cells from a variety of toxins; they may also inhibit platelet aggregation, tumor proliferation, and possibly even HIV replication. As chemists in the food and medical industries increasingly explore these lignans, it's likely that demand for S. chinensis as a pharmaceutical pre- cursor and "functional food" will increase. Even though Schisandra may not dazzle, this vine's exciting chemistry and singular evolu- tionary history prove it truly stands alone. Next time you visit the Arboretum be sure to check out Schisandra chinensis — it tends to reward closer inspection. -Sam Schmerler recently completed his appointment as a Curatorial Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum. ? . *a.V. .Vtf/nrai tue. m I arnoldh The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum VOLUME 69 • NUMBER 4 • 2012 Arnoldia (ISSN 0004-2633; USPS 866-100) is published quarterly by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts. Subscriptions are $20.00 per calendar year domestic, $25.00 foreign, payable in advance. Remittances may be made in U.S. dollars, by check drawn on a U.S. bank; by international money order; or by Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. Send orders, remittances, requests to purchase back issues, change-of-address notices, and all other subscription-related communica- tions to Circulation Manager, Arnoldia. Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130- 3500. Telephone 617.524.1718; fax 617.524.1418; e-mail arnoldia@arnarb.harvard.edu Arnold Arboretum members receive a subscrip- tion to Arnoldia as a membership benefit. To become a member or receive more information, please call Wendy Krauss at 617.384.5766 or email wendy_krauss@harvard.edu Postmaster: Send address changes to Arnoldia Circulation Manager The Arnold Arboretum 125 Arborway Boston, MA 02130-3500 Nancy Rose, Editor Andy Winther, Designer Editorial Committee Phyllis Andersen Peter Del Tredici Michael S. Dosmann William (Ned) Friedman Kanchi N. Gandhi Copyright © 2012. The President and Fellows of Harvard College 7i,e ARNOLD ARBORETUM of HARVARD UNIVERSITY CONTENTS 2 Japanese Flowering Cherries —A loo-Year-Long Love Affair Anthony S. Aiello 15 Charlie Deam and the Deam Oak [Quercus x deamii) George Hibben 22 Book Excerpt: Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries Elizabeth Barlow Rogers 30 2011 Weather Summary Bob Famiglietti 36 Wilson’s Pearlbush (Exochorda giraldii var. wilsonii): A Gem to the Core Stephen Schneider Front cover: Japanese flowering cherries have been popular with American gardeners for a century. Photo of Prunus sargentii 'Dr. S. Edwin Muller' by Anthony S. Aiello. Inside front cover: A page from the Yokohama Nursery Company's 1901 catalog shows some of the flowering cherries that were offered for sale. Archives of the Arnold Arboretum. Inside hack cover: Arboretum Manager of Hor- ticulture Stephen Schneider extols the inner and outer beauty of Wilson's pearlbush [Exochorda giraldii var. wilsonii) in this issue's plant profile. Photos by (clockwise from upper left) Nancy Rose, Robert Mayer, and Michael Dosmann. Back cover: Starting on page 30, read all about the weather events recorded at the Arboretum in 2011. Photo of damage sustained in Tropical Storm Irene by the centenarian silver maple [Acer sacchari- num. accession 12560-C) along Meadow Road by Nancy Rose. PETER DEL TREDICI Japanese Flowering Cherries — A 100-Year-Long Love Affair Anthony S. Aiello This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1912 planting of the famous flower- ing cherries surrounding the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. The story of how they came to he planted is worth exploring, given the centennial anniversary, the lasting impact of the planting efforts, and the continued public fascination with flowering cherries. Although the Tidal Basin plantings seem like a singular event, the interest in flowering cherries was widespread in the early 1900s, and these plants came into the United States through a number of different sources. Around this time both the USDA's Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Intro- duction (under David Fairchild) and the Arnold Arboretum were instrumental in bringing many cultivated varieties into the United States as part of a broad interest in flowering cherries. Based largely on the efforts of Fairchild, Charles S. Sargent, and E. H. Wilson, there was a surge in the number of varieties available in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The flowering cherries, or sakura, have been an integral part of Japanese culture for centu- ries. "Japanese flowering cherries" is a general term for a taxonomically complex group of plants that includes several well-known taxa such as Prunus subhirtella (Higan cherry). The famous llowerinj; cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. Japanese Flowering Cherries 3 JAPANESE CHERRIES COME TO AMERICA Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan' bears an abundance of double pink flowers. In the late 1800s, the Arnold Arboretum was responsible for some of the first introduc- tions of flowering cherries into North America. Prunus sar- gentii (previously described as Prunus serrulata var. sachali- nensis] was first introduced to the Arboretum in 1890 by Dr. William S. Bigelow, who sent seeds from Japan, and again in 1892 by Charles S. Sargent on his Japanese expedition (Wilson 1916). In 1894, seeds of Higan cherry [Prunus subhirtella] were received from the Imperial Botanic Garden in Tokyo (Wilson 1916). In 1934, describing trees grown from this collec- tion, Paul Russell of the USDA's Division of Plant Exploration and Introduction wrote that "two excellent specimens which stand near the Forest Hills gate of the Arnold Arboretum are nearly 40 years old; the tips of their wide- spreading branches nearly touch the ground. These apparently are the oldest trees in cultiva- tion outside of Japan and it was from the Arnold Arboretum that this variety found its way into England" (Russell 1934). Prunus X yedoensis (Yoshino cherry), Prunus serrulata (also known as the Sato-zakura group) with its numerous cul- tivars, plus a number of other species. Despite their historic popularity in Japan, only a few types of flowering cherries had entered the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The most commonly available flowering cherry at this time was prob- ably the weeping Higan cherry [Prunus subhirtella 'Pendula'), listed in nursery catalogues starting in the mid- 1800s (Rus- sell 1934). The earliest record of the weeping Higan cherry at the Arnold Arboretum dates from January 16, 1880, when a plant was received from Mr. A. M. McLaren of Forest Hills, Massachusetts. In 1916, Wil- son wrote that weeping Higan cherry "is now a fairly familiar tree in the parks and gardens of Europe and North America" (Wilson 1916). Prunus X yedoensis 'Shidare Yoshino' in full bloom at the Morris Arboretum. LIBRARY or CONL'.RESS I’RIN I S ANH PNG '(X RAFHS DIVISION 4 Arnnidia 69/4 • April 2012 This mid- 1800s woodcut print, Koganeihashi no sekisho (translation: Evening glov\ at Koganei Bridge), is by Hiroshige Ando and shows flowering cherry trees along a canal bank with a view of Mount Fuji in the background. Despite these first introductions, the diver- sity of fhwering cherries available in the early 1900s was limited. Fairchild described the situ- ation at this time, writing, "I do not mean to give the impression that there were no flow- ering cherry trees in this country before the Office of Plant Introduction began to bring them in. There were individual trees brought in by naval officers and others who had learned to love them in the East, and several nursery firms handled them, hut there were no mass plantings and only a few varieties were known" (Fairchild, undated manuscript). Leading up to the 1912 planting in Washing- ton, David Fairchild and Eliza Scidmore were perhaps the greatest proponents of planting flowering cherries. Scidmore was a remarkable woman who spent a significant amount of time in Japan, China, lava, and the Philippines as a journalist at the turn of the nineteenth cen- tury (Jefferson and Fusonie 1977). She became enamored with Japanese culture, flowering cherries in particular, and had long promoted the idea of planting these throughout Wash- ington. Likewise, Fairchild became enthralled with flowering cherries on his 1902 visit to Japan. As a result of this trip, Fairchild, with help from philanthropist Barbour Lathrop, first imported 30 varieties of flowering cherries into the USDA system in 1903. The following year a collection of 50 varieties was imported into the Plant Introduction Station in Chico, Cali- fornia, although Fairchild wrote that the ship- ment into Chico did not grow particularly well and many of them had died (Fairchild, un- dated manuscript). In 1906, Fairchild and his wife, Marian Bell Fairchild, imported 25 varieties directly from the Yokohama Nursery Company of Japan for their property, "In the Woods," located in Chevy Chase, Maryland. One of his goals was to test these varieties for cold hardiness, which to this point was virtually unknown. This experi- ment was so successful that in 1908 Fairchild helped to organize an Arbor Day planting with schoolboys from every school in Washington, MATTHEW lONES Japanese Flowering Cherries 5 Yoshino cherry blossoms frame the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. This striking image of a man seated beneath a large Prunus subhirtella ‘Pendula’ in a village near Tokyo was made on April 1, 1914, by E. H. Wilson during his plant collecting trip to Japan. with each of them receiving a flowering cherry to plant in schoolyards across the city (Jefferson and Fusonie 1977). In the often told story (Jefferson and Fusonie 1977; McClellan 2005), the first donation of flowering cherries sent to Washington from the City of Tokyo was found to be heavily infested with insects and diseases. All 2,000 trees were burned and, as can be imagined, this cre- ated a great deal of diplomatic consternation. Fortunately this was all overcome and a second shipment of 6,000 insect- and disease-free trees reached the United States in 1912. One half of these were sent to New York City, where some of the original Yoshino cherries grow near the reservoir in Central Park. The better known half of this shipment were the 3,020 trees that were sent to Washington and were planted around the Tidal Basin, on the White House grounds, and in other areas in the city, where they quickly made the capital famous for its cherry blossom displays. These original trees were made up of 1 1 varieties of Prunus serrulate (1,220 plants) and 1,800 plants of Yoshino cherry [Prunus x yedoensis] (Jefferson 1995). Today, of the 3,750 total trees counted by the National Park Service, Yoshino and Kwanzan [Prunus serrulate 'Kwanzan') cherries predomi- nate (http://www.nps.gov/ cherry/index. htm). Soon after these plantings, E. H. Wilson conducted his 1914 plant collecting expedi- tion to Japan. This expedition focused on cultivated plants and, because it was to be a less rigorous trip, Wilson was accompanied by his wife and daughter (Howard 1980). This trip is often overshadowed by Wilson's more famous expeditions but it is remarkable for his investigation and importation of Japanese flowering cherries. One of the main purposes of this expedition was to assemble a collec- tion of authentic, named Japanese flowering cherries, backed up by herbarium specimens 6 Arnoldia 69/4 • April 2012 and published taxonomic descriptions. One of the lasting results of the expe- dition was the publication of Wilson's seminal work on the subiect, Cherries of Japan. Wilson's nomenclature can be confounding at times, but tbe book marked the first publication in English of a thorough review of these plants. A FLOOD OF FLOWERS In early 1915, a large shipment of over 60 varieties arrived at the Arnold Arbo- retum directly from tbe Yokohama Nursery Company. Additionally, scion wood of 63 varieties was sent for propa- gation directly to the USDA in lanuary 1915, under a cooperative agreement between the USDA and the Arnold Arboretum. Unfortunately many of these were not successfully propagated, so in February 1916 a duplicate set of 54 varieties was "presented by the municipality of Tokyo to the Ameri- can Government. These scions were cut from authentic trees growing in the famous Arakawa flowering-cherry collection maintained by the Tokyo municipality, which collection ... contains some of the loveliest forms of these remarkable flowering trees" (Fairchild 1916). Another famous plant explorer, Frank N. Meyer, along with Mr. H. Suzuki of the Yokohama Nursery Company, was instrumental in arrang- ing this second shipment. Fairchild wrote that "so much and such genuine interest has been aroused in the Japanese flowering cherry trees, through the gift to the City of Wash- ington by tbe Mayor of Tokyo of a collection of them, and through the satisfactory growth which specimen trees have made in Maryland, Massachusetts, and California, that a demand for them has grown up which nurserymen find it difficult to meet. It is of interest, there- fore, to point out that 54 varieties from the municipal collection of Tokyo near Arakawa, which represent the loveliest of the hun- dreds of varieties known to the Japanese, have been secured througb the Mayor's courtesy, and these will be propagated and distributed This 1 image OOl Yokohama Nursery Company catalogue features an elegant of a weeping flowering cherry on a silver background. under the same varietal names as they bear in the Arakawan collection" (Fairchild 1917). It may seem heretical to us today, given current concerns over invasive plants and pests, but at the time it was possible to pur- chase a wide range of plants directly from overseas. Yokohama Nursery Company cata- logues from this era list a large assortment of single, double, and semi-double flowering cherry varieties. It is possible to gain insight into this trade from institutional and private records. For example, our records at the Morris Arboretum indicate that co-founder John Morris purchased weeping Higan cher- ries from the Yokohama Nursery Company in 1910 and Yoshino and Mt. Fuji [Prunus Japanese Flowering Cherries 7 serrulata 'Shirotae') cherries from the same source in 1912. Flowering cherries continued to be very popu- lar between the World Wars. One of the leading proponents and sources of flowering cherries was Anton Emile Wohlert, the proprietor of the Garden Nurseries in suburban Philadelphia (Wister 1955-56). Information about Wohlert is scarce and comes indirectly through his nurs- ery catalogues and the plant records of Philadel- phia arboreta. Wohlert promoted all forms of Primus, including his own introduc- tions named after family members. As far as 1 can tell, all of these culti- vars are extinct from cultivation so we will never know if they were as exemplary as Wohlert claimed. During the pre-World War 11 period the USDA continued their great interest in flowering cherries, with the mantle passed on to Paul Russell, whose 1934 publication The Oriental Flowering Cherries remains one of the most useful works on this group of plants. In the late 1920s and 1930s Russell continued the tradition of importing cherries into the germplasm system, most significantly plants he propagated from the Fairchild estate in Chevy Chase. Russell had the advantage of examining thirty years of growth and establishment of Primus, and his work provides an invaluable insight into the state of development in the early 1930s. In this booklet Russell mentions the most important cherry colleetions, including those at the Plant Introduction Gardens in Glenn Dale, Maryland, and Chico, Califor- nia, along with those at the Arnold Arboretum and the city parks of Rochester, New York. No article on flowering cherries is complete without mention of Cap- tain Collmgwood "Cherry" Ingram, a British horticulturist who was one of the most well-known plantsmen of his time. Among many diverse interests, Ingram dedicated himself A specimen of Prunus 'Okame' in bloom at the New York Botanical Garden. to importing, growing, and hybridizing flow- ering cherries (Buchan 2011). His 1948 book. Ornamental Cherries, was responsible for spreading the gospel of growing cherries both in the United Kingdom as well as on the Con- tinent (Ingram 1948). If you happen to visit the Philadelphia Flower Show or tour the city in mid-March, you will unwittingly owe a great debt to Captain Ingram because one of the most dominant trees at the show and on the streets at that time of year is Prunus 'Okame', an Ingram Cherries in Print AN INDICATION of the popularity of flowering cherries can be gained by reviewing the Arnold Arbore- tum's Bulletin of Popular Informa- tion and its successor, Arnoldia (Del Tredici 2011). Flowering cherries were mentioned as early as 1911, and their virtues were extolled regu- larly from the 19-teens through the 1930s (for examples, see Bulletin of Popular Information: New Series, Vol. Ill (3) May 14, 1917: pp. 9-12; Series Three, Vol. II (4) May 3, 1928: pp. 13-16; and Series Four, Vol. VI (6) May 20, 1938: 27-30). Interest in lapanese flowering cherries contin- ued after World War 11 but slowly waned as the century progressed. Donald Wyman's article. The Better Flowering Cherries, is the last holis- tic view of the group (Wyman 1950), after which most of what is written is restricted to only a few species and their varieties (Arnold Arboretum 1970; Arnold Arboretum 2000). E. H. Wilson (left) and C. S. Sargent (right) pose in front of a flowering Prunus subhirtella at the Arboretum in this 1915 lantern slide image. E. H. Wilson in the Bulletin of Popular Information, May 3, 1928: The Rosebud Cherry {Prunus subhirtella pendula [P. s. 'Pendula']) is another sport and this, on account of its pleasing habit of growth, was one of the first trees brought to this coun- try from Japan. Another Cherry belonging to this group is Prunus subhirtella autumnalis |P. s. 'Autumnalis'], a small tree with many twiggy branches and more or less vase-shaped when young. It is a precocious plant with semi-double pink blossoms, which sometimes appear in the autumn but in other years sparsely in autumn and abundantly the next spring as is the case this year. Owing to this peculiarity, it is known when it flowers in the autumn as the Jugatsu-zakura or October-flowering Cherry and in the spring as the Yaye-higan or Double-flowered Spring Cherry. hybrid cherry with early-blooming light pink flowers. It was imported into the United States through the Morris Arboretum by Henry F. Skinner. This plant grew in relative obscurity here until the early 1980s, when propagation and distribution made it a popular nursery choice (Meyer and Lewandowski 1985). REJUVENATING FLOWERING CHERRIES AT THE MORRIS ARBORETUM Like many arboretum collections, the Prunus collection at the Morris Arboretum reflects changes in horticultural trends. Our cherry collection is comprised of venerable old speci- mens, young trees growing vigorously, and Japanese Flowering Cherries 9 newly added plants. In addition to trees dating to the Morris Estate era, there were continual waves of cherry varieties accessioned from the 1940s through the 1980s. In the 1940s we received a large consignment of trees from the Scott Arho- retum, including a few that remain today. These were followed hy a group of plants from Kings- ville Nursery in the late 1950s, from Princeton Nurseries in the mid-1960s, and more cultivars from the U.S. National Arhoretum in 1983. One often reads that cherries are short-lived, surviving for not more than 50 or 60 years, so it may be surprising to learn that we have cherry trees that were planted by John and Lydia Morris prior to the establishment of the Morris Arbore- tum in 1932. Our collection has indi- viduals up to 100 years old because we use specific management prac- tices for veteran trees. We work with the natural life cycles of these trees, managing them for longevity and safety and rethinking our approach to arboricultural practices. By implementing the practices of veteran tree care, we have been able to prolong the lives of our old flower- ing cherries almost indefinitely (Fay 2002). I could say that we began this process through careful literature research and a prescient understand- ing of veteran tree biology, hut the reality is more serendipitous than that. In the early 1980s, then Morris Arhoretum curator Paul Meyer (now our director) began to rejuvenate our Prunus collection by remov- ing older trees and replanting with newly propagated plants that we had received from the National Arhore- tum. A 1940s accession of Prunus X yedoensis 'Daybreak', thought to be nearing the end of its life, was pruned hard to make way for some of these youngsters. This Yoshino cherry cultivar responded remark- ably well, with vigorous new growth where it had been pruned. This practice of hard pruning was then tried on more of our mature cherry trees, with very similar results. What began as trial-and-error attempts has evolved into a regular retrenchment or restora- tion pruning program, based on the ideas estab- lished in Europe for veteran tree management (Fay 2002). We begin the process of targeted pruning by reducing the end-weight of declining and decaying older branches. Major portions of these branches are removed, lessening the end- load on these branches and reducing the risk of failure along with hazards to the public and New shoots grow from the trunk of this venerable Yoshino cherry at the Morris Arboretum, where a veteran tree management program keeps old cherries alive and blooming. ANTHONY ■ AIEL 10 Arnoldiii 69/4 • April 2012 This 1912 Yosliiiio cherry accession at the Morris Arboretum has been pruned to reduce the old crown and encour- age interior growth. Staff. Simultaneously, we selectively encourage young shoots from along the interior portions of the trunk, working with the natural growth patterns of these veteran trees. Through this process of phased reduction, we continue to reduce the maior structural branches, leaving the young interior branches to develop and mature into the new architecture of the tree (Fay 2002). This is an ongoing process, and we rotate through the cherry collection on a five to seven year cycle. In essence we are coppic- ing the trees, maintaining them in a state of juvenility and not allowing them to reach the ultimate stage of maturity and decline (Del Tredici 1999). It is illustrative to look at lapa- nesc hooks on flowering cherries to learn that propping and pruning of ancient trees is a long- established cultural practice resulting in the long-lived cultural icons so revered in that country (Sano 1990). A remarkable example of this process is one of the Yoshino cherries purchased by lohn Mor- ris from the Yokohama Nursery Company in 1912. This tree grows in relative obscurity in the English Park section of the Arboretum, and it was not until recently that we pieced together historical documents and realized its origin as one of the 1912 plants. This tree has also been sustained through our veteran tree management techniques, with crown reduction and encouraging of interior growth. In addition to its massive old trunk, there are numerous basal and trunk sprouts — rather than thinking of these as detriments, we work with the tree biology, thinning and selecting this new growth with the intention of making those shoots the future crown of the tree. On some specimens we will encourage these basal sprouts into new trees, hut only if we know that the plant is on its own roots. A prime Japanese Flowering Cherries 1 1 Management of the vigorous new sprouts around this old Prunus sub- hirtella Tendula' allows the specimen to be rejuvenated. example of this is an old specimen of Prunus subhirtella Tendula' that was planted prior to 1932. This tree has a highly decayed trunk with a hand of healthy hark and one large remaining branch. For the past few years we have removed all hut about five of these sprouts and are encour- aging the basal rejuvenation of these to form a new tree (Fay 2002). Even- tually we will remove all hut one or two of these and then allow the original trunk to decay completely. Cherries have an especially inter- esting biology because of their ten- dency for endocaulous rooting, a process of forming roots from por- tions of stem tissue; these roots result in a successional trunk as they grow down through the decay- ing parent trunk (Fay 2002; Liu and Wang 1992). As the inner trunks of older plants decay, often there is a shell of living tissue surrounding a core of rich decomposed organic matter from the old wood. The tree often initiates roots into this rich medium, and as root tissue grows down through the core of the tree, it provides added structural support to the tree's upper portions (Jenik 1994). This process is especially apparent in old flowering cherries, and an extreme example occurred with another of our old Prunus subhirtella 'Pendula' plants, in this case a plant that is shown on our 1909 Atlas of Compton (the Morris Estate). In the mid 1990s this tree was in significant decline, with a severely decayed old trunk supporting a few feeble branches. For a number of years we observed a major root growing within a cavity in the trunk and leafy shoots arising from the top of this root with increasing vigor. With each passing year the root became more trunklike as the old trunk further deteriorated until it was a standing hollow shell. In the fall of 1997, the old rotting trunk simply fell to the ground under its own weight. We were delighted to see that the "new tree" that had formed inside of this shell was strong enough to stand on its own, but with about four feet of above-ground root tissue forming the new trunk. Since then this tree has continued to prosper, a Lazarus of a plant having returned from the brink. It now grows vigorously across from our visitor center, providing a fabulous spring display. FUTURE EFFORTS WITH FLOWERING CHERRIES A few years ago I began to expand the Morris Arboretum's cherry collection by propagating early- and late-flowering varieties to extend the period of flowering interest. Before this project began I was intimidated by Prunus propaga- tion, believing that, like many other rosaceous plants, they had to be grafted or budded to he reproduced. Fortunately our propagator, Shel- L 12 A mold id 69/4 • April 2012 (clockwise from top left) In the mid 1990s it appeared little was left of this Primus subhirtella ‘Pendula’, but a root grow- ins within the decaying trunk developed into a new trunk, fully revealed when the old trunk fell away. By 2005 the rejuvenated plant was a fine flowering specimen. ley Dillard, disabused me of this notion and we regularly root cuttings of a number of Primus species and varieties (see page 14). This project has evolved, and in recent years 1 have begun to survey public gardens in the northeastern United States to determine the extent of their Primus holdings and to dis- cover where there are unique cultivars. The goal is to propagate these and then redistribute them to a wider audience of public gardens and private collectors. Two notable examples are Primus serrulata 'Gyoiko' and 'lo-nioi', both represented by single trees, the former at the Morris Arboretum and the latter at the Arnold Japanese Flowering cherries 13 Three Prunus serrulate cultivars, including the unusual green-flowered 'Gyoiko', are featured on this page from a 1916-1917 Yokohama Nursery Company catalogue. The name listed here, P. pseudocerasus, is no longer accepted, but its appearance in the catalogue hints at the confusing nomenclature within Japanese flowering cherries. Arboretum. Last year we rooted cuttings of these and look forward to growing and distributing them. 'Gyoiko' is an especially interesting plant because it has char- treuse flowers with thin pink and white streaks in the center of the petals. The name translates as "colored court-robes" and refers to the green, white, and pur- ple robes of women in the ancient Japanese imperial court (Kuitert 1999). In the original 1912 Washington planting, all 20 specimens of 'Gyoiko' were planted at the White House. 'Jo-nioi' ("supreme scent" or "first- class fragrance") has single white flowers that bloom in profusion and is known as one of the most fragrant of the flowering cherries (Kuitert 1999). Although once more commonly grown, it has vanished from our landscapes and would make a fine addition to any garden. The flowering cherries at the Morris Arboretum are a prime example of how a living collection can fulfill multiple aspects of our mis- sion, namely, collections preservation, horticultural display, research, and educa- tion. The cherry collection is a model for preserving our horticultural heritage while providing a living laboratory to implement the practices of veteran tree care. Flowering cherries have long been a captivat- ing presence in Japan and — since their wide- spread introduction 100 years ago — throughout the United States as well. Their continued popularity is seen in the numerous blossom festivals across North America. The ephemer- ality of their blossoms provides the highlight of spring and, as the famous Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa wrote, "There is no stranger under the cherry tree ...". Plant one in your garden and see what happens. AIU I lIVtS t )F 11 IE AKNOLU AKHORE FUM 14 Arnoldia 69/4 • April 2012 Propagating Prunus OUR TECHNIQUE involves taking 4- to 6-inch-long terminal cuttings in mid-June when the trees have set terminal buds but the new growth is still somewhat flexible. We wound the cuttings, then dip in 3,000 ppm KIBA in liquid. The cuttings are stuck in a 60:40 mixture of perlite:peat to which RootShield granules (a biological fungicide containing Trichoderma haizianum] are added. The cutting trays are placed in a fog and mist greenhouse with bottom heat of 70°F (21°C) and 16-hour extended photoperiod. Although it varies from year to year and by cultivar, with this method we have very good rooting percentages with a number of cultivars. A critical step in suc- cesful propagation is leaving the cuttings in their potting trays for the subsequent winter after they have been rooted, repotting them only when they start to show new growth the following spring. CITATIONS Arnold Arboretum. 1970. A Cumulative Index to Arnoldia, Volumes 1-29 (1941-1969). Arnoldia 30(7): 63-64. Arnold Arboretum. 2000. A Cumulative Index to Arnoldia, Volumes 1970-2000. Arnoldia 60(5): 18-19. Buchan, U. 2011. Collingwood Ingram (1880-1981). The Plantsnian (New Series) 10(3): 194-199. Del Tredici, P. 1999. Aging and Rejuvenation in Trees. Arnoldia 59(4): 10-16. Del Tredici, P. 2011. One Hundred Years of Popular Information. Arnoldia 69(2): 2-10. Fairchild, D. 1916. United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry Inventory of Seeds and Plants Imported 46 (Nos. 41685 to 42383): 25-26. Fairchild, D. 1917. United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction: Plant Immigrants 134 (June): 1186. Fairchild D. Undated manuscript. Courtesy of Nancy Korber, Librarian/ Archivist, Center for Tropical Plant Conservation, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami, FL. Fay N. 2002. Environmental Arboriculture, Tree Ecology and Veteran Tree Management. The Arboricultural Journal 26(3): 213-238. Howard, R. 1980. E. H. Wilson as a Botanist (Part II). Arnoldia 40{4]: 154-193. Ingram, C. 1948. Ornamental Cherries. London, Country Life. lenik, L 1994. Clonal Growth in Woody Plants: A Review. Folia Geobotanica et Phytotaxonomia, Prague 29: 291-306. Jefferson, R. 1995. The History of the Cherry Blossom Trees in Potomac Park. Introducing Modern Japan IV: 33^0. Jefferson, R. and A. Fusonie. 1977. The Japanese Flowering Cherry Trees of Washington, D C.: a Living Symbol of Friendship. Washington: Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Dept, of Agriculture, U.S. National Arboretum Contribution No. 4. Kuitert, W. 1999. Japanese Flowering Cherries. Portland, OR: Timber Press. Liu, Q and Z. Wang. 1992. Root System Inside Heart- rot Stem of Betula ermanii. Research of Forest Ecosystems 6:68-71 (in Chinese). McClellan, A. 2005. The Cherry Blossom Festival: Sakura Celebration. Boston: Bunker Hill. Meyer, P and R. Lewandowski. 1985. The 'Okame' Cherr>'. Arnoldia 45(1): 23-24. Russell, P. 1934. The oriental flowering cherries. Washington, [Govt. Print. Off.), U. S. Dept, of Agriculture. Circular no. 313. Sano Toemon. 1990. Sakura Taikan. Kyoto-shi: Sato Toemon. Wilson, E. H. 1916. The Cherries of Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Publications of the Arnold Arboretum No. 7 Wister, J. 1955-56. Swarthmore Plant Notes-, a Record of all the Plants Grown by the Arthur Hoyt Scott Horticultural Foundation. Swarthmore College. 3rd Edition. Swarthmore. Wyman, D. 1950. The Better Oriental Cherries. Arnoldia 10(3): 17-24. Anthony S. Aiello is the Gayle E. Maloney Director of Horticulture and Curator at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Charlie Deam and the Deam Oak (Quercus x deamii) George Hibben A handy reference in the Arnold Arboretum's curatorial office is a paperback reprint of Trees of Indiana, originally published by the Indiana State Board of Forestry in 1912. It was written by Charles demon Deam (1865-1953), a drugstore owner with a lifetime passion for document- ing the flora of Indiana. With the help of a young zoology student and Gray's Manual of Botany, he taught him- self the basic methodology employed by botanists and taxonomists. Deam mounted his first specimen on a her- barium sheet in 1896. Sixteen years and over ten thousand specimens later, his first edition of Trees of Indiana was printed. It was a reference book that: "scientists could use, rich in accu- rate technical detail, filled with Latin names and botanical terminology. At the same time, it was a useful and understandable manual for the ama- teur pupil, teacher, or hobbyist, with picture book drawings that mixed hard science with the warm fuzzy feel of the drugstore almanac" (Kriebel 1987). All ten thousand free copies were distributed within three years, and a one- thousand-copy reprint in 1919 was snapped up within a few days. Revised editions of Trees of Indiana were printed in 1921, 1931 and 1953. In subsequent years, photo reprints and digital print-on-demand copies have been produced. Deam also wrote and published Shrubs of Indi- ana (1924), Grasses of Indiana (1929) and Flora of Indiana (1940). One hundred years after its publication. Trees of Indiana remains his best known work. INDIANA'S PLANT COLLECTOR Deam is remembered as: "a rugged individual- ist who appeared brusque and gruff to those not well acquainted with him, but to those Charlie Deam in May 1938. who were closest to him and knew his intel- lectual integrity and scientific sincerity this outward brusqueness masked a humble, mod- est, unassuming man who despised sham and pretense and was deadly serious about his scien- tific work" (Kriebel 1987). Recognized for these characteristics, in 1909 Deam was appointed the first Secretary of the State Board of For- estry and a member of the Indiana Conserva- tion Commission. In 1917 he became the acting State Forester and in 1919 was appointed head of the Forestry Division in the newly formed Department of Conservation. A significant por- tion of the salaries and travel allowances he earned while serving in these positions paid for his collecting expenses. In 1915 he purchased and outfitted a Ford Model T touring car which he called the "Weed Wagon." "The advent of this motor car sig- naled an end of Charlie Deam's first fifty years. SPURCEON-GREENE PHOTOGRAPHS, ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 16 Arnoldia 69/4 • April 2012 0« aifli ^RBARlUljp OF TU ARNOLD ARBORETUM HERBARIUM OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM HARVARD UNJVERSITY V 'TKjLJjuJUy^ X aI^) ( u c.e /t.ftd.l'A. v-'o-i»33. A 1933 Arnold Arboretum herbarium specimen of Quercus x dcamii accession 89''-28, which was grown from acorns received from Charlie Deam in 1928. Quercus x deamii 1 7 Accession Taxon Grid Height (meters/feet) DBH (centimeters/inches) Year accessioned 7033 E Fraxinus tomentosa Pumpkin ash 27SW 24.1 / 79.1 82.2 /32.4 1929 7033 F Fraxinus tomentosa Pumpkin ash 27SW 25.1 / 82.3 58.5 / 23.0 1929 21817 A Quercus x bebbiana Behh oak 25SE 17.4/57.1 29.5 /1 1.6 1916 16883 A Quercus shumardii var. schneckii Variant of Shumard oak 32NW 21.3/69.9 61.7/24.3 1916 19804 A Tilia americana American linden 7SE 14.2 /46.6 76.1 /30.0 1916 21588 A Gleditsia triacanthos Honeylocust 21NE 18.4/60.4 56.4 / 22.2 1929 a period of growth and the laying of ground- work. Now began in earnest his tireless, dis- tinguished journey into science ... In the decade from 1905, when he reorganized and restarted his Indiana herharium and numbering system, through 1914, his last full year with- out a car, he averaged collecting about 1,500 specimens a year. But in 1915 alone he added 3,764" (Kriebel 1987). Deam sent his collections to the Missouri and New York Botanical Gardens and to Charles S. Sargent, director of the Arnold Arbo- retum. He asked for assistance in identifying his specimens. The Sargent Letter Books, found in the archives of the Arnold Arboretum, con- tain copies of thirty letters written by Sargent to Deam during the years 1914 through 1919. They reveal that Sargent identified over 600 tree and shrub specimens mounted on Deam's herbarium sheets. Sargent thought highly of Deam's work, writing on two occasions in 1915: "I am very pleased indeed with your collection [Cornus and Salix] and I think you have done a capital piece of work, and certainly you are adding greatly to the knowledge and distribu- tion of Indiana trees" and "There is nothing in your Carya collection which I should not have expected from Indiana. It is a remarkably fine collection and of very great assistance to me." When Sargent believed one of the trees found by Deam would enrich the Arnold Arbo- retum's living collection, he requested Deam send seed for propagation. The table above lists some specimens grown from seeds sent by Deam that still survive in the Arboretum's living collection. THE DEAM OAK In Wells County, Indiana, about three miles northwest of Bluffton, stands an oak tree which is well into its second century of growth. Spec- imens from this tree were first collected on October 4, 1904, by Bruce Williamson, a young zoologist, and his father. The specimens were taken to Deam who forwarded them to Profes- sor William Trelease of the Missouri Botanical Garden for identification. Growing in prox- imity to this tree were many white {Quercus alba] and chinquapin (Q. nmehlenheigii] oaks. Though reminiscent of Q. alba, the leaves were not as deeply lobed and its acorns were not as large as those of a white oak. IS Arnoldio 69/4 • April 2012 In the first edition of Trees of Indiana, Deam described the tree as follows: "Quercus alba X Mule]hlenbeT}^ii. Plate 44. Bark of a white oak type, branchlets in October gray and some- what pubescent; winter buds ovoid, blunt, reddish-brown, more or less gray pubescent; leaves obovate in outline, 6-12 cm. (214 - 4% inches) long, wedge-shaped at base, coarsely toothed and irregularly lobed, sinuses wide or narrow, lobes and teeth ascending except the lowest pair, lobes and teeth generally triangu- lar, sometimes oblong, dark green above, paler and densely gray pubescent beneath; petioles 1 .5-3 cm. {Vi - 1 *4 inches) long; acorns on stalks about 0.5 cm. (1/5 inch) long; nut ovoid, about 2 cm. (44 inch) long, rounded or flat at the base, rounded at the apex, chestnut brown, pubescent near the summit, enclosed for 1/3 or more of its length in the thin saucer-shaped cup; cup rounded at the base, pubescent within; scales blunt, thickened on the hack, brown, densely gray pubescent." In 1915, Deam discovered that this unique hybrid tree had been blazed for cutting by the landowner. When persuasion to save the tree failed, Deam negotiated the purchase of the one-fifth acre of land on which the tree was growing for seventy-five dollars, a princely sum in those days. The land was deeded to the State in order to preserve and protect the tree. The property became known as the Deam Oak Monument Forest, the smallest preserve in Indiana. In luly of 1916, Sargent, who had been assist- ing Deam in the identification of woody speci- mens found in Indiana, wrote: "Dear Mr. Deam, 1 have been hoping for some time to hear from you and 1 hope you are getting on all right. You remember, no doubt, your peculiar Oak, a sup- posed hybrid between alba and Muehlenbergii (141 17 and 14131). 1 should be very glad to get some acorns of this tree to plant in the autumn, and as it grows within a few miles of Bluffton it ought not to be difficult for you to get them. Before sending acorns put them in water and send only those that sink for those that float are worm-eaten and worthless." Records for Arnold Arboretum accession 7786 list it under the name Quercus deamii Trelease and indicate that plants were grown The orii’inul Deam oak in Indiana on May 8, 201 1 (left) and Inly Ift, 201 1 (rij’ht). The Arboretum's First Deam Oak IN 1908, the Arnold Arboretum received two plants of Quercus muehlenbergii x Q. alba (accession 5962) from the Parks Department of Rochester, New York. It is likely that they were grown from seed distributed by Charles Deam. Accession 5962-B has grown over the past century on Peters Hill to become a stately tree 20.1 meters (66 feet) tall and 59 centimeters (23.2 inches) DBH. This 1908 accession (5962-B) of Deam oak (center) grows on Peters Hill at the Arboretum. .;E(1 ; '.E HIHBEN 20 Arnohlici 69/4 • April 2012 Williamsons who first found it, but for Deam who had first described the tree and saved it from destruction. Seventy years later, in 1987, the Deam Oak Monument Forest was described in Robert C. Kriebel's biog- raphy, Plain or Charlie Deam, Pio- neer Hoosier Botanist: "Northwest of Bluffton, off Indiana 1 16 at County Road 250-N, the traveler encounters a chain link fence around a hundred- foot-square reservation. Inside the enclosure are three picnic tables, a rusted trash barrel, a grill, a back- yard-type swing set for youngsters. And forty feet from the highway pavement, the Deam oak lives on, plain and battered as its namesake. A brown and yellow, state-main- tained sign explains its significance to the stranger." PERPETUATING THE DEAM OAK This Deam oak (accession 7786-A) was grown from acorns received by the Arboretum in 1916 from Charlie Deam. from seed received on September 28, 1916, from C. C. Deam, near Bluffton, Wells County, Indiana. Accession 7786-A, now over ninety years old, stands adiacent to Dak Path and is 21 meters (69 feet) tall and 69.8 centimeters (27.5 inches) DBH. Indeed, after studying specimens taken annually for many years. Professor Wil- liam Trelease determined the tree discovered in 1904 was a natural hybrid of the two spe- cies. In the 1917 Proceeding's of the American Philosophical Society' he named it not for the Today, very few inhabitants of Bluff- ton and Wells County recall Charlie Deam's career as a plant collector, forester, and conservationist, or the history of the Deam oak. Among the knowledgeable few are Douglas Sundling, a resident and employee of Bluffton, and Brad Brody, the Wells County District Forester. They are both dedicated to the preservation of this notable oak. Sundling's pho- tographs— made in the spring and summer of 2011 — show that the tree, while aging, is in good condi- tion, and a wooden fence encloses the well maintained grounds. Because of the Deam oak's interesting his- tory and connection to the Arboretum, several staff members became interested in clonally repropagating the original tree. In the spring of 2011, a request was made to Sundling and Brody for scion material. They sent a bundle of 3- to 6-inch-long stem terminals, and Arbo- retum propagator Jack Alexander grafted these scions onto Q. macrocarpa understock. Sev- eral of these grafted plants will be grown on for future planting in the Arboretum's Living Quercus X deamii 21 An aerial view of the the Deam Oak Monument Forest (upper left), the smallest preserve in Indiana. One of the grafted Deam oaks growing at the Arbore- tum’s Dana Greenhouses. The informational sign near the original Deam oak. Collection. The remaining plants will be returned to Bundling and Brody to be planted in Indiana's Deam Oak Monument Forest and Wells County parks. One hundred years later, Charlie Deam's legacy lives on. Bibliography Deam, C. C. 1912. Trees of Indiana, (published in the Indiana Board of Forestry Report for 1911, Bulletin No. 1, pp. 86-372). Wm. B. Buford, Contractor for State Printing and Binding, Indianapolis, Indiana. Kriebel, R. C. 1987. Plain OP Charlie Deam, Pioneer Hoosier Botanist. Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana. Weatherwax, P. 1971. Charles Clemon Deam: Hoosier Botanist. Indiana Magazine of History 67(3): 197-267 Trelease, William. 1917. Naming American hybrid oaks. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 56: 44-52. George Hibben began volunteering with the nursery and greenhouse staff at the Arboretum's Case Estates site in 1988. He also accessioned artifacts found at the Arboretum and prepared the monograph Arnold Arboretum — Prehistoric Indian Artifact Collection in 1991. BOOK EXCERPT: Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries Elizabeth Barlow Rogers David R. Godinc, Publisher, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, with funding from the Foundation for Landscape Studies and the New York Society Library. 2011. 312 pages. ISBN: 978-1-567902-440-4. EDITOR'S NOTE: IT'S SPRING, and those of us who love to garden are happily sinking our fingers into the warming soil as we plant seeds, pull early weeds, and ruthlessly hunt down lurking cutworms. But after a hard day in the garden it's time to relax with a good book, and what better than a hook about some of the best garden writers (or writing garden- ers) of the past couple of centuries. In Writing the Garden, author Elizabeth Barlow Rogers presents insightful essays on the works of a diverse group of writers. Some are well known, others less so, but in their writing all present fascinating opinions about the nature of gardening and a deep love for the subject. Rogers groups the authors into sections based on their interests and importance to garden literature, such as "Women in the Garden," "Travelers in the Garden," and the delightful "Humorists in the Garden" (it turns out I'm not the only gardener who goes slug hunting at night with a flashlight). In the following excerpt, "Warriors in the Garden," we are reminded that the seemingly gentle art of gardening is full of highly opinionated practitioners. Writing the Garden 23 "Warriors in the Garden" Gardening is nothing less than warfare with nature. With no respect for the cabbage or the rose, nature sends in her legions of hungry insects and foraging animals to wreak havoc. But there is another kind of war- fare in the garden, one that is waged against fellow gardeners rather than garden pests. In this kind of warfare garden theory is often presented as a polemical diatribe against previous practices or contrary philosophies. For the reader, it is both instructive and amusing to argue or agree with certain opinionated writers and to refight the horticultural battles of yesteryear as they promulgate their passionate beliefs and ideas. William Robinson If [Gertrude] Jekyll was the authoritative mother of a more naturalistic English garden style, her friend William Robinson (1838-1935) was its highly influential father. Fie also serves as the prime exemplar of a didactic and sometimes color- fully caustic genre of garden writing. In Robinson's view, the architect was the enemy of good landscape design, which he held to be the exclusive province of the gardener — that is, the enlightened gardener who agreed with him that mow- ing be forsaken in some parts of the garden so that cut lawns would transform themselves into wildflower meadows. His further ideal was to allow climbing plants to entwine themselves on trunks and branches, and he dogmatically declared that fallen leaves should be left on the ground as natural mulch in woodlands. The White Japan Anemone in the Wild Garden. 24 Arnoldici 69/4 • April 2012 Anemones in the Riviera. Thrive equally well in any open soil here, only flowering later. A trained professional gardener, Robinson had a botanist's as well as a horti- culturist's thorough knowledge of plant species and their growth habits. He was adamantly opposed to greenhouse-grown annuals planted in regimental rows or showy ornamental beds. He also detested the display of trees and shrubs in Loudon's Gardenesque style as individual specimens, and he vigorously pros- elytized the overthrow of late Victorian gardening in favor of one in which bulbs were planted in drifts, herbaceous beds were composed of mixed peren- nials, and horticultural species appeared to merge at the garden's perimeter with the native vegetation of meadows and woodlands. Together he and lekyll redirected garden design in a way that gave the world what is now thought of as the prototypical English garden — a blending of wild and artificial nature; the grouping of trees and shrubs to form pleasing landscape vistas; the use of hedges to create more intimately scaled garden "rooms"; and the laying out of beds in which casually composed yet sophisticated plant combinations — based on a thorough knowledge of floral and leaf colors, blooming times, and growth characteristics— made gardens interesting throughout the entire year. Two years after the publication of The English Flower Garden (1883) — a volume that eventually ran to fifteen editions and remained in print for fifty years — Robinson purchased the Elizabethan manor of Gravetye in Sussex along with its adjoining two hundred acres. He subsequently acquired additional land so that his property totaled a thousand acres, more than sufficient in size for rural nature and naturalistic garden to be melded into a unified landscape with unobstructed views of the horizon. Here, with occasional advice from his friend lekyll, he created broad scenic effects as well as herbaceous gardens closer to tbe manor. The landscape theories he put into practice at Gravetye, however, had been articulated long before in The Wild Garden (1870). Writing the Garden 25 It would be a mistake, as Robinson is at pains to point out, to assume that the wild garden is the same thing as the native-plant garden. It should, to the contrary, be considered an opportunity to naturalize the flora of other coun- tries, for as he tells us: Naturally our woods and wilds have no little loveliness in spring; we have here and there the Lily of the Valley and the Snowdrop, and everywhere the Primrose and Cowslip; the Bluehell and the Foxglove take possession of whole woods,- but, with all our treasures in this way, we have no attractions in or near our gardens compared with what it is within our power to create. There are many countries, with winters colder than our own, that have a rich flora; and hy choosing the hardiest exotics and planting them without the garden, we may form garden pictures. Here it is important to pause a moment and consider again the term "garden pictures," since it is so frequently found in the writing of both Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll. For these writers, garden pictures did not imply the same thing as the Picturesque, the term commonly used to describe the earlier garden style in which designed landscapes were created in accordance with the principles of landscape painting. The garden pictures they had in mind are perhaps better characterized as vignettes, small scenes of beauty that the eye takes in as dis- crete discoveries rather than as panoramic scenery. Jekyll's carefully positioned camera framed many charming, seasonal vignettes within Munstead Wood, and in The Wild Garden. Alfred Parsons's engravings give graphic expression to Robinson's words, which are never themselves lacking in descriptive power. This does not mean, however, that such garden pictures, whether verbal or illustrational, should he considered as so many floral incidents independent The American White Wood-Lily (Trillium grandiflorum) in Wild Garden, in wood bottom in leaf-mould. 26 Arnoldia 69/4 • April 2012 The Giant Scabious (8 feet high). (Cephalaria procera.) of the overall landscape composition. Rather, the term is intended to imply that gardening is fundamentally an art form in which composition, color, line, and texture are as impor- tant as botanical knowledege and horticultural expertise. Marshaling his arguments in favor of wild gardening, Rob- inson points out: Hundreds of the finest flowers will thrive much better in rough places than ever they did in the old-fashioned border; . . . look infinitely better than they ever did in formal beds; . . . [have] no disagreeable effects resulting from decay; . . . enable us to grow' many plants that have never yet obtained a place in our 'trim gardens'; [and] settle the question of the spring flower garden [since] we may cease the dreadful practice of tearing up the flower-beds and leaving them like new-dug graves twice a year. As a final point in its favor, the wild garden can be seen as a kind of paradisiacal reunion of nature's bounty, for from almost every interesting region the traveler may bring seeds or plants, and establish near his home living souvenirs of the various countries he has visited. Robinson's luxuriously produced Gravetye Manor, or Twenty Years’ Work Round an Old Manor House (191 1), is both a diary and a narrative of the successive stages of Gra- vetye's creation from 1885 through 1908. He tells the reader how he went about felling trees to open up views, remov- ing iron trellises and the kitchen garden abutting the house, eliminating "a mass of rock-work (so-called) of ghastly order," and destroying other offensive elements left by the previous owners. The hook's beautiful engravings evince the principles put forth in The Wild Garden as Robinson demonstrates Gravetye to be the paradigm in which house, garden, fields, and forest are united in a pastoral work of art as quintessen- tially English as a painting by Constable. As attractive as all this may sound, there were some who felt that Robinson's garden ideal lacked cohesive structure. His peppery personality made it inevitable that he would be attacked by those who disagreed with him, most notably the architect Reginald Rlomfield, whose ideas about what a gar- den should he were quite different. Reginald B lorn field The Formal Garden in England (1892) by the country-house architect Reginald Blomfield (1856-1942), with its attractive engravings by F. Inigo Thomas, is a treatise in the form of an essay on English garden history. In the preface to my second- edition copy Blomfield puts forth a spirited defense against what he considers to be Robinson's fallacious, intemperate, and untenable charges, made after the publication of the first edition. With considerable invective Robinson had taken Writing the Garden Tl issue with Blomfield's recommendations for a return to formality, and here it is Blomfield's turn to aim a few angry verbal arrows at Robinson. Heatedly, he rebuts Robinson's sarcastic barbs, accusing him of willful misinterpretation and ignorance of garden making as a form of art: Mr. Robinson neither gives us the definition, nor shows us where the art is or what it consists of. The trees are beautiful, and so are the flowers, hut where is Mr. Robinson's art? What does it do for us, or for the trees or the flowers? His skill as a tree-planter, or as a flower-grower, is no doubt great, but that does not make him an artist, and by no possible wrestling of the term can he be called so on this ground only. Blomfield maintained, "The formal treatment of gardens ought, perhaps, to be called the architectural treatment of gardens, for it consists in the extension of the principles of design which govern the house to the grounds which surround it." Discriminating between the two views of gardening — the formal and the naturalistic — he argues: The formal school insists upon design; the house and the grounds should be designed together and in relation to each other; no attempt should he made to conceal the design of the garden, there being no reason for doing so, but the bounding lines, whether it is the garden wall or the lines of paths and parterres, should he shown frankly and unreserv- edly, and the garden treated specifically as an enclosed space to be laid out exactly as the designer pleases. He strongly refutes the notion that the landscape gar- dener has a monopoly on nature: The clipped yew-tree is as much a part of nature — that is, subject to natural laws — as a forest oak; but the land- scapist, by appealing to associations which surround the personification of nature, holds the clipped yew-tree to oblo- quy as something against nature. Again "nature" is said to prefer a curved line to a straight, and it is thence inferred that all the lines in a garden, and especially paths, should be curved. Now as a matter of fact in nature — that is, in the visible phenomena of the earth's surface — there are no lines at all; "a line" is simply an abstraction which conveniently expresses the direction of a succession of objects which may be either straight or curved. "Nature" has nothing to do with either straight lines or curved; it is simply begging the ques- tion to lay it down as an axiom that curved lines are more "natural" than straight. For Blomfield, it was not the Italian style of formal gardening that was instructive for contemporary garden- ers,- rather it was the old gardens of England that had not succumbed to the fashion for Baroque ornamentation or. The tall O.x-eye Daisy (Pyrethrum serotinum). 2S Anidhlio 4 • April 2012 Valley in Somersetshire, with Narcissi, Marsh Marigolds, and Primroses, Writing the Garden 29 subsequently, the Picturesque. Nor did formality imply a great expanse as in the French garden, for "some of the best examples of [the English garden] are on a comparatively small scale." However, Blomfield does not merely sing the praises of old English formal gardens. With an architect's eye for composition and detail, he criticizes these as well as the later gardens designed in the Picturesque style, his principal objects of censure. He maintains that the white marble statues of Bacchus and Flora at Wilton were a mistake: "To attain its full effect [marble] wants strong sunlight, a clear dry light, and a cloudless sky. In the soft light and nebulous atmosphere of the north marble looks forlorn and out of place." An integrated overall plan is what counts most, so in discussing public parks he comes down hard on "the spasmodic futility" of Battersea Park where, without a dominant idea controlling the general scheme, "merely to introduce so many statues or plaster casts is to begin at the wrong end. These are the accidents of the system, not the system itself." Blomfield is united with Robinson, however unintentionally, in despising the Gardenesque style and the gardener who would have the specimen dahlia banish the hollyhock and other simple, old-fashioned flowers. He equally hates plants in beds that "make the lawn hideous with patches of brilliant red varied by streaks of purple blue." Taking sarcastic aim at the Victorian head gardener, he asks, "Would he plant them in patterns of stars and lozenges and tadpoles? Would he border them with paths of asphalt? Would he not rather fill his borders with every kind of beautiful flower that he might delight in, and set them off with grass and pleasant green?" In Blomfield's mind, the desired relationship between the architect and the horticulturist should not end in a standoff, nor would it, if their responsibilities were divided thusly: "The designer, whether professional or amateur, should lay down the main lines and deal with the garden as a whole, but the execution, such as the best method of forming beds, laying turf, planting trees, and pruning hedges, should be left to the gardener, whose proper business it is." In this regard, it is worth noting that Gertrude Jekyll achieved some of her most notable gardens in collaboration with the architect Edwin Lutyens. Their sympathetic marriage of brick terracing and hedge-enclosed garden spaces cre- ated an Arts and Grafts landscape idiom that influenced Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson at Sissinghurst and many other gardeners up to the present day. Providing an architectural frame uniting house and garden and giving structure to seasonal borders of sophisticated horticultural artistry, this type of design might be viewed as a synthesis of Robinson and Blomfield. The harmonizing of their opposing but ultimately complementary theories resulted in a style that made a virtue of formal structure as a foil for loosely composed "garden pictures." In this way these important late-nineteenth-century garden writers can be said to have assisted in the redirection of English garden style at a critical time when vast estate grounds were beginning to become a thing of the past. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is a writer on the history of landscape design and the cultural meaning of place. She is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies and was the founding president of the Central Park Conservancy. Writing the Garden recently won a 2012 Book Award from the American Horticultural Society. Note; The images that accompany this excerpt are engravings by Alfred Parsons from William Robinson's The Wild Garden. 1881 edition. SUE A PFEIFFER 2011 Weather Summary Boh Famiglietti 201 1 continued the trend of warmer than normal temperatures and above average precipitation that started in 2008. Plentiful moisture plus a long growing season allowed the Arboretum's plants to attain optimum growth. Some of our plants suffered damage from storms during the year. JANUARY began mild, and Arboretum visitors celebrated New Year's Day at 59°F, the high temperature for the month. Only a week earlier, on December 26th, 2010, the Arboretum had experienced a fierce blizzard that brought high winds and heavy snow, which led to considerable plant damage. This mild early January weather helped reduce the blizzard's snow pack to 6 inches and gave our horticulture crew an opportunity to start cleaning up and repairing our living collections. The spring mood was short lived, however, as temperatures dipped and the snows began. Light snowstorms occurred by the second week and a strong, windy northeaster on the 11th and 12th dropped over 15 inches of snow and inflicted even more damage to our plants. Snowstorms occurred from the 17th through the 22nd, depositing another 10 inches. Now 22 inches of snow lay accumulated on the ground. The snow stopped for a couple of days as an Arctic cold front swept through, dropping the night temperature to -4' on the 24th. This was the first below-zero reading in two years. The month finished cold and very snowy with storms dropping another 10 inches from the 24th through 26th, making lanuary's snow total 35 inches and leaving 31 inches of snow accumulation on the ground. The view from an .■Vrborctum plow truck on lanuary 13, 201 1, after another heavy snowfall. Weather 31 Arnold Arboretum Weather Station Data • 2011 Avg. Avg. Avg. Max. Min. Precipi- Snow- Max. Min. Temp. Temp. Temp. ration fall (“F) (°F) (°F) (°F) {°F) (inches) (inches) JAN 33.9 16.0 25.0 59 -4 5.01 35.2 FEB 37.9 17.9 27.9 59 5 4.48 13.0 MAR 46.4 28.9 37.7 71 11 2.88 1.0 APR 58.3 40.5 49.4 76 29 4.59 2.5 MAY 68.8 51.5 60.2 90 37 3.69 JUN 74.6 57.8 66.2 89 43 5.01 JUL 85.8 64.4 75.1 101 52 1.66 AUG 81.2 62.7 72.0 93 54 10.45 SEP 74.4 57.7 66.1 86 41 6.49 OCT 62.9 45.0 54.4 82 28 10.75 2.0 NOV 57.6 38.3 48.0 69 26 4.64 DEC 46.3 29.2 37.8 62 13 4.14 Average Maximum Temperature 60.7°F Average Minimum Temperature 42.5°F Average Temperature 51.6°F Total Precipitation 63.79 inches Total Snowfall in 2011 53.7 inches Snowfall During Winter 2010-2011 67.8 inches Warmest Temperature 101°F on July 22 Coldest Temperature -4°F on January 24 Last Frost Date 30°F on April 16 First Frost Date 30°F on October 28 Growing Season 194 days 32 A mold io 69/4 • April 2012 FEBRUARY 1st delivered 7 inches of snow. The snow pack on the ground now measured 38 inches, testing the limits of our snow depth gauge (40 inches maximum). Rain storms occurred on the 2nd and 5th while light snow fell on the 7th and 8th. The snow pack was reduced to 28 inches. A storm-free period occurred from the 9th through the 18th and our low for the month of 5'”F occurred on the 10th. Temperatures soared to 59°F on the 1 7th and 18th, reduc- ing the snow pack to 24 inches. February ended with seasonal temperatures and 3 inches of light snow, leaving the month's total snowfall at 13 inches and the snow pack at 17 inches. MARCH began with a rainstorm, a rare event for this winter. Temperatures climbed into the low 40s and our accumulated snow from the fading winter season was further reduced to 13 inches. The maximum temperature on the 3rd was well below average at just 28T and temperatures dipped into the teens and twenties for the first five nights of the month. It felt like winter would never end. Snow and ice were everywhere, making it extremely difficult for anyone to walk in the Arboretum, let alone work on the grounds. Gardeners could hardly wait to walk on hare earth again. Temperatures then jumped to 60°F on the 6th and it remained relatively mild, eventually making it to 71°F on the 18th. This was the high for the winter season and the warmest it had been since October 28th, 2010, nearly five months earlier. A combination of these unseasonably warm temperatures along with the sun's intensity and some rain brought an end, on March 16th, to the continuous snowpack that had started on December 20, 2010 — an incredible span of nearly three months. Old Man Winter teased us with a 3 inch snowstorm on the 31st. March ended on the dry side with only 2.88 inches of precipitation, which was 14.56 inches less than March 2010's record-setting 17.44 inches. APRIL 1 St started with remnants of the snowstorm that began on March 31st. The first ten days saw high temperatures rise into the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It dropped to freezing or below on the 6th, 7th, and 8th, the last freezing tem- peratures for the season. It reached a warm 72°F on the 1 1th, 76°F on the 24th and 29th, and then hit 81°F on the 27th, the high for the month. Very humid conditions were recorded on the 5th, 26th, and 27th, and wind gusts of over 50 mph from the east occurred during a storm on the 17th. Measurable precipita- tion occurred on 14 days, totaling 4.59 inches. MAY had lots of fog and near normal temperatures but its average daily high temperature of 68.8°F was 4.3°F cooler than last May's average daily high of 73.1°F. Rainfall totaled 3.69 inches and precipitation was measured in our rain gauge on ten consecutive days from the 14th through the 23rd. Our highest one day rainfall was only .95 inch on the 18th. A low temperature of 37°F was recorded on the 2nd, the last reading in the 30s for the season. It reached 90°F for the first time this year on May 27th. Last year the first 90°F reading was recorded on April 7th. JUNE was rather cool. Total rainfall reached 5.01 inches, about 2 inches above normal. There were 14 days with measurable precipitation and thunder was heard on several occasions. High temperatures of 89°F were recorded on the Weather 33 8th and 9th. It never reached 90°F, very unusual for June hut not as cool as June 2009 when the maximum temperature was 83°F and the month turned out to he the third coldest June in Boston's 140 years of weather history (Logan Airport station). A low of 43°F was recorded on the 4th, the last minimum temperature in the 40s. JULY was very hot and dry. 52°F, our low for the month, occurred on the morning of the 15th. Heat waves (three consecutive days of 90°F or over) were recorded at Boston's weather station (Logan Airport) on several occasions, hut the Arhoretum's weather station only recorded one. We missed others hy just a couple of degrees. Our heat wave occurred from the 20th through the 23rd. July's high temperature was recorded on the 22nd at 101°F, making it the high- est temperature reading for the year and our first triple digit reading since July 2002 (104°F). In contrast, our low temperature for the year was -4°F on January 24th, giving an incredible temperature range of 105°F in 2011. We had measur- able precipitation on 11 days and the month's total of only 1.66 inches was produced mainly from brief periods of light rain. AUGUST brought very heavy rainfall, a continuation of July's heat, and Tropi- cal Storm Irene. The month began hot — a reading of 93°F occurred on the 1st, which was the high for the month. Temperatures then moderated to the 70s and 80s and we did not reach 90°F again this year. Some early August rains devel- oped into continuous rainy weather, and by the 10th almost 5 inches had fallen. More rain fell from the 13th through the 21st, leaving another 2.48 inches. Tropical Storm Irene blew through the Arboretum on August 28, 2011. Fortunately, damage was lim- ited, but this shellbark hickory [Carya laciniosa, accession 12898-8) lost a large section of its crown. 34 Arnoldia 69/4 • April 2012 Tropical Storm Irene arrived in full force on the 28th hut (fortunately) didn't live up to expectations. Wind speeds only reached 28 mph at the Arhoretum's weather station and rainfall was less than 2 inches. Structural damage to our collection was minimal thanks in large part to the preventive pruning standards used by our arborists and horticulturists. Thunder was heard throughout the month and August ended up with an incredible 10.45 inches of rain, more than making up for July's deficit. SEPTEMBER was summerlike and continued the trend of warm, wet weather that had been so evident this growing season. Rain, thunder, fog, and mosqui- toes were prevalent. A high of 86°F was recorded on the 5th while a low of 41°F occurred on the 19th. It rained for four days from the 5th through the 8th, dropping over 3 inches of precipitation. Rainy conditions continued and the month's total reached 6.49 inches. These warm rains encouraged our plants to remain lush and actively growing, showing no signs of slowing down for the impending fall season. OCTOBER began as September had ended and the year's trend continued with warm temperatures and more rain. The monthly high temperature of 82°F was reached on the 9th and 10th. Above average temperatures occurred throughout the month and October ended as the 12th warmest in Boston's 140 years of weather records (Logan Airport station). Our first fall freeze finally happened on the morning of the 29th as temperatures dipped to 32°F and a heavy rainstorm was ending, leaving a trace of snow and icy surfaces. This officially ended the Arboretum's long growing season at 194 days. Five heavy rain storms occurred through the month along with lighter periods of rain, leaving 10.75 inches as the month's total. On October 30th, the last storm of the month left 2 inches of wet snow on the ground. Our plant collections suffered some damage since the snow was able to accumulate on the leaves that had not yet fallen, weigh- ing down and breaking branches. The Arboretum was very fortunate to have escaped the devastation that occurred just to the north and west of here where up to 3 1 inches of snow fell, causing massive damage and statewide power out- ages that in some cases lasted for weeks NOVEMBER brought opinions and predictions as to what the imminent win- ter season would be like as October's snowfall brought back memories of last winter's extremely snowy conditions. Some were sure that the wet, stormy weather pattern that we were in would continue into the winter. Much of Massachusetts now lay under a heavy blanket of snow, but the Arboretum's 2-inch layer melted as temperatures rose into the 60s and the monthly high of 69°F was reached on the 9th. November continued very warm and finished 2nd warmest in 140 years of records at Boston's Logan Airport weather station. Our low for the month was set on the 1st at 26°F. The fall foliage season was somewhat disappointing as the warm temperatures created unfavorable condi- tions for vivid color. It only dipped below freezing on ten nights in November, and Thanksgiving was a delightful 57°F. At the Dana Greenhouses, as in sev- eral recent years, the trend in warm temperatures prevented our containerized plants from going dormant, thus delaying their return to winter cold storage. November ended with 4.64 inches of rain and no snow! Weather 35 a > U z < z Two inches of heavy, wet snow fell on October 30, 2011. The next day, traces of snow along with fallen leaves remained around this ginkgo {Ginkgo biloba, accession 222-97-A). DECEMBER was very mild, continuing November's warmth. A high of 62°F was recorded on the 5th and it reached 50°F or more on nine occasions. It was the 7th warmest December in Boston's weather record keeping history and the sixth straight month with above average temperatures. December's early warmth brought vivid foliage displays on some individual specimens. A 13°F low for the month — recorded on the morning of the 19th — hastened winter dormancy in our containerized plants, a condition needed for storage. 4.14 inches of precipitation was recorded and no snow fell, an unusual event that marked only the fifth time in Boston's weather records that no snow fell in the November-December period. Bob Famiglietti is a Horticultural Technologist at the Arnold Arboretum's Dana Greenhouses. Wilson's Pearlbush (Exochorda giraldii var. wilsonii): A Gem to the Core Stephen Schneider It can be a memorable experience the first time you crack open a geode — pale gray and nondescript on the outside, the color- ful crystalline center is anything but. The same can he said for cutting into the wood of the trees and shrubs in the Living Collection at the Arnold Arboretum. There have been many surprises for Arboretum staff who prune and remove trees and are also interested in wood- working; often what is hidden by thick, scaly, neutral-colored bark proves to be a treasure once the inner wood is revealed. Several species come to mind when consid- ering unique and beautiful wood. Golden rain- tree [Koelreuteria paniculata] and Osage orange {Madura pomifera) yield consistent chocolate brown and bright yellow heartwood, respec- tively. Boxelder {Acer negundo], on the other hand, often displays an erratic, bright red fun- gal staining in parts of its center. Even the old- growth stems of common lilac {Syringa vulgaris] often have a deep purple center that, unfortu- nately, disappears once the wood is seasoned. Although there are many other Arboretum plants that possess interesting wood, a large specimen of Wilson's pearlbush {Exochorda giraldii var. wilsonii, accession 11626-C) mer- its particular attention. Grown from seeds collected in 1907 by E. H. Wilson in Hubei, China, this centenarian shrub resides just off the road near the top of Bussey Hill. Its racemes of spring flowers start as white, pearl- like buds and open to perfect, five-petaled flowers. The flowers are followed by interest- ing star-shaped seed capsules. Mature and well established, this multi-stemmed shrub has a commanding spread of about twenty feet and a height to match. Its presence, however, is often overlooked by the many visitors who pass by it each day on their march to the top of the hill. They are unaware of the secret that lies beneath its bark. I remember well the first time I was intro- duced to Exochorda wood. A rather small piece, about a foot long and four inches in diameter, was tossed to me from across the room. Its weight took me by surprise — it felt as strong and dense as hickory. A first attempt to cut through it failed, since the wood was too hard for the band saw blade to provide a straight cut. It became necessary to use a fine-toothed car- bide blade on a table saw. That machine even seemed to struggle a bit, but the results were worth the effort. Hidden beneath the gray, scaly, exfoliating bark was densely grained wood patterned in light and dark browns with orange-red highlights throughout. A single pass of the blade proved to be all that was needed to create a smooth finish, velvety to the touch. Applying a coat or two of Danish oil enhances the beauty of this material since it makes the swirling grain more noticeable. When put on a lathe and turned, this wood creates a beautiful spindle that displays the variety and complexity of its colors and pat- terns. Checking (cracking that occurs during the lumber drying process) is nearly impossible to avoid with a wood this dense, so finding sta- ble stock to work with between the cracks can be a challenge. Since discovering the wood of Exochorda, I have reserved the use of it for very special projects for very special people. Since Wilson's pearlbush is a relatively easy plant to grow. I'll often give the recipient of the gift a live specimen of it to plant in the backyard as a reminder that, much like a geode, its plain appearance on the outside can harbor profound beauty on tbe inside. Stephen Schneider is Manager of Horticulture at the Arnold Arboretum. f V; I r ' (r. , ii.