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The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum

VOLUME 75 • NUMBER 1 • 2017

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
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Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130-
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e-mail arnoldia@arnarb.harvard.edu

Arnold Arboretum members receive a subscrip¬
tion to Arnoldia as a membership benefit. To
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please call Wendy Krauss at 617.384.5766 or
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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
Anthony S. Aiello
Peter Del Tredici
Michael S. Dosmann
William (Ned) Friedman
Jon Hetman
Julie Moir Messervy

CONTENTS

2 Plant Exudates and Amber:

Their Origin and Uses

Jorge A. Santiago-Blay and Joseph B. Lambert

14 Other Order: Sound Walk for an Urban Wild

Peter Del Tredici and Teri Rueb

26 Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds, and the
Ornamentation of Public Parks

Phyllis Andersen

36 Uncommon By Any Name:

Acer pensylvanicum

Jon Hetman

Front cover: Plant parts, such as this flower, and
animals trapped in amber can provide important sci¬
entific insights to the distant past. Photo courtesy of
Patrick R. Craig.

Inside Jront cover: Many public parks, including
Boston's Public Garden, seen here, still create extensive
annual bedding out displays, a practice first popularized
in the Victorian era. Photo by Norman Eggert/Alamy
Stock Photo.

Inside back cover: Whether you call it striped maple,
snalcebarlc maple, or moosewood, Acer pensylvanicum
is an admirable native tree. Photo of Arnold Arboretum
accession 137-2003-F by Jon Hetman.

Back cover: A carpet of non-native lesser celandine
(Ranunculus Jicaria ) blooms amid old stems of Helian-
thus. Photo by Peter Del Tredici.

The ARNOLD
ARBORETUM

of HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY JORGE A. SANTIAGO-BLAY UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Plant Exudates and Amber: Their Origin and Uses

Jorge A. Santiago-Blay and Joseph B. Lambert

P lants produce and export many different
molecules out of their cellular and organ -
ismal confines. Some of those chemicals
become so abundant that we can see or smell
them. The most visible materials oozed by
many plants are called "exudates ."

What are plant exudates? Generally, exudates
are carbon-rich materials that many plants pro¬
duce and release externally. When exudates are
produced, they are often sticky to human touch.
Such plant chemicals can be the visible expres¬
sion of attack by bacteria, fungi, herbivores, or

Prolific white, resinous exudation is seen on a tumor-
like growth on the trunk of a white pine (Pinus strobus )
at the Arnold Arboretum.

some other plant pathology. In other instances,
such as in typical underground roots, exudate
production appears to be part of the typical
metabolism of healthy plants that helps stabi¬
lize the soil and foster interactions with other
organisms around the roots.

Different plant tissue types and organs can
produce exudates. We have collected resins and
gums from the above ground portions of plants,
or shoots, as well as from the generally below
ground portion of plants, or roots. Root exuda¬
tion has been known for decades and is respon-

Resinous exudates on a conifer.

Blobs of white resin on a relatively young shoot of a
Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii, AA accession
11371 - 0 ).

REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF AMERICAN SCIENTIST

Plant Exudates and Amber 3

A slab of Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva ) right out of the microwave oven showing extruded (and very
hot!) resinous exudates. Microwave heating experiments were performed at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research,
University of Arizona, Tucson.

sible for many of the fascinating relationships
in the interface of plant roots and soil microor¬
ganisms known as the rhizosphere.

Collecting and Analyzing Plant Exudates

After receiving collecting permission (if needed),
we spend days walking the grounds of botani¬
cal gardens and arboreta, or do field work else¬
where. Exudates are easily collected directly
from the trees with no harm to the plant and
leaving no doubt about their botanical identity.
Occasionally we use more forceful methods,
such as carefully microwaving wood slabs to
extract the exudates, then letting them reso¬
lidify. Once the material is collected, we place
it in a small plastic zip-top bag. An additional,
external bag is used to hold a paper label con¬
taining the collection data. If needed, we let the
exudate dry slowly in an oven and, once dried,
the materials are ready for subsequent analyses.
In other instances, generous collaborators send
us materials for chemical analyses.

Carbon-13 solid state Nuclear Magnetic
Resonance spectroscopy (ssNMR) is a state-
of-the-art research tool that generates spectra

(or chemical signatures) of materials, includ¬
ing plant exudates and amber or greatly
fossilized plant resin. The analyses, which
use a tiny amount (as little as 50 to 100 mil¬
ligrams, approximately the volume of a new
eraser on a school pencil) of the exudate, are
non-destructive. They are performed at North¬
western University (in Evanston, Illinois), one
of a few research laboratories in the world
with carbon-13 ssNMR capabilities. At times,
we observe plants that evidently have produced
exudates but the amounts are insufficient
for our analyses.

Solid exudates are pulverized manually and
undergo two sets of carbon-13 ssNMR analyses:
normal decoupling, which gathers signals for
all carbon atoms, and interrupted decoupling,
which, among others, obtains signals from car¬
bons lacking the attached hydrogens. Just like
in spectra used in the health-allied sciences,
different regions of the spectra provide valu¬
able information (see Figure 1 on page 4). In
the case of NMR, the peaks represent different
atoms and reflect their molecular environment.
The height of the peaks largely represents rela-

4 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

(A)

220 200 180 160 140 120 100 80

fl (ppm)

60 40

(B)

Interrupted Decoupling - only carbons with strong C-H interactions analyzed

I C=0 bonds as in carboxyls I C=C bonds as in alkenes [ as 111

1 1 sugars 1

C-C bonds as in alkanes

— 1 -

220

- 1 -

200

- 1 -

180

- 1 -

160

- 1 -

140

- 1 -■- 1 -

120 100

(ppm)

- 1 -

(C)

Interrupted Decoupling - only carbons with strong C-H interactions analyzed

| C=0 bonds as in |
carboxyls

C=C bonds as in alkenes

C-O bonds
as in
sugars

C-C bonds as in alkanes

- 1 -

220

- 1 -

200

180

160

- 1 -

140

- 1 - 1 - 1 -

120 100

(ppm)

- 1 -

Figure 1. Chemical identity of peaks on a C-13 ssNMR spectra. Panel (A) is a
resin, panel (B) is a gum, and panel (C) is a kino (a type of phenolic, often found
in Eucalyptus ). In all panels, the upper result uses interrupted decoupling,
which eliminates peaks representing C-H single bonds. The lower result uses
normal decoupling in which all carbon-to-atom bonds are represented.

tive abundance of those atoms.
The position of the peak along
the horizontal axis (parts per mil¬
lion [ppm]) is the resonance fre¬
quency characteristic of the atom
and its molecular neighborhood.
This position is an indication
of the chemical identity of the
peak as compared to an external
molecular reference. In carbon-13
ssNMR, peaks in the 0-80 ppm
region are singly bonded carbon
atoms (-C-C-), or alkanes,- signals
within the 80-100 ppm region are
single bonded carbon atoms with
electron-withdrawing neighbors,
in particular, oxygen (C-O), as
found in carbohydrates, such as
sugars. Currently, we have ana¬
lyzed over 1,800 exudates of all
types, including amber, represent¬
ing most of the major plant groups
worldwide. However, a lot more
samples still need to be acquired
and analyzed.

Types of Plant Exudates

Using NMR, we have determined
that there are three major types of
plant exudates: resins, gums, and
phenolics. Resins are made from
terpene molecules. The basic
molecular unit of terpenes is a
five-carbon molecule, known as
isoprene (see Figure 2 on page 6).

When freshly produced, many
resins are sticky and smell like
Christmas trees or incense. Resins
are insoluble in water and thus do
not dissolve during rains. As time
passes and the resins begin to
"mature," many of their original
chemical constituents evaporate.
The materials remaining behind
in the resin blob form chemical
bonds, a process known as polym¬
erization, and the blob begins to
harden. With the passage of mil¬
lennia, the resinous material
becomes greatly polymerized and

JOSEPH O'BRIEN, USDA FOREST SERVICE, BUGWOOD. ORG

Plant Exudates and Amber 5

Not On the Collection List

Not everything that looks like an exudate is an exudate. Some living organisms,
particularly fungi, can resemble the kinds of plant exudates we collect. In other
instances, the watery—and often foul smelling—material that decomposing
portions of plants produce can also resemble exudates. As you may guess,

we do not collect those!

Clockwise: Some exudate mimics include a cedar-apple
rust ( G ymn osp or an gi um juniperi-virginianae) fungal
fruiting body on Juniperus virginiana; an unidenti¬
fied fungus growing on a Pinus hwangshanensis (AA
accession 68-76-F)—note its superficial similarity to the
yellowish color of some resins; a Polyporus fungus on
Quercus palustris (AA accession 805-87-A); an exudate-
resembling, foul smelling material resulting from
decomposition by fungi and bacteria on a cut Cornus
kousa (AA accession 524-49-D) branch.

CHIP CLARK, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION CHIP CLARK, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

6 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

Close-up of resinous flow on the trunk of a pine ( Pinus ).

Latex exudate emanating from a Euphorbia tirucalli stem.

of resins.

ChUOH

H OH

Figure 3. Model of a glucose, an example of a simple
sugar molecule. Chemically linked sugar molecules
make up carbohydrates. The carbon bound by two
oxygen atoms (arrow) is known as anomeric carbon
and is characteristic of sugars. Exudated carbohy¬
drates are known as gums.

evolves into the robust gemstone called amber,
produced only by specific plant species. Coni¬
fers such as pines [Pinus], firs [Abies], spruces
[Picea], larches [Laiix], and some other familiar
cone-bearing trees in northern latitudes tend to
produce resinous exudates. Many angiosperms
(flowering plants) also produce resins.

The term “ latex" refers to milky-looking exu¬
dates produced by numerous flowering plants,
including those in the euphorbia or spurge fam¬
ily (Euphorbiaceae). Latexes can be dangerous to
touch, causing dermatitis or other damage, espe¬
cially to the eyes. Interestingly, all latexes we
have examined thus far are resins in suspension.

A second type of exudates is known as
gums. Gums are large carbohydrates consist¬
ing of myriad sugar molecules linked together
chemically (see Figure 3 above). Gums do not

O v OH

CHIP CLARK, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

Plant Exudates and Amber 7

Gum produced by a Yoshino cherry (Prunus x yedoensis )
growing near the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

Reddish phenolic exudates are visible on the trunk of
this Eucalyptus sideroxylon.

tend to smell because of their low volatility
stemming from their high molecular weight.
When freshly produced, many gums are spongy
to touch because of their high water content.
Thus, freshly produced gums dissolve easily
during rains. If somehow gums manage to sur¬
vive and dry out, they can then be very hard to
dissolve. However, as far as we are aware, gums
are not known to survive millions of years as
amber does. Gum exudates tend to be produced
by flowering plants,- fruit trees in the genus
Prunus , including cherries, plums, peaches, and
almonds, commonly produce gums.

The third major type of exudates is known
as phenolics. Phenolics are chemically related
to terpenes but form unsaturated ring com¬
pounds known as aromatics because of their
often-pleasant odor. When freshly produced,
phenolics tend to be watery and reddish brown,
and lack the strong smell of resins. If they sur¬
vive dissolution, phenolics tend to form brittle
solids. As with gums, we are not aware of phe-
nolics that have survived deep time. Phenolics

tend to be common in Eucalyptus and related
plants. Combinations of these major types of
exudates, such as gum resins, as well as several
other minor kinds of exudates are also known.

Uses of Plant Exudates

In addition to their generally beautiful colors,
pleasant aroma, and light weight, resins are
water insoluble. These properties make resins,
including amber, coveted natural products.
Some uses of resins, including amber, include:
ceremonial and artistic, as construction mate¬
rials, ingestive, and, of course, as objects of
science because they provide windows into
past worlds.

Ceremonial and artistic uses

Amber, that is, greatly polymerized resin, has
been used for ceremonial purposes as well as for
objects of trade, jewelry, sculptures, and many
other items. Although highly valued in the mar¬
ket, amber varies greatly in color and translu-
cency, from white to black and from translucent

CHIP CLARK, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF

PATRICK R. CRAIG PATRICK R. CRAIG NATURAL HISTORY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

8 Amoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

An assortment of typical yellowish amber specimens
showing the wide range in color and translucency.

A group of typical Baltic amber specimens shows
varying color.

Specimens of rare Dominican blue amber from the per¬
sonal collection of Patrick R. Craig.

Earrings made from Columbian copal were treated in an
autoclave, which applies heat and pressure, resulting in
a color change from yellow to green.

Retsina is a Greek wine traditionally flavored with
pine resin.

to opaque. Because of this variability, color and
translucency on their own are generally not
good diagnostic traits for identifying amber.

On the other hand, copal (less polymerized
resin) and modern resins are still used in some
areas of Mexico and Central America for artis¬
tic and ceremonial purposes, prized because

they smell of incense. Next time you encounter
a pine, fir, or spruce tree, look carefully at its
bark and you may be able to see some exudate
blobs or “ teardrops ." Pick one of them up and
smell it! Pine resin has been used in the prepa¬
ration of rosin, which is applied to the hairs
of bows used to play string instruments such

NSAA, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS PATRICK R. CRAIG

Plant Exudates and Amber 9

Is It Amber or Copal?

Amber is greatly fossilized resin. This resinous fossilized material has been found in numer¬
ous localities worldwide. The oldest amber has been dated as early as the Carboniferous
period, over 300 million years ago. Often, forests whose trees produced resins that eventu¬
ally became amber tended to be located close to sea level at the time of production.

Partially polymerized resin is known as copal, a Nahuatl or Aztec word that means
incense. At times, we have seen the term “semi-amber” used instead of copal. We recom¬
mend avoiding the term “semi-amber” because it suggests the material is older than it really
is. Although it can be difficult to distinguish copal from resin, a straightforward preliminary
way to distinguish between the two is by using a drop of organic chemical such as 95% etha¬
nol or acetone (the solvent used in most nail polish removers). Take a drop of the chemical
and place it in a portion of the test sample that has little or no value to the owner. Then
touch the wetted portion with the finger. If it feels sticky, the test sample likely is copal;
if it does not feel sticky, likely it is amber. We have examined a number of alleged amber
samples that turned out to be copal, some of which were in the collections of respectable
museums. When finding “amber” specimens of potential scientific value, we recommend
testing them by physicochemical means, such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
(NMR) or others, to gain more confidence on the specimen's true nature.

ROBERT MAYER

10 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 2017

as the violin (rosin makes the hairs just sticky
enough to grip the strings and create sound).

Construction materials

The metallic transatlantic cable that connected
the Old and New Worlds telegraphically during
the second half of the nineteenth century was
insulated by gutta percha, the resinous exu¬
date of Palaquium gutta, a tropical Southeast

Asian tree. The modern aviation and aerospace
industry uses human-made, lightweight and
strong, synthetic resins and phenolics in build¬
ing airplanes.

Ingestive

An old and interesting use of resins is in the
preparation of retsina, a Greek wine that is
flavored with a little bit of pine resin (typi¬
cally from Aleppo pine, Pinus hala-
pensis). Gums are also sometimes
eaten,- in places where the legumi¬
nous Acacia trees produce copious
quantities of gums, these exudates
are used as survival foods when
other food is scarce. Although it has
been alleged that amber has healing
and other medicinal properties, we
are not aware of scientific studies
using a double-blind protocol that
demonstrate any medicinal proper¬
ties of amber.

Science

For reasons that are not known,
some forests in the past appear to
have produced copious amounts of
resins. Although these exudates may
have attracted some organisms and
repelled others, once small organ¬
isms such as insects landed on the
sticky material it was difficult to
detach from it. When subsequent
resin flows covered the specimen
it was protected from the action
of decomposing organisms and the
environment, allowing it to be pre¬
served for a longer time. Subsequent
polymerization of the resin preserved
a fraction of the resin-entombed
organisms, which, when found, now
have great value to scientists. Amber
encased plant and animal specimens
have contributed insights in a num¬
ber of scientific fields.

Amber specimens that contain
larger, rarely found organisms (e.g.,
scorpions, amphibians, lizards, birds)
are of great interest and may com¬
mand great sums of money. How-

Collecting Competition

Interestingly, sometimes birds, such as the types of woodpeckers
commonly called sapsuckers (genus Sphyrapicus), compete with
us as they also feed on exudates and leave characteristic holes on
the surface of some trees. Other birds and some insects are known
to use exudates for nest construction.

A yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius ) perches on a conifer branch
that displays the typical holes created by this and other sapsucker species.

PATRICK R. CRAIG PATRICK R. CRAIG

Plant Exudates and Amber 11

A drosophilid fly trapped in amber.

Wood fibers encased in amber.

ever, buyer beware, as there are unscrupulous
sellers willing to make money from objects that
are not genuine amber.

Ongoing Research Goals

Ultimately, we seek answers to questions
because we are curious about nature. Some¬
times, our results can help answer a question.
For example, along with several other col¬
leagues, including Dr. Lisa Niziolelc from the
Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago,
we answered the question: In what plant family
was the tree that produced the blocks of resin
found in a thirteenth century shipwreck exca¬
vated from the Java Sea? Our studies of many
plant exudates have generated a large data¬
base of their NMR profiles. When we study a
sample of unknown botanical provenance, that
database allows us to compare the samples of

unknown botanical origin, like the resin from
the Java Sea wreck, with those in our database.
With that information, we were able to suggest
that the plant whose resins were harvested back
in the thirteenth century was from the botani¬
cal family Dipterocarpaceae, and perhaps spe¬
cifically the genus Shorea. Having an idea of the
botanical provenance of archeological artifacts
enriches our knowledge of how our predeces¬
sors used plants. In this case, research tells us
that aromatic resins were an important com¬
modity at the time and were often imported
into China for use in Buddhist rituals as well
as medicines, lacquers, and perfumes. We will
continue to collect and analyze plant exudates
from around the world, including amber and
copal, as well as materials associated with
anthropological artifacts, adding knowledge for
future researchers to use.

References

Kosmowslca-Ceranowicz, B. 2015 Infrared spectra atlas
of fossil resins, subfossil resins and selected
imitations of amber. In: ATLAS, Infrared Spectra
of the World’s Resins, Holotype Characteristics.
pp. 3-213. Warszawa, Polska: Polska Akademia
Nauk Muzeum Ziemi w Warszawie.

Lambert, J. B., C. E. Shawl, G. O. Poinar, Jr., and
J. A. Santiago-Blay. 1999. Classification of
modern resins by solid nuclear magnetic
resonance spectroscopy. Bioorganic Chemistry
27: 409-433.

Lambert, J. B., Y. Wu, and J. A. Santiago-Blay. 2005.

Taxonomic and chemical relationships revealed
by nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of
plant exudates. Journal of Natural Products 68:
635-648.

Lambert, J. B., Y. Wu, and J. A. Santiago-Blay. 2002.

Modern and ancient resins from Africa and
the Americas. In: Archaeological Chemistry.
Materials, Methods, and Meaning. Chapter 6,
pp. 64-83. Symposium Series No. 831. K. A.
Jakes (Editor). American Chemical Society.
Washington, District of Columbia.

Lambert, J. B., M. A. Kozminslci, C. A. Fahlstrom, and J.

A. Santiago-Blay. 2007. Proton nuclear magnetic
resonance characterization of resins from the
family Pinaceae. Journal of Natural Products
70(2): 188-195.

Lambert, J. B., M. A. Kozminslci, and J. A. Santiago-Blay.

2007. Distinctions among conifer exudates
by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
Journal of Natural Products 70(8): 1283-1294.

SUZANNE C. SHAFFER

12 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 2017

Lambert, J. B., Y. Wu, and M. A. Kozminski, and J. A.

Santiago-Blay. 2007. Characterization of
Eucalyptus and chemically related exudates
by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
Australian Journal of Chemistry 60: 862-870.

Lambert, J. B., J. A. Santiago-Blay, and K. B. Anderson.

2008. Chemical signatures of fossilized resins
and recent plant exudates. Mini Review.
Angewandte Chemie (International Edition)
47: 9608-9616. Also published in German,
with the following bibliographic information:
Chemischer Fingerabdruck von fossilen Harzen
und rezenten Pflanzenexsudaten. Angewandte
Chemie 120: 9750-9760.

Lambert, J. B., E. R. Heclcenbach A. E. Hurtley, Y. Wu,
and J. A. Santiago-Blay. 2009. Nuclear magnetic
resonance spectroscopic characterization of

legume exudates. Journal of Natural Products
72:1028-1035.

Lambert, J. B, E. A. Heckenbach, Y. Wu, and J. A. Santiago-
Blay. 2010. Characterization of plant exudates
by principal component and cluster analysis
with nuclear magnetic resonance variables.
Journal of Natural Products 73(10): 1643-1648.

Lambert, J. B., C. Y.-H. Tsai, M. C. Shah, A. E. Hurtley,
and J. A. Santiago-Blay. 2012. Distinguishing
amber classes by proton magnetic resonance
spectroscopy. Archaeometry 54(2): 332-348.

Lambert, J. B., C. L. Johnson, E. W. Donnelly, E. A.

Heckenbach, Y. Wu, and J. A. Santiago-
Blay. 2013. Exudates from the asterids:
characterization by nuclear magnetic resonance
spectroscopy. Life: The Excitement of Biology
1(1): 17-52.

On the lookout even during vacation, author Jorge A. Santiago-Blay (left) noticed resinous exudates on several lodgepole pines
(.Pinus contorta) in Yellowstone National Park, including one partially debarked, possibly by American bison (Bison bison ) (right).
Note the copious exudate production (yellowish color) on the debarked portion of the trunk.

SUZANNE C. SHAFFER

Plant Exudates and Amber 13

Lambert, J. B., E. W. Donnelly, E. A. Heckenbach, C. L.

Johnson, M. A. Kozminski, Y. Wu, and J. A.
Santiago-Blay. 2013. Molecular classification
of the natural exudates of the rosids.
Phytochemistry 94: 171-183.

Lambert, J. B., A. J. Levy, ). A. Santiago-Blay, and Y. Wu.

2013. NMR characterization of Indonesian
amber. Life: The Excitement of Biology 1(3):
136-155.

Lambert, J. B., J. A. Santiago-Blay, Y. Wu, and A. J.

Levy. 2014. Examination of amber and related
materials by nuclear magnetic resonance
spectroscopy. Magnetic Resonance in
Chemistry (Special Issue on NMR in Cultural
Heritage) 53: 2-8.

Lambert, J. B., J. A. Santiago-Blay, R. Rodriguez Ramos,
Y, Wu, and A. J. Levy. 2014. Fossilized, semi-
fossilized, and modern resins from the Caribbean
Basin and surrounding regions for possible pre-
Columbian Trans-Caribbean cultural contacts.
Life: The Excitement of Biology 2(4): 180—209.

Lambert, J. B., C. L. Johnson, A. J. Levy, J. A. Santiago-
Blay, and Y. Wu. 2015. Molecular classification
of exudates horn the monocots, magnoliids, and
basal eudicots. Life: The Excitement of Biology
3(2): 083-117.

Lambert, J. B., J. A. Santiago-Blay, Y. Wu, and A. Levy.

2016. The structure of stantienite. Bulletin for
the History of Chemistry 40(2): 86-94.

Lambert, J. B., C. L. Johnson, T. M. Nguyen, Y. Wu,
and J. A. Santiago-Blay. 2016. Ferns, cycads,
Ginkgo, and Gnetophytes: Nuclear Magnetic
Resonance characterization of exudates from
exotic plant sources. Life: The Excitement of
Biology 4(3): 215-232. https://blaypublishers.
files.wordpress.com/2016/ll/lambert-et-al-
2016-leb-43215-2321 .pdf

Lambert, J. B. Y. Wu, and J. A. Santiago-Blay. 2016. High-
resolution solid-state NMR spectroscopy of
cultural organic materials. In: Webb, G. Modern
Magnetic Resonance. Second Edition. Springer.

Lambert, J. B., A. J. Levy, L. C. Niziolek, G. M. Fienman, P.

J. Gayford, J. A. Santiago-Blay, and Y. Wu. 2017.
The resinous cargo of a Java Sea shipwreck.
Archaeometry. (A paper authored by M.
Donahue describing this research was published
in The Smithsonian Insider on May 15, 2017.
http://insider, si. edu/2017/05/ resin-ship wreclc-
hints-trade-routes-botany-ancient-asia/ .)

Langenheim, J. H. 2003. Plant Resins: Chemistry,
Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnohotany. Portland,
Oregon: Timber Press.

Mills, J. S. and R. White, R. 1994. The Organic Chemistry
of Museum Objects. Second Edition. Oxford,
England: Butterworth-Heineman.

Nussinovich, A. 2010. Plant Gum Exudates of the
World: Sources, Distribution, Properties, and
Applications. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.

Rodriguez Ramos, R., J. Pagan Jimenez, J. A. Santiago-
Blay, J. B. Lambert, and P. R. Craig. 2013. Some
indigenous uses of plants in pre-Columbian
Puerto Rico. Life: The Excitement of Biology
1(1): 83-90.

Santiago-Blay, J, A., R. L. Hoffman, J. B. Lambert, and Y.

Wu. 2003. Cylindroiulus truncorum (Silvestri):
a new milliped for Virginia (USA), with natural
history observations (Julida: Julidae). Banisteria
20: 62-66.

Santiago-Blay, J. A. and J. B. Lambert. 2007. Amber's
botanical origins uncovered. American Scientist
95:150-157. (Reprinted with permission as Aux
sources de l’ambre. Pour la Science [French
version of Scientific American ] June 2007. 356:
70-75. Abstracted by David M. Kondo in the
Winter 2007 issue of Gems and Gemology
43:395.)

Santiago-Blay, J. A. and J. B. Lambert. 2010. Legumes and
their exudates. Aridus (Bulletin of the Desert
Legume Program of the Boyce Thompson
Southwestern Arboretum and the University
of Arizona) 22(1): 1, 4, 6.

Santiago-Blay, J. A. and J. B. Lambert. 2010. Desert plants
and their exudates. Desert Plants 26 (1): 1, 3-8.

Santiago-Blay, J. A., J. B. Lambert, and P. P, Creasman. 2011.

Expanded applications of dendrochronology
collections: Collect and save exudates. Tree-
Ring Research 67(1): 67-68.

Vavra, N. 2015. Mineral names used for fossil resins,
subfossil resins and similar materials. In:
ATLAS. Infrared Spectra of the World’s Resins
- Holotype Characteristics, pp. 215-280.
Warszawa, Polska: Polska Akademia Naulc
Muzeum Ziemi w Warszawie.

Dedication

Author Jorge A. Santiago-Blay dedicates this paper to

his mother, Angeles Blay Salomons, who in the early

1980s suggested to him that he pursue the study of “las

resinitas” (the little resins) as she used to call exudates.

Her memory always lives with him.

Jorge A. Santiago-Blay is a Resident Research Associate
in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of Natural History in
Washington, D.C, (blayi@si.edu). Joseph B. Lambert is
Research Professor of Chemistry at Trinity University in
San Antonio, Texas, and Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of
Chemistry Emeritus, Northwestern University, Evanston,
Illinois (ilambert@northwestern.edu).

Other Order: Sound Walk for an Urban Wild

Peter Del Tredici and Peri Rueb

I n urban areas, vegetation that is not planted
or maintained by people—including both
native and non-native species—typically
dominates many different habitats including
river and stream banks, highway verges, vacant
building lots, infrastructure edges, chain-link
fence lines, and random pavement cracks. For
most cities, the amount of spontaneous vegeta¬
tion they support varies inversely with their
economic prosperity,- cities that have lost the
most population and jobs show the highest lev¬
els of land abandonment and volunteer plant
growth (Del Tredici 2010a, b ; Burkholder 2012).

How city dwellers respond to the presence
of spontaneous vegetation in their midst is
influenced by personal preferences as well as
by cultural norms. In many European cities,
residents' feelings about spontaneous vegeta¬
tion is divided—some welcome it as a mani¬
festation of unrestrained urban nature while
others see it as an indicator of dereliction that
should be removed. Such responses have led to
the categorization of urban residents as either
"nature lovers" (a.lc.a. wilderness enthusiasts)
or "neat freaks" (a.lc.a. urban devotees). Inter¬
estingly, the percentages of people in these cat¬
egories can vary dramatically from one city to
the next in the same country (Keil 2005; Rink
2005; Weber etal. 2014).

In an effort to promote a wider appreciation
and acceptance of "urban wilds," urban ecolo¬
gists have recently been attempting to calculate
the value of the ecosystem services provided
by spontaneous vegetation, especially in cit¬
ies where the population is shrinking and the
amount of vacant land is expanding (Patalci et
al. 2011; Burkholder 2012; Robinson and Lund-
holm 2012). On the positive side, this vegeta¬
tion contributes to increasing the ecological
functionality of the city in terms of storm
water management, temperature reduction,
carbon sequestration, soil development, and

total biodiversity (Kowarilc and Korner 2005;
Carroll 2011). Harder to quantify, but never¬
theless important, are the opportunities for
social, cultural, educational, and nature expe¬
riences that spontaneous vegetation provides
across the wide array of cultural contexts and
sites that characterize most cities (Pfeiffer and
Voelcs 2008; Daniel et al. 2012; Jorgensen and
Keenan 2012).

The aesthetics of spontaneous vegetation are
usually considered negative given that much
of it is perceived as ugly or messy (i.e., lack¬
ing ornamental characteristics or possessing
an unkempt appearance), and its presence in
the landscape is justifiably viewed as project¬
ing an image of neglect (Nassauer and Raskin
2014). In the arena of public health, many people
see spontaneous vegetation as providing habi¬
tat for animals that are vectors for a number
of human pathogens and infectious diseases
such as rats, mosquitoes, and ticks (Garvin et
al. 2012; Gulachensilc et al. 2016). Similarly, the
large size that spontaneous urban vegetation can
reach in the absence of maintenance is viewed
as providing cover for potential criminal activity
and thus a threat to public safety. To the extent
that urban landscapes dominated by spontane¬
ous urban vegetation are perceived as threaten¬
ing, they fit within a concept of a "wilderness"
that is defined as land that exists outside the
bounds of human control (Hofmeister 2010;
Jorgensen and Keenan 2012; Desimini 2015).

In this article we will explore the history of
the "urban wilds" construct as it developed in
Boston, Massachusetts, from its introduction
in the mid-1970s through today, and present
a case study of one such site, Bussey Brook
Meadow at the Arnold Arboretum, to illustrate
how multi-faceted urban wilds can be creatively
interpreted for the general public utilizing
GPS (global positioning system)-based cell
phone technology.

ALL PHOTOS BY PETER DEL TREDICI UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

Other Order: Sound Walk 15

Urban vegetation takes hold in cracks in a neglected swath of asphalt pavement.

Pretty wildflowers or invasive weeds? Chicory (Cichorium intybus ), yellow
sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis ), and spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe
subsp. micranthos ) bloom along a city street.

Weedy trees take over an abandoned lot in Detroit.

Urban Wilds in Boston

In the United States, the idea that
unmanaged "open space" in cities
could perform valuable ecologi¬
cal services was foreshadowed by
a movement in the 1970s that cat¬
egorized such sites as "urban wilds"
(Tanner 1975; Desimini 2015). In
1976, the Boston Redevelopment
Authority (BRA), a city planning
agency, officially adopted the term
when it issued an inventory of Bos¬
ton's unimproved and unprotected
natural areas under the title Boston
Urban Wilds. The report—which
was partially funded by a grant from
the National Endowment for the
Arts—was spearheaded by BRA land¬
scape architect Elliot Rhodeside. It
identified 143 parcels of land (2,000
total acres) of diverse sizes and own¬
erships that contained significant
"natural resource value" but were
threatened by on-going development
pressure (BRA 1976). Most of the
sites had histories of industrial, insti¬
tutional, or residential use, some
dating back to the nineteenth cen¬
tury. Rhodeside left the BRA shortly
after the report was published and
the work of advocacy, fundraising,
and protection for the Boston Urban
Wilds project passed to a non-profit
organization, the Boston Natural
Areas Fund (BNAF), founded in 1977
by Eugenie Beal (the head of the then
newly formed Boston Conservation
Commission) along with her future
husband, John Blackwell.

In its early days, BNAF was focused
on trying to preserve and protect
properties listed in the Urban Wilds
report, but over time the emphasis of
the organization shifted away from
land acquisition to maintenance
of already protected properties and
coalition building with other non¬
profit organizations around issues of
public advocacy. In 1988, the Boston

16 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 2017

Boston Urban Wilds , a 1976 report from the Boston
Redevelopment Authority, identified 143 land parcels
in Boston with potential value as preserved natural
areas. This copy of the report is in the Arnold
Arboretum library.

Parks Department officially took over manage¬
ment of the Urban Wilds program which, as of
2014, listed 39 properties in its inventory. The
Parks Department currently provides mainte¬
nance and logistical support for those properties
that are controlled by the city,- other proper¬
ties on the list receive varying levels of main¬
tenance depending on the resources allocated
by the organization that controls it (Bird 2014).

The original 1976 BRA report described 143
sites that contained some significant "natural
resource value," including geological features
(68 sites), coastal or fresh water wetlands (20
sites), shorelines (27 sites), or important veg¬
etation (28 sites). It was clearly a simpler time
when the meaning of the words nature and
natural were not contested and the dichotomy
between native and exotic species had yet to
emerge as the divisive issue it is today. In the
1970s, urban wilds, regardless of their biological

content or cultural history, were viewed as valu¬
able antidotes to blighted, barren cityscapes.
By the late-1990s, the original concept of an
urban wild became subsumed under the rubric
of ecological restoration. This reconceptualiza¬
tion of urban nature—essentially attempting
to affix a "native" label on it—represented a
dramatic reversal of fortune for the non-native
organisms that found themselves reclassified
as invasive species. Older, less value-driven
terms to describe these plants, including weed,
pest, naturalized species, garden escapee, volun¬
teer, etc., fell by the wayside and with them an
appreciation of their historic connection with
the past land use of the site (Del Tredici 2010b).

This privileging of native over non-native
species has created problems for today's advo¬
cates of urban wilds because many of the sites
they're striving to protect can no longer be
"restored" to anything resembling their origi¬
nal ecological condition (Del Tredici 2010a, b;
Carroll 2011). Similarly, the ways that some
people use minimally maintained urban wilds,
including drinking, doing drugs, having sex,
painting graffiti, and camping out, has also
caused problems for advocates because of com¬
plaints from abutting residents and other users.
Like it or not, urban wilds are places where
human behavior, like the plants and animals
that occupy them, can sometimes be out of con¬
trol (Keil 2005; Thompson 2012).

Bussey Brook Meadow

Bussey Brook Meadow of the Arnold Arbore¬
tum of Harvard University was listed as an
urban wild in the 1976 BRA report. This 25-acre
wetland has a documented history of land use
going back 350 years when, in 1662, one of the
first roads leading southwest out of the city of
Boston was constructed along its western edge.
This road opened the land up to farmers who
drained portions of the property and moved
the stream, Bussey Brook, that ran through
the middle of it to the periphery. A hundred
and forty years later, in 1802, another road was
built along its eastern edge, which eventually
developed into a railroad line that is still in
operation today. Once a stable earthen berm
was constructed for the rail line in 1873, Bussey

Other Order: Sound Walk 17

Willows and cattails are among the moisture loving plants that thrive in Bussey Brook Meadow.

Brook was effectively isolated from the larger,
adjacent Stony Brook watershed that drains into
the Charles River. Following this, the processes
of fragmentation and filling of Bussey Brook
Meadow accelerated dramatically, most notably
with the installation in 1900 of a 9-foot-diame-
ter, 3,600-foot-long high-level sewer line across
the western edge of the property and the con¬
struction of an expanded Forest Hills train sta¬
tion to the north in 1909 (Arnold Arboretum).

The Arnold Arboretum, through a land
purchase from its Harvard University par¬
ent, acquired roughly half of the Bussey Brook
Meadow parcel in 1919 and constructed Muddy
Pond in the middle of the site, a wagon road
following the track of the high-level sewer line,
and a tree nursery on the site of former agricul¬
tural land. All of these activities over a period
of seven years resulted in more wetland filling
and disruption of surface drainage. In the 1950s,

a privately owned eslcer on the site, composed
mainly of sand and gravel, was excavated for
construction purposes and replaced between
1955 and 1965 with a 5-acre landfill consisting
of construction debris from the demolition of
several Boston public schools. In 1971, after an
unfortunate incident in which two neighbor¬
hood children from a nearby public housing
project drowned, Muddy Pond in the center of
the Arboretum's portion of the wetland was
filled in (Arnold Arboretum).

In 1982, the northern end of Bussey Brook
Meadow underwent a major transformation
when an expansion of the Forest Hills train sta¬
tion was initiated in order to make room for
the new Orange Line subway station. As part
of this project, a pathway was built along the
base of the landfill that linked the new subway
station to the South Street gate of the Arbore¬
tum. In 1996, through the determined efforts of

JAY CONNOR

18 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 2017

Eugenie Beal and John Blackwell and the two
non-profit organizations they co-founded (the
Boston Natural Areas Fund and the Arboretum
Park Conservancy), the deeds to the variously
owned parcels of Bussey Brook Meadow were
bundled together and added to the Arnold Arbo¬
retum's 1882 indenture, thereby achieving per¬
manent protection for the entire 25-acre site. At
the same time, grants from federal, state, and
city agencies, together with funds generated by
the Arboretum Park Conservancy, were used
to construct granite entrance gates and upgrade
the surface of the main pathway, now chris¬
tened Blackwell Path.

In 2011, the Arboretum, in keeping with its
scientific research mission, approved a plan
that called for turning Bussey Brook Meadow
into a site for long-term environmental moni¬
toring and research on urban ecology. While
this meant that most of the land in Bussey

Brook Meadow would be left alone to follow its
own ecological trajectory, the Arboretum made
a commitment to manage portions of the site
that were heavily used by visitors, including
mowing the edges of Blackwell Path regularly,
removing hazard trees that threatened public
safety, and mowing several meadow areas annu¬
ally to keep woody vegetation from taking over
(Arnold Arboretum).

Creating the Other Order Sound Walk

Having developed a long-term strategy for the
site, the Arboretum still had to contend with
issues raised by discordant visitor perceptions of
the land. Some saw Bussey Brook Meadow as a
"natural" counterpoint to the well-maintained
landscape of the Arnold Arboretum proper,
while others saw it as a haven for invasive spe¬
cies that undermined the Arboretum's moral
authority on matters of ecology. It was into this

Bussey Brook Meadow with Blackwell Path running through it.

ARNOLD ARBORETUM ARCHIVES

Other Order: Sound Walk 19

The 9-foot-diameter sewer line being installed in Bussey Brook
Meadow in August 1900.

Blackwell Path in Bussey Brook Meadow in summer.

A tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima ) grove on the slopes of
the landfill in Bussey Brook Meadow. Ring counts of downed
trees indicated that they established themselves on the site
in 1965 or 1966, shortly after dumping stopped.

breech that the authors of this article stepped in
2012 with a proposal to interpret Bussey Brook
Meadow for the general public using a GPS-
based sound walk designed for use with a cell
phone. The purpose of the proposed app was
to illuminate the complex cultural history of
Bussey Brook Meadow, to reveal the complex
ecological interactions that are currently taking
place on the site, and to show some of the ways
the site was being used by the general public.
The ultimate goal of the project was to try and
change how people thought and felt about the
site—to help them see that it was not just a
chaotic collection of weeds but a dynamic, orga¬
nized ecological system that reflected cultural

values, past land-use history, and future eco¬
logical trajectories (Rueb and Del Tredici 2014).

The Other Order app took two years to
complete and involved a close collaboration
between Del Tredici, who provided extensive
verbal interpretation of the site in situ, and
Rueb, who recorded this material and combined
it with field recordings to create a soundscape
designed for delivery via a downloadable mobile
app. The app uses GPS to track visitors 7 move¬
ments and play the sounds at specific locations
in Bussey Brook Meadow as they pass through
them. In addition to Del Tredici's monologues
on "cosmopolitan 77 vegetation, recordings
included dozens of on-site conversations with

20 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

Non-native wetland plants growing in Bussey Brook Meadow: common reed (Phragmites australis ) in the background,
yellow flag iris [Iris pseudacorus ) in the middle, and reed canarygrass [Phalaris arundinacea) in the foreground. These
species have sorted themselves out across a moisture gradient to form a functional urban wetland.

various experts, stakeholders, Arboretum staff,
and park visitors including urban ecologists,
park advocacy groups, multi-generation urban
farmers, landscape architects, dog walkers,
commuters, and transient residents.

Over twenty hours of ambient field record¬
ings of the environment were also incorporated
and used as inspiration for sound compositions
evoking, for example, the material layers of the
landfill, the interior sounds of the high level
sewer pipeline, the leisure activity of past vis¬
itors mingled with those of the present, and
the wildlife of the meadow. In some places one
might find unexpected sounds such as light
snoring tucked under a tree-of-heaven grove
(Ailanthus altissima ) near a concrete over¬
hang, a flute mingling with sounds of laughter

in a clearing in the center of the old Arboretum
nursery, cows lowing and chickens clucking
near the site of the former Bussey farmstead,
and the sound of underwater gurgling as cap¬
tured with hydrophones dropped into Bussey
Brook. All of these sounds reference actual and
imagined ways in which the meadow has been
inhabited over time and the various materi¬
als and organisms that make up the complex
social, biological, and physical matrix that is
Bussey Brook Meadow.

Sound regions are arranged throughout the
meadow in a manner that allows for a com¬
plete experience should visitors constrain their
movements solely to Blackwell Path, which
takes about twenty minutes to traverse at a lei¬
surely pace. However, additional sound regions

Other Order: Sound Walk 21

A wetland in Bussey Brook Meadow consisting of common reed (Phragmites australis ), yellow flag iris (Iris pseud-
acorus ), and reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea ).

are spread throughout the meadow, rewarding
the more adventurous and patient with sounds
that may be accessed only by leaving the trail
behind and following informal footpaths, trails,
and tunnels through the dense vegetation.

Blackwell Path is an egalitarian corridor that
connects the elegant environs of the formal
Arboretum with the urban hubbub of the Forest
Hills subway station and surrounding neighbor¬
hoods. Intervening into this path system repre¬
sents a critique of conventional parks as much
as an invitation to go off the beaten track and
explore the wilds held within this "urban wild."
Bussey Brook Meadow is a particularly complex
social site as it sits somewhere between a man¬
aged botanical garden on the one hand, and an
interstitial zone where commuters, neighbor¬
hood residents, and tourists from all over the

world mix with transient populations who are
often staying for extended periods of time or
returning each year with the milder seasons to
regular encampments.

A central concern of the work is to commu¬
nicate a variety of perspectives on place as a
means of critically engaging contested mean¬
ings, uses, and inhabitations of public sites.
Voices in the work range from those of experts
who tell us what to look for, what to hear, and
what to value in this richly vegetated environ¬
ment, to those that offer meandering impres¬
sions, personal histories, random thoughts, and
idiosyncratic perceptions of a place. Animals,
wind, weather, and water are equal voices in
this mix. Through this blending of voices, the
work draws upon the cosmopolitan botany of
the site as a central metaphor and a means for

JON HETMAN

22 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

Peter Del Tredici and Teri Rueb recording conversations
in Bussey Brook Meadow.

asking probing questions about ownership,
access, interpretation, and use of public parks
and green spaces.

Among the discoveries that stood out for
the authors in developing the work and seeing
its reception across various audiences was an
awareness of the intensity of the experience as
visitors were often torn between giving them¬
selves over to immersion in the layered sounds
emanating from their headphones and relating
them to the complex sights, sounds, and social
activities of the site itself. Frequently groups
of people would walk together, taking their
headphones off at regular intervals to exchange
impressions and ask each other if they heard the
same thing, and if it was "in the headphones" or
"real." A surprising number of people seemed
willing to bushwhack through the Japanese

lcnotweed and stinging nettles to find a sound
buried deep in the meadow or high on top of an
embankment.

A challenge of sorts, Other Order could be
approached as a kind of game where one tries
to cover as much territory as possible, to visit
each sound in its unique niche, or identify each
of the plants and landmarks referenced in the
sound composition and included in the project
index. Related apps, including "Alpine Garden
Misguide" by Jill Didur (2015), have success¬
fully used the game structure of an exotic plant
hunt to engage critical perspectives on the colo¬
nial histories of botanical gardens and specimen
collecting. As an educational and informative
piece, the authors were happy to discover that
Other Order was equally appealing to adults
and children, though it is less accessible to
audiences with physical disabilities that
would limit their movement or ability to lis¬
ten through headphones. Finally, we found that
visitors' appreciation of the botany of urban
wilds was enhanced through the experience,
but especially in the context of understanding
plants in relation to their social entanglements
with humans.

At its core, the Other Order sound walk is
an effort to combine scientific and cultural
perspectives on urban ecology in a format that
can reach broader publics in non-traditional
settings. Bussey Brook Meadow is often mis¬
taken for a derelict parcel of public land—a
park of sorts, but with an uneasy appearance
when compared to the manicured landscape of
the Arboretum grounds or with sections of the
Olmsted-designed Emerald Necklace of Boston
parks that bear the stamp of formal landscape
design. As a public artwork, Other Order is
aimed at drawing visitors into the site through
a sonic overlay that reveals another kind
of beauty—and another perspective on ecolog¬
ical environments that blend the biological,
technological, cultural, and social elements.
The contrasting aesthetics of urban wilds and
more formal parks is brought into focus, reveal¬
ing a historical moment when each has under¬
gone dramatic shifts in purpose, perception,
and public use.

Other Order: Sound Walk 23

fowl JirJfs gate

Asti ton

ARNOLD

/'iRbi'crruM

Via inmate

(jj W.W

b?/y >1—T iri

STATION 1

south

strttt

gut*

A map of Bussey Brook Meadow showing the locations of the fifty-five sound regions that make up Other Order.

Herb Nolan, a longtime Arboretum supporter, listening to Other Order.

TERI RUEB

NANCY ROSE

24 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

Other Order is available for free download from the App Store and Google Play Store.
Visitors are encouraged to download the app in advance of their visit and wear head¬
phones in order to appreciate the stereo, binaural recordings as they blend with the
actual environmental sounds of the meadow. The combination of stereo, binaural record¬
ings with the ambient sounds that surround visitors as they move through the meadow
creates an uncanny sense of being simultaneously "here and now" and "there and then"
in the site, further emphasizing the complex temporalities of the meadow, and complicat¬
ing the emplacement of visitors as situated actors within its operations.

Urban vegetation provides autumn color along Blackwell Path in Bussey Brook Meadow.

Other Order: Sound Walk 25

Acknowledgements

The final work included over two and a half hours of
edited sound recordings that were broken into roughly
thirty-six different sound regions spread throughout the
25-acre site. Spoken elements included excerpts from
conversations with the following Arnold Arboretum staff
members: Ned Friedman, Maggie Redfern, Jim Papargiris,
Nima Samimi, Susan Hardy Brown, Ailene Ettinger, and
Bob Mayer (Arboretum volunteer). From outside the
Arboretum the following people were recorded: John Lee,
Eugenie Beal, Nina Brown, Lucy Hutyra, Steve Decina,
Matthew Battles, Kyle Parry, Anya Yermakova, and
Richard, a longtime resident of Bussey Brook Meadow.
And finally, thanks to Ernst Karel for help with sound
recording. Funding for the development of Other Order
was provided by a generous donation from Janine Luke in
memory of Melvin Seiden.

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Greening 13: 205-212.

Peter Del Tredici is the former Director of Living
Collections at the Arnold Arboretum and now a Retired
Senior Research Scientist. Teri Rueb is a Professor in the
Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo
— State University of New York.

Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds, and the
Ornamentation of Public Parks

Phyllis Andersen

HOT HOUSE AMO FLOWER BED? IN FClflE ET PARK, $Pfl|N£FICLI}.

The geometric patterns and colorful flower and foliage plants typical of bedding out
are seen in this postcard depicting part of Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts.

M unicipal parks are the
last territory of the
decorative gardening
tradition of bedding out: the
practice of using brightly col¬
ored, low-growing flowering
and foliage plants in ornamen¬
tal patterns in beds, mounds,
pyramids, floral clocks, com¬
memorative plaques, and three-
dimensional figures. Arranging
plants to create decorative pat¬
terns is a convention of garden
design from the eighteenth cen¬
tury, found from the parterres
de broderie of Versailles to the
boxwood fleur de lis of George
Washington's Mount Vernon
garden. But in the nineteenth
century, perhaps as a reaction
to the long reign of the picturesque model,
which favored naturalistic design, bedding out
jumped the walls of the aristocratic garden and
found a home in public parks on both sides of
the Atlantic. The bedding out practice elicited
the admiration of the public and the sustained
scorn of many landscape critics.

A variety of names have been assigned to
this practice: carpet bedding, mosaiculture,
pattern gardening, "gardenesque." It is also
called Victorian gardening, an homage to its
popularity in nineteenth century Great Brit¬
ain, where advances in greenhouse technology
and the introduction of tropical and subtropical
species created a new way of displaying flow¬
ering plants. Bedding out, now the shorthand
term, occupies a territory between art and
craft. It is part of the history of ornamenta¬
tion as well as the history of gardening. Both
embrace the power of serial imagery and the
creator's virtuosity in creating original forms.
Bedding out evoked heated discussion on the
definition of taste: what is it, who has it, and

who doesn't. Bedding out of brightly colored
flowers in artificial situations became part of
the larger discussion in which popular taste
was defined as bad taste, the highbrow/lowbrow
remnants of that discussion still being argued
in gardening circles today. Bedding out was the
territory of gardeners rather than landscape
designers, anonymous individuals whose skills
were admired but whose names are unknown.
The great bedding out schemes in public parks
in American cities were associated with civic
pride, with a populist enthusiasm for both the
intricate floral displays and the intensive labor
that was needed to both create and maintain
them. Horticulture, as well as city beautifica¬
tion, is inherently competitive. Supported by
park commissioners and local officials, munici¬
pal gardeners were encouraged to expand their
floral displays to accommodate the tastes of the
people—"to show you care."

Bedding out is temporary and labor inten¬
sive—a sink-hole of energy consumption. It is
profoundly artificial, appealing most directly to

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds 27

CARPET BEDDING.

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A color plate in Robert Thompson's The Gardener’s Assistant (1878 edition) shows
carpet bedding patterns complete with lists of plants to be used.

COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

NANCY ROSE

28 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 2017

Brightly colored flowers and foliage along with exotic tropical
plants are still a common feature in city parks, such as this
streetside planting in Victoria, British Columbia.

the senses rather than to the power of reflection
or solitary contemplation. It is not a simula¬
crum of nature. It is antithetical to a prevail¬
ing notion of public parks based on a pastoral
model, famously invoked in Frederick Law
Olmsted and Calvin Vaux's design for Central
Park in New York. It did not claim to bring the
country into the city. The practice of bedding
out produced no theoretical treatises, no literary
or painterly allusions. It tapped into the public's
love of spectacle and novelty, its appreciation
of skilled labor well executed. Bedding out cap¬
tured the lure of the exotic by using newly dis¬
covered plants from South America and Africa,
tropical and subtropical natives brought into a
temperate climate. It had the repetitive power
of a military parade, an analogy not lost on the
British garden writer William Robinson, who
observed "Gardeners were not so much plant
stewards as drill sergeants."

Critics of this type of floral display reached
new heights of rhetorical disdain. William

Robinson went on to call bedding out "pastry¬
making." The popular and widely published
British writer Shirley Hibberd called ribbon
beds (long meandering beds with alternating
bands of floral color) "eels in misery." Land¬
scape architect Frederick Law Olmsted's antip¬
athy to floral display is well known. Writing
in 1892 to his associates in Brookline, Massa¬
chusetts, about detached floral beds in London
parks, he observed "I have hardly seen anything
yet of that kind that did not seem to me child¬
ish, vulgar, flaunting, or impertinent, out of
place and discordant with good general effect."
In an article in a 1908 issue of Ladies Home
Journal, the writer blamed municipal garden¬
ers for creating "veritable pimples on the face
of Nature."

The Roots of Bedding Out

The evolutionary process that advanced the
nineteenth century version of bedding out is
traced to the writings of landscape designer
and writer John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843)
who, in the 1830s, introduced the word "gar-
denesque" to the vocabulary of landscape. He
encouraged his readers to think beyond the pic¬
turesque to what he defined as "scientific," col¬
lecting plants from all over the world to test
their adaptability to different climates and grow¬
ing conditions (a close definition of arboreta and
botanical gardens). The goal was not to imitate
nature. While Loudon valued artifice and offered
bedding designs in many of his publications,
he did warn against the extremes of bedding out,
the distorted beds and clashing colors.

Loudon also recognized the limited educa¬
tional opportunities for gardeners whose only
option was a long apprenticeship that isolated
them from new plant introductions and plant¬
ing techniques. Loudon published Self Instruc¬
tion for Gardeners in 1815, the first of several
publications in the nineteenth century that
attempted to codify best practices for both
estate gardening and later municipal park man¬
agement. With printing costs dropping, a num¬
ber of magazines were founded that addressed
professional gardeners, giving them access to
information on new bedding plants and propaga¬
tion techniques. They came to serve as pattern
books for floral designs—fashion magazines for

MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds 29

With their bright colors and exotic, pouchlike flowers,
South American calceolarias fit perfectly in the bed¬
ding out trend. Illustration of Calceolaria pisacomen-
sis from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Volume 93, plate
5677), 1867.

ZONAL GERANIUM

1, {PELARGONIUM ZOffALE) 1 & 1- HYBRIDS
*, 1 * Njit, si:f*

PL. A4

Illustration by D. Bois of zonal pelargonium ( Pelargo¬
nium zonale ) and several hybrid selections (note the
hybrids' larger petals and denser flower heads) in Edward
Step's Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse (Vol¬
ume 1, Plate 54), 1896-1897.

aspiring enthusiasts. Florists’ Journal, Garden¬
ers’ Chronicle, and Gardener’s Magazine were
available in Great Britain, and Magazine of Hor¬
ticulture, Gardener’s Monthly, Genesee Farmer
and Gardener’s Journal informed gardeners in
the United States.

If principles of romanticism and aesthetic
theory provided a structure for the pasto¬
ral park, advances in science and technology
stimulated the expansion and complexity of
bedding out. To underscore the artificiality of
the bedding out system, the plant species used
were often imports from South America, Africa,
and the Mediterranean region. The botanical
bounty collected by plant explorers, perhaps
more appropriately called flower hunters, was

given to botanic gardens and to commercial
nurseries where species were hybridized to
create showy selections with features such as
compact growth, larger flowers, more brilliant
colors, and variegated foliage. Plants were as
much a product of the nursery trade as they
were of plant collecting. Many global imports—
begonias, calceolaria, echeveria, caladiums,
cannas, coleus, and more—were commonly
used in bedding out configurations. Sedums,
sempervivums, and other succulents also had
a brief period of popularity. Palms, yuccas, cro¬
tons, monkey puzzle trees, and banana plants,
all valued for their exotic forms, were brought
in to serve as backdrops for theatrical staging
and to punctuate the flatness of planting beds.

BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY

COURTESY OF NIAGARA PARKS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Floral Clocks

The association of plants with the passing of time has a very long history. Carl
Linnaeus developed an idea for a flower clock in his 1751 treatise Philosophia
Botanica. Based on his field observations, he proposed a Horologium Florae, a
clock using forty-six flowers which opened and closed as the day progressed. But
this more literal interpretation of flowers and time evolved into decorative objects:
flower plantings with an imbedded clock mechanism. In the early twentieth
century the floral clock was reinvented as a decorative object for parks, tourist
sites, and international expositions.

|4f

A 1*

1,1

First created in 1903, the floral clock in Edinburgh, Scotland, is still a popular attraction
(postcard from the early twentieth century).

The design for the 40-foot-wide floral clock in Ontario's Niagara Parks is changed yearly
and requires 15,000 to 20,000 bedding plants.

Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds 31

No plant group was more subject to manipu¬
lation than the pelargoniums ( Pelargonium ),
which are often called (erroneously, British
gardeners would say) geraniums in the United
States. Native to South Africa, pelargoniums
are still ubiquitous garden plants: drought resis¬
tant, blooming throughout the summer, a plant
that has become a symbol of cheerful welcome
in window boxes and entry planters. Zonal pel¬
argoniums, introduced in the late eighteenth
century, are characterized by alternating bands
of dark and light green on their leaves and
large, brilliantly colored flower heads. Contin¬
ual experimentation with hybridizing various
Pelargonium species resulted in hundreds of
upright, prostrate, variegated, and ivy-leafed
cultivars. Instantly recognizable by the general
public, the pelargonium is still among the most
popular bedding plants in municipal parks.

Growing and Designing With
Bedding Plants

By the mid-nineteenth century, glass houses,
once a luxury of estate gardens, became acces¬
sible to municipalities and commercial nurs¬
eries. In Great Britain, the repeal of the glass
tax in 1845 dropped the cost of the material
and fueled experiments with mass production.
In both the United States and Great Britain
advances in cast and wrought iron construction
developed for the glass pavilions of the Crystal
Palaces in London, Syndenham, and New York
City were adapted to smaller glass structures.
Magazines for gardeners offered advice on ven¬
tilation, humidity control, and heating alterna¬
tives. Commercial nurseries created acres of
glass houses for the mass production of bedding
plants. Nurseryman and author Peter Hender¬
son (1822-1890) started with a small shop in
New York City selling seeds. By the 1850s, his
business skills and ability to predict the horti¬
cultural market allowed him to build extensive
greenhouses near Jersey City, New Jersey. By his
books, aimed at both the professional gardener
and the amateur, and by his color catalogs, he
developed a market for bedding plants, includ¬
ing his own introductions, most notably zinnias
from Mexico and his hybrid 'Giant Butterfly'
pansy. Henderson visited England in 1885 and
noted that the carpet style beds "were interest¬

ing to the people in a way that no mixed border
could ever be." He also noted the conspicuous
lack of ornament in Central Park and Prospect
Park, an omission he attributed to "a lack of
taste in the management of our public parks."

Color theory, the investigation of human
color perception, guided gardeners in the design
of beds and created the distinctive intense
impact of color combinations, either gaudy or
brilliant according to your taste. One of the
first explorations of color perception was a 1743
treatise by the French naturalist, Georges-Louis
Buffon, followed by Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe's Theory of Colours published in Eng¬
lish in 1840. But it was the work of Michel
Eugene Chevreul (1786-1889), a French chem¬
ist employed by the Gobelins Tapestry Works
whose work on color, first directed to the textile
industry but also to horticulturists, gardeners,
and artists, that proved the most influential.

The 1900 autumn catalog from Peter Henderson and Company
offered tulip bulbs for bedding out patterns.

BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY

BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE

32 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

Michel Eugene Chevreul's color circle was used by horticultur¬
ists and garden designers when creating bedding out displays.

His book, The Principles of Harmony and Con¬
trast of Colours and Their Applications to the
Arts, published in English in 1854, enhanced
the gardener's understanding of how colors are
modified when placed next to each other, in
contrast to how the color is perceived when
observed alone. Chevreul's Color Circle, a cir¬
cular chart organizing complimentary colors
opposite each other, was a reference guide for
gardeners well into the twentieth century.

Bedding Out in City Parks

The city of Chicago engaged some of the best
landscape architects in the country to trans¬
form the flat terrain of the city into a sophis¬
ticated park system to rival those of Eastern
cities. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert
Vaux, H. W. S. Cleveland, and later Jens Jensen,
with his passionate commitment to the prai¬
rie landscape, all left their imprint on the city.

But parallel to their planning work, the city
encouraged ornamental planting in the form
of elaborate bedding out schemes. In the 1890s
Chicago built a large glass conservatory in Lin¬
coln Park for the display of tropical plants, with
extensive plant propagation areas for bedding
plants. Earlier Chicago's South Park Commis¬
sioners supported ornamental plant attractions
in Washington Park that included a twenty-
foot-diameter globe, a sundial of echeverias,
and wire structures covered in flowering plants
depicting President Grant and Uncle Sam—
what one writer called "floral masterpieces."
In 1872 a Board of Botanical Directors was
formed under the direction of H. H. Babcock, a
prominent botanist and member of the Chicago
Academy of Science. In a move antithetical to
Olmsted, Cleveland, and Jensen's native plant
perspective, the Board sent requests to botani¬
cal gardens and noted horticulturists all over
the world and received seeds and bulbs from
the United States, Europe, India, and Austra¬
lia. Many were eventually planted out in the
Chicago parks. In 1891, the journalist Charles
Pullen wrote extensively on the development of
Chicago's park and parkway system, especially
of Olmsted's plans. He carefully threaded his
way through the controversies of natural and
artificial but commented that "it is hoped that
with the gradual evolution of the grander and
simpler elements of the park landscape these
features of curiosity will be given to more
appropriate places, less antagonistic to the plea¬
sures obtained from natural scenery."

Boston's Public Garden, still admired for its
commitment to the bedding out tradition, rests
on a set of artificial conditions that eliminated
any call for a rural landscape model. The Gar¬
den was created out of brackish tidal flats as
part of the landfill project that created Boston's
Back Bay. The supporters of the Public Garden
were men with strong horticultural interests
as well as a dedication to civic improvement.
William Doogue, the Irish-born horticultur¬
ist hired to bring architect George Meacham's
original 1859 plan for the Public Garden to life,
developed flower adornments for the Garden of
great public appeal. He maintained a municipal
greenhouse that produced thousands of plants
for the extensive beds he created throughout the

Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds 33

A park with bedding out displays along Drexel Boulevard in Chicago.

2800—Waih!njjt0n Park Chicago.

A stereo view card with images of large floral sculptures in Chicago's Washington Park.

CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

34 Arnoldia 75/1 • August 201 7

621:—Panorama, PuUlie Cardan, Boston, Mass.

Early twentieth century postcard shows bedding out in Boston Public Garden.

A Boston Public Garden floral carpet bed depicting the seal of the American
Legion in 1930.

Garden. A newspaper article in 1888
described the summer scene: acan¬
thus, pyrethrum, beds of silverleaf
geraniums and pansies, edged with
lobelias and alternanthera. In the
midst of this blaze of color, Doogue
created a cactus bed, an exotic sight
to Garden visitors. In one of the more
memorable horticultural disputes of
the nineteenth century, played out
in the pages of Garden and Forest
magazine in the 1880s, Mr. Doogue's
plantings and their accompanying
popularity with the public were con¬
demned by both signed and unsigned
articles in the publication. Doogue
and the supporters of his distinctive
floral displays were pitted against an
impenetrable fortress of opposition
from the likes of landscape writer and
architectural critic Mariana Griswold
Van Rensselaer, Arnold Arboretum
director Charles Sprague Sargent,
and Frederick Law Olmsted. Doogue
scoffed at their limited views, their
isolated lives, and, most importantly,
their lack of empathy for the taste of
the general public.

The bedding out tradition is seen
as a historical remnant of the Vic¬
torian era, outside the canon of
landscape design history: at best,
charming and whimsical, at worst
an affront to good taste and the sanc¬
tity of a natural landscape. It is seen
as a vernacular tradition perpetuated
by gardeners rather than professional
landscape designers or landscape architects. In
a postscript to the bedding out tradition, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art sponsored an art
installation in 2012 by the minimalist artist
Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). The work was based
on a proposal LeWitt made to the Fairmount
Park Art Association in 1981. The resurrected
Lines in Four Directions in Flowers was cre¬
ated from LeWitt's initial instructions: "To
plant flowers of four different colors (white,
yellow, red, and blue) in four equal rectangu¬
lar areas, in rows of four directions (vertical,
horizontal, diagonal right and left) framed by

evergreen hedges of about 2-foot height ... The
type of plant, height, distance apart, and plant¬
ing details would be under the direction of a
botanist and the maintenance by a gardener."
It was a short term work, installed in 2012 and
dismantled in 2015. It, perhaps unintentionally,
reiterated the original power of bedding out: the
appeal of geometric forms, the intervention of
blocks of color in a green field, the fascination
with observable change.

Today, we still identify public parks with
the core of civic life. The binary of ornamental
versus pastoral is still rightfully argued, but,

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Floral Clocks, Carpet Beds 35

Artist Sol LeWitt's work, Lines in Four Directions in Flowers , was installed in front of the Philadelphia Museum
of Art from 2012 to 2015.

more challenging, is the question: How do you
translate planting techniques of mass appeal
with contemporary values of sustainability
and the still unspoken ideas of taste? In 1856,
horticulturist and landscape designer Andrew
Jackson Downing argued that the public park
could modify artificial barriers of class, wealth,
and fashion—a notion that is still valid and
still contentious. Sophisticated observers may
still feel a degree of discomfort at the use of
bedding plants to spell out town names, patri¬
otic emblems, comic characters—the definition
of kitsch being "the adaptation of one medium
to another." But in the words of the art histo¬
rian Tomas Kullca, "If works of art were judged
democratically—that is, according to how
many people like them—kitsch would easily
defeat all of its competitors."

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