Arnoldia Archive

[{"type":"arnoldia","title":"2022-79-4","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25794","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15e8527.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","arnoldia_cover":true},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Asian Longhorned Beetle Scouting","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25795","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15e856b.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"12","authors":"Lawlor, Rachel","start_page":"64","end_page":"64","article_content":"Every winter, teams of horticulture staff members scout a random assortment of our susceptible trees for the presence of the invasive Asian long-horned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis). Maples, elms, willows, horse chestnuts, and poplars are some of their preferred hosts. We record the DBH of the tree, note the start time, and scan the trunk and each branch of a selected tree with binoculars, which is much easier when the trees are lacking foliage. We're looking for any egg-laying sites chewed into the bark by the females, or exit holes from emerging adults after tunneling and feeding on the tree's sapwood and heartwood. A single tree, tall enough and with a spreading crown, could take a group of three over an hour to scout, or a cumulative three work hours to check that specimen. Luckily, ALB has not been detected in the Arboretum. For the health and safety of our collections, we will continue to be vigilant in our yearly scour of the landscape for this destructive pest."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Grafting the Past to the Future","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25796","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15e896e.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"11","authors":"Kapplow, Heather","start_page":"61","end_page":"63","article_content":"Though raised on a Pennsylvanian farm, Syracuse-based artist Sam Van Aken was unfamiliar with fruit cultivation when he started working with trees as an art medium. Van Aken's most recent artwork, Open Orchard, is a distributed, site-specific fruit orchard, part of which exists as a long-term art installation on public parkland on Governor's Island in New York City, and the rest of which is scattered around the boroughs of the city, echoing the planting patterns of generations of immigrants that brought plants and seeds with them to New York from their respective homelands. The part of the orchard that is on the island is in an idyllic location, cascading down a gentle slope overlooking New York Harbor. Getting it there was a long journey, beginning in 2014. \\\"I had been shopping around for a place where I could plant one hundred trees in New York City, and people would kind of pat me on the back and say 'good luck!'\\\" Van Aken's lucky break came when he was introduced to curator Shane Brennan, who had just become Director of Public Programs on Governors Island. Brennan responded to the idea immediately, but it was such a drawn-out process that Brennan moved on before Open Orchard was realized. Even finding the right location on the island took several years. The final location was determined by topography. \\\"Fruit trees like to be on raised hills,\\\" Van Aken explains, \\\"so the cold can run off.\\\" But the location ends up also being very resonant with Open Orchard's theme of fruit cultivation as a portrait of the people who have migrated to and lived in New York. \\\"I still pinch myself, because I can't believe that the orchard is there,\\\" he admits. \\\"There's a view when you come from the back part over the hill, and you look down the road, and you see Ellis Island, and the whole project sort of comes together.\\\" The 102 trees on the island will be matched by a roughly equal number planted around New York City, through a collaboration with NYC Parks' community gardening program, Green Thumb (some of these are already in place, others are in a nursery on Governor's Island, in various stages of grafting). Each tree will bear four or five varieties of fruit (apple or stone fruit), all of which are native to or have been historically cultivated in New York. \\\"There are over 100 varieties [of fruit] that originated in New York,\\\" explains Van Aken. Only about two dozen of these are still actively (i.e., commercially) cultivated, but Van Aken was amazed by how much detail he could find about what has grown in New York over the past three hundred years. \\\"I tracked varieties down to intersections, street corners, and farms. And then I took that historical map of New York City, laid it on top of a current one, and realized that I could place these varieties back into the places they originated from. We're currently in the process of doing that. I think today, we've distributed about fifty trees.\\\" Van Aken worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), accessing their germplasm collection to work with varietals that have ceased to exist outside of their archive. \\\"With a fruit tree, you can't [just] store it as a seed, right? So they keep a living sample going. For apples, they store samples in Geneva, New York. For pears, in Corvallis, Oregon. For stone fruit I go to [University of California,] Davis. They'll keep a living example in each of these locations, but then they'll also maintain it as tissue culture.\\\" Trees matched with community gardens get paired with local caretakers, and Van Aken also offers comprehensive grafting workshops and tree-care training materials through Green Thumb as part of the long-term plan for maintaining the offisland part of the orchard. \\\"It's been amazing, distributing trees to people. If you're ever feeling low, just give somebody a tree. I get pictures from the community gardens with five people holding a potted tree and they're just beaming and I'm like, 'I'm doing something right,' you know?\\\" The fruit in Open Orchard spans from pre-contact (pre-colonial) times until about WWII, and includes many fruit varieties that hadn't been accessible for 150-200 years. The newest fruit variety in the orchard is the Stanley plum, developed in Geneva, New York in 1938. \\\"The oldest European variety\\\" says Van Aken, \\\"is the Damson plum. That's believed to date back to Damascus [11 BCE] and was brought into Europe, where it became naturalized and then brought here.\u2026 But, the beach plum, that's been in New York for 10,000 years!\\\" In fact, it may have always been on Governor's Island. \\\"Verrazano [1524] and Hudson [1609] both mentioned it when they sailed into New York Harbor. It's kind of crazy to think that the shoreline of New York was completely lined with these plums that would blossom in white in the spring. It's a far cry from what it [the shoreline] is now.\\\" \\\"When I was looking at all those [tree] placements for community gardens\\\" Van Aken shares, \\\"I realized I had to work with the Lenape Center on this.\\\" Van Aken cold-emailed The Lenape Center, and they enthusiastically invited him into a few of their own projects\u2014for example, an exhibition that the group curated for the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which includes a teaching garden composed of \\\"indigenous fruit trees\\\" cultivated by the Lenape in Manhattan, and meant to build \\\"continuity between ecological past and present.\\\" The Lenape Center helped Van Aken arrange for all of the native tree varieties to be planted in Prospect Park (including beach plum, American plum, black cherry, chokecherry, and American persimmon), and also has a future collaboration with Van Aken in the works. Open Orchard grew out of Van Aken's earlier fruit-tree-related work, Tree of 40 Fruit, where the artist pushed the orchardist's practice of grafting to its outer limits. Bearing a title that rings equally biblical and futuristic, Van Aken's Tree of 40 Fruit is a living artwork, with editions spread throughout the world, each producing blossoms and then fruit of 40 different stone fruit varieties. His motivations for constructing Tree of 40 Fruit were among the most traditional artistic drives: he wanted to create something impossible and unexpected\u2014to surprise and delight people when a normal looking tree in their fall\/winter environments burst into multi-colored flower in the spring and then a fruit basket in the summer. But as is often the case in art making, the process became at least as interesting a project as the outcome. In this case, the process brought up big questions about the sustainability of how fruit and knowledge about fruit gets shared. Van Aken's efforts to realize Tree of 40 Fruit raised the specter of varietal extinction. There were once thousands of varieties of stone fruit in the United States, but because of fruit industrialization, it was difficult for him to find and graft scions from enough different varieties for Tree of 40 Fruit to live up to its name. The work thus became an odyssey of archival research and relationship building, and ultimately transformed into a preservation project: purchasers of Tree of 40 Fruit don't just own a unique edition of an artwork. They own an entire cultural history\u2014a living collection of beloved fruits brought from one place to another via immigration\u2014along with some responsibility for keeping rare varieties of peaches, plums, apricots, and cherries present in the future. When searching for fruit varieties for Tree of 40 Fruit, Van Aken found himself welcomed at agricultural research stations and the USDA, but also felt keenly aware that his access to these resources was due to his institutional affiliation (Van Aken is an Associate Professor in the School of Art at Syracuse University). Open Orchard was conceived to make these rare varieties available again for everyone to pick, taste, and modify. He considered a title for the project based on the notion of orchards as commons in Medieval Europe. Then he learned about a philosophy in the Lenape culture \\\"Where essentially, a tree couldn't be owned. You could only come to be gifted the fruit off of the tree.\\\" Open Orchard, with its echo of open-source culture where nothing is proprietary, and anyone can sample and rearrange, clicked into place. \\\"Culture evolves out of agriculture,\\\" Aken says, \\\"and this idea of sharing is an essential component of that, whether that's seeds or knowledge or technology.\\\" The orchard on Governor's Island has been purposely planted with alternating rows\u2014apples every other row, stone fruit in between\u2014so that there can be a (free to the public) harvest within a few years, and so that the apples will be at their peak when the stone fruit trees age out of productivity. But if no one \\\"owns\\\" the trees, who looks out for them? With global warming in mind, irrigation has been installed in Open Orchard, even though orchards don't typically have irrigation. Being on a hill puts the orchard above the flood plains, and the orchard is planted with drought-resistant fescue grass. Van Aken and the island's horticultural team have been working closely on the project since he began grafting the trees for it in their greenhouse 2018, and this close relationship is contractually obligated for at least five years. Van Aken also sees his workshops and community garden tree placements through Green Thumb as part of the orchard's future-proofing process. \\\"Experiencing the fruit is one way of understanding it\u2014aesthetically. But then empowering people through teaching is another way.\\\" Van Aken also describes people becoming excited by reconnecting to their personal histories through caring for their local trees as a strategy for keeping fruit knowledge alive for another generation. Grafting, too, he sees as extremely motivating, almost a mystical experience\u2014a fall graft blossoming in spring still thrills him even though he does about 3,000 grafts a year. \\\"I can talk to people about grafting. I can show them how to graft. I can completely give away all the knowledge. But when that graft takes for that person and they have a thing that they grafted, all of a sudden the mysticism of it comes flooding in.\\\" When meandering among Open Orchard's young trees, imagining them coming into maturity as the view and landscape around them alters due to planned development and unplanned impacts of climate change, it feels as though Van Aken is also grafting in some deeper way\u2014binding forgotten knowledge and biodiversity in place now, to posit a surprising alternative future, branching off from the one we are barreling toward now."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"City Trees, City Seasons","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25797","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060a326.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"10","authors":"Walker, Kevin","start_page":"58","end_page":"60","article_content":"It is a curious fact that from any of the green public benches found throughout the city of Boston, you can see a tree. And there is no starker contrast to be found in the polarized city of Boston than between the trees of summer and the trees of winter. Throughout Boston's parks and streets, but particularly down along the granite banks of the Charles River, the dreaming trees of summer are as different from the hibernating trees of winter as sunlight is from moon light. The bench where I sit is the bench where I sleep: a green hardwood bench along the Charles River watershed in Boston. My green bench serves double duty as a place to sit and observe the seasons, and, come bedtime, a place for this \\\"rough sleeper\\\" to spend his homeless nights. My bench is in the vicinity of several river trees I've grown to know\u2014and by sleeping between the trees, I know it ain't skid row! I'm in good company with all the gallant elms, sycamores, lindens, mulberry, crabapple, and maple trees found lining the bicycle paths of the Emerald Necklace. And I've noticed over the years camping out that each of these species has a unique reaction to the environment. It's as if a tree could have a personality. It saddens me when a favorite tree loses a large limb due to a harsh winter wind; and I wince in the summer when a large, noble, fully-leaved tree snaps and gets knocked over on top of a footbridge, necessitating its destruction in a giant woodchipper. The occasional stump of a tree looks to me like a boarded up & closed business, reminding me that an important community asset has been lost. Branches stretching skywards towards the light with roots descending into the darkness, the tree is a sentinel of time, a living testament that cannot be recovered if the tree is destroyed by fire or simply knocked over by wind. Silent witnesses to so much Boston history, trees inspire further acts of wisdom: to plant as many trees as possible. Thus, \\\"arborist\\\" is a particularly sagacious vocation. Cheerfully greening and especially beautiful, the trees of summer stretch up towards the sun like so many cathedral spires. Tall and broad like a circus tent, sacred since time immemorial, summer trees are also companionable, providing protection against a sudden rainstorm or providing shade to enjoy a picnic, and glorious, no matter how insect ridden or gnarly they may be. Not all trees are treated equally, however. One particular tree from Asia, called The Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), is classified as a noxious invasive species. Thought to have been brought to the U.S. in 1784, It is found throughout Boston today. Ailanthus altissima is notorious for producing a chemical that retards the growth of other plants (though other trees do this, too), while its roots can damage sidewalks, sewers, and the foundations of buildings (again, this happens with many other tree species, including natives). No tree is perfect, and I can understand that they sometimes need to be removed. My regret is lessened when I realize that more trees are being planted around Boston on a regular basis. The Charles River estuary is lined with trees, their shiny brass identification tags tinkling in the wind. The early evening darkness is pierced by soft moon glow, silhouetting branches against Boston's crenellated skyline, reminding me of the strange and disturbing paintings of Gustave Dor\u00e9, or an old Civil War daguerreotype, a bleak scene in shades of gray. All trees serve some purpose in the judgement of the arborists who plant them or the neighborhoods that demand them. There are approximately 125,000 trees in the entire city of Boston, and more than 35,000 of these are street trees. Healthy public trees provide much more than shade: they filter air pollution, contribute to climate control, store rainwater and reduce erosion, connect the city to various ecosystems, and provide stable habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals. As I limp around the city of Boston, pushing my shopping cart ahead of me in my homeless pilgrimage, the days of tree watching go by slowly, while the years feel quick. I make my way along the footpaths of the Charles River basin, noting the work done on trees. Most of the round brass tags nailed to the trunks have blown off in the winter, while those which remain show various I.D. numbers. Newly planted saplings have plastic tags snapped around their branches, identifying them by species: Northern Red Oak, Swamp White Oak, Little Leaf Linden. I have come to know the trees by the shapes they take, the pattern of their leaves, and the shade or protection they offer. My favorite trees provide deep shade in the searing sun, dense foliage against the down-pouring rain, or wide trunks to offer protection against the sudden winds of a violent squall. Those three types of trees I consider my friends."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Olmsted Trees","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25798","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060a36a.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"9","authors":"Greenberg, Stanley","start_page":"50","end_page":"57","article_content":"Much of Brooklyn-based photographer Stanley Greenberg's work explores infrastructure\u2014and as a lifelong New Yorker (and onetime city parksdepartment employee), he knows that parks are urban infrastructure as vital as any aqueduct or reservoir. Greenberg's recent book, Olmsted Trees, documents his hunt for trees surviving from Olmsted's time in parks from New York and Boston to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Louisville, Kentucky. In a recent conversation, Greenberg reflected on the sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes unsettling thoughts trees provoke about time and the nature of change. His remarks here are edited and condensed. I 'm in Brooklyn's Prospect Park almost every day. A few years ago I learned that the Prospect Park Alliance had surveyed all the trees in the park, and I realized that I could use it to find the largest and, probably, the oldest trees. With some help from parks staff and an old guidebook, I learned that some of them dated from Olmsted's time. I spent a few days photographing in the park, and then in Olmsted's Chicago parks. Olmsted always said he was designing his parks for how they would look one hundred years from now, and I wondered what the hundred-year-old trees looked like. And that made we wonder if we're thinking enough about one hundred years from our own time. I also realized that Olmsted's two hundredth birthday was coming soon. I decided to try to visit every Olmsted park where he had selected all the plantings. The pandemic slowed my work, but most parks were relatively easy to get to from New York. After many rejections I found a publisher, and my editor wanted a timeline of all the parks in the book, and when the trees were planted. In many parks there were some records, or historical surveys had been done, or arborists showed me their best candidates. I also made educated guesses based on old guidebooks and relative tree sizes. The Arboretum was the only place that had detailed planting records. But as for the timeline, it was almost impossible\u2014because, when is a park finished? Even as far as Olmsted was concerned, he'd work for a few years, and there were probably ten or twenty years of planting to do. So, who's to say when a park is \\\"done\\\"? This is the first project I've done that's been just about \\\"nature.\\\" Much of New York's water supply, which I've photographed extensively, is in somewhat- altered nature. And Olmsted's parks, of course, are mostly constructed (though there were places where he refused to touch what was there). I'm out in nature often, but tend not to photograph when I'm there. This project has shown me that there are things I want to photograph in that world, and has shifted my work in a new direction."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Catawba: Back to the Future of the American Wine Industry","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25799","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060a76d.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"8","authors":"Fine, Julia","start_page":"42","end_page":"49","article_content":"In the mid-nineteenth century, American wine drinkers found themselves obsessed with a particular grape, known for its fragrant, somewhat musky profile: 'Catawba', a spontaneously occurring cross between the wine grape Vitis vinifera traditionally cultivated in Europe and the Vitis labrusca grape indigenous to North America's eastern seaboard. By the 1850s, this hybrid had achieved vaunted status in the American wine industry. This was also the time when Ohio was the largest wine-producing state in the country, and approximately 19 out of every 20 vines cultivated there were 'Catawba' grapes.1 Illustrated catalogs of grapes often did not include this \\\"pionee[r] of American grapes\\\" as it was \\\"too generally known to require portrait or illustration by engraving.\\\"2 Even famed poets wrote odes to the grape; Henry Longfellow waxed that this cultivar \\\"has a taste more divine, \/ more dulcet, delicious and dream\\\" than any other, so much so that it \\\"has need of no sign, \/ No tavern-bush to proclaim it\\\" as it was so eminently popular.3 'Catawba'\u2014which American winemakers often argued distinguished their wine from European classics\u2014was thus the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance of the early American wine industry. It may seem surprising, then, that this grape fell almost entirely out of favor in the post-Prohibition era, surpassed by classic V. vinifera grapes. Today, few Americans have heard of 'Catawba'. Those who have may associate it with saccharine pink fortified and unfortified wines and grape juices. Across the United States, many sommeliers who are familiar with 'Catawba' decry it as \\\"foxy,\\\" \\\"musky,\\\" or \\\"unidimensional,\\\" and eschew wines made with it.4 Why was a widely popular grape relegated to the realm of the outmoded, even unknown? Through seed catalogues, regional publications, and viticulturists' correspondence, we can trace the rise and fall of 'Catawba' and the Ohio wine industry which is often ignored in contemporary scholarship in favor of the later emergence of the California wine industry. But, as environmental historian Richard White reminds us, \\\"in paths forged and blocked, abandoned and resumed, history shows that things need not be the way they are.\\\"5 Once shunned by the American palate, the 'Catawba' has the potential to contribute to the reinvigoration of the American wine industry in the face of the climate crisis. Towards a Botanical History of 'Catawba' First, though, what exactly is 'Catawba'? The history of the grape, much like its parentage, is murky. There are many stories regarding how settler winemakers came across the grape in the nascent United States. Some historians (perhaps apocryphally) suggest that one \\\"General Davy\\\" living on the Catawba River brought the cultivar to Washington DC and distributed it among friends in that area, associating the cultivar with the river (which was itself named after the Catawba or Iswa Indigenous people).6 While the veracity of this story is unclear, we know that by 1823, 'Catawba' became more widespread, helmed by the \\\"Father of American Viticulture\\\" Major John Adlum who promoted indigenous grape varietals and attempted to create viticultural experiment stations. In an 1829 letter reprinted in the New England Farmer, and Horticultural Register, Adlum reported how he discovered a 'Catawba' vine in \\\"Mrs. Schell's garden,\\\" in Montgomery County, Maryland. While Mrs. Schell apparently had no information as to how the family acquired this vine, she informed Adlum that her husband had referred to it as the Catawba grape.7 Adlum, for his part, sent cuttings of the plant around the country, including to Ohio viticulturist Nicholas Longworth, who, as we will see, played a critical role in popularizing the cultivar. From its beginnings, viticulturists have argued over the exact botanical definition of 'Catawba', with some claiming it was entirely a variety of Vitis labrusca, some contending it was V. labrusca mixed with another indigenous American grape species, and others still arguing that it was a mix between V. labrusca and V. vinifera.8 Today, it seems as if the last hypothesis is correct, as most present-day viticulturists believe 'Catawba' is a spontaneously occurring hybrid between labrusca and vinifera that emerged after European settlers brought cuttings of V. vinifera to North America.9 In particular, Catawba is probably a hybrid between V. abrusca grapes and \\\"S\u00e9millon,\\\" a white V. vinifera grape commonly grown in the southern winemaking regions of France.10 As with other V. labrusca hybrids, winemakers prized 'Catawba' grapes for their versatility and hardiness.11 However, unlike many V. labrusca hybrids, 'Catawba' has less of a \\\"foxy\\\" or \\\"musky\\\" flavor, instead often described as a \\\"perfumey\\\" grape.12 The purple-lilac grapes, Adlum declared, were \\\"the most beautiful \u2026 to the eye, when they begin to ripen, that I know of.\\\"13 'Catawba' and the Ohio Wine Industry This \\\"most beautiful\\\" grape soon played a critical role in the expansion of the American wine industry and westward expansion more generally. Historians have long outlined the relationship between winemaking and imperialism. Erica Hannickel, in her book Empire of Vines, argues that grape culture in the nineteenth-century United States was distinctly expansionist, not only in terms of artistic and literary representations of the grapevine but also the physical space the vineyard occupied.14 As she argues, \\\"Americans believed if they could make good wine, everything else in terroir's web\\\"\u2014the \\\"totalizing ecology of the vineyard\u2014\\\" would be legitimated for their new country\u2014including its land, methods, farmers, and claim to international prestige.\\\"15 Here, Hannickel shows, \\\"grapes and the myth of terroir rooted the nation's imperial sense of itself\\\" during the period of westward expansionism. One man, Nicholas Longworth, argued in favor of Ohio's potential as an ideal location for grape-growing. Inspired by both the profit and potential improvements to the nation wrought by viticulture, Longworth began growing grapes as early as 1813 in his backyard.16 By 1823, Longworth was ready to set up a commercial endeavor. In that year, he began to cultivate his first vineyard, a four-acre plot.17 While Longworth began planting South African Cape grapes to make madeira, he soon transitioned to growing Vitis vinifera, which was already popular among American consumers. He went on to dedicate himself to V. vinifera grapes: in one letter to the editors of the Cincinnati Gazette, he writes that he worked for thirty years to cultivate V. vinifera grapes \\\"from all latitudes,\\\" to no success.18 Longworth's efforts reflect a broader preference for European wine grapes to the exclusion of wild American varieties, which stemmed from a belief in the superiority of V. vinifera. One nineteenth-century grape manual by viticulturist George Engelmann declared the European variety the \\\"only true\\\" wine grape and suggested that native American grapes were not worth cultivating due to their poor quality.19 However, Longworth soon found that Vitis vinifera was not easy to grow in the United States. In the thirty years Longworth attempted to cultivate European wine grapes, he claimed to \\\"have never found one worthy of cultivation in open air.\\\"20 This experience was not unique to Longworth but instead echoed throughout the nation. As one early American botanist claimed, despite the \\\"hundreds of thousands\\\" of European vines imported, they all failed due to the North American climate.21 Myriad horticultural manuals from the early nineteenth century confirmed that planting Vitis vinifera grapes in the United States was a herculean, if not impossible, task. winemaking and imperialism. Erica Hannickel, in her book Empire of Vines, argues that grape culture in the nineteenth-century United States was distinctly expansionist, not only in terms of artistic and literary representations of the grapevine but also the physical space the vineyard occupied.14 As she argues, \\\"Americans believed if they could make good wine, everything else in terroir's web\\\"\u2014the \\\"totalizing ecology of the vineyard\u2014\\\" would be legitimated for their new country\u2014including its land, methods, farmers, and claim to international prestige.\\\"15 Here, Hannickel shows, \\\"grapes and the myth of terroir rooted the nation's imperial sense of itself\\\" during the period of westward expansionism. One man, Nicholas Longworth, argued in favor of Ohio's potential as an ideal location for grape-growing. Inspired by both the profit and potential improvements to the nation wrought by viticulture, Longworth began growing grapes as early as 1813 in his backyard.16 By 1823, Longworth was ready to set up a commercial endeavor. In that year, he began to cultivate his first vineyard, a four-acre plot.17 While Longworth began planting South African Cape grapes to make madeira, he soon transitioned to growing Vitis vinifera, which was already popular among American consumers. He went on to dedicate himself to V. vinifera grapes: in one letter to the editors of the Cincinnati Gazette, he writes that he worked for thirty years to cultivate V. vinifera grapes \\\"from all latitudes,\\\" to no success.18 Longworth's efforts reflect a broader preference for European wine grapes to the exclusion of wild American varieties, which stemmed from a belief in the superiority of V. vinifera. One nineteenth-century grape manual by viticulturist George Engelmann declared the European variety the \\\"only true\\\" wine grape and suggested that native American grapes were not worth cultivating due to their poor quality.19 However, Longworth soon found that Vitis vinifera was not easy to grow in the United States. In the thirty years Longworth attempted to cultivate European wine grapes, he claimed to \\\"have never found one worthy of cultivation in open air.\\\"20 This experience was not unique to Longworth but instead echoed throughout the nation. As one early American botanist claimed, despite the \\\"hundreds of thousands\\\" of European vines imported, they all failed due to the North American climate.21 Myriad horticultural manuals from the early nineteenth century confirmed that planting Vitis vinifera grapes in the United States was a herculean, if not impossible, task. varieties are everywhere met with, springing up spontaneously in our woods and prairies, nature's own gift unaided by culture or by toil.\\\"25 For Prince, this underscores that the United States \\\"possess[es] not only all the advantages that France and other wine countries enjoy, from our having already introduced the choice varieties which those climes can boast, but this advantage is enhanced by the numerous varieties which our own country presents to us.\\\"26 Of the native grapes, Vitis labrusca emerged as the species of choice in Ohio for several reasons. For one, V. labrusca was indigenous to the American Northeast and could withstand dampness and cold\u2014 so much so that the grape allegedly failed when planted in the warmth of southern France.27 Further, \\\"the large size of the fruit, the vigor and productiveness of the vine, and its easy propagation from cuttings, made the varieties of this species preferable\\\" to others, according to one 1895 illustrated catalog on the American grapevine.28 These reasons transformed V. labrusca grapes into the grape of choice for early American viticulturists. As a result of a growing understanding of its qualities, 'Catawba' grape became a popular cultivar in the Northeast and Ohio regions. One 1871 article noted the widespread preference for the grape by both \\\"emigrants from the best wine districts of Europe, as well as those of American birth,\\\" based on \\\"careful analytical comparison with the best foreign wines, as well as upon taste, bouquet, &c.\\\"29 'Catawba' was also considered by some viticulturists to have a flavor superior to most indigenous grapes. In one letter to Adlum dated February 12th, 1827, a Dr. George Holcombe lauded the recipient for his role in popularizing 'Catawba': \\\"I congratulate you upon the success of your wines, particularly your Catawba, which is incomparably the best\u2014much the best sweet wine I have ever tasted.\\\"30 These reasons led viticulturists to declare that because of 'Catawba', America may someday become \\\"the vineyard of the west.\\\"31 Longworth, too, recognized the immense potential of the 'Catawba' in the Ohio context after Adlum sent him a sample in 1823. Longworth soon turned his focus to the 'Catawba' grape to establish the Cincinnati wine industry as the seat of wine production in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. He wrote of 'Catawba', \\\"We have native grapes in most of our states, could a selection be made, which would leave us so little cause to regret that foreign grapes succeed so badly with us.\\\"32 And he began to note the advantages of the native grape over imported varieties, claiming in one profile that, unlike certain European wines, 'Catawba' does not \\\"run into the acetous fermentation, or become ropy.\\\"33 The few statistics we have from the 1830s suggest that Longworth's operation was initially small. In 1833, he owned nine vineyards which produced approximately 3,000 gallons of wine.34 By the 1840s, however, his scale of operations took off as he made a champagne-like \\\"sparkling Catawba\\\" which proved immensely popular throughout the nation and was immortalized in many poems. One Charles Hackay wrote an ode to the grape, ending with \\\"Catawba! Heart warmer! \/ Soul cheerer! life-zest! \/ Catawba, the nectar \/ And balm of the West.\\\" In 1850, Longworth produced 60,000 bottles of Catawba wine; that number rose to 75,000 by 1852.35 These bottles sold very quickly: one 1852 report noted that demand was \\\"much above the ability of Mr. L. to supply.\\\"36 Catawba had rapidly become one of the most popular\u2014and most quintessential\u2014 American wines. Historical Forces of Failure But even as 'Catawba' represented a successful departure from European wine grapes, most producers continued to employ European-style viticultural techniques. The 'Catawba' grape was raised in a highly regimented, monocrop culture typical of many European vineyards.37 Longworth also chose to use trellises to support his plants in the typical Rhineland style. Present-day viticulturists suggest a potential reason for this imitation of Rhine viticulture: whereas European vineyards in flat areas do not use trellises as the vines are able to support themselves, the younger vines of the United States could not stand alone, therefore requiring trellises like the grapes growing on the steep hills of the Rhine.38 Another potential reason was that most of Longworth's vineyards were run by German immigrants, many of whom came from the Rhine.39 Their experience growing grapes in Europe may have led them to adopt similar techniques upon arrival in Cincinnati, even though the topography of Ohio differed from that of their natal lands. This attempt to transform Cincinnati into the \\\"Rhineland of the West\\\" ultimately failed, in part due to this adherence to traditional European styles of viticulture. Because the 'Catawba' grape vines were planted so close to one another and monocropped, they were particularly susceptible to airborne fungal diseases and pests not initially found in Europe. The most destructive of these diseases originally found in America was black rot, which before the 1880s had only been observed in the Eastern United States. Black rot is a fungal disease that appears in the rainy season, as \\\"water activates the release of fungal spores.\\\"40 The spores cause the grapes to shrivel, making them unusable. By 1885, black rot was reported in France, most likely from the transfer of grape vines from the United States to Europe.41 However, this particular fungal disease had not been recorded on the European continent before that time. Because of the controlled, tight planting of the 'Catawba' grape, black rot deeply impacted the Ohio wine industry. According to a 1911 article on the wine industry in Ohio, \\\"From 1850 to 1880 it was difficult to get a bunch of any size and evenly ripened where it escaped the rot.\\\"42 Despite this problem, viticulturists like Longworth continued to praise 'Catawba' as the best of America's native grapes. It is unclear why Longworth remained so loyal to 'Catawba'; perhaps it was due to the popularity of sparkling 'Catawba' nationwide or fealty to the idea of producing wine from a grape native to America. By the 1860s, the tide began to turn against 'Catawba'. Viticulturist George Husmann, at a meeting of the Missouri Horticultural Society, allegedly tried to place 'Catawba' on the \\\"rejected list\\\" of vines, given its liability to various fungal diseases.43 And, just five years later, in 1865, one outlet lamented, \\\"We regret to learn that this variety of grape is nearly destroyed the present season by rot.\u2026 Every one having the Catawba in this vicinity, tell us a sad story about them in the present season.\\\"44 Here, then, we see a paradox of the early Ohio wine industry: even as producers like Longfellow opted for indigenous grapes rather than European vinifera, they stuck to traditional European cultivation mechanisms, leading to the industry's ultimate failure. Some wine producers recognized that the problems with 'Catawba' could be solved by departing from European viticultural methods. One \\\"E.P.C,\\\" writing in a popular Cincinnati newspaper in 1858, argued that the grape was sensitive to diseases only \\\"when not sufficiently aired and ventilated.\\\" The author underlines the failure of traditional planting techniques: \\\"That our old mode of close planting, heading-down, and crowding to the earth, with a view to get branches as near the ground as possible, is not calculated to remove this difficulty, is clear to all and self-evident.\\\"45 Anecdotal evidence suggests that he was correct: an 1888 contributor to a national agricultural journal notes that when he planted 'Catawba' with more room than normal, \\\"there has been no rot in twenty-eight years.\\\"46 Such alternatives demonstrate that 'Catawba''s proto-industrialized, regimented nature catalyzed the spread of black rot. However, vineyardists in Ohio, like Longworth, continued to plant 'Catawba' in the traditional Rhine style. It is unclear why this happened when national farming magazines and local papers printed information advising against monocropping 'Catawba' grapes so close together. Further, it is clear that alternative methods of grape-growing were present in other parts of the United States. Viticulturists in the Hudson Valley, for example, often practiced \\\"mixedfruit farming\\\" by planting red currants below the grapes and raspberries, strawberries, or a vegetable in between vineyard rows, with fruit trees at the end of every third row.47 The Ohio industry could have drawn upon these alternatives. Instead, perhaps due to attachment to European agricultural traditions, the monocultural cultivation of 'Catawba' pushed the Cincinnati wine industry towards its end. By the 1860s, the wine industry in Ohio folded in part due to fungal diseases.48 Its ravages, combined with the lack of laborers in vineyards due to the Civil War, as well as the death of Nicholas Longworth, meant that by 1870, grape-growing almost wholly vanished from Ohio.49 The Ohio wine industry\u2014and the 'Catawba' grape that undergirded it\u2014folded after just 50 years. Soon after, the behemoth we know today as the California wine industry took off in Ohio's stead. Other wine regions, like the Hudson Valley, also came into vogue as the cooler climate limited fungal pressures.50 The Catawba Wine Renaissance? But even as the Ohio wine industry failed, the 'Catawba' grape never totally disappeared, but is used in \\\"Pink Cats\\\" sweet wine as well as Kosher juice and wine.51 And today, Catawba wine is making a comeback. Skeleton Root, a popular Cincinnati winery, is \\\"focused on the revitalization of the local growing region,\\\" and makes delicious and unique Catawba wines that pay homage to Longworth's legacy. 52 As Skeleton Root winemaker Kate MacDonald noted, \\\"The West Coast is very forward about wine heritage, particularly in Sonoma where they have a lot of pre-prohibition wineries.\u2026 I became obsessed once I learned about Cincinnati's wine heritage.\\\" For MacDonald, using grapes like 'Catawba' is an opportunity \\\"to produce a wine that's uniquely American and uniquely Cincinnati.\\\"53 As MacDonald points out later in the interview, 'Catawba' offers more than a fascinating window into American agricultural and environmental history: it also offers a potential path forward in light of climate change. As the climate gets increasingly hotter and more unstable, fungal disease, which thrives on moisture, has the potential to impact grapes even more than normal. \\\"Instead of spraying [fungicides] like five times a year, which we would have done 15 or 20 years ago, we are having to spray 12 or 15 times a year,\\\" explains viticulturist and historian Stephen Casscles.54 \\\"I'm the one spraying these things, [so] I just would rather not use things that are highly toxic,\\\" Casscles says. \\\"Or, if I am, I'd rather use them three times a year rather than twelve.\\\"55 It is ironic that, despite the fact that 'Catawba' initially failed due to fungal disease, many winemakers are convinced that when grown in a more spaced out, polycultured manner, the grape can offer a potential antidote to frequent spraying. \\\"The labrusca varieties are marvels of biology\\\" says Phil Plummer, a winemaker at a Montezuma Winery in New York who works with 'Catawba' grapes. As he explains, V. labrusca grapes co-evolved with many of the fungal diseases and pests native to North America. \\\"If you can develop a hybrid,\\\" he notes, \\\"there are some of the characteristics and flavor and aroma of a V. vinifera, with some of the hardiness and disease resistance of the wild grapes that grow around here.\\\" This allows Plummer to successfully propagate grapes like 'Catawba' without \\\"breaking the bank or being out in the vineyard with the sprayer weekly.\\\"56 This is necessarily an important issue in environmental justice: Justine Belle Lambright, director of external business at the Kalch\u0113 Wine Cooperative in Vermont, points out, \\\"Although the majority of workers in a vineyard are Black and brown bodies, they only make up one percent of the ownership level.\\\" Hybrid grapes, which tend to require fewer chemical inputs, thus can improve health conditions for workers of color.57 While many historians have marked the Ohio wine industry as simply a failure, the long history of 'Catawba' suggests the vitality of the early American wine industry and a path forward for winemakers today. Hybrid grapes like 'Catawba', alongside other hybrids including 'Croton', 'Empire State', and more, allowed the industry to thrive for many decades. While 'Catawba' may have initially failed in the American wine industry, from its failure\u2014as well as its successes\u2014we might find new ways forward in cultivating crops during our current climate crisis. endnotes 1. Erica Hannickel, Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 105. 2. Bush, Son, and Meissner, Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of American Grape Vines: A Grape Growers' Manual (St. Louis: R. P. Studley & Co., 1895), 99. 3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, \\\"Catawba Wine,\\\" in Birds of Passage (London: Routledge, 1878), 62. 4. Phil Plummer, Personal Interview, Phone, April 7, 2022; \\\"Catawba Grape Juice,\\\" Sweetwater Cellars, accessed June 20, 2022, https:\/\/sweetwatercellars.com\/catawbawhite. html; Julia Fine, \\\"Will Climate Change Help Hybrid Grapes Take Root in the US Wine Industry?,\\\" Civil Eats, June 16, 2022, https:\/\/civileats.com\/2022\/06\/16\/willclimate- change-help-hybrid-grapes-take-root-in-theus- wine-industry\/. 5. Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), 28. 6. John Frederic von Daacke, \\\"'Sparkling Catawba': Grape Growing and Wine Making in Cincinnati, 1800-1870\\\" (MA Dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1964), 10 7. S. Downer, \\\"Native Grapes: Catawba Grape,\\\" The New England Farmer, and Horticultural Register 8, no. 29 (February 5, 1830): 226-27. 8. J. Stephen Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley: And Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada (Coxsackie: Flint Mine Press, 2015), 70. 9. Ibid. 10. F. Huber et al., \\\"A View into American Grapevine History: Vitis Vinifera Cv. 'S\u00e9millon' Is an Ancestor of 'Catawba' and 'Concord,'\\\" VITIS - Journal of Grapevine Research 55, no. 2 (May 11, 2016): 53-56. 11. Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley, 69. 12. Ibid., 69-70. 13. Downer, \\\"Native Grapes,\\\" 227. 1 4. Hannickel, Empire of Vines, 8. 15. Ibid., 12. 16. Pinney, A History of Wine in America, 157. 17. Ibid. 18. Robert Buchanan, The Culture of the Grape, and Wine-Making (Cincinnati: Moore, Anderson & Company, 1854), 106. 19. George Engelmann, The True Grape-Vines of the United States (St. Louis: R. P. Studley & Co., 1875), 2. 20. Buchanan, The Culture of the Grape, and Wine-Making, 106. 21. Engelmann, The True Grape-Vines of the United States, 2. 22. For more on these indigenous grapes, see: J. Stephen Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley: And Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada (Coxsackie: Flint Mine Press, 2015). 23. Buchanan, The Culture of the Grape, and Wine-Making, 106. 24. William Robert Prince, A Treatise on the Vine: Embracing Its History from the Earliest Ages to the Present Day, with Descriptions of Above Two Hundred Foreign and Eighty American Varieties; Together with a Complete Dissertation on the Establishment, Culture, and Management of Vineyards \u2026 (New York: T. & J. Swords, 1830), v. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Paul Lukacs, American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 126. 28. Bush, Son, and Meissner, Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of American Grape Vines: A Grape Growers' Manual, 27. 29. W. G, \\\"The Vineyard: The Catawba as a Wine Grape.\\\" Prairie Farmer (Chicago, February 11, 1871), 43. 30. John Adlum, A Memoir on the Cultivation of the Vine in America: And the Best Mode of Making Wine, 2nd ed. (Washington: Printed for the author, by William Greer, 1828), 150. 31. H. Shaw, \\\"The Catawba Grape,\\\" Prairie Farmer (Chicago, August 1849), 251. 32. Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture: With an Abstract of the Proceedings of the County Agricultural Societies, to the General Assembly of Ohio \u2026 (Columbus: State Printers, 1860), 467. 33. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents (Washington: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848), 463. 34. Pinney, A History of Wine in America, 161. 35. Ibid. 36. \\\"Grape Culture in the United States.,\\\" Valley Farmer (1849-1864) 4, no. 9 (September 1852): 314. 37. Hannickel, Empire of Vines, 105. 38. J. Stephen Casscles, Personal Interview, Phone, December 3, 2021. 39. Dann Woellert, Cincinnati Wine: An Effervescent History (Mount Pleasant: Arcadia Publishing, 2021). 40. Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley, 30. 41. F. Lamson Scribner and Pierre Viala, Black Rot (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1888), 5. 42. Lowell Roudebush, \\\"The Catawba Grape,\\\" National Stockman and Farmer (Pittsburgh: Center for Research Libraries, 1911), 880-881. 43. \\\"HORTICULTURAL NOTES: Who Wants Pruning Well Done Father Abraham Apple Iron Hot-Bed Sashes An Inquiry The Catawba Not a First-Rate Grape Ellwanger & Barry's Catalogue Cherry Solons The Apple Tree Borer,\\\" Michigan Farmer (Lansing, February 25, 1860), 59. 44. \\\"Catawba Grapes,\\\" Colman's Rural World (St. Louis: July 1, 1865), 102. 45. E. P. C, \\\"More About the Grape,\\\" The Cincinnatus (Cincinnati: Center for Research Libraries, September 1, 1858), 412-414. 46. M. Clay, \\\"Grape-Rot,\\\" National Stockman and Farmer (Pittsburgh: Center for Research Libraries, September 13, 1888), 432-433. 47. Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley, 10. 48. von Daacke, \\\"Grape-Growing and Wine-Making in Cincinnati\\\", 210. 49. Ibid. 50. See: Casscles, Grapes of the Hudson Valley. 51. Phil Plummer, Personal Interview, Phone, April 7, 2022; Dan Berger, \\\"The Feast of Unleavened Bread: Kosher Wine: A Buyer's Guide,\\\" Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1993. 52. \\\"Skeleton Root Winery,\\\" The Skeleton Root, urban winery and event space in Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, accessed July 1, 2022, http:\/\/www.skeletonroot.com\/about. 53. Karen Day, \\\"Interview: Winemaker Kate MacDonald, Skeleton Root Winery,\\\" Cool Hunting, January 8, 2018, https:\/\/coolhunting.com\/food-drink\/skeleton-root-winery\/. 54. Casscles, Personal Interview, Phone, December 3, 2021. 55. Julia Fine, \\\"Will Climate Change Help Hybrid Grapes Take Root in the US Wine Industry?,\\\" Civil Eats, June 16, 2022, https:\/\/civileats.com\/2022\/06\/16\/willclimate- change-help-hybrid-grapes-take-root-in-theus- wine-industry\/ 56. See ibid. 57. Ibid."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Trophic Cascade","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25801","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060af28.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"7","authors":"Dungy, Camille T.; Holten, Katie","start_page":"41","end_page":"41","article_content":"After the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone and, as anticipated, their culling of deer, trees grew beyond the deer stunt of the mid century. In their up reach songbirds nested, who scattered seed for underbrush, and in that cover warrened snowshoe hare. Weasel and water shrew returned, also vole, and came soon hawk and falcon, bald eagle, kestrel, and with them hawk shadow, falcon shadow. Eagle shade and kestrel shade haunted newly-berried runnels where mule deer no longer rummaged, cautious as they were, now, of being surprised by wolves. Berries brought bear, while undergrowth and willows, growing now right down to the river, brought beavers, who dam. Muskrats came to the dams, and tadpoles. Came, too, the night song of the fathers of tadpoles. With water striders, the dark gray American dipper bobbed in fresh pools of the river, and fish stayed, and the bear, who fished, also culled deer fawns and to their kill scraps came vulture and coyote, long gone in the region until now, and their scat scattered seed, and more trees, brush, and berries grew up along the river that had run straight and so flooded but thus dammed, compelled to meander, is less prone to overrun. Don't you tell me this is not the same as my story. All this life born from one hungry animal, this whole, new landscape, the course of the river changed, I know this. I reintroduced myself to myself, this time a mother. After which, nothing was ever the same. camille t. dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, and four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade. She has edited three anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the NEA. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. katie holten is an artist and activist. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. Exhibiting internationally, she is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a Fulbright and a MacDowell Fellowship. In her book The Language of Trees (Tin House, April 2023), Holten uses a \\\"tree alphabet\\\" of her own design to interpret the work of more than fifty contributors, including Dungy's \\\"Trophic Cascade.\\\""},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Roots of Rejuvenation","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25802","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060af6c.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"6","authors":"Del Tredici, Peter","start_page":"30","end_page":"40","article_content":"I've been studying how trees can rejuvenate themselves through sprouting since 1989, when I traveled to Tianmu Mountain in eastern China to study a wild population of Ginkgo biloba and discovered that many of the ancient specimens growing there had produced secondary trunks in response to storm damage, logging, or landslides. Twelve years later, I published a review article describing the morphological mechanisms that temperate trees have developed for generating basal shoots following traumatic disturbance, from root suckers and branch layers to stump sprouts and lignotubers. Essentially, sprouting is a form of clonal growth that not only allows woody plants to recover from damage but also to circumvent the ravages of aging, especially when they are able to produce new, adventitious roots to support their new shoots. In botanical sciences, the word adventitious is traditionally used to describe a plant structure that is somehow \\\"out of place,\\\" such as a shoot produced by a root, or a root produced by a stem. Within the field of plant propagation, the term is used to describe roots produced by detached stem cuttings treated with auxins under greenhouse conditions. Intact trees growing in natural habitats also produce adventitious roots from their stems, either as a genetically programmed part of their normal development\u2014such as the free-hanging aerial roots produced by tropical trees like strangler figs and mangroves\u2014or induced by changing environmental conditions such as partial uprooting or burial with silt following flooding. Regardless of whether they are programmed or induced, adventitious roots always develop from cells that neighbor vascular tissues located just below the bark (Bellini et al. 2014). Types of Adventitious Roots My research has shown that the trunks and branches of intact temperate trees can produce five different kinds of adventitious roots, the most common of which are those that develop on low-hanging lateral branches that come in contact with soil\u2014a process known as layering. The phenomenon has been documented in many different species of trees and is particularly common among conifers, both wild and cultivated. In many old estates, trees grown as widely spaced specimens often retained their lower horizontal branches that, under the influence of age and gravity, ended up resting on the ground and taking root. Once they take root, the branches change from a horizontal to a vertical orientation and, over time, can form a ring of new trees surrounding the original parent trunk. There is an extensive literature on layering, which David Orwig of the Harvard Forest and I reviewed in 2017 in our article about this behavior in the eastern hemlock, Tsuga canadensis. Genera with species that commonly form layers include Chamaecyparis, Fagus, Picea, Platanus, and Thuja. Lateral branches high up in the tree canopy also produce adventitious roots when they are covered with moisture-trapping epiphytes. As ecologist Nalini Nadkarni has shown, such \\\"canopy roots\\\" play an important role in nutrient absorption and cycling in tropical rain forests and, as described by Dietrich Hertel, to a more limited extent in temperate forests among such genera as Acer, Alnus, Fagus, and Populus. In wetland habitats, the partially uprooted trunks of trees lying on the ground often produce adventitious roots that allow the prostrate stem to generate new vertical shoots, a phenomenon known as trunk layering. In a similar vein, the vertical trunks of trees that have been partially covered with soil, silt, or water after flooding often produce adventitious roots that allow them to adjust to the new conditions, as seen in species in the genera Alnus, Larix, Salix, Sequoia, and Taxodium. Many trees produce swollen root collars with the capacity to generate adventitious roots as well as secondary shoots following some form of traumatic disturbance. In some long-lived species, these basal swellings\u2014technically known as lignotubers\u2014are a genetically programmed part of normal seedling development. In others, the they are induced by repeated coppicing or some other type of environmental disturbance. Examples of the former include species in the genera Ginkgo, Eucalyptus, Olea, Sequoia, and Tilia while the latter include species in the genera Betula, Castanea, Morus, Platanus, and Quercus. As stated above, my interest in lignotuberproducing trees began with my studies of ginkgo trees in eastern China, where I observed that many of the ancient specimens growing on Tianmu Mountain had produced secondary stems in response to damage to their primary trunks. My research on lignotubers continued in California where the coast redwood produces massive underground lignotubers that, following logging, can generate \\\"fairy rings\\\" of new trunks that can extend the tree's lifespan for centuries (Del Tredici, 1992, 1998, 1999; Del Tredici et al. 1992). The fifth and final type of adventitious root\u2014and the focus of the remainder of this article\u2014are those that emerge from the woundwood that trees produce when their trunk is damaged and its xylem exposed. In response to this damage, trees generate undifferentiated callus tissue that gives rise to a new layer of vascular cambium that produces the woundwood that will eventually cover over the injury (Stobbe et al. 2002). During the healing process, woundwood typically grows inward from the edges of the damage and continues growing until its margins come together to seal off the exposed wood. If the wood to the interior of this callus tissue is firm, this is usually the end of the process. If the wood is rotten, however, it offers little resistance to the expanding woundwood which rolls inward on itself and continues growing inside the trunk. In response to the moist, dark conditions within the trunk, the vascular cambium of the woundwood can initiate adventitious roots that grow into its own rotten core. If the rot extends through the trunk down to the ground, these roots have the capacity to generate a new subterranean root system and develop into stout columns that can provide extra support for the hollow trunk. While many angiosperm trees have been reported to form internal trunk roots, it is a relatively uncommon phenomenon that occurs mainly in old, open-grown specimens that have experienced extensive branch loss. Internal Trunk Roots in the Literature Descriptions of internal trunk roots are rare in the botanical and horticultural literature. The earliest mentions of the phenomenon that I could locate were published in the British periodical Gardeners' Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette between 1853 and 1877. William Booth wrote the first article and reported finding them inside the trunks of sweet chestnut (Castania sativa) and Cornish elm (Ulmus minor 'Stricta'). In both cases, the roots originated from woundwood and reached down to the ground. A second article, authored by \\\"Vigilax,\\\" appeared a week later and described the same phenomenon in a specimen of Laburnum. The third reference to internal trunk roots is by Moggridge in 1870, who described four old pollarded pedunculate oaks (Quercus robur) growing in Richmond Park in Surrey, England, that had produced large internal, adventitious roots, two of which he illustrated. The final Gardeners' Chronicle article on the subject is from 1877 by W. G. S., who described a large internal trunk root in an ancient specimen of yew (Taxus baccata). In the modern scientific literature, the first reference to internal trunk roots is from 1908 by O. M. Ball, who reported their existence in an old specimen of the umbrella chinaberry, Melia azedarach 'Umbraculifera'. He called the process \\\"self-eating\\\" and described how \\\"roots descend through the decaying materials and often, upon reaching the harder, less decayed wood of the lower part of the stump, turn sharply back and grow upward even to the point of origin.\\\" He published a photograph of the specimen that shows the roots originating from woundwood. Such was the extent of the literature until 1954, when Czech botanist Jen Jenik published a short article describing internal trunk roots in European beech, Fagus sylvatica. In 1975, another Czech scientist, Jarmila Kubikov\u00e1, published an article that not only described their morphology in detail but also the amazing ecosystem inside the trunks of rotten linden trees (Tilia). To this day, Kubikov\u00e1's summary of his research remains the one of the best descriptions of internal trunk roots. Noting that the phenomenon is \\\"little known,\\\" he describes the \\\"specific ecosystem\\\" found within old trees, which includes \\\"saprophytic fungi and bacteria, together with numerous protozoa, snails and various groups of insects.\\\" Internal roots only develop when the living material of the cavity \\\"reaches the living peripheral tissues of the trunk whose meristems form the healing callus\\\" from which root primordia eventually develop. Kubikov\u00e1 described their significance in older trees as \\\"important regeneration phenomena which extend the number of absorption rootlets, improve the transport of water and nutrients, and thus enable the growth of new branches and photosynthetic apparatus. At the same time, these roots function as supplementary armature increasing the resistance of a tree to damage by wind and snow. Thus the ageing process can be retarded and the life span of the tree prolonged.\\\" Three years later, in 1978, Dickenson and Tanner reported the occurrence of roots inside the hollow trunks of several species of Jamaican trees that were cut down in an experimental logging operation. Ten of the thirty-nine cut trees were hollow and \\\"many\\\" of them contained roots. They examined four trees in detail and found that in only one case the roots were produced by the tree itself. In the other three individuals, the internal trunk roots were produced by epiphytes attached to the branches of the tree or by nearby fig trees (Ficus sp.) whose roots grew a meter and a half upwards into the rotten trunk from the mineral soil below. The authors concluded that they had found \\\"examples of a possible advantage gained from having a hollow trunk and examples of a possible disadvantage.\\\" Their observations are important because they remind us that the nutrients inside a tree's rotten core are fair game for any plant than can reach them from above or below. Remarkably, it was not until 1992 that internal trunk roots were given a proper scientific name by two Chinese scientists, Liu Qijing and Wang Zhan. Working on the windswept slopes of Changbai Mountain in northeast China\u2014which I visited in 1997\u2014they described their occurrence in numerous old specimens of Betula ermanii and called them \\\"endocaulous roots\\\" in the English abstract of their article (which was written in Chinese). The study site was between 1700 and 2000 meters elevation with abundant annual precipitation (967-1400 mm) and fog. Because of strong winds and heavy snow, many of the birch trees were growing diagonally rather than vertically as they did at lower elevations. The authors looked at a large number of specimens and determined that endocaulous roots were common in trees around two hundred years old and 20 cm DBH (diameter at breast height, 4.3 feet above ground), and that these roots were able to grow down into the soil because their trunks had been hollowed out by extensive heart-rot. In younger trees, those less than 10 cm DBH, endocaulous roots were not common, and rarely reached the soil as there was much less heart-rot than in larger trees. In the moist forests on the north side of the mountain, trees greater than three hundred years old commonly developed endocaulous roots that reached the soil\u2014up to five or more per trunk\u2014some of which were more than 15 cm across and over one hundred years old. The extreme weather on Changbai Mountain caused serious damage to the trunks and branches of older trees which, in turn, promoted the development of heart-rot on the inside and woundwood on the outside. When the woundwood came into contact with the soft, moist heart-rot, it generated adventitious roots that grew into it and eventually made their way down into the soil. Liu and Wang made the additional observation that, \\\"Such rotten trees will be blown down or broken during wind storms so that endocaulous roots become visible. However, these broken trees will not likely die. Rather, their vigor increases because of the rapid development of endocaulous roots following the disturbance\\\". Unaware of the work of Liu and Wang, Jenik proposed calling the internal trunk roots, \\\"endocormic roots\\\" in 1994 based on the work of Kubikov\u00e1 from 1975 as well as his own earlier research from 1954. Remarkably, literature and internet searches of both terms show that neither of them have had a significant impact on the botanical or horticultural literature, a situation I intend to remedy with this article. The prefix caul- comes from the Latin caulis meaning stem or stalk, and corm- from the Greek kormos meaning tree trunk. While both terms are appropriate, I prefer endocormic for three reasons: 1) it was proposed by Jenik, who published an early description of the phenomenon in 1954; 2) it is derived from the same root as the widely used term, epicormic shoots, which describes new branches that sprout from an old trunk; and 3) it suggests the use of a new term, epicormic roots, to describe those that are produced by the trunk or branches of a tree when they come in contact with the soil. Observations on Endocormic Roots I observed my first endocormic roots in 1986, in a storm-damaged red oak, Quercus rubra, at the Arnold Arboretum that was being cut up for removal. Midway through the process, a member of the grounds crew noticed an unusual structure inside the trunk and called me over to look at it. What I saw amazed me\u2014the woundwood that had initially covered an old branch scar had turned inward and continued growing inside the trunk where it formed a large mushroom-shaped structure that had proliferated adventitious roots. I have been on the lookout for endocormic roots ever since, and have observed them in various gardens and parks in a number of old trees growing as isolated specimens of various types, including: Acer platanoides, Cladrastis kentuckea, Cornus controversa, Fagus sylvatica, Ginkgo biloba, Gymnocladus dioicus, Liriodendron tulipifera, Malus sp., Morus alba, Prunus \u00a9 yedoensis, Tilia americana, and Tilia \u00a9 vulgaris. Several authors have published illustrations of endocormic roots, including Oldeman (1990) in Fagus grandifolia; Mattheck (1991) in Fagus sylvatica; Thomas (2000) in Ulmus \u00a9 hollandica; Fay (2002) in Carpinus betulus, and Bragg (2018) in Acer rubrum. Writing in Arnoldia in 2012, Tony Aiello described an unusual specimen of Prunus subhirtella 'Pendula' at the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia, in which a large endocormic root morphed into the stem of a stand-alone tree. Taken together, these reports indicate that the woundwood of most angiosperm trees has the capacity to generate endocormic roots when it comes into contact with rotten heartwood. For some unknown reason, internal trunk roots seem to be less common among gymnosperms. In New England, I have observed endocormic roots on several species of wild-growing trees, including sugar maple (Acer saccharum), red oak (Quercus rubra), and gray birch (Betula populifolia). Mostly the roots were confined to the cavities filled with rotten heartwood, but in a few cases the roots extended all the way down into the ground and developed into thick columns that helped support the hollow trunk. It seems likely that upon reaching the soil, these roots produce tension wood that causes them to contract and thicken and, over time, provide an added measure of structural support for the hollow trunk. Assuming this is the case, these column roots are probably behaving similarly to the aerial roots of Ficus that produce reaction wood that contracts when they reach the ground (Gill & Tomlinson, 1975). On August 4, 2020, I had the rare opportunity to observe multiple cases of endocormic root formation after tropical storm Isaias passed near the town of Cornwall, Connecticut where I was spending the summer, and seriously damaged many of the trees growing along the roadways. While Isaias caused lots of problems for the people who lived there\u2014power was out for ten days\u2014it offered the opportunity to observe the condition of the trees that brought the power lines down, including several old specimens of sugar maple that had been planted over a century ago for syrup production. Most of these open-grown sugar maples that lined many of the roads possessed whorls of large, upright lateral branches about three meters up on their trunks, which showed an increasing tendency to brake off in storms as they got bigger. To my surprise, many of the large laterals that broke off the old sugar maples during Isaias revealed \\\"humus\\\" inside the trunks that was permeated with endocormic roots that had originated from woundwood produced in response to earlier limb loss. My observations on the morphology of opengrown sugar maples echoed the findings of Ranius and his colleagues who described hollow formation in the trunks of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) growing in southwest Sweden in 2009. The authors found that among trees less than one hundred years old, fewer than one percent contained hollows, while fifty percent of trees between two and three hundred years old had hollows. They also observed that hollows formed at an earlier age in faster growing trees located in open pastures than in slower growing trees located in forests. The authors attributed this to the fact that most hollows were generated when large branches broke off and that such large branches formed sooner on open-grown trees than on forest-grown trees of the same age. Management of Ancient Trees There are long-standing questions in both the ecological and horticultural literature as to why so many trees have hollow cores and whether it compromises their stability. In 1976, Daniel Janzen was far ahead of his time in proposing that \\\"the rotten hollow core is often an adaptive trait, selected for as a mechanism of nitrogen and mineral trapping. A rotten core is a site of animal nests, animal defecation, and microbial metabolism that should result in a steady fertilization of the soil under the base of the tree.\\\" Graeme Ruxton in 2014 proposed an economic rather than a nutritional answer to the question, asserting \\\"the central wood of trees is allowed to decay because the costs of chemically defending it are not justified by the small reduction in structural stability that is likely to occur.\\\" To support his theory, he cited arboricultural research showing that if the radius of the inner hollow region of the trunk is less than seventy percent of the total radius, there is little cost to the tree in terms of reduced structural stability (Mattheck, 1994; Fink, 2009). Over the past twenty years, a considerable body of research has developed on the horticultural management of ancient and veteran trees. In particular, there is an extensive literature focusing on pruning techniques that promote the long-term survival of such trees while simultaneously creating habitat for the hollow-inhabiting (saproxylic) organisms that are dependent on them (Fay, 2002, Read et al., 2010, Gough et al., 2014, Fay & de Berker, 2016, Hirons & Thomas 2018, Bengtsson et al., 2021). One particularly interesting study by Pavel Sebek and his colleagues from 2013 looked at the incidence of hollows in pollard versus non-pollard white willow, Salix alba, in the Czech Republic. The authors sampled 1,126 trees across in four different areas and observed hollows in 83% of the pollarded trees and only 34% of the unpollarded trees. For trees of 50 cm DBH, they found that \\\"the probability of hollow occurrence was 75% in pollards, but only 30% in non-pollards.\\\" They concluded that actively managing trees via pollarding could speed up the creation of habitats for saproxylic organisms and contribute significantly to the conservation of rare, hollowdependent fauna. While the authors make no mention of endocormic roots, their research suggests that pollarding might well induce their development by virtue of the fact that it typically stimulates extensive woundwood formation. This modern approach to promoting the development of tree hollows for conservation purposes is a complete reversal of the once common practice of filling them with cement. In addition to promoting the development of tree hollows, pollarding is known to increase the lifespan of many trees. As Oliver Rackham noted in 1990, \\\"Trees whose function is not timber\u2014pollards and coppice stools\u2014may live much longer than timber trees. The cutting process prolongs their lives, and they go on doing their job of producing useful crops of poles despite old age or decay.\\\" Taking this into account, the repurposing of pollarding for conservation rather than production purposes is a \\\"winwin\\\" management strategy for both the trees and the organisms that live within their rotten hearts. In conclusion, the formation of endocormic roots by old trees is a manifestation of the senescent phase of their growth. Writing in 2013, Howard Thomas vividly describes senescence as a state in which the boundary between life and death is often blurred, as a tree seeks \\\"to control its own viability and integrity\\\" while confronting the \\\"thermodynamically unavoidable\\\" eventuality of death. From this perspective, a tree's ability to transform rotten heartwood into living tissue is an incredible example of how trees can navigate the ambiguity of their mortality by generating adventitious roots. acknowledgements The author expresses thanks to Jianhua Li of Hope College for help with Chinese translations and Michael Dosmann of the Arnold Arboretum for his support and thoughtful review of the manuscript. peter del tredici worked in a variety of capacities at the Arnold Arboretum for 35 years and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at MIT for over 20 years. His recent work is focused on urban ecology and climate change and he is the author of Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide (2nd ed. 2020). An expanded version of this article was published in June 2022 in Arboricultural Journal. roots references Aiello, A. S. (2012). Japanese flowering cherries\u2014a 100-year-long love affair. Arnoldia, 69(4), 2-14. Ball. O. M. (1908). Formation of adventitious roots in the umbrella China tree. Botanical Gazette, 46(4), 303-304. Bellini, C., D. I. Pacurur & I. Perrone. (2014). Adventitious roots and lateral roots: similarities and differences. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 64, 17.1-17.28. Bengtsson, V., C. P. Wheater, H. Read & R. Harris. (2021). Responses of oak pollards to pruning, Arboricultural Journal, 43(3), 156-170. Booth, W. B. (1853). Curious instances of the formation of roots. Gardeners' Chronicle & Agricultural Gazette, 13 (January 1), 4. Bragg, D. C. (2018). A woody chamber of secrets. Frontiers in Ecology & Environment, 16(10), 598. Del Tredici, P., & D. A. Orwig. (2017). Layering and rejuvenation in Tsuga canadensis (Pinaceae) on Wachusett Mountain, Massachusetts. Rhodora, 119, 16-32. Del Tredici, P., H. Ling, and G. Yang. 1992. The Ginkgos of Tian Mu Shan. Conservation Biology 6(2): 202-209. Del Tredici, P. (1992). Natural regeneration of Ginkgo biloba from downward growing cotyledonary buds (basal chichi) American Journal of Botany, 79, 522-530. Del Tredici, P. (1998). Lignotubers in Sequoia sempervirens: development and ecological significance. Madrono, 45, 255-260. Del Tredici, P. (1999). Redwood burls: immortality underground. Arnoldia, 59(3), 14-22. Del Tredici, P. (2001). Sprouting in temperate trees: a morphological and ecological review. Botanical Reviews, 67(2), 121-140. Del Tredici, P. 2022. Endocormic roots: transforming death into life. Arboricultural Journal, DOI: 10.1080\/03071375.2022.2085943 Dickinson, T. A., & E. V. J. Tanner. (1978). Exploitation of hollow trunks by tropical trees. Biotropica, 10(3), 231-233. Fay, N. (2002). Environmental arboriculture, tree ecology and veteran tree management. Arboriucultural Journal, 26, 213-238. Fay, N., & N. de Berker. (2016). Ancient trees and their value. In K. Witko\u015b-Gnach & P. Tyszko-Ghenienlowiec (Eds.), Trees\u2014a lifespan approach (pp. 103-131). Wroclaw: Fundacja EkoRozwoju. Fink, S. (2009). Hazard tree identification by visual assessment (VIA): scientifically solid and practically approved. Arboricultural Journal, 32, 139-155. Gill, A. M., & P. B. Tomlinson. (1975). Aerial roots: an array of forms and functions. In J. G. Torrey and D. T. Clarkson (Eds.), The development and function of roots (pp. 237-260). New York, NY: Academic Press. Gough, L. A., T. Birkemoe & A. Syerdrup-Thygeson. (2012). Reactive forest management can also be proactive for wood-living beetles in hollow oak trees. Biological Conservation, 180, 75-83. Hertel, D. (2011). Tree roots in canopy soils of old European beech trees\u2014an ecological reassessment of a forgotten phenomenon, Pedobiologia, 54, 119-125. Hirons, A. D., & P. A. Thomas. (2018). Applied tree biology. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Janzen, D. H. (1976). Why tropical trees have rotten cores, Biotropica, 8, 110. Jenik, J. (1954). Ko\u0159enov\u00fd syst\u00e9m vo kmeni buku [The root system in the beech trunk]. Vesmir, 33, 350-351 [In Czech]. Jenik, J. (1994). Clonal growth in woody plants: a review. Folia Geobotanica & Phytotaxonomica, Praha, 29, 291-306. Kubikova, J. (1975). Adventivn\u00ed ko\u0159enov\u00fd syst\u00e9m v dutin\u00e1ch star\u00fdch strom\u016f a jeho v\u00fdznam [Adventitious root systems in the cavities of old trees and its significance]. Preslia, 47, 331-334 [In Czech with English summary]. Liu, Q., & Z. Wang. (1992). Root system inside heart-rot stem of Betula ermanii. Research Forest Ecosystems, 6, 68-71 [In Chinese with English summary]. Mattheck, C. (1991). Trees: The mechanical design. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Mattheck, C., & H. Breloer. (1994). The body language of trees. London: The Stationary Office. Moggridge, J. T. (1870). Pollard oaks. Gardeners' Chronicle & Agricultural Gazette, 30(Sept. 17), 1248-49. Nadkarni, N. M. (1994). Factors affecting the initiation and growth of above ground adventitious roots in a tropical cloud forest tree: an experimental approach. Oecologia, 100, 94-97. Nadkarni, N. M. (1981). Canopy roots: convergent evolution in rainforest nutrient cycles. Science, 214, 1023-1024. Oldeman, R. A. A. (1990). Forests: elements of silvology. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Rackham, O. (1990). Trees & woodland in the British landscape (revised ed.) London: Phoenix Giant. Ranius, T., M. Niklasson & N. Berg. (2009). Development of tree hollows in pedunculate oak (Quercus robur). Forest Ecology & Management, 251, 303-310. Read, H. J., C. P. Wheater, V. Forbes & J. Young. (2010). The current status of ancient pollard beech trees at Burnham Beeches and evaluation of recent restoration techniques. Quarterly Journal of Forestry, 104(2), 109-120. Ruxton, G. D. (2014). Why are so many trees hollow? Biology Letters, 10: 20140555. Sebek, P., J. Altman, M. Platek & L. Cizek. (2013). Is active management the key to the conservation of saproxylic biodiversity? Pollarding promotes the formation of tree hollows. PLOS One, 8(3), e6045. Stobbe, H., U. Schmitt, D. Eckstein & D. Dujesiefken. (2002). Developmental stages of fine structure of surface callus formed after debarking of living lime trees. Annals of Botany, 89, 773-782. Thomas, P. (2000). Trees: their natural history. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Thomas, H. (2013). Senescence, aging and death of the whole plant. New Phytologist, 197, 696-711. Vigilax. (1853). Curious formation of roots above ground. Gardeners' Chronicle & Agricultural Gazette, 13(Jan. 8), 21. W. G. S. (1877). Ancient resuscitated yew at Bettws Newydd. Gardeners' Chronicle, 7(Feb. 17), 215."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Oak and Pine in Life and Death","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25803","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060b36f.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"5","authors":"Carlson, Robin Lee","start_page":"16","end_page":"29","article_content":"In The Cold Canyon Fire Journals: Green Shoots and Silver Linings in the Ashes, artist and naturalist Robin Lee Carlson shares the six years she spent learning from the wildfires that burned through Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve near Davis, California twice in five years. This excerpt, drawn from the chapter \\\"The Relativity of Time,\\\" explores the tree-entangled life that returns in abundance after fire\u2014some of which emerges rapidly, and some of which takes longer to make itself known. \\\"It is tempting to immediately tally the living and the dead,\\\" notes Carlson. \\\"But trees exist on a very different time scale, and their lives and deaths caution against hasty conclusions.\\\" \\\"Look at this burned bay laurel. Do you see the way those branches are all pointing the same direction?\\\" Dead tree branches just over my head etch lines into the electric-blue sky, and I am transfixed. From the thicker supporting branches to the finest twigs, they all swirl in the same direction, performing a ghostly dance choreographed by the Wragg Fire's fierce, hot wind.* Even though the air around me is completely still, I can easily envision the wind whipping around these trees as the fire blazed and they were frozen in this shape. It has been a year-and-a-half since the fire, and a participant in a field sketching class I am leading at Cold Canyon has just pointed out these shapes in the trees to me. Miriam Morrill is a biologist and a specialist in fire and communications at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). She is also an artist, and I see that she has been making notes and drawings in her sketchbook that capture some of the signs of fire behavior still legible in the landscape. This is not a language that I know, and we are excited to compare notes. She explains that she sees more trees and tree skeletons on Blue Ridge than she would expect had the fire advanced up that slope from the bottom of the canyon. She surmises that the fire instead came from the west, over the top of the ridge, and backed down into the canyon, burning less intensely moving downslope than it would have had it been charging upslope. I tell her that this is what I know to have been the case, based on Jeffrey Clary's descriptions of the fire's progress. Miriam says that she also notices that the branches of the leafless trees where we are standing near the creek are all pointing in different directions, as if different eddies of wind were whirling around each one. From this, Miriam concludes that the fire became more intense at the bottom of the canyon before racing up the slope on the other side. As the Wragg Fire paused here, the intensity of the fire created its own weather. Strong winds gusted and eddied among the folds and pockets of the hills. Where the fire did not fully burn the vegetation, its heat dried out the branches. Losing their moisture made them permanently inflexible, pointing in the direction of the last wind they would ever feel. This phenomenon is termed foliage freeze. Time stopped, arrested, and I am held there too, caught in this still, quiet day but also in the midst of the roaring frenzy of fire and wind of late July 2015. This could be the image of violence preserved, jarring me out of time on a peaceful day. I might see this as the life force of these trees sucked right out of them by the wind, with their macabre skeletons still here to remind me. If fire is only a catastrophe from which this ecosystem must recover, the brutality of that image is appropriate. But if fire's place in the ecosystem is subtler, then those frozen branches might equally be seen as a reminder of the continuity that underlies the fire, tying the seemingly singular event to the past and future of the landscape. Disturbance has a past and a future and blends more easily into both than it would seem. And now, as I stand here in the present, the frozen branches are important clues to the behavior of the fire. Fire leaves signs behind on the land that are often fleeting\u2014 erased by wind and rain and footsteps\u2014so it feels like a race to find and read them before they disappear. Patterns of ash and char, curled leaves, fallen tree trunks, and grass stems\u2014all are quickly obscured by the movement of animals, the fall of rain and rush of wind, and the growth of new vegetation. These twisted branches, though, remain. The fire's passage is frozen in the trees' bodies, and the trees' writhing limbs marking this path are emblazoned on my mind. Oaks: Anchors in time Growing up in California's Central Valley ensured that water worries indelibly marked my subconscious. I am a child of brown summers and green winters, of regular drought and water scarcity. I was a toddler during the 1976-77 drought and have vivid memories of my mother explaining to me why we couldn't flush the toilet every time we used it. Even as a child, I approached each winter with concern: Will there be enough rain this year? Will the rivers dry up? I find nothing more reassuring than rain and nothing more terrifying than the endless cloudless summer skies. As I got older, I began to understand the ways life here has adapted to make the most of the rain we do receive. I am reassured by the hardy species that get by on little water and conserve their moisture in ingenious ways, like the blue oaks standing tall in the woodlands and savannas that ring the Central Valley. These are important members of Cold Canyon habitats, the trees that Jeffrey was concerned about after the Wragg Fire. Blue oaks are of middling size for oaks, with the wildly crooking branches common among oaks that make their limbs look as though they are dancing ecstatically. Their leaves are compact, with only wavy margins, not the deep lobes of some of the other oak species. The waxiness of their leaves helps with moisture retention in their oftenarid habitats. Staunchly Californian, blue oaks are endemic here\u2014found nowhere else in the world. They live at lower elevations in the Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada, as well as on the southern end of the Cascade and Klamath Mountains. A few grow in the Central Valley itself, but they mostly prefer to be up in the hills. Though I live in the flatlands of the valley, I am glad to be close to the hills and mountains, and it is to these foothill habitats that I turn for guidance in how to live in an often-parched land. Of all the deciduous oaks in California, blue oaks are the most able to withstand drought. Their taproot\u2014their main central root\u2014can grow deep into the ground to find the water table, to depths of eighty feet, though they can also focus their energy on growing shallower roots if water is available higher in the soil. They need soil that is relatively dry and well drained, and are found on soils that are poorer in nitrogen, phosphorous, organic matter, and other nutrients than the soils that support other California oaks. On these soils, they cultivate communities of other hardy species by holding the earth in place against erosion and using their taproots to bring water to the surface, incidentally making it available to other species as well. Before introduced annual species came to dominate California grasslands and savannas, blue oaks grew alongside bunchgrasses such as blue wildrye and purple needlegrass, similarly water-conserving species. The oaks and grasses mutually supported one another, sharing resources via fungal mycelial networks. Now, introduced annuals such as redstem filaree, cheatgrass, and wild oat have largely replaced the bunchgrasses. The introduced species compete with young oaks for space, water, and light, just as they outcompeted the native bunchgrasses for these resources. As in the rest of their range, blue oaks in Cold Canyon shelter quite a few introduced annual species, but they are also home and sustenance to many other creatures. Nuttall's woodpeckers rely on them for foraging and nesting. Dusky-footed woodrats build at their feet and eat their acorns. Fallen branches are important gathering places for western fence lizards. Oak titmice\u2014birds the soft mousy brown of their namesakes\u2014defend year-round territories in their canopies. It is easy to see the wildlife that depends on the oaks, but equally important to understand the less visible forces at work. Blue oaks are critical to the quality of the soil around them, increasing its nutrient content. This is thanks to the fall of leaf litter, which increases the nitrogen in the soil. It is also because trees capture moisture from the air that otherwise would have evaporated. Instead, the water droplets adhere to the leaves, eventually aggregate into larger drops and then fall to the ground. The drops bring along important nutrients\u2014 potassium, phosphorous, and magnesium, for example\u2014that were present in the air and are concentrated when the drops form. There are three kinds of oaks growing in Cold Canyon, two of which are trees\u2014blue oak and interior live oak\u2014and scrub oak, which takes a shrubbier form. Interior live oaks tend to be found in the bottoms of the canyons, as they prefer the wetter areas in the riparian zones, and these are often too wet for blue oaks. Blue oaks generally grow on the hillsides. The distinctions are not absolute: there are certainly blue oaks growing in the canyons and live oaks on the hills, but the general pattern holds. Over the five years of my visits, when I look closely at oaks, I try to decipher the puzzle of their health and survival. In a landscape of rapidly sprouting annual plants and fast-growing shrubs, trees are not as easy to assess. There are no immediate answers to how the oaks at Cold Canyon are faring. In the areas closest to the creek, some oaks did not burn at all and are doing fine\u2014these are mostly interior live oaks. A little further from the creek, there are more interior live oaks, and some of these burned. These that burned are sprouting, strong shoots growing up from their bases, from their root crowns. The brand-new leaves in their chartreuse skin are spiky and fresh. Further up the slopes, some of the blue oaks are sprouting. On the blue oaks I see, the sprouts are not at the bases of the trunks but higher on the tree, on the branches. These differences are characteristic of the two oak species: live oaks tend to regrow from their bases, blue oaks from their crowns. The oaks that are able to survive fires will benefit from them, especially if the fires were low intensity. Fire removes accumulated litter beneath the trees, which helps reduce the numbers of insect pests that feed on acorns, such as filbert worms and filbert weevils, two of the most common in California. Fire also helps remove some of the oaks' competitors for resources, such as annual grasses, though it can also open opportunities for other competitors\u2014thistles, filaree, and the like\u2014to gain a foothold and claim the open turf for themselves. The world underneath the blue oaks' canopy is much different now than it was before incursions of plowing, plants, and livestock. Fire can still be a healthy force, but that is no longer always the case, now that fires burn hotter and higher, and more often kill the crowns of trees, making it hard for trees to survive and resprout. The bark of mature blue oaks is thinner than other similar oaks, which increases the trees' susceptibility to fire as they age. It is more difficult for acorns to grow under competition from introduced plants and in our rapidly drying environment, with droughts becoming more and more common. All of this is to say that one year, three years, five years in, it is too early to tell how the oaks are doing at Cold Canyon. Trees challenge our impatient animal desire to know what is happening. Acorns take a very long time to make more acorns. Seedlings take a long time to become saplings, which take a long time to become mature trees. Time stopped for the branches frozen by the heat of the fire, but most of those trees are still alive and sprouting green at their bases. Trees live and die slowly, but it is difficult to remember this in the context of a disturbance like wildfire. The fire can feel like a catastrophe, and tallying the damage afterward feels so urgent. Trees move in their own time, and it is hard for me to comprehend when I am so quick, so mobile, so unrooted. Oak gall wasps Sometimes I go hunting for marvels, and sometimes they are sitting right in the middle of the trail, in shocking bright-pink glory. On a day when I arrive at Cold Canyon planning to focus on oak regrowth patterns, it is a strangely appropriate gift to find a crackly, dry blue oak leaf in front of me, covered in tiny galls. There two different kinds of gall on the leaf, both elaborately structured and very pink. I pick up the leaf and sit down on a rock beside the trail to wonder at the details of these tiny homes, nurseries to the microscopic babies within. The interaction that creates these intricate structures is an amazing tale of manipulation, and a relationship maybe even more strange than the complex interaction fostered by horntails, fungi, and the distressed trees in which they lay their eggs.* Once again, it is wasps that are responsible. This time, very much unlike the large, somewhat alarming horntails, however, gall wasps are no bigger than about a quarter of an inch. Some of the smallest gall wasps in the world are only one millimeter long, the size of a comma on this page. Female gall wasps lay their eggs in rapidly growing parts of trees, such as twigs or leaves like the one I am holding in my hand. Once the eggs hatch and the wasp larvae begin to eat the plant tissue, a chemical in their saliva, or perhaps the mechanical process of their feeding itself, stimulates the plant to redirect some of its own cells to produce a protective outer structure that surrounds the larvae. This is a defense response by the plant, sequestering the larvae so that they do not eat its other parts. But it has great benefits for the larvae as well. The gall is both shelter and, inside, more food for the ravenous larvae, which comfortably feed until they mature and chew their way out of the nursery as adults. It does not seem as though the wasps do any real harm to their host plants, though they do of course consume some resources that would otherwise be used to meet the plants' own needs. What is most amazing, and apparent even on the leaf I've just found, is that each species of gall wasp stimulates a very specific and unique structure of gall. One of the kinds of gall on the leaf has spines sticking out in all direction. This is the home of a batch of urchin gall wasp larvae. The other kind is almost furry, and is made by crystalline gall wasps. The gall shapes are even expressed in the wasps' scientific names. The urchin gall wasp is Cynips quercusechinus\u2014the species name means \\\"oak hedgehog,\\\" emphasizing its spikes. The crystalline gall wasp is Andricus crystallinus, inspired by the delicacy and translucence of its fine \\\"hairs.\\\" Two different species, with two characteristic gall shapes. And there are over a hundred different gall wasps known so far worldwide. How on earth do the chemicals in the saliva of the larvae dictate the shape of the gall that the plant cells will build? Most gall wasps are specific to a single type of tree, usually an oak. It turns out that blue oaks have the largest known number of different gall wasp species, at forty-one and counting. They also appear to have the greatest diversity of shape and color of galls. I am looking at the galls just a little after one year since the fire. I try to guess which of the blue oaks around me dropped this leaf. I wonder whether it was a tree that burned, and this was a new leaf since the fire, or one that survived the fire intact. Perhaps the wasps whose offspring were reared in these galls came to Cold Canyon after the fire, or perhaps they survived the fire as larvae themselves. The effects of fire on oak galls have not been extensively studied, but it appears that gall wasps need time after a fire to return. There must be oaks for them to return to, either newly grown oaks or ones that survived the fire. There must be sources near the burn for them to come from. And some wasp larvae surely survive the fire, sheltering in the oaks that did not burn and remained cool enough that their leaves were not all killed by the heat. Adult wasps are not likely to survive the fire themselves, but then, they generally live only about a week, so the wasp truly spends most of its life\u2014about a year\u2014as a larva. How funny it is that wasps have twice been my windows into the endlessly intricate webs of interactions that compose these ecosystems. First, the horntails, who rush to burned trees to lay their eggs and inject their symbiotic fungi. Now the gall wasps, who bend the oaks to their will but are dependent on their hosts for shelter and protection when the world around them burns. Without being present in these places\u2014burning and burned\u2014I would have remained ignorant of these beautiful mysteries. The wasps' relationships are just glimpses into vast silken webs of stories that humans have not yet even dreamed. Start traveling along just one exposed thread, and how many more nodes in the silk might we find? The ones we do see tantalize us with the many that are yet unknown. Gray pines: Waves of loss and return Gray pines, towering over the other trees at Cold Canyon, seem to me the embodiment of solidity and permanence after the fire. They have an underappreciated beauty, being arguably rather spindly and dull in comparison with some of the more majestic pine species. But I think their long, pale-green needles are pretty, especially in the bright summer sun. And while their needles are not densely packed enough to create a whole lot of shade, I find they create striking silhouettes against wintery overcast skies. In the early years after the canyon burned, I am anxious to count the survivors and the lost, to take inventory, even if anecdotal, of the fire's casualties. Studying the gray pines, I can see green needles on what look like two-thirds of them, so I assume they have survived fairly well. But on a winter hike with Jeffrey Clary and Sarah Oktay, the Reserve's current director, just over three years after the fire, I learn that the truth is likely more complicated. Gray pines, also known as foothill pines, are often found in the blue oak woodlands and savannas that are interspersed with chaparral habitats in the California foothills. Like blue oaks and chaparral shrubs, they are hardy and thrive in places with drier climates and less nutrient-rich soils. Unlike many other plants, they do not have root, trunk, or bark adaptations that allow them to survive fire. Gray pines are extremely pitchy, even for a pine. They are torches in a fire, thanks to the resin in their needles, cones, bark, and wood. Because they do not contain the burls or other root structures that allow many chaparral shrubs to regrow, a gray pine too damaged by fire will not grow back. Instead, gray pines must start all over again, growing from the seeds protected inside their enormous, spiny cones. I see cones, open and dry, with seeds long spilled, all over the canyon. Picking them up and turning them in my hands, I wonder whether their seeds are unfurling now, nestled underground where they landed after dispersing when the cone opened still high on its tree. The heat of fire stimulates germination by weakening or breaking the seed's coat and allowing it to begin development. Gray pine seeds are also able to germinate without fire, but there are other pine species, such as lodgepole and knobcone, that do require fire for germination, at least in some parts of their ranges. This all sounds reasonably straightforward: gray pines mostly die in fires and eventually return to the landscape as new sprouts. It is the timing of their dying that is a surprise. Jeffrey points out that even though many of the trees at Cold Canyon still have green needles in their crowns, they may already have been killed by the fire, either because part or all of them burned or because the heat of the fire was too great and killed their tissues. Set inexorably onto the path to their fate, they are continuing to function while slowly winding down. In their diminishment, they are now home to organisms that they would have easily fought off while healthy. The fire drew pine sawyer beetles\u2014a kind of longhorn beetle\u2014and their larvae are now tunneling through the pines' wood. Bark beetles, such as pine engravers, will also have come, finding nourishment in the wood of the dying trees. These wood-boring beetles and their relatives are usually healthy members of forest communities, consuming only trees that are already dead or dying and returning the trees' nutrients to the ecosystem. But in the increasingly stressed habitats of the western US, some species, such as the pine engravers, have become decidedly unhealthy. In the face of plentiful dead wood during years of drought and fire and excessive logging, the beetle populations explode. Voracious new generations feast on living trees too, making for even more fuel in wildfires and escalating the vicious cycle. While we are most familiar with large expanses of dead pines and firs in the Sierra, gray pines are not immune to these amplifying effects of climate and beetle. As I walk beneath a pine with silvery-green needles left on only a few of its higher branches, I see the fine line between health and disease, between beetles as beneficial recyclers and beetles as forest destroyers. I am learning that dying is a completely different phenomenon for a tree than for all of us more ephemeral creatures. It is not a single event in time but a very long process. How smooth is the continuum of living and dying and how hard to say where some organisms are on that spectrum.* There are no quick answers in assessing the results of upheavals like wildfire, at least for trees, as I watch the aftermath play out slowly over the years. Gray pines are common in chaparral habitats, but they require plenty of time to recolonize between wildfires, after the fires have mostly killed off the existing trees. On the one hand, if wildfires occur too frequently in chaparral, there will not be enough time for new gray pines to grow from seed. As the window for recolonizing closes, gray pines will slowly disappear from these habitats. On the other hand, if fire is completely absent from the chaparral ecosystem, gray pines will take over\u2014enough gray pines will eventually colonize that the blue oaks cannot compete for space and sunlight. Fire\u2014at least a healthy fire regime\u2014keeps the balance in these blue oak and gray pine foothill habitats. After my hike with Jeffrey and Sarah, before I head home to the valley flatlands, I stand next to a gray pine and put my hand on its bark. Time slows to a crawl as I deliberately calm my quick animal breaths. Time stops while I try to think in tree time. Here time is measured in roots creeping, tunneling, and connecting with fungal mycelia and other roots. Time passes in rings of wood expanding, thickening, drying, and cracking into bark. And time is the slow, slow pull of senescence, embarked on long before the tree's final end. Senescence is set to the tiny music of the jaws of beetle larvae scraping and gnawing their intricate way through the tree, just below the surface of the bark. This is a kind of sorrow, deep and abiding. There is nothing that will stop the onward pull of time and the tightening of death's grip. The last green needles will brown. The wood will fully dry. The tree will continue to stand for a long time, entirely dead, waiting for the gust of wind or shift of soil that will send it crashing to the ground. But I am also, just as deeply, moved by the cycles in which the pines and I are enveloped. As though my awareness of the process allows me into the rolling pattern. Nothing is what it once was, nothing in the view ahead of me can stay this way forever, and we are all senescing even as we are full of life. The gall wasps whose tiny homes I marvel at on blue oak leaves live only a week as adults. A blink of an eye. What would they make of my ponderously long and slow life, beyond the limits of comprehension? Just as I struggle to understand how a living tree can also already be dead. * For more on how trees blend of life and death, see Peter Del Tredici, \\\"The Roots of Rejuvenation,\\\" in this issue (page 30). robin lee carlson is a natural science writer and illustrator based in Davis, California. Visit her website at robinleecarlson.com"},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Morus rubra","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25825","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e3d260816e.png","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"4","authors":"Jaikumar, Devika","start_page":"14","end_page":"15","article_content":"In the summer heat, mornings are blanketed by a mist that leaves the arboretum quiet and still. I softly make my way up Bussey Hill, my shoes soaked through by the morning dew that lies thick on the grass. A fawn suns itself on a patch of dirt while a family of turkeys take their morning stroll, all undeterred by my presence. It isn't these creatures I have come to see, however, but 787-85*A, a striking mulberry tree that every morning for the past two weeks had been picked clean of fruit by squirrels. Found all over the world, mulberries are known for their sweet fruits that resemble blackberries, and for their role as a key food source for silkworms. The tree I visited nearly every day for a month is a specimen of Morus rubra, a species native to North America. At the Arboretum it is surrounded by Morus alba trees, a species introduced from Asia. Despite their differences\u2014glossiness of leaves, presence of hair-like structures on the underside of leaves, colors of fruit\u2014these species are prone to hybridization, making positive identification of trees especially complex. My goal in the summer of 2021 was to acquire a cutting of the plant, with leaves and fruit, to press for an herbarium specimen. As I approached the tree that morning as I had so many times before, the squirrels leaped off, revealing that they had picked the branches clean of ripe fruit. I could not fault them for their behavior; the idea of explaining to the council of squirrels how I needed a handful of fruits for scientific study was enough to keep my spirits up until the day I was successful in my task. The specimens that I was finally able to collect were sent to Morris Arboretum, where researchers are engaged in long-term study of mulberry hybridity. Herbarium specimens have been crucial to research for centuries, and one of their primary uses is to identify species. While we believe our multi-stemmed Bussey Hill tree is correctly identified as Morus rubra, perhaps it is indeed a hybrid, the identity of which has taken years of growth to reveal itself. Herbarium specimens also fill gaps in our knowledge by creating a physical timeline for plants throughout their lifespans. When I collect a specimen to later mount onto paper and file into the Arnold Arboretum's Herbarium of Cultivated Plants, it's with the knowledge that this specimen is intended to last hundreds of years, to be used in ways that I can't even imagine. As for the squirrels, their interest in the mulberries is far less mysterious."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Hidden Ice of Plants","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25805","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060b76a.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"3","authors":"Villouta, Camilo","start_page":"11","end_page":"12","article_content":"When studying how plants in winter deal with freezing temperatures, the observation of ice formation in their tissues is especially elusive. I addressed this topic in my dissertation, which challenged me to find new methods to answer them. At the time, I was a PhD student at the fruit crops lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under the guidance of Dr. Amaya Atucha. Our goal was to understand the development of cold hardiness in the terminal buds of cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon). Most importantly, we wanted to know what strategy they used to withstand and survive ice formation. In woody perennial flowering species, buds are known to survive exposure to freezing temperatures by either of two freezing survival strategies. Both follow a similar principle: avoid the formation of ice crystals with their potential of causing lethal damage in the flower primordia, tissues that are the precursor of the mature flower. These strategies have extravagant names, which nonetheless describe their main characteristics very well. On one hand, we have \\\"deep supercooling,\\\" where buds avoid the propagation of ice into the flower primordia, keeping them ice-free even when they are at subfreezing temperatures. The other strategy is named \\\"extraorgan freezing,\\\" where the flower primordia dehydrate, pushing water away from themselves towards the ice-tolerant bud scales. In the case of cranberry terminal buds, we needed to determine which strategy was at work, both to interpret damage patterns more accurately and to know which techniques to use for assessing cold-hardiness levels at different times across the season. While designing the study to answer this question, we reviewed a range of current methods for imaging plant tissues, assessing them for their ability to capture freezing events inside an intact bud. Thermal video recording offers only a surface view of freezing progression, as do electric thermometers, or thermocouples, which only register temperature changes at a specific location. MicroCT (computed tomography) scans offer great resolution of internal tissues, but cannot track freezing, as the method does not detect a contrast difference between liquid water and ice. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), however, can detect this difference. Searching the UW campus for appropriately-sized MRI machines, I found one in use at the Small Animal Imaging Center. While a regular MRI has an entrance designed to fit a person, this apparatus was made for animals such as rats, with an entrance diameter of about 3 inches. Once we found the proper MRI machine, we needed to find a way to control the rate of decreasing temperature at which the buds would have been exposed\u2014a rate of vital importance. Studies have reported that a common rate of temperature change in nature is 1 \u00b0C\/hr (degrees Celsius per hour). Thus in laboratory conditions, we usually work with rates ranging from 1 to 4 \u00b0C\/hr, otherwise you risk creating artificial effects in non-realistic freezing conditions. To detect the progress of freezing in our plants, I needed a device to control temperature with great precision, which I set out to construct. The goal was to acquire MRI images corresponding to slices of our samples at room temperature, and then slowly decrease the temperature, capturing other images at just below freezing, and then two more times at colder temperatures, always of the same slices. In collaboration with the Morgridge Institute's Advanced Fabrication Laboratory,\u2014 a.k.a. the \\\"Fab Lab\\\"\u2014at UW Madison, we started to develop a prototype. It needed to follow several guidelines: it could not have any of its metallic implements close to the MRI apparatus, while at the same time it had to withstand freezing temperatures, exhibit chemical resistance, and not interact with the imaging process. The prototype needed to have three compartments: one for the flow of chilled glycol, a second for the addition of a chemical that helps with image contrast, and a third to surround the samples with all these compounds. Once the design was defined, we started testing the circulating system. We located the circulating bath and pump for the chilled glycol with their metallic parts outside the room, connecting the glycol via tubing with the prototype inside the MRI. With this circulation system exposed to air, frost formation was also a big concern, as this could damage the expensive MRI equipment. We ran trials in our lab just to see where frost was forming and find corrective measures. By this time, a year had passed, and finally, we were able to obtain our first images. After doing the official runs in late fall of 2019, I measured the signal intensity at different regions of the buds and compared them across the different imaged temperatures. Higher signal intensity translated into a higher presence of liquid water, and the opposite meant relocation or freezing of water. My analysis showed a gradual decrease in the amount of liquid water in the internal tissues of the bud. This was an important piece of evidence for our study. With the MRI, we observed a range of freezing events occurring at temperatures below -20 \u00b0C, while in visual damage evaluations for that same date, we found that damage did not start until reaching temperatures of -24 \u00b0C and lower. In the end, our study concluded that terminal buds of cranberry survive exposure to freezing temperatures by undergoing a process of freeze dehydration, a variant of the extraorgan freezing survival strategy. From here, we can direct our efforts on developing cold hardiness models with a greater understanding of the damage patterns, knowing what mechanisms need to be developed during the fall during the seasonal acclimation to winter. This knowledge will help farmers and horticulturists decide how to respond when fruit crops are exposed to the threat of unseasonably cold temperatures\u2014conditions likely to occur with greater frequency as climate change advances."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Bud Morphology","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25806","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060bb6d.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"2","authors":"Moeglein, Morgan","start_page":"8","end_page":"10","article_content":"Every fall across the temperate latitudes, the leaves of woody plants complete development, reach their final form, and begin to senesce. Leaf senescence marks the end of a growth cycle that may seem to begin at bud break in the spring, but for many leaves actually began much earlier, during the previous growing season, hidden from view within a resting bud. Leaves that initiate and mature within a single growing season are known as neoformed leaves. Preformed leaves, by contrast, initiate during one summer, undergo one or more periods of winter dormancy, and complete their life cycle in the following summer. Botanists have long noted the presence of incipient leaves within dormant resting buds. Many unanswered questions about leaf preformation remain, however. When we look at a tree at the end of the summer, how many of those leaves were preformed? Do different species employ different strategies when they invest in preformed leaves for future seasons? I have spent the last year trying to characterize how plants invest resources in their overwintering buds and the leaves within. This work led me to the Arnold Arboretum, where I set out to investigate how preformation contributes to leaf development across woody taxa. The first step in this work was to look very closely at dormant buds in the field. Surveying buds across species in the depths of winter, without the obstruction of leaves, is the best time to appreciate how much bud morphology varies. Some overwintering buds are obvious, such as the long, shiny beech buds or the furry, gray magnolias. Then there are the minuscule and hard to find: the buttonbush bud barely raised from the surface of the twig, or the winterberry with its few, tiny, camouflaged bud scales. Walking through the collections sampling dormant buds for future microscopy, I easily snapped the bigger buds from their branches with my fingers, while smaller specimens had to be shaved from twigs with a razor blade back in the lab. Even more remarkable than the external bud morphology observed in the collections is what you find inside after dissections under the microscope: the large, showy buds usually contain mature-looking leaves in miniature. The morphological intricacies of an oak or sweetgum leaf are already apparent, intact in these preformed leaves, months before they expand to their mature size. Even in the smallest buds, many leaves are already initiated, their shape recognizable in its relation to the mature form. A tiny, flattened catalpa bud may contain ten leaf primordia, similar to the number of mature leaves that will be present at the end of the growing season. It's astonishing to realize, while looking at buds in the field, that the form and number of mature leaves could be determined so far ahead of time, within the tiny space of the smallest buds. By comparing preformed leaves dissected from within buds to mature, fully expanded leaves, I hope to deduce how much of the multi-seasonal cycle of leaf development occurs within buds relative to the end-of-season total. Looking at preformed leaf and bud measurements relative to mature leaf measurements allows us to measure relative investment in different leaf components, and begins to reveal patterns in preformed investment. These strategies can tell us something about how plants prepare for the future. Some species may preform more leaf tissue that is more fully developed in preparation for expected circumstances in the coming growing season, while others may wait and neoform the leaves they need in real time as a response to present growth conditions. There are also different ways to invest. One species might invest in many small leaves, while another might invest in fewer leaves that are larger and more completely developed. With so many different ways to invest in preformation, the range between preformation and neoformation begins to seem more like a spectrum than a dichotomy. Based on observations so far, I suspect the species surveyed will vary widely in the timing and extent of their investment in future leaves. Surveying the contents of overwintering buds can help us learn how plants invest in leaves from season to season\u2014but it may also better our understanding of the evolution of leaf form more broadly. Leaf shape varies massively across plants, but the variation within species or within individuals can be just as impressive. Leaf shape along a single growing tip can vary over the course of a season and this variation may correspond to preformed and neoformed trajectories arising from different developmental programs. Leaf-shape plasticity could provide standing variation for evolution to act upon, or it might open up different photosynthetic options as the season progresses. If the shape of preformed leaves is largely predetermined within the dormant bud, and if this shape is different from the shape of neoformed leaves later in the season, the confined nature of development within a bud may have some influence on leaf shape. The same may be true when comparing across species with different preformation strategies; a species that preforms more may be more likely to have certain leaf shapes than a species that produces more leaves through neoformation. There are many possibilities, but looking within dormant buds at the earliest stages of leaf development across species and environments may illuminate our understanding of the variation we see across mature leaves. IN MEMORIAM Karen Madsen 1942-2022 Karen Madsen edited Arnoldia from 1993 to 2007, leading the magazine through dramatic changes in publishing and printing. Perhaps no one at the Arnold worked with Karen more closely than Peter Del Tredici, who offers the following remembrance: I first met Karen in 1988 when she was a student in the Radcliffe Seminars program, working on her thesis on Woodlands, the famous garden of William Hamilton, who introduced the Ginkgo tree into North America in 1784. When I was appointed editor of Arnoldia in 1989, I asked Karen to contribute a short version of her thesis. We got along well during the editing process, which is not always a given, and I hired her part time to help me with copyediting. After I became Director of Living Collections in 1992, Karen was appointed to replace me as editor. Not only was Karen a good friend, a great writer, and a skilled editor, but she helped make landscape design history one of Arnoldia's specialty topics. BOOK BRIEF Older Than the World \\\"Trees,\\\" writes historian Jared Farmer, \\\"are plants that people call trees\u2014a term of dignity, not botany.\\\" And it is the largest and, especially, the eldest that have commanded the greatest dignity, from the the Buddha's Bodhi Tree to Methusaleh, the bristlecone pine in California's Inyo National Forest thought to be the oldest non-clonal tree in existence. Believers held that the Oak of Mamre in Jerusalem had been growing since the dawn of creation\u2014a tree older than the world itself. By the time this tree fi nally fell in the yard of a West Bank monastery, far older trees had been identifi ed by scientifi c means. And yet fascination for trees like the giant sequoia accompanied a rush to cut them, nearly leading to their disappearance. Farmer's book explores the mythmaking, veneration, and exploitation to which the oldest and largest trees have been subjected through time, and poses an urgent question: in the wake of the industrial era, under the cloud of climate change pushing them to the brink, do these elder fl ora have a future? We need them to survive, Farmer argues, if we are to make sense of changes we have set in motion in deep time."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Converging Paths","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25867","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e3d24e816d.png","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"4","article_sequence":"1","authors":"Battles, Matthew","start_page":"1","end_page":"2","article_content":"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood: Frost's words come to mind unbidden as I walk through the Arnold amid November's yellowing days, following forking paths that might take me to the Hunnewell Building and the workday, to Weld Hill for a lecture, or into the conifers for a quiet afternoon copyediting in the company of wild turkeys. It's worth remembering that intersections are also convergences, comings-together for travelers from different points of origin. The arboretum itself is such an intersection, where two grand ways of working with plants, the scientific and the horticultural, converge. How many other ways of knowing, feeling, and storying trees also meet at this crossroads? Some convergences come after long travel. Turning off Meadow Road, I approach the golden glow of the katsuras\u2014though even before I arrive, they've already announced themselves by their characteristic caramel fragrance. One of these specimens of Cercidiphyllum japonicum, 882*A, is among the oldest trees in the arboretum, accessioned in 1878. But katsura's path is far older: fossil evidence shows them thriving in forests of the northern hemisphere by the end of the Cretaceous, some seventy million years ago. We say that katsura smells like cotton candy\u2014 the German name for the tree is Kuchenbaum, or \\\"cake tree\\\"\u2014but isn't it properly the other way round? Cakes and cotton candy, those latecomers, smell like katsura, whose fragrance of toasted sugar, tens of millions of years in the making, likely wafted long before there were noses attached to humans with a propensity for naming, propagating, and choosing tree-convergent ways. So these converging paths through trees are generous, gregarious, inspiring. Richard Powers begins his 2018 novel The Overstory with a powerful invocation of trees as generous storytellers: A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words. It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering. It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch. It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still. The woman does exactly that. Signals rain down around her like seeds. With this year's Spring issue, Arnoldia debuted a new design and editorial format; in the very same moment, I joined as editor. I can take no credit for this new vision for the magazine, which was brought forward by Michael Dosmann, and my predecessor, Jonathan Damery, in collaboration with members of Arnoldia's editorial committee and our consulting design studio, Point Five. I've been thrilled by all the new ways they have furnished me to know, story, and connect with trees\u2014not only through a profusion of new literary forms, including poetry and creative nonfiction, but drawing from the visual arts as well. We've welcomed verse from emerging and prizewinning poets, and book excerpts from provocative scholarly works like Rosetta Elkin's Plant Life (Fall), to Cold Canyon Fire Journals by Robin Lee Carlson, whose distinctive, lyrical art and storytelling about wildfire and place in California enriches this issue (page 16). Our editorial artist, Matt Huynh, provides each issue's Notes from the Field section with a fresh set of expressive illustrations, while our endpapers by Shyama Golden frame the magazine with sumptuous assemblages drawn from the shifting seasons. At the same time, this renewed Arnoldia also brings forth the scholarly and scientific research that have long been the magazine's mainstay, such as Peter Del Tredici's article in this issue on the fascinating phenomenon of endocormic roots (page 30). And most crucially, we're making space for authors whose voices historically have not been heard along the paths of science and the garden. Native voices, the voices of folks of color, the unhoused\u2014Arnoldia seeks to come into restorative relation with such authors, and to bring the knowledge they carry to our readers. Arnoldia's rebirth comes at a time of both richness and urgency, with an efflorescence of innovative writing about the natural world arriving from new directions, prompted by climate change, calls for environmental justice, and the enormity of the biodiversity crisis. And so now is a crucial time to bring forth this expanded editorial mission and toolkit for telling tree-entangled stories. Meanwhile, the Arnold's paths proliferate. The horticulture team has been laying new trails throughout the landscape, giving visitors more immediate access to our collections. And in the years to come, the Roslindale Gateway Path Project will connect Forest Hills to Roslindale Center, making even more of this living landscape into an equitable contact zone. As these paths intersect, new stories surely will emerge. Our former tagline was The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum; now, it's The Nature of Trees. An intersection for more than science and horticulture, this nature is a gregarious convergence of lyric, memoir, storytelling, and scholarship. Who speaks to the nature of trees? Everyone. May Arnoldia continue to be as generous as the katsura, as message-bringing as Powers' fragrant pine. May it be a crossroads, a meeting place. And may it always be thronged with trees."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"2022-79-3","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25793","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15e816e.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","arnoldia_cover":true},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Hardwood Cuttings","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25808","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d0608528.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"14","authors":"Halloran, Sean","start_page":"64","end_page":"64","article_content":"Plant propagation is both traditional art and applied science. Made from mature, dormant stems, hardwood cuttings are just one clonal propagation technique we use at the Arnold Arboretum to coax life from some of our most valuable accessions. In New England, we can root hemlock and many other genera via this technique. We collect hardwood material in late fall or early winter after plants enter dormancy and deciduous plants have lost their leaves, selecting younger, healthy stock for optimal results. Hormone is applied to the freshly prepared cuttings, which are usually \\\"stuck\\\" the same day they are collected, in benches filled with quick-draining growing media, tented with plastic to ensure high humidity, and heated from below to encourage rooting. Hormones and wounding treatments are taxon-specific, based upon the scientific literature as well as our own propagation records. Cuttings that survive and root will be potted up in the spring or early summer, eventually to serve as prized members of the next generation of our collections."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Among white pines, at the foot of them","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25809","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060856c.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"13","authors":"Lorsung, \u00c9ireann","start_page":"61","end_page":"63","article_content":"The largest city in the place I call Maine is called Portland, and it lies along the Atlantic coast in the northeast of the country called the United States. For as long as the city has existed its industries have been tied to the sea: fishing, lobstering, clamming, oystering, seaweed-picking\u2014though that is changing: wealth clusters along the seafront and the city's industry turns toward tourism. At low tide the horizon goes even further out than you'd think possible, and between the expensive houses and the drawn-back water, the seaweed pickers go, bent over, along the little strip of land that belongs to everyone. The coastline just north of the city becomes rocky, and small granite islands house wealthy summer residents and year-round island people who know the ferry schedule by heart. A map eye and a surveyor's eye, a deed eye; an insurance company's eye, a property investor's eye, a painter's eye; an art collector's eye beholding the paintings of the \\\"empty\\\" landscape that hang in the well-appointed houses in the best neighborhoods, in the white cool rooms of the city's art museum. We perceive the beauty of a map or painting in the manageable space between the object and ourselves, the gaze a place that holds the object still. In the map and the landscape painting\u2014 objects I feel such a fondness for\u2014the place that holds me is reduced to a place that I can hold. It becomes property and I am its arranger. The world goes on around the museum and the city records office, in infinite overlapping circles. The room and the building, the city and the state, are permeated by economies and public-health statuses and modes of transit and pollution, by taste and custom and the determining structures of US racial and class hierarchies. We work temporary jobs in Portland and pay two-thirds of our income to the landlord. It is a pandemic, so we don't go anywhere. We couldn't afford to go out in this city in any case. To occupy my time and thoughts, I take walks and ride my bicycle: watching the light change is free, noting down the seasonal appearance of weeds in the cracks is free. I am moving through a landscape that is unfamiliar to me, and I cannot see it from outside\u2014outside the drafty, unheated apartment, outside the exorbitant rent, outside the virus transmitted by breath. Nor from outside the sea air, the smell of the white pines, the sting of first snow on a stiff breeze. Only from inside, where I am: with you. I find my way, in copper October, along a causeway to an island that houses the state school for Deaf and Blind students, a cemetery where the dogs and horses of a former governor have long since turned into soil themselves, and a clearing in which visitors build structures out of twigs, leaves, shells, seaweed, rocks, pinecones, and a winking belief in fairies. (The children who visit to see the fairy village do not wink, and their houses are furnished with bright orange berries, mushrooms, moss carpets, colorful and smooth stones, the best shells.) The name I know for this island is Mackworth. Among the trees, the name I know falls away, insubstantial as a piece of Scotch tape. Its granite edges, its carpet of rust-orange pine needles, its non-local roses trimmed back by state park service employees, its sumac, its dulse. I have names for these, and yet the names cannot hold them. They exceed my ability to call them. In every season, the island's white pines establish the architecture of my passage there. I walk the circumference in autumn's fullness, then in the silence of winter as the wind stirs the ocean into gray slush, and in spring as a bright yellow haze passes through the deciduous trees of the understory. And in the summer, in the rich quick bright unbearable green of living things that know how soon they will be dying. The tall gray bodies of the pines set a rhythm for seeing. Their needles form paths and fields among the trees. The sunlight falling through them, I receive. The sky they orchestrate among their openings. They are an uncapturable color, a green that is not singular green but green-prismatic with all earth colors: chlorophyll, umber, ochre, iron oxide. Light and vision refracting in air. Among the white pines, at the foot of them, I find a distinct understanding of my proper proportion. The placedness that makes me among and with and makes my gaze through and in rather than at. From the edge of the city I see them, objects on a horizon: but among them, my sight is transformed and I am a subject among subjects. I would like to hold them in this withness and throughness. \\\"Landscape\\\" is an effect of an exterior position. I am wrestling with my love of landscape painting and my position as an outsider to that tradition, by virtue of gender, training, and class\u2014and I am wrestling with the fact of my being-settler in this place, with the history of ownership- as-land-relation I belong to. From a distance, the painter or surveyor perceives an interplay of light, shadow, form, movement. These are arranged as painting or as map, or, if in the mind rather than in material, as property. But this island is a freely offered immersion in color, perspective, time. Surrounded by white pines, it is impossible to take distance. I cannot stand back and see myself apart from them. They remind me we have always been involved in one another, whether I knew it or not. I was formed in a scientific and religious environment where human beings and other beings are unequal. But despite how my imagination or understanding was formed, the white pines' way of being requires, structurally, that I am among them, beneath them, between them, in their midst. It changes the kind of relationship I can have, and not just to the white pines. The withness they do to me extends limitlessly. They with me, and they with their understory. They with the greyness of the ground, scattered with their rust-orange needles, after long weeks without rain. They with the chipmunks who make holes at their feet. They with and are withed by the non-local roses and the local ferns, the lichen, the sound of the tide arriving, the bladderwrack, the smell of the mud on a hot afternoon coming through the closer sweetness of the needles that carpet the dry ground. They with the conditions of the air\u2014humidity, pollution\u2014and of the water, weather, the salt marshes, the bogs beyond, the fields beyond that. The way the white pines are makes me with, a with that exceeds them and far exceeds me\u2014and exceeds the pronoun \\\"me\\\". Here, among the trees, I find myself one among many, even unseen many, moving in a concert it is impossible to know in full. The island, the ocean, the iron streaks in granite, the yellow seaweed and its scent in the September air, the red hips of the roses spattering the afternoon: I don't want a painting I can own as soon as I see, that lets me say I know what you are. I want something that can do to me again what has been done here\u2014that amongs me. As color does to me, as scent does: throughs me. Withs me. Bewiths me. This human head and your lowest branches. The light held there, having fallen through you from the nearest brightest star. The air I expel from my lungs and take into my lungs. The words-failness of that light, air, open, up, around space. An experience closer to what I name preposition than noun: more than thing it is movement, direction, location, a totality of space and passage. The pines make this sense as they move through time and space. By the time I arrive where they are, they have ordained an entire way of being, and I enter it. This is true of almost all places I go: the city and its apartments, the museum and its rooms. They have been made in advance and they will outlast me. Among the white pines on this rocky island I am altered to fit the time and space of the pines. What is this alteration? It changes the I that I am, and the eyes that I have. The duringness and withinity of the pines are a grammar that refits me to an accompanied and accompanying multiple subjecthood. No longer the center of the sentence-shaped universe or the distant viewer of a landscape made to hold, I am here: with the pines, with the world they are."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Plants, Identity, and War in Ukraine","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25810","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d060896f.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"12","authors":"Keegan, Brendan","start_page":"58","end_page":"60","article_content":"From 2010-2012, I served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in a small Ukrainian town. In 2017, my wife (who also served in Ukraine) and I returned for a visit. We met with Natalia, a dear friend, and former colleague, at the school were I once worked. Together, we walked the old paths connecting nearby villages through the surrounding forest. It was a crisp, September day. The previous year's leaves, from towering old lindens, crunched beneath our feet. As we walked, I remembered the forest in seasons past. In March and April, millions of blooming white wood anemone and snow drops carpet the understory as far as the eye can see. A neighboring baba (granny) once asked if I would pick her a bouquet of those fragile, ephemeral flowers. As a child, she had plucked from those same woods. Giving them as gifts is a tradition common in the region for good luck and health. Last spring, I observed Arboretum visitors marveling at the same delicate snowdrops popping throughout our own collections. I thought of that friendly baba. As news images show the utter destruction of Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages, I often think of her, long since deceased, and her love for those simple flowers. Many readers will surely appreciate the Ukrainian custom of sharing snowdrops, of marking the seasons with walks through old forests. Indeed, Ukrainian identity as a whole is strongly associated with the natural world, and with plants in particular. The kalyna, better known in the U.S. as a guelder rose or snowball viburnum, is the most prominent example. Ukrainians believe planting one outside a home brings health and good fortune. Its red berries also serve as a metaphor for Ukrainian nationhood and independence. The plant prominently features in Ukrainian music, literature, and art. Its red berries adorn the bright embroidery of the vyshyvanka (Ukraine's national costume) as well as the modern-day insignia of Ukraine's armed forces. Plants play important roles in many other aspects of the culture. Wheat, the nation's economic lifeblood, is famously referenced in Ukraine's flag, golden under a bright blue summer sky. European aspen, found at the Arboretum on Peters Hill, features widely in Ukrainian poetry and literature, especially in the work of Ukraine's national poet, Taras Shevchenko. In Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, horse chestnuts adorn the various squares; at one point in its history, horse-chestnut leaves even graced this green city's official seal. Botanically inclined readers might even be envious of Ukraine's calendar, in which the names of months reference coinciding natural phenomena. For example, Berezen' (March) means \\\"birch,\\\" and indicates the time to tap the birches for their sweet sap. Kviten' (April) is \\\"flower,\\\" when the earliest blooms appear. Lypen' (July) is \\\"linden,\\\" marking the long summer evenings when this tree's sweet aroma bathes Ukrainian towns. My personal favorites mark the fall. Zhovten' (October) means \\\"yellowing,\\\" referring of course to changing leaves, while Lystopad (November) translates literally as \\\"leaf fall.\\\" Examples such as these abound in Ukrainian culture. In addition to sharing a general love for plants, the Arnold Arboretum also shares connections with Ukrainian botanical gardens and their staff. During the first year of the pandemic, our virtual lectures and educational presentations provided an opportunity for a truly global audience to attend and participate. Staff from Ukraine's M. M. Hyrshko National Botanic Garden in Kyiv were among them. After communicating first over social media, then directly, they sought advice from Arboretum staff on plant curation and exchanges. Of course, everything changed for our Ukrainian horticultural counterparts when Russia invaded on February 24, 2022. As the Russians advanced towards Kyiv, the M. M. Hryshko National Botanic Garden closed to all visitors. While many Kyivites fled the city in the face of bombardment, Arnold Arboretum staff kept in touch with our garden connections who remained. Throughout the months of fighting, horticulturist Olga Pokhlychenko updated us on the situation in city and garden alike. As many a gardener can surely relate, she feared for her plants as well as her colleagues, friends, and family. Of course, she was not alone; a select group of staff were allowed into the garden to keep their treasured greenhouses functioning during the bitter February cold. When the garden closed, Olga joined multitudes of other citizens volunteering in defense of their city and for each other. She spent much of her time gathering and dispersing medical supplies, and later served as a volunteer coordinator. At one point, she darkly joked that she had so many medical supplies in her house that she had retired as a horticulturist and become a pharmacist instead. When the Russians retreated from Kyiv in late March, Olga and others went to assist civilians living in the formerly occupied suburban towns and villages. Several towns, including Bucha and Irpin, were off limits as a result of mines and booby traps left behind. However, in the numerous surrounding villages, they delivered aid to the disproportionate number of elderly who remained during the fighting. Some volunteer aid deliveries included seeds for vegetable gardening, a popular pastime and food source for both urban and rural Ukrainians even before the war. Even after the Russian withdrawal, the danger of attack remained so high within Kyiv that the M. M. Hyrshko National Botanic Garden stayed closed for several months. As winter turned to spring, many loyal visitors mourned the inability to see their beloved plants. They inquired about the status of their favorite magnolias, cornelian cherries, and forsythia. Unfortunately, even the garden's renowned lilac festival was canceled for security concerns. Finally, after being closed for over ninety days, the M. M. Hyrshko National Botanic Garden reopened for staff and visitors on May 28. The opening day aligned with the weekend-long celebration of Kyiv's city day, marking its 1,540th anniversary. Olga, and those of her colleagues who remained in Kyiv, finally returned to their plants. At the Arnold Arboretum, our own Lilac Sunday returned in full after two years of muted festivities. In tribute to our Ukrainian colleagues, we highlighted a rare lilac cultivar in our collection, Syringa vulgaris 'Ukraina' (pronounced oo-kray-EE-na), named in honor of Ukraine. Although still a small plant, our Syringa vulgaris \\\"Ukraina\\\" bloomed beautifully this year. The cultivar was discovered in 1974 by Ukrainian horticulturist Valentina Zhogoleva. She worked at what is today Ukraine's National Botanic Garden, where Olga and her colleagues continue her care for the lilac collection. A woman in a field largely dominated by men, Valentina is also credited as a collaborator on many lilac cultivars. All of her credited lilacs are named after Ukrainian heroes, cities, and literary icons. The Arboretum plans to introduce several of these now rare Ukrainian cultivars into our collections over the coming years. We also hope to share acquired specimens with Ukrainian institutions, such as Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute, which may not already have them. Our hope is to provide plants for memorial plantings, remembering Ukrainians who have died in the ongoing war, while also preserving unique cultivars of Ukraine's botanical heritage. In early spring, I connected again with my friend Natalia. She provided updates on the town, my colleagues, and both the strain and unusual rhythm of war. As a teacher, she described the difficulties of conducting lessons with periodic intermissions in the bomb cellar. Like many of us, she found solace working outside. \\\"(L)ife finds its balance even during war,\\\" she wrote in her message. \\\"We also have spring here\u2014it is still cold, but tulips have already blossomed, we have a lot of fruit trees, so I have enough work to do.\u2026 And a rose flower garden of 52 rose bushes. My hands are all in thorns\u2014but it's not so bad. The beauty of flowers is worth it.\\\" I am sure that many readers would sympathize with Natalia's words. Perhaps peace is like Natalia's roses, painfully, and painstakingly, cultivated. Until it is achieved, I hope the shared love of plants, such as the beautiful snowdrops in spring, the flowers of our Ukrainian lilac in May, and the red berries of the kalyna each fall, remain symbols of personal and institutional connection with the Ukrainian people."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Public Gardens and the Livable City","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25811","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070a327.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"11","authors":"Rakow, Donald A.; Gough, Megan Z.; Lee, Sharon A.","start_page":"54","end_page":"57","article_content":"Over the centuries, public gardens like the Arnold Arboretum have welcomed visitors to their grounds and enhanced those visits with opportunities to learn about the garden's plant collections and landscapes and to reflect and relax. In recent decades, many gardens have expanded the garden experience through art exhibits and performances of musical and theatrical groups on the grounds. However, most visitors to public gardens are those with the means to travel to the garden and the resources to pay for admission, when a gate fee is charged. For residents of underserved neighborhoods, even public gardens that offer free admission may be largely unknown due to a lack of public transportation, the absence of bilingual signs, or a perception of the institution as unwelcoming and catering only to higher- income or white members of the community. To thrive in the twenty-first century, public gardens must respond to their elitist reputations and invest in programs and policies that are inclusive, caring, and relevant to a wider audience. No matter their size or budget, it is time for public gardens to assume their responsibilities as community institutions and to focus on outreach to all community residents. As plant-based scientific and educational institutions, public gardens have the expertise and the experience that can help address challenges such as unsafe neighborhoods, poor quality science education, limited access to fresh and healthy foods, a lack of job training and job opportunities, and degraded environments. In support of the role that gardens can play in addressing these challenges, studies have shown that as streetscapes become greener, they attract more activity and engender more pride in public spaces. When young children are provided with hands-on science and nature instruction, they are more likely to succeed in school and see science as a possible career alternative. When previously incarcerated individuals are given training and offered jobs in the green industries, they are far less likely to return to prison. And when under-resourced residents are given the tools to build and grow community gardens, their diets and health also improve. The most successful initiatives arise through partnerships. As we demonstrate in our book, Public Gardens and Livable Cities (Cornell 2020, foreword by Scott Medbury), many initiatives to improve quality of life in our cities result from partnerships between gardens and other community organizations, neighborhood groups, municipal agencies, and private entities. There are a number of reasons why such partnerships make sense for public gardens. First, to be accessible to an increasingly diverse population, many programs need to be based where people reside or gather, rather than at the gardens themselves. Also, addressing environmental hazards in our poorest neighborhoods and connecting people with plants supports the priority that many public gardens now place on environmental stewardship. Through collaborations, gardens can be invaluable to initiatives that involve urban greening, while their partners contribute social capital and other organizational, financial, or logistical aspects. Public gardens can learn from organizations that have already entered into partnerships that resulted in successful initiatives. Our book provides multiple examples of partnerships that gardens have formed with school districts, municipal governments, community foundations, businesses, and neighborhood associations. Some of those partnerships are described below. In each example, partners have brought their particular strengths to the project, with the result that together they have had a far greater impact than any could have produced on their own. Community impact is possible across a variety of sectors, including public safety, food security, educational quality, and economic development: Promoting Neighborhood Safety and Well-Being Many underserved neighborhoods are still feeling the effects of the federally supported redlining initiated in the 1930s. Unequal access to mortgages, inadequate park development, and absence of street tree plantings are all manifestations of how discriminatory housing policies still impact low income and communities of color. To provide all communities within their borough with opportunities to reverse these trends, Brooklyn Botanic Garden created the Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest in partnership with multiple local block and civic associations, the Brooklyn Borough President's office, and engaged funders. The residents who plant and beautify their individual streets are not only improving the environmental quality of their surroundings, they are also building social ties, enabling them to better address neighborhood concerns related to crime prevention, economic development, and other quality of life issues. The prizes awarded to the \\\"greenest blocks\\\" also serve as points of pride for residents, encouraging them to sustain their beautification efforts in subsequent years. Access to Healthy Foods and Promoting Healthy Lives Underinvestment also strikes poor urban communities in the paucity of food choices. Neighborhoods that lack access to a full range of grocery items, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, have been termed \\\"food deserts\\\" and are often associated with high rates of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes, health issues that take a toll on our medical system. To address the negative impacts of food deserts throughout the Bronx, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) created Bronx Green-Up, a program that annually supports up to 75 community gardens and urban farms throughout the borough. While NYBG provides horticultural expertise and planting supplies to each growing site, the program's continued success depends on a range of local nonprofit and educational partners. Among these are Farm School NYC, NYC Parks Green Thumb, Butterfly Project NYC, and the Bronx Land Trust. Through its hands-on engagement with communities, NYBG, which was once seen as an elite institution, now feels like a welcoming space for many more of its neighbors. Training and Employment Programs Throughout our metropolitan regions, prisons are overcrowded, and sentencing is often long delayed. Many incarcerated individuals are likely to return to their past behavior, resulting in a continued cycle of recidivism. Some public gardens in partnership with other community institutions have created initiatives to help break this cycle, especially for non-violent offenders. Programs such as Roots to Re-Entry (R2R), administered by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, treat young incarcerated men as individuals, rather than statistics. The R2R program depends on partnerships with the Bureau of Prisons, the District Attorney's Office, the Defender's Association of Philadelphia, and a web of local landscaping businesses and foundations. This synergy of participants allows the R2R program to train participants in horticultural and mechanical skills, and then helps to place them in green industry positions. Moving these young men into paying positions is enhanced by mentors who assist them as they re-enter the world. As a result, the recidivism rates for R2R participants is 30 percent compared to 65 percent for the general prison population in Philadelphia. Improving the Quality of Science Education Science education in U.S. public schools suffers from too little time devoted to the subject, a shortage of trained science teachers, and traditional curricula that focus on memorization rather than engaging students in interactive instruction. In many urban school districts, a high proportion of students also suffer from the negative impacts of poverty. These shortcomings come as the nation deals with the consequences of global climate change, loss of biodiversity, and polluted environments. The Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG) is addressing these challenges through their multi-stage Science Career Continuum. The initial stage, Science First, is an intensive, inquiry-based summer program designed to introduce middle schoolers to basic biological principles and applications. At the Garden, students are led by a team of public school science teachers and CBG staff in scientific inquiry, investigations, and observations. Those who excel are invited to participate in the College First program for eleventh and twelfth-grade that features a summer-long intensive immersion program at the Garden, including an environmental science practicum, an internship with a CBG scientist, and a monthly session with CBG staff mentors during the school year. Chicago Botanic Garden partners with a range of educational and social services organizations in the execution of these programs, including Northwestern University, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago Scholars, Chicago Public Schools, and Hive Chicago, a network of nonprofits dedicated to connected learning. The impact of this continuum of programs is stunning: 100 percent of College First participants have graduated from high school, and 94 percent matriculated to two- or four-year colleges. These hardly exhaust the examples\u2014or the possibilities. The partnerships mentioned in this article and others described in more depth in Public Gardens and Livable Cities, will not, by themselves, solve all of the challenges of our cities. But such efforts are making a difference in creating cities that more livable for all residents. They succeed because they involve the collective expertise of both the gardens and their partners; they address real issues as identified by community members; and they reach out broadly to engage partners from across the municipal, not-for-profit, and business worlds. To learn about additional exciting collaborations between public gardens and their partners , visit our companion website at https:\/\/blogs.cornell.edu\/pglc."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Viburnum bracteatum 'Crimson Gem'","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25812","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070a36b.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"10","authors":"Enzenbacher, Tiffany","start_page":"50","end_page":"53","article_content":"'Crimson Gem' bracted viburnum (Viburnum bracteatum) is the first cultivar release from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University's new plant introduction program, Arnold Selects. This bracted viburnum's one-of-a-flower was discovered over ten years ago by the Edwards Lab (then of Brown University, now of Yale) while conducting research in the Arboretum's collections, and noted by Keeper of the Living Collections, Michael Dosmann. Reading his May 2010 database field check note, one can still feel Dosmann's excitement: \\\"inflorescences have red centers!\\\" Indeed, blossoms have a rare sterile red floret in the center, resembling the herbaceous biennial Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota). The red floret is perched above the ivory ones, literally taking center stage. These unique flat-topped cymes are held on erect pubescent, 2-inch stems that are a whopping 1 \u00bd to 3 inches across. In fact, the red floret can be enjoyed even before the shrub comes into full flower, while its pearl-colored neighbors are still in bud. But the real show starts when the enchanting inflorescences open in their entirety in late May to early June, showering the shrub, and revealing the 'gem' in the center of practically every single inflorescence. Foliage is also appealing: emerging leaves have an ephemeral reddish hue, notably visible along the margins and between veins. Leaves are 2 to 4 inches long and 1 \u00bc to 2 \u00bd inches wide, and change to dark green as the season progresses. They are ovate with acuminate tips and serrate margins. Giving the plant its common name are the four persistent, bract-like stipules at each node (junction of leaf petiole and stem), as well as the two bracts below each inflorescence. Paired with leaf colors ranging bronze to maroon, the clusters of shiny oval to rounded fruits (drupes) are blue-black at maturity, providing autumn interest. 'Crimson Gem' was originally acquired as part of the Arboretum's commitment to plant conservation. The Arboretum is a participating member of the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), and has holdings of ten current indigenous North American species on the CPC threatened plant list. Founded in 1984 at the Arboretum, and with the national headquarters currently at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, California, CPC is unique partnership of conservationist organizations, such as botanical gardens and arboreta. Its aim is to preserve threatened North American plant taxa by ex situ conservation focused on acquisition and species stewardship. Bracted viburnum is considered critically imperiled (global conservation status G1) and is endangered in the wild\u2014mainly due to limestone quarrying, but also by clearing and logging operations. Only a few populations remain in the southeastern states of Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. In its current range, it is found selectively as an understory shrub growing in open deciduous woodlands and along rivers, particularly on the ledges of the Coosa River, which begins in Rome, Georgia before entering Alabama, and on the escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau (southern part of the Appalachian Mountain Plateau). With CPC collections at the forefront of Arboretum institutional priorities in the mid-1980s, assistant plant propagator Rob Nicholson embarked on multiple expeditions to facilitate ex situ conservation. \\\"I basically would go to the herbarium, compile a list of locales for the targeted species, and off I went,\\\" Nicholson recalls. \\\"Once in awhile I would connect with a botanist who knew a species and where to find it \u2026 but it was mostly solo hunting.\\\" (Nicholson was a prolific collector for the Arnold and other institutions; see his account of the expedition to collect Pinus krempfii beginning on page 32.) Nicholson's investigations led him to travel to Tennessee and Georgia in October 1987, where scarce native populations of bracted viburnum are present. Twenty-one acquisitions from the very full weeklong Southeast State Expedition were accessioned. The trip was characterized by \\\"long 16-hour days \u2026 and long miles.\\\" Other taxa of interest on the trip included Fraser fir (Abies fraseri), endangered due to the balsam wooly adelgid; southern bush honeysuckle (Diervilla sessilifolia), considered threatened in its native state of Tennessee; and longstalk holly (Ilex collina), vulnerable with only 4,000 individuals in the wild. With so many target taxa acquired, Nicholson's CPC expedition was a success, but not to the extent that he could ever have imagined. Nicholson found the 'Crimson Gem' parent plant growing in Franklin County, Tennessee. Flowering in late spring, this bracted viburnum's precious bloom could not have been observed when Nicholson made the collection on October 10th. Though it was in its fall fruiting phase, he recalls that no fruit was present, so he harvested a division\u2014the sole means of preserving this crucial imperiled taxon. To hedge his bet, Nicholson took three divisions, two of which remain in the collections. Three days later, Nicholson visited Floyd County, Georgia, and collected other bracted viburnum divisions on the bluffs overlooking the Coosa River. These are also planted in the living collections, but don't share their relatives' unusual attribute. Bracted viburnum divisions were cataloged upon receipt at the Arboretum, and 'Crimson Gem' was given the accession number of 1067-87. Plants were dutifully nurtured at the Dana Greenhouses at the Arboretum, and then aptly planted at the Viburnum Collection\/Greenhouse border (likely so Nicholson could keep tabs on his valuable acquisition accomplishment) in 1992. In 2005, stem cuttings were taken of this endangered (and extraordinary) plant to increase the Arboretum's ex situ holdings. The resulting clone, with the same ruby \\\"gem,\\\" was planted in the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden. With over thirty years in the Arboretum landscape, 'Crimson Gem' has stood the test of time. It has provided outstanding seasonal interest, and has been reliable year after year in a shrub border. It would also be well utilized if planted as a hedge, or in mass. 'Crimson Gem' is adaptable to different soil conditions\u2014it has certainly tolerated the Arboretum's acidic soils just fine, though it is native to the alkaline soil of limestone woods. 'Crimson Gem' cuttings were just provided to nursery partners, so it will be several years before this new cultivar is available in the trade. However, it will no doubt be the jewel of gardens someday, and we can all have that magical \\\"aha\\\" moment\u2014flowers have red centers!"},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Timber Culture Act","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25813","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070a76e.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"9","authors":"Elkin, Rosetta S.","start_page":"40","end_page":"49","article_content":"The Timber Culture Act (1873) was a radical means to secure resources in otherwise treeless environments. Its stated claim provided entry \\\"for the cultivation of timber which are prairie lands or other lands devoid of timber.\\\"1 Its passing mobilized the protocols and promises of affidavit to deed land across the prairie states. The act was followed by land entries and land patents, the final steps in securing land that had already been peopled for thousands of years by hundreds of Native American tribes.2 Nebraska\u2014a prairie state\u2014took the lead in land entry numbers, tallies, and acres, which frames the itinerary of tree planting as a form of land tenure predicated on afforestation because Nebraska is principally a dry prairie grassland.3 Therefore, the Timber Culture Act sanctioned the substitution and deletion of dryland ecology, in this case both the extant prairie biome and the skillful cultivation of its inhabitants. A quick review of the associated institutional language makes evident the use of authority, hinged on administrative tasks. It further implicates the individual farmer as a developer, invested in the act of swapping thick grassy cover for individual tree units in order to establish an enterprise. Where 160 acres are taken, at least five must be plowed within one year from date of entry. The following, or second year, said five acres must be actually cultivated to crops or otherwise, and another five acres must be plowed. The third year the first five acres must be planted to trees, tree seeds or cuttings, and the second five acres actually cultivated to crop or otherwise. The fourth year, the second five acres must be planted to trees, tree seeds or cuttings, making, at the end of the fourth year, ten acres thus planted to trees.4 A \\\"tree claim\\\" could be filled in by anyone, and in return no more than 160 acres was acquired, with the specification that 40 acres of the claim must be tree planted, an effective means to ensure settlement. According to one claimant, \\\"the section of land specified in my said application is composed exclusively of prairie lands, or other lands devoid of timber; that this filing and entry is made for the cultivation of timber and that I have made said application in good faith.\\\"5 Units coalesced local and regional affairs, advancing federal and legislative ambitions. But the cost was only refined in the fine print, which specified that no fewer than 2,700 tree units could be planted on any ten-acre block.6 It was a staggering number that led to copious tallies, monitoring programs, and the need for reportage. Each territorial procedure (survey, reportage) reinforced the hopelessness of the task: water was scarce, winds were strong, erosion seemed erratic, and the quantity of units could not be sustained. To plow and maintain 160 acres with a mix of crops and trees was a challenge that took hold for very few claims.7 Managing 675 living trees on each acre was akin to owning a product, and growing trees was the best way to hold onto your land and avoid the cancelation of your claim. The number of entries made under the Timber Culture Act records area in acres, although territory could only be claimed if individual tree units were calculated and submitted for approval. This kind of accounting leaves out more than it includes, marking both the beginning of afforestation- linked landscape management and the rise of incentive-based policy maladapted to drylands. In Nebraska alone almost nine million acres were claimed under the act, but final proof was only made for trees planted across two million acres.8 Since alterations to the land were less predictable than imagined, the gradual accumulation of expertise was necessary to further instill confidence in afforestation. The newly formed federal government certainly did not want western expansion to be deemed a failure. Not surprisingly, this tension between success and failure required expertise, which arrived in the form of technical manuals, suitable species lists, and machinery types: the index of expertise. In the radical ecology of afforestation projects, the concept of failure is critical to the vocabulary of management, whereby catastrophe becomes a claim made by a specialist rather than a circumstance of ill-aligned biotic and climatic association. From a different angle, this means that expertise reinforces ecological projections through a series of calculated procedures rather than distinguishes, decodes, and evolves through direct experience with plant life. In fact, the plant really had nothing to do with it. Thus, failures in tallying units set the stage for the assimilation of expertise, which was equally an opportunity for the emerging business of arboriculture to become the science of forestry. The Timber Culture Act mobilized substantial takings across drylands, revealing that trees were valued as an important natural resource before forestry emerged as a discipline. At the time, forestry was a colonial economy, a means to import and spread viable European plants across the American continent and send New World novelties back to Europe.9 The botanical studies and the natural sciences were far too remote from the actual efforts of farming, explicated by the disparity created between increasing knowledge of plant parts in botany and the transmission of their application into common use, through horticulture. The more practical \\\"cultures\\\"\u2014 including the planting of trees in cities, crops for a homestead, or flowers for public display\u2014were the domain of arboriculture, horticulture, or agriculture, for instance. Botanical studies were firmly indifferent to practical endeavors in much the same ways as farmers or ranchers are indifferent to scientific study. Botany's elevated status ensured that it did not labor, and its scientific status protected it from ever having to do so. So long as these two practices (botany and horticulture) remain entirely distinct and in organized separation, a summarized reading of plant life is multiplied into the space of physical, earthly matters. Imagine a world of individual farmers working across vastly differentiated territories. Each effort represents a struggle to hold boundaries across a landscape without trees. Consequently, the failure to establish trees compelled professionalization. Failure was pinned on individual farmers and expertly manipulated as a means to assert more control over territory.10 It was not attributed to the ill calibration of species, quantity or the insistence of inserting trees into a vast, treeless landscape. Rather, lands beyond the hundredth meridian look empty from the shady groves of the East Coast. Timber and crops were needed to support a growing population, and the prairies represented a blank canvas. As a result, tree culture across the Plains was predicated on the need for protection from the harsh climatic conditions, which offered a correspondingly reduced description of the grassland biome.11 In order to increase agricultural production by sheltering farmlands from strong winds, each belt, break, or wall represented more than local shelter, firewood, or fuel: it was an opportunity to nationalize timber. The replicable model of planting a shelterbelt catalyzes the farmer as an agent of the federal economy by suppressing indigenous practices and local acquaintance. The language of this authority eliminates conjecture through levels of survey, reportage, and authoritative lists that impress with calculation. Of the total area (Great Plains region), some 56 percent lends itself to shelterbelt planting, about 39 percent is difficult to plant, and 5 percent is entirely unfit for planting.12 According to this federal explanation, there is nothing essential, intermediary, or material to constrain the accumulation of units. This description instrumentalized efforts to liberate the vacant spaces between meridians. Settlement necessitated clearing and cutting forest to make space for cultivation, as the character of cheap nature ultimately supported expansion. Both tree planting and tree felling were exploitative regimes that consolidated control across the American continent. As we have seen, the difference was contextual; trees were cleared to make space for cultivation along the arborized East Coast, and trees were planted as pioneers moved west into the treeless prairies to cultivate land. In both cases, trees with clear human advantage were selected, while plants that grew of their own accord, or spontaneously, were overlooked and rarely stabilized in the procedures of index. It took decades of energy, planting, and felling before allegiance to the spontaneous plants was described by Charles Sprague Sargent: Many years ago, when I first realized the difficulty of obtaining any true knowledge of the trees in this country, I formed the plan of writing a Silva which should contain an account of all the species that grow spontaneously in the forests of North America.13 The study of trees as spontaneous organisms with indigenous characteristics was described in The Silva of North America (1891), a work of botanical inquiry that detailed 412 species, with reference to growth habit linked to illustrated maps that indicated distribution. 14 Most significantly, Sargent, the director of the At the time, Sargent held the position of professor of arboriculture, which ensured that his tenure at the arboretum would be focused on applied engagement with the landscape, with \\\"plants in a living state.\\\" Sargent valued the associations between the individual tree, and its necessary relationship with soil, climate, and human codependency. His treatise provided a careful account of spontaneous woody plants, distinguishing between rainfall patterns and elevation, factors that limit tree growth at the hundredth meridian. This is the boundary of aridity that reveals the prairies as dryland. The variable edge is endowed with a watercolor- like transparency that emulates this bond between climate and plant life. Armed with the notes on \\\"wood producing capacity,\\\" Sargent's treatise would go on to become the first technical forestry report of the newly created Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture in 1886. The Silva of North America elevates claims in drylands, as forestry reaches into scientific study to nurture its advance. Of note is that while the profession of forestry is confirmed in the United States in the European tradition, it expands to include planting in order to secure extractable resources. The varied institutional settings between botany as a science and forestry as a profession entangle the study of plant life in the discrepancies and difficulties reports, as forestry read gaps in the maps and botanists read their extents. Rather than carefully consider the findings of Sargent's botanical fieldwork, remote structures deployed the literal blank space of his mapping efforts as a means to recontextualize the prairies as a tree-planting endeavor, converting biomes and replacing thick, fibrous rhizomes with woody plant units. The appropriations of forestry transformed Silva into an operations manual\u2014or a masterplan\u2014which begins to explain how vast quantities of grassland expanse and ancient reserves of pastoral acreage become the jurisdiction of federal foresters. The map was \\\"empty,\\\" a curse of drylands the world over, but it was an opportunity for the industrious. The insertion of trees infused meaning into New World expansion in the prairie states, as demand for ownership lines and boundaries enabled land claims hinged on tree planting. Afforestation emerges as forestry (not botany) and disseminates plant life as a \\\"tree unit,\\\" transferring knowledge of resource management to each small-hold farmer. In this way, particularly profitable and predictable plant species are endorsed over others, superimposing units on extant plant life. New World Forest Problems 1891 published. The Silva of North America (Sargent) 1901 renamed. Division of Forestry becomes the Bureau of Forestry 1905 renamed. Bureau of Forestry becomes Forest Service 1910 published. The Fight for Conservation (Pinchot) In the American consciousness, the origins of environmentalism are tied to the ethics of conservation, first recognized as forest conservation. The lineage of conservation, like many historic accounts, is entirely dependent on the narrator. For instance, ecological thought in America was first affirmed as plant ecology, the study of plant life in the environment. What is worth bearing in mind is that despite its significance, plant ecology did not proceed as the science of consequence in the grassland biome. Rather, forestry administered and studied the prairie formation. The reasons for this odd fragmentation of knowledge are slippery to pin down, but it is worth noting the role of Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946). Pinchot was more of a politician than a forester, and he acted as the first head of the newly established Forest Service in 1905. Under his leadership, forestry progressed from a division within the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to a separate bureau responsible for forest policy across the whole land surface of the United States. The Forest Service emerged\u2014not coincidentally\u2014 as the nation demanded unprecedented quantities of timber for fuel and construction. Charged with a simplified problem statement, Pinchot pushed forest conservation into unchartered territory. The influence of George Perkins Marsh (1801-82) motivated Pinchot's interest in the debates of conservation. In Man and Nature (1864), Marsh determined that humans were a major geologic influence, famously asserting that \\\"man is everywhere a disturbing agent,\\\" a landmark statement in both ecological and conservation studies.16 Marsh was neither forester nor plant ecologist but articulated an unparalleled understanding of the role of plant life in preserving the landscape, in how a plant's connection to the soil maintains the substrate and prevents or reduces erosion. According to biographer David Lowenthal, the success of Marsh's rhetoric is found in his caution concerning impending disaster, by addressing what he termed \\\"New World\\\" forest problems. Marsh challenged the general belief that human impact on nature was generally negligible, explicating a global tendency toward wasted natural resources. Armed with Man and Nature, Pinchot adopts conservation as forest policy. In a sticky exchange of authority, conservation and forestry coalesce as both ethic and science, alternatively sanctioning felling and planting trees regardless of context. Despite Marsh's warning, the Forest Service appropriated conservation as a \\\"solution\\\" to forest devastation, seizing upon Marsh's warning of old-world forest decline as a motivation to enforce national policy. Conservation policy progressed through extant forests and forest plantations, as plant ecology evolved as a scientific discipline in the prairie states. Remarkably, the difference was not correlated, although ecology revealed the role of plants in forming the territory and conservation uncovered the role of human agency over the territory. Rather, conservation was annexed to the profession of forestry, authorizing the Forest Service to oversee the planting of grasslands, prairies, agricultural lots, deserts, urban centers, and high mountains, concealing their extractive procedures in the outlines of conservation. Tree-planting projects begin to materialize in the millions of acres as the soil is planted, replanted, aplanted, seeded, fenced, and labeled. The landscape is objectified, appearing and disappearing through measurement and calculation. In this way, felling and planting develop synonymously, rendering the environmental messages of Man and Nature were translated as generalized statements with gross ecological miscalculations. For instance, the notion that tree planting would bring rain to the arid West was appropriated to encourage settlers to move to ever-dryer lands.17 The assumed property that followed tree planting is a clever disguise for afforestation. As Lowenthal's biography verifies, Marsh's message was pillaged for such \\\"proof\\\" that rainfall and prosperity followed tree planting. This nexus between national forest policy and conservationist thought is repeatedly stressed in Pinchot's The Fight for Conservation (1910): \\\"As a forester I am glad to believe that conservation began with forestry, and that the principles which govern the Forest Service in particular and forestry in general are also the ideas that control conservation.\\\"18 The fight for conservation was taken up by the Forest Service, exploiting the growing concern over forest devastation in order to plant and thus control more federal land. Tree cover emerges in the lexicon of conservation. Land, absent \\\"cover,\\\" is manipulated into land that can potentially receive cover. Tree units add up, when acres of \\\"cover\\\" are procedurally converted by the practices of forestry, as tree planting is sanctioned in non-treed environments. Consider the following passage. The crown has more to do with the life of the tree than its other parts, for the most important processes in the reproduction of the tree and the digestion of its food take place in the crown. For this reason, and because we can control its shape and size more easily and directly than that of the roots or trunk, the crown is of special interest to the forester. It is almost exclusively with the crowns that he has to deal in tending a crop of trees and preparing the way for succeeding generations. As they stand together in the forest, the crowns of trees form a broken shelter, which is usually spoken of as the leaf canopy, but which may be better called the cover.19 Land, absent \\\"cover,\\\" represents millions of acres of potential federal territory. The conversion of \\\"crown\\\" or \\\"leaf canopy\\\" into \\\"cover\\\" had a number of spatial consequences that will be addressed further. For now, the consequences are especially poignant because the root system is set aside in the first pages. Regulators, policy makers, and the forest service administrators intentionally reduced the growing plant to standing timber. The consequence is that the federal government had no use for the nascent scholarship of grassland science or the complications of plant ecology. The hidden intelligence of rhizomatic formation could not reaffirm exploitation or capital return, one of the most fundamental reasons why canopy continues to prevail in carbon-capture calculations. This is what professional expertise does when it lays claim to fact and asserts the power of disqualification instead. Pinchot's use of the term cover not only left out the aliveness of plants; it delineated the absence or presence of trees. The social implications and the negligence toward practical knowledge or public intelligence were already a form of expert persuasion upon which the profession of forestry is established: treeless lands can be conserved by planting trees. This raises another question: What are the spatial\u2014 and thus social\u2014consequences of such abridged problem statements? If Marsh explicated the \\\"problems\\\" of human action, Pinchot clarified that forestry had solutions, a defense strategy that he claims as a \\\"virile evolution of the campaign for conservation of the nation's resources.\\\"20 Conveniently, the solution relies on the interrelated goals of national expansion and resource extraction. By associating tree planting with conservation, Pinchot appealed to President Teddy Roosevelt, who pioneered land conservation armed with Pinchot's treatises.21 Thus, a fragmented translation of Man and Nature is interpreted by statistical proof in Pinchot's The Fight for Conservation. At the time of Man and Nature's publication, federal regulations had already secured the first Forestry Service in the federal Department of Agriculture, established a forestry program at Yale University, and set aside more than 150 national forests as reserve areas. Such policy and regulatory potency have lasting spatial repercussions. Particular to the success of forestry was the reduction of national geography to manageable units, as conservation became a capital project.22 Thus, the terms of conservation mitigated the affiliation between planting and felling, but conservation was fortified by yield management, the precision of index. This is significant to the ways in which management and development continue to prosper through the invention of crisis. Specification in Units Afforestation hides in the manipulation of specifications, loudly advocating for tree planting while quietly converting biomes: cut here, fill there or fell here, plant there. The cyclical arrangement is wedged between industrial and ecological intentions, necessitating expertise in both analyzing extant lands and constructing entirely new ones. Not surprisingly, the interdependencies between forest and field mobilize the need for more and more units as a primary measure of converting biomes, or planting trees to secure timber. The forester does not deal in individual trees destined for a purpose but on masses of tree units, because the individual tree has value only as part of the whole. At the same time that Weaver was excavating earthy workshops and painstakingly detailing the depth and intricacy of the prairie formation, the character of American expansionism was emerging in tree units, as domesticated plants balanced settlement. The accumulation and distribution of homogenous units triumphed over the diverse, interconnected, spontaneous, and multiple, preventing any expression from unscientific worlds and erasing the intimate aspects of daily life where social, cultural, environmental, and plant life mingle. Armed with an antidote to treelessness, forest policy worked its way across 170 million acres of American dryland by stabilizing a sanctioned list of tree varieties, despite the warnings that cycles that transform forest to field to plow flatten diversity and destroy soil by field wash at both an unprecedented scale and an unprecedented speed due to plow and policy. The Timber Culture Act confirmed that only the most reliable, predictable plants could be confidently inserted, so these updated lists confirmed only trees that could persist in prairie soil. To facilitate planting, the specification of tree units was linear, and in the American context catalyzed the shelterbelt typology. Dryland shelterbelts are additive, unlike the shelterbelts in Europe or those found in the American East, which are primarily composed of remnant forest. Such belts are the residues of clearing, burning, or grading procedures. The plants that remain intact are often called hedgerows or windbreaks, and are registered vertically through a prolific, enduring accumulation of biota that remain deep in the rhizosphere. In other words, the trees, shrubs, and herbs of the former landscape are unbroken, and continue to thrive in diversity and habitat. As a network of accretive forces and biological activity, they are extremely effective at slowing erosive forces. The subtractive force of clearing land produces an increase in mounds and layers within the hedgerows, as branches and rocks are thrown into piles and endure. Each mature specimen also maintains vigorous seed banks and robust sprouting stumps. When a plant is inserted as an individual organism, copied and pasted in neat rows, it has limited ability to produce relations in the soil. This is due to the constitution of the rhizosphere, in which a process between microorganisms, fungus, and soil biota is stratified in cooperation with other neighboring organisms. Plants, left behind with their major root systems and mycorrhizal relationships intact, continue to provide reliable growth patterns. The connection of each remnant to the soil advances the entire network, an interdependent and persistent spatial structure, which pulses through the soil. In contrast, shelterbelt protocols in drylands insert plant units into flattened, cleared, turned, and exposed soil. Plants\u2014treated as objects\u2014are forced to instigate each belowground relationship anew before any achievement can be registered aboveground. A shelterbelt not only has behaviors, domains, and unknowns; it has a spatial geometry that often necessitates two landowners, as it straddles property lines. Further, this geometric configuration not only extends a thickened line and extrudes a height gradient; it extends the root zone in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions. The roots require irrigation, nutrition, and time in order to assert aboveground effects. As a result, local disputes escalate along with the behavior of any trees that display significant mobility, as some plants spread more quickly than others. While a shelterbelt is designed to grow in height and girth, it is certainly not expected to migrate or move. If a shelterbelt is \\\"successful,\\\" it is only because the plant evolved persistent root morphology and reproductive capacity, a feature that cannot be rendered visible or valuated economically. Yet conflict arises if the plant is successful enough to be found encroaching beyond property lines, or into productive farmland.23 For instance, the behavior of some woody roots will outcompete annual crops for resources such as moisture and nutrients, which makes them a nuisance to farmers. In shelterbelt culture, trees are deemed beneficial only if they provide undeviating protection, and are deemed a menace if they overcome specifications. The correlation between additive and subtracted spatial geometry illuminates the friction between developers and their environment during this period. Tree planting in the Plains exemplified this struggle, as failure to adapt was decidedly unacceptable and un-American.24 Resolve only increases in the space between dying and trying, a feature of most developers bent on return. But it was the lack of consensus between investments that finally led to the appeal for government support.25 Just as the American pioneers resisted treelessness, they could not cooperate on investment between property limits. Ownership is a personal discipline, as the contested fence and neighbor relationship suitably explicates. In a largescale planted system, these thresholds prove mutually beneficial. Yet the owner who initially broke ground, transplanted, or seeded the rows tended to be the one to water, manage, and maintain it, despite shared outcomes. Effort was the developer's investment, and resistance has the power to affect the system it endorses. Simultaneous to the decades when professional forestry, sedentary agriculture, and public acquisition were determining the American landscape, conservation collapsed neatly into agencies, services, institutes, and organizations. Political agendas merged with development strategies through the protection or abuse of natural resources, so that access and recreation became the most salient features of the vistas, lakes, peaks, and other wonders of natural beauty.26 Forestry lurks in the background as the landscape becomes a cultural and social construct, devoid of individual life-forms beyond the human. The symmetrical competition between growth and yield, or materializing and subtracting, currently calculates carbon credits through additive operations and timber volume in deductive increments. At once, local populations are led to believe that \\\"billion tree\\\" campaigns and \\\"great green walls\\\" are pronouncing progress, but growth statistics and depletion metrics are isolated from accountability and context. These flip-side tactics benefit from quick rotations that leverage tree planting as a means to elevate control through yield, in a world troubled by ongoing crisis. When dealing in units, the authority of forestation selectively neglects the less visible attributes of plant life, including individual plant behavior, symbiotic relationships, and the concealed roots and rhizomes that form and deform the soil within which biomes are produced. Because of aboveground visibility, development budgets, and technical encouragement, projects that eagerly plant trees under the rubric of afforestation continue to garner international funds and approval despite the haunting conspiracy of replacing biomes and commercializing plant life. The prowess of progress that celebrates biome conversion creates as it destroys, a central tenet of afforestation. rosetta s. elkin is associate professor and academic director of landscape architecture at Pratt Institute, principal of Practice Landscape, and research associate at the Arnold Arboretum. endnotes: 1. The full Timber Culture Act is available in Thomas Donaldson, The Public Domain: Its History, with Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884), 1093. 2. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Boston: Beacon, 2014). 3. For more on Nebraska as a \\\"tree-planting state,\\\" see John F. Freeman, \\\"Trees for High Plains,\\\" in High Plains Horticulture: A History (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008), 19-32. 4. Donaldson, The Public Domain, 1092. 5. Donaldson, 1094; Timber Culture Act, application October 3, 1878, Individual Claimant, NB. 6. Benjamin H. Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Policies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), 422. 7. Accounts of individual claims are covered in relation to the landscape in Charles Barron McIntosh, The Nebraska Sand Hills: The Human Landscape (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). 8. Everett Newfon Dick, Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1975). 9. Philip J. Pauly, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007). 10. C. B. McIntosh, \\\"Use and Abuse of the Timber Culture Act,\\\" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65, no. 3 (1975): 347-62. 11. In a description of the region, an introductory study by Raphael Zon of the Forest Service explains that \\\"the climatic conditions become less favorable for plant growth from east to west.\\\" Lake States Forest Experiment Station, U.S. Forest Service, Possibilities of Shelterbelt Planting in the Plains Region (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1935), 3. 12. Lake States Forest Experiment Station, 7. 13. Charles Sprague Sargent, The Silva of North America: A Description of the Trees Which Grow Naturally in North America Exclusive of Mexico (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891), v. 14. See also Charles Sprague Sargent, Sixteen Maps Accompanying Report on Forest Trees of North America (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1884). 15. Sargent, The Silva of North America, v. 16. George P. Marsh, Man and Nature (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), 14. 17. On the embrace of Pinchot's policies by Americans, see Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 393-411. 18. Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910). 19. Gifford Pinchot, A Primer of Forestry (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), 7. 20. Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation, iv. 21. David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation, Weyerhaeuser Environmental Book (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 9. 22. Lowenthal, 10-12. 23. Office of Information, U.S. Forest Service, Prairie-Plains Region Shelterbelt Project (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Forest Service, 1946). 24. Wilmon H. Droze, Trees, Prairies, and People (Denton: Texas Woman's University, 1977), 30. 25. Droze, 22. 26. There is tremendous literature on the history of conservation. See, for instance, George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, ed. David Lowenthal (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1864); and Douglas Helms and Susan L. Flader, eds., The History of Soil and Water Co"},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Two Poems","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25814","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070ab26.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"8","authors":"Fjeld, Jessica","start_page":"39","end_page":"39","article_content":"Early Early I descend the stairs like a child's newly-acquired marionette No part in predictable relation to the others In the kitchen on the top shelf is a cardboard bankers box Full of boiling water Good The lilac's leaves all withered but for months it has had a hundred green little buds, firm little pregnancies at the tip of each branch I am watching them daily to gauge their intentions I think you should find it surprising that given the time we spend on our feet, it's so difficult to learn to stand on our hands How the ground presses up The cement is compromised, full of hope and sand I tell the children it's a bunker due to the bunk beds They want to show the beds to visitors but instead we teach them moral rectitude, screaming, subsisting on sugar and edible species of fungus Their teeth sink into cake like gravity sinks into the snow laying thick on the mountainside The mutinous avalanche turns the trees upside down but the trees are prepared Their roots and branches mirrored in all relevant respects jessica fjeld is the author of Redwork (2018) and the chapbooks The Tide (2010) and On animate life (2006), for which she received the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. Also an attorney and academic, Fjeld is the Assistant Director of the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, where she focuses on supporting the work of creatives, archivists, and human rights defenders as that work intersects with emerging technology. She lives with her family in Somerville, MA."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Pinus krempfii Does Battle","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25815","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070ab6a.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"7","authors":"Nicholson, Rob","start_page":"32","end_page":"38","article_content":"All the plants of a given country are at war one with another. The first who establish themselves by chance in a particular spot tend, by the mere occupancy of space, to exclude other species\u2014the greater choke the smaller, the longest-lived replace those which last for a shorter period, the more prolific gradually make themselves masters of the ground, which species multiplying more slowly would otherwise fill. \u2014Augustin Pyramus de Candolle 1820 Writing more than a decade before Charles Darwin embarked on the Beagle, Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841) foreshadowed the idea of the survival of the fittest when he wrote of the ecological competition between plants, a competition with inevitable winners and losers. Over geological history, the groups of plants that cloak the earth have shifted dramatically with changes in climate, and as new groups of plants evolved and entered the battle for territorial supremacy. Between the Devonian and early Cretaceous periods (about 380 to 125 million years before present), the world's flora saw the rise and dominance of gymnosperms: conifers, cycads, ginkgos, and others. In the early Cretaceous, angiosperms, or flowering plants, began to evolve, proliferating into the hundreds of families, now some ninety percent of all plant species, which now dominate vast areas of the planet. Gymnosperms (roughly one percent of extant plant species) surrendered huge expanses of land and were pushed to high altitudes, the boreal region, or into cohabitation with the new \\\"masters of the ground,\\\" flowering plants. Modern ecologists shun the vivid language of \\\"the war between the plants,\\\" couching this battle in terms like \\\"sequential clade competition\\\" and the \\\"active displacement hypothesis.\\\" But with global warming, the shrinking of the boreal forest and mountaintop refuges will only accelerate the gymnosperms' loss of territory. This largely human-induced change may be more rapid than any yet withstood by the group. Ebb and Flow The largest family in the gymnosperms, Pinaceae, the Pine family, includes 232 species, with 119 described as pines in the genus Pinus. Of these true pines, the IUCN lists nineteen as falling in the most dire categories: vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered. Pinus has one of the widest natural ranges of any genus of trees on the planet, both in terms of latitudinal distribution and altitudinal distribution, and is also one of the most widely planted of trees. Predominantly native to the Northern Hemisphere, pines grow from 72 degrees North latitude in Siberia to just below the equator in the mountains of Sumatra, and range in elevation from coastal species like Pinus rigida and Pinus banksiana to pines in Mexico and the Himalayas growing well above 10,000 feet elevation. Still one of the most poorly known pines, Pinus krempfii of Vietnam is also highly unusual. Its broad, flat leaves can measure 12 mm wide over a length of 10 cm, unlike the more familiar thin needles of species like white pine, Pinus strobus. In the tropical forests it inhabits, it grows to be a colossal tree, towering over the surrounding flora. The species was described in 1921 by the French botanist M. Krempf, in the Nha Trang vicinity, where it is no longer found. Never widely collected, its specimens in cultivation number in single digits outside of Vietnam. A tropical holdout in the war of the plants, P. krempfii isn't faring as well in the competition for collection. Prior to the discovery of Krempf's pine, paleobotanists had recorded finds of fossils of a broad-needled Pinaceae. The current climatic conditions where Pinus krempfii is found are warm, humid, and equitable. These conditions prevailed during the Paleocene Epoch (56-66 MYA), during which time a 'boreotropical flora' dominated much of the middle latitudes. Gymnosperms such as Glyptostrobus, Sequoia and Taxodium were components of this flora, and, since this epoch, their ranges have been severely contracted. This would have been a period in which P. krempfii or its precursors may have had a far wider range. A diminution of favorable conditions for the boreotropical flora during the Eocene (34-56 MYA), coupled with increasing competition from angiosperms, may have severely reduced the potential range for a conifer adapted to mild conditions. Two fossil discoveries in 2021 in Northern Thailand and Yunnan relate to P. krempfii, and show it once had a greater range. Like Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood), it now exists in a highly restricted area. This perhaps adds P. krempfii to the list of \\\"living fossils,\\\" such as dawn redwood and Wollemi pine\u2014plants that were known as fossils before they were linked to extant populations. Dr. Tim Brodribb, a former Fellow at the Harvard Forest, has visited the wild stands of Pinus krempfii, and his 2008 report with Dr. Taylor Field is to my mind the best recent ecological paper. He argues that Krempf's pine behaves more like a tropical gymnosperm Podocarpus, noting that the tree \\\"shows photosynthetic, hydraulic and anatomical characteristics more akin to a southern hemisphere podocarp than a pine tree,\\\" with leaves that show a \\\"striking convergence with the flattened leaves of rainforest Podocarpaceae\\\" as well. But what really catches my eye is Brodribb's profoundly de Candollean view of the species. Krempf's pine, he notes, offers the first evidence that \\\"Pinus has the physiological (and anatomical) capabilities to invade equatorial evergreen forest. The question remains whether the evolution of broad leaves and shade tolerance is a recent development, representing a new southward invasion of the genus, or alternatively the remnant of an ancient and unsuccessful invasion.\\\" Whether recent or ancient, invasion is a constant. Collecting for the Smith College Conservatory in the autumn of 1998, I teamed with Dr. Shu-Miaw Chaw of Taipei's Academy of Sciences to collect rare conifers of Taiwan and Vietnam. We wished to bring into cultivation many rare and endangered species for future research purposes, and Dr. Chaw was to collect DNA samples of conifers for her work on the evolution and phylogeny of gymnosperms. Our research team was to have an extraordinarily successful trip, collecting such rarities as Amentotaxus formosana, Cephalotaxus wilsoniana, Cephalotaxus mannii, Calocedrus macrolepis, Taxus wallichiana, Keteleeria evelyniana, Podocarpus nerifolius\u2014and one of our primary goals, Pinus krempfii. Once in Hanoi, we began our journey with a courtesy call to Dr. Le Thi Xuan, the head of the Biotechnology Institute, whom we knew from prior collecting trips for Taxus\/Taxol research. She had been instrumental in linking us to Dr. Tran Ngoc Ninh, a capable field botanist and expert in the Rubiaceae. As time was tight due to our early flight, we only had time to maneuver quickly through local alleyways to her home and take tea. Our old friend was ill, struggled to move and speak, but insisted on extending hospitality to us. We socialized and exchanged gifts and then briskly headed to the airport for the flight south. As we were leaving, she pulled me aside. \\\"Be careful in the \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323t Forest,\\\" she whispered. \\\"It is full of danger.\\\" \\\"What kind of danger?\\\" I replied. \\\"Two-legged or four-legged?\\\" \\\"Danger of every kind,\\\" she replied, in a grace note worthy of Joseph Conrad. After two flights from Hanoi, we landed at \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323t airport and drove upward into the hills, where the city lay, at 4900 feet (1500 m), home to over 100,000 people. A balmy summer capital for many of the regimes that have ruled Vietnam, \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323 t boasts a miniature Eiffel Tower as a souvenir of occupation by the French, along with the fine French bread and French roast coffee that can be found in the cafes. At the southern terminus of the Annamite range of mountains, one of the southernmost pieces of high ground on the Asian landmass, a number of conifer genera reach the southernmost extent of their ranges. Isolated here for millions of years, they may possess unusual genetic characteristics. We stayed at the Biological Institute, located in a former Catholic monastery on the town's outskirts. It was built by Catholic monks in 1950 but lost to the Communist takeover in 1954. Despite the apparent low budget, the institute had a tissue culture lab and was involved in conserving the many endemic plant and animal species of the region. In the small nursery outside grew a number of conifer species we sought, including Taxus wallichiana, Dacrydium elatum, Fokenia hodginsii, and Podocarpus neriifolius. The former Director of the Arnold Arboretum, Dr. Peter Ashton, who had been to \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323 t, had informed me that a specimen of Pinus krempfii also grew nearby. In C\u00f4ng Ty Park on the outskirts of town, we found a Keteleeria evelyniana in cone, a member of the pine family, which grows well in our southern states but is poorly known horticulturally. No more than fifty feet from it, we found our prize: a specimen of Krempf's pine. Looking like a broad-leafed Podocarpus from only ten feet away, though on close examination it held its new \\\"candles\\\" like a pine, and smelled like a pine when crushed. We happily collected needles and herbarium sheets. The next day we drove to Xuan Tho, a section of \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323 t, to see a stand of native Taxus wallichiana, the Himalayan yew, and to collect cuttings for the Taxus collection at Smith College, a collection used extensively for anti-cancer research. It was the height of Vietnam's coffee boom, and the whole area showed a recent conversion to plantations, as Viet coffee gained in stature among gourmets. At 1420 meters, we walked down a slope toward a small stream bed. Nepenthes smilesii, a vinelike pitcher plant, was growing among the grassy understory of this pine forest. Only two yews remained, one a substantial specimen, eighty feet high with a basal diameter of four to five feet. On our return to the institute, we stopped at the home of a local plant collector, a forester, in whose lathe house grew numerous orchids alongside a locally-collected specimen of Cephalotaxus mannii, a gymnosperm within the Cephalotaxaceae, from which he generously provided us cuttings. After a hard night's rain, the dawn broke clear, and we loaded our war-vintage Russian jeep and headed out of town, driving past schoolchildren trudging down the road in neat blue uniforms. We wove through a quilt of grassy pinelands and carefully tended, productive family farms. Nine kilometers from the institute, we halted beside a roadside grove of Keteleeria evelyniana that had recently suffered through a forest fire. Plants from the collection we made there currently grow with Dr. Jason Smith of Florida State University. Another species, Keteleeria roulettii, had been reported as endemic to the \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323t area, based on the observation of longer needles. But from our observations of K. evelyniana, it was clear that fire had caused a series of new shoots to regenerate longer juvenile foliage, and this character was probably the basis of a false \\\"new\\\" species. It is no longer recognized. We continued on the muddy red-orange road upward through a pine savannah, very similar to the longleaf pine forests of southern Georgia, into an unpopulated and relatively undisturbed piece of geography. About twenty-eight kilometers from the institute, we stopped at 1700 meters altitude in the area known as L\u00e1n Chanh. Putting our packs to our backs, we marched to the crest of a small hill. Looking down into the valley, we could see a drastic change in the vegetation: the piney grassland became a primeval evergreen forest, moist, dark, and lush. Rising above it all, a towering example of the pine we had come so far to see and collect, Pinus krempfii. Rather than having a spire-like habit, this forest giant had a broad crown, more like an oak than any pine I could remember seeing. We eased downslope toward the sounds of birds trilling and a river's flow, crossing a transition zone so narrow we felt as though we had stepped through a glass wall into a terrarium. Suddenly we trod upon a soft spongy humus soil dotted with ferns and seedlings of the evergreen trees around us. So many primitive angiosperms were present\u2014Magnolia of the Magnoliaceae, Illicium of the Illiciaceae, Sacandra of the Chloranthaceae\u2014it seemed a forest undisturbed since the Cretaceous era. Orchids were common, having fallen from the branches above, species of Dendrobium, Bulbophyllum and Epigeneium that would be precious to any orchid fancier. We made our way to the large pine we had seen from the hilltop, which proved a tree of mythic proportions: about 120 feet high with a trunk circumference of eighteen feet, the first branch at a height of seventy-five feet. Climbing the tree to harvest cones would have been unreasonably risky without climbing equipment, so we had to forage for what we could find on the ground. Our party of five took to combing the forest floor, looking for fallen cones from prior years that might still harbor a seed or two, or for seedlings and saplings we might dig up. At one point I searched farther away from the party only to be cautioned by Dr. Tran to come back into the fold. \\\"There are tigers,\\\" he warned. We found 4 younger trees and about twenty seedlings to bring to our respective institutes. The leaves were so unlike any I had ever seen, curving blades 4 mm wide by 6 cm long, held in pairs. Cones that we found in the forest duff were easily recognized as pine. We also collected cuttings of Podocarpus neriifolius, along with some of the epiphytic orchids fallen from their perches above, and a smattering of ferns and seed. Our Vietnamese colleagues seemed intent on getting out of the forest as quickly as possible, and counseled against crossing the valley to look for more trees. I recollected Dr. Xuan's warning in Hanoi, and was relieved to think that we had avoided any peril beyond the usual rigors of the field. In any case, I already had collected a cache of rarities for our Smith College conservatory, and we had precious DNA samples for genetic work. We rose out of the ravine, over the grassy slopes and down to our waiting vehicle. We lunched at the side of the road, fine French-style baguettes, local fruit and imported soft cheese. Our success fueled our good mood and we sat on the side of the road, talking about our various plant specialties and favorite species. I glanced down at my feet and saw in the road's gutter a weathered bullet casing, American made, a probable relict from the war that once tore both nations apart. It was my final collection of the day. The few seedlings we brought out seemed to languish in the heat of our New England summer, and eventually died. Despite numerous hormone treatments, none of our cuttings rooted (though this is typical for pines). Other than the lonely plant at the Cong Ty Park in \u0110\u00e0 La\u0323 t, the only plant I could find in cultivation is held in the conservatory at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Groves of Krempf's pine also are found within the boundaries of the Bidoup Nui Ba National Park, established in 2004, though their remoteness may make them susceptible to illegal timber poaching. Pinus krempfii remains aloof, distant and beckoning still. Given its great height, future collectors may need collection equipment like that used for Sequoiadendron: a bow and stringed arrow followed by ascension gear, with skilled arborists acquiring a supply of seed for ex-situ work. Growing ex-situ specimens outside native ranges requires a combination of factors: the correct climate conditions (whether in a conservatory or outside), a long-term infrastructure of skilled horticulturists, and institutional will. The correct climate conditions would seem to be the biggest stumbling block for Krempf's pine, as it grows in montane tropical or cloud-forest conditions without extremes of cold or heat. Its hardiness is not known. Some of the mildest areas of the California coast and upper altitudes in Puerto Rico may serve as potential US sites, though hurricanes would be a factor in Puerto Rico. But as was shown with Metasequoia, it can be a fool's game to make hardiness assumptions based on a current restricted population range. As elsewhere, the war of the trees continues in Vietnam, though thankfully the wars of the humans there have subsided. For all its rarity, Pinus krempfii is a magnificent holdout against angiosperm domination, one of the most amazing species I have ever seen in a long career collecting plants. In discussing local politics, Dr. Xuan had once told me, \\\"In Vietnam, nothing is possible but everything is possible\\\"; the latter part of that truism seems to apply to the flora as well."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Wild Hydrangeas of Mt. Cuba Center","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25816","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070af6d.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"6","authors":"Hoadley, Sam","start_page":"20","end_page":"31","article_content":"When I bought my house five years ago in Chester County, Pennsylvania, I inherited a landscape with a garden tradition dating back to the 1940s. Mature specimens of choice woody plants are bountiful and include a grove of mature dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), three massive franklinia (Franklinia alatamaha), and one large and aged smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens). The identity of this smooth hydrangea cultivar is not known, but due to the age and the substantial sprawling nature of the planting I suspect it to be Hydrangea arborescens 'Grandiflora', formerly sold under the name 'Hills of Snow'. This cultivar was originally selected from a wild population of Hydrangea arborescens in the early twentieth century, and is still available from specialty growers today. Hydrangea arborescens 'Grandiflora,' along with the similar and more popular H. arborescens 'Annabelle', are staples of American horticulture that are readily recognized by expert and novice gardeners alike. Their oversized, dome-shaped inflorescences borne in June and July have classic ornamental appeal, but these cultivars are not without their shortcomings. Both 'Grandiflora' and 'Annabelle' have floppy habits, a flaw that is exacerbated by summer storms right when the blooms are at their peak. For this reason, I had always considered these cultivars to be horticultural relics and, admittedly, gave little consideration to the use of the species in modern landscapes. My insular outlook was quickly challenged, however, thanks to my inheritance of a comprehensive trial of smooth hydrangea when I was hired for my current role of Manager of Horticultural Research at Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, Delaware, in March of 2019. Mt. Cuba Center, situated in the rolling hills of New Castle County, Delaware, is the former estate of Pamela and Lammot du Pont Copeland. The Copelands envisioned that Mt. Cuba could be a place to inspire an appreciation for the beauty and value of native plants and spark a commitment to protect the habitats that sustain them. This original intention lives on as Mt. Cuba Center's core mission, and continues to guide the organization to this day. After Mrs. Copeland passed away in 2001, the transition from private estate to public garden began in earnest. In 2002, the Copelands' cut-flower plot was repurposed to serve as a trial garden. In this space, native species and cultivars were grown side by side to determine their horticultural qualities in a low-maintenance common garden setting. The first research report was published in 2005, describing findings from a threeyear trial on asters, including floral display, habit, cultural adaptability, winter hardiness in Zone 7a, and disease resistance. This publication highlighted and recommended the top-performing plants to gardeners and nurseries in the mid-Atlantic region, and served as a template for future research reports. A report on Echinacea was released in 2009, and in 2011, the trial garden was redesigned with a new perimeter fence, brick walkways, and a shade structure. The shade structure proved to be an invaluable tool, not just for trialing shade-loving species, but also for comparing the performance and adaptability of trialed plants when they are cultivated in both sun and shade. In 2013, Mt. Cuba Center opened its doors to regular public visitation for the first time, and the trial garden welcomed visitors to observe and interact with trials in progress. Under the deft management of George Coombs, publication of the trial garden's research reports became a highly anticipated resource valued by the public and nursery industry. Trials were established in a staggered rotation so that four trials run concurrently, with one trial concluding each year. In addition to promoting plants with excellent garden qualities, the Coreopsis, Monarda, and Phlox reports aspired to address the ecological services that these species and cultivars provide by collecting comparative pollinator data on the various species and cultivars in each trial. Pollinator studies quickly became an important component of Mt. Cuba's trial program, and have allowed consumers to make informed decisions about which plants have the most capacity for attracting and supporting pollinators in their home landscapes Quantitative and qualitative horticultural data are collected in the trial garden on a weekly basis between April and September. Scores are assigned that reflect habit, form, foliage, and other ornamental qualities that the plant may exhibit. For example, a weak plant with a floppy habit might receive a low score, while a vigorous plant with a robust and nonfloppy habit would receive a high score. A separate rating is assigned to the floral display when the plants are in bloom, and an additional rating assesses disease resistance, which becomes especially important when observing plants that have a known susceptibility to specific pathogens. At the end of each season an overall score is generated for each plant. At the conclusion of the three-to-five-year evaluation, the scores from each year are averaged to determine the final horticultural score. In the most recent trials of hydrangea and Echinacea, supplemental points were then awarded to plants that attracted the most pollinators. This supports our initiative of promoting plants that are both beautiful and also have wildlife value. The top performing plants are then featured in subsequent research reports. For some gardeners, selecting a native plant for its ornamental qualities is enough, but for others this is only part of the greater story of providing habitat and food sources for wildlife in their home landscape. Pollinator data are collected by a cadre of Mt. Cuba Center's citizen scientists, called the Pollinator Watch Team. On a near-daily basis, these volunteers observe plants in bloom for 60 seconds and collect information on insect visitors. Counts are made on one plant per accession, or single inflorescences if blooms are numerous or plants are prohibitively large. The number of pollinator visits is recorded, along with the time, weather data, and additional observations. In some trials, all pollinators that visit the plant or inflorescence are counted, while in others, only targeted groups such as butterflies or hummingbirds are recorded. The results of these studies help homeowners make informed decisions about which plants in our evaluations have the most capacity to attract and support insect pollinators. These data become particularly relevant as natural habitats face increasing threat of destruction. Home gardens are uniquely poised to temper those losses, and can help provide small oases for wildlife in the midst of food deserts comprised of the turfgrass and non-native foundation plantings that make up the majority of home and commercial landscapes today. By pointing people in the direction of beautiful and beneficial native plants, Mt. Cuba Center can help people become conservators. When I was hired as Manager of Horticultural Research in the early spring of 2019, I was greeted with four in-progress trials: Helenium, Echinacea (the second trial of this genus), smooth hydrangea (or \\\"wild\\\" hydrangea, as they are called at Mt. Cuba Center), and Carex. Smooth or \\\"wild\\\" hydrangea represented the first woody plant trial at Mt. Cuba and had just begun the third year of a five-year evaluation. While the study of woody plant material represented a step into new territory for the trial garden, it was a logical one. There is an increasing demand from homeowners for reliable information on alternatives to non-native woody landscape plants that are low maintenance, beautiful, and providers of wildlife value whenever possible. Included in the smooth hydrangea evaluation were three species of hydrangea native to the eastern United States: Hydrangea arborescens, Hydrangea cinerea, and Hydrangea radiata. Hydrangea arborescens was the primary species evaluated, and is the wild version of most of the twenty-six cultivars in the trial. Hydrangea arborescens, or smooth hydrangea, has the largest native range of the three species and can be found in much of the eastern and central United States, often on shaded moist slopes. Hydrangea cinerea, or ashy hydrangea, is exceedingly rare in cultivation and can be found primarily in the central and southeastern United States. The best identifying feature of ashy hydrangea is the concentration of white to grey pubescence on the stems and the backs of their leaves, which differs from the relatively hairless foliage of Hydrangea arborescens. Hydrangea radiata, or silver-leaf hydrangea, has the smallest native range compared to Hydrangea arborescens and Hydrangea cinerea and can only be found in a handful of states in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The most striking feature of Hydrangea radiata is the bright white undersides of the leaves making this perhaps the most easily identified and inherently ornamental species of the three in our trial. Silver-leaf hydrangea was also the first to bloom in our trial in mid- June while the other two species started blooming in early July each year. While the three species vary slightly in size, habit, and overall appearance, each flowers on new wood and produces superficially similar inflorescences. The three species, including two distinct accessions of Hydrangea radiata, were all propagated from wild collected stock from the collection at Mt. Cuba Center, and these plants acted as the controls against which all of the cultivars would be compared. Twenty-five cultivars were then sourced from various arboreta and nurseries, in most cases representing material available to homeowners at that time. All twenty-nine hydrangea accessions were grown in full sun and nineteen cultivars were also grown in shade for comparison. Since these shrubs bloom on new wood and flower buds are not produced until the start of the growing season, smooth hydrangea can be heavily pruned in late spring and flowers are still reliably produced in June and July. To assess response to pruning, one example of each hydrangea grown in full sun was cut back to approximately six to eight inches from the ground in late March 2019, 2020, and 2021. The remaining examples of each hydrangea served as the control group and were left unpruned for the duration of the evaluation. That first spring at Mt. Cuba, before the hydrangea had even leafed out, I was struck by the diversity of form, texture, and even stem color. Subtle variations between similar cultivars and species were readily apparent when the plants were grown side by side. It became obvious to me how short-sighted I had been when I had written off smooth hydrangea for my own garden use. There was clearly so much more to this group of plants than the old standbys, like Hydrangea arborescens 'Grandiflora' and 'Annabelle'. As spring progressed and data collection began, I looked forward to what I knew would be a spectacular floral display in June and July. When the time came, the flowers were indeed breathtaking, and included a concert of white and pink inflorescences that fell into two distinct categories: lacecaps and mopheads. Lacecap smooth hydrangea species and cultivars produce flat-topped, corymbose inflorescences that are primarily composed of masses of fertile flowers that number anywhere from 800 to 2,000 individual flowers. Around the perimeter of many lacecap flowerheads are a small number of sterile flowers that give the inflorescences their trademark lacy appearance. Lacecap inflorescences are the predominant flower form found in wild populations of Hydrangea arborescens, and offer visiting pollinators highly accessible nectar and pollen rewards. Hydrangea arborescens and Hydrangea radiata both produced lacecap inflorescences that averaged around 4.5 inches in diameter, although the sterile flowers of the silverleaf hydrangea were noticeably larger than those of the smooth hydrangeas. The fertile flowers of Hydrangea radiata were also less tightly clustered than those of Hydrangea arborescens. Hydrangea cinerea, on the other hand, produced the smallest diameter flower heads in the trial at around 3.5 inches on average, and also some of the smallest sterile flowers. Despite the smaller diameter, the inflorescences of the ashy hydrangeas were tightly packed with fertile flowers and were heavily visited by pollinators. In contrast, mophead hydrangea blooms are often more dome-shaped and produce a much higher number of sterile flowers per inflorescence, giving them their iconic billowy cloud-like appearance. In most cases, fertile flowers are still produced, but in much lower numbers than their lacecap counterparts. In addition, these fertile flowers are often sequestered within the inflorescences, reducing their accessibility for some insects. Some mophead smooth hydrangeas such as Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' are selections made from naturally occurring anomalies found in nature. However, not all mophead smooth hydrangeas in cultivation are the products of simple selection. Wild-origin mutations form the genetic building blocks utilized by modern plant breeders to cross and further select smooth hydrangeas. The progeny of these breeding programs feature ornamental and horticultural improvements as well as novel garden traits. The trial at Mt. Cuba was planted with mophead cultivars concentrated on one end of the planting bed and lacecap cultivars and species planted on the other. As I walked through the blooming mophead cultivars, the inflorescences were beautiful, but the surroundings were quiet and relatively devoid of insect pollinators. As I continued down the path to the lacecap hydrangeas, this changed, and I was greeted with an immersive audible and visual experience composed of hundreds if not thousands of insects. Bumblebees, wasps, beetles, true bugs, and flies busily collected pollen and nectar from the fertile flowers of the lacecap inflorescences in a frenzy of activity. I was in awe, not just because of the huge number of insects I was witnessing, but also by the stark contrast between the two flower forms and the obvious preference that the various pollinators displayed for the lacecap smooth hydrangeas. One lacecap cultivar in particular, Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas' Halo', completely captivated me. Not only was it covered with pollinators but here was a robust plant with an incredible floral display that rivaled any of the mophead cultivars in the trial. This was an example of a plant that encapsulated Mt. Cuba's mission. This ornamentally superior and garden-worthy native plant inspired an appreciation for its beauty and for the ecological value that this plant was clearly providing to scores of insect pollinators. I was so taken by Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas' Halo' that I ordered one for my home garden that same day. This single experience in the trial garden constituted a personal paradigm shift in the way I looked at horticulture and my own gardening practice. There was room for beauty and ornamental interest, which had always been a priority, but ecological value did not have to be sacrificed. In fact, gardening for insects and other wildlife quickly became a focus for me, and has been a deciding factor for the vast majority of my home-garden additions ever since. This one plant has inspired me to take conservation action by planting a native shrub with high ecological value in my home landscape. And I was not alone. Over the next three years, I fielded countless questions about Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas' Halo' from visitors who had experienced this plant for the first time in the trial garden just as I had. They all wanted to know where they could buy one. This is exactly the kind of inspiration and conservation action that I imagine the Copelands envisioned when they first conceived of the idea to one day welcome the public into their home and gardens. In 2021, the five-year trial of smooth hydrangea was complete and the results were in. The top-performing hydrangeas were identified, and pollinator counts were tallied. The pollinator data confirmed what could be readily observed when the plants were in bloom each year. Insects overwhelmingly preferred lacecap hydrangeas over mopheads. That is not to say that all mopheads are completely devoid of pollinator value. In fact, some attracted a reasonable number of insects. The mophead that attracted the most insects in the trial was Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA2' (Invincibelle\u00ae Spirit II) which, maybe not surprisingly, produced a greater proportion of accessible fertile flowers than other mopheads. While some compromises exist where you can have both the mophead aesthetic as well as some pollinator value no mophead hydrangea received enough pollinator visits to be directly compared to any of the lacecaps. Interestingly, the hydrangea with the lowest number of pollinator visits was Hydrangea arborescens 'Hayes Starburst'. This cultivar exhibits mophead inflorescences but is an extreme case of genetic variation within the species. While most mophead smooth hydrangeas produce a reduced number of fertile flowers, Hydrangea arborescens 'Haye's Starburst' produced no observable fertile flowers. No fertile flowers mean no pollen or nectar and therefore no pollinator benefits. This lack of pollinator value was directly reflected in the low pollinator count. Interestingly, there were three exceptions that broke the rule that lacecaps are better than mopheads for pollinators: Hydrangea arborescens 'Riven Lace', Hydrangea arborescens 'Emerald Lace', and Hydrangea arborescens 'Green Dragon'. These are relatively compact plants with lacecap inflorescences and distinctive dissected foliage. These three cultivars are so similar that it is widely believed that they are actually the same, genetically identical plant that was named and introduced into the horticultural trade on three separate occasions. Their inability to attract insect pollinators remains a mystery, but could be attributed to several factors, including the possibility that these cultivars do not offer the same quality or abundance of nectar or pollen as other lacecaps hydrangeas in the trial. From a purely ornamental perspective, most of the nineteen smooth hydrangea cultivars grown in shade performed better than the specimens in full sun. The primary reason for this is that shade-grown plants avoided issues such as foliar and floral burn as well as premature defoliation. Inflorescences of the hydrangeas grown in shade retained their form for months after the fertile flowers had finished blooming in July, and aged from white to attractive shades of lime green. Hydrangea radiata and its cultivars struggled the most when grown in full sun, particularly during the heat of the summer. These were always the first to show signs of heat and drought stress and were the first to start dropping leaves. This species is best reserved for use in woodland edges and shade plantings in the mid-Atlantic region. At Mt. Cuba Center, Hydrangea radiata is grown to perfection in the shady naturalistic gardens where the silvery undersides of the leaves add movement and interest to the landscape and their lacecap inflorescences attract insect pollinators in droves. To my surprise, a handful of pink flowering hydrangeas performed exceptionally well in full sun, even better than in shade, including Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA2' (Invincibelle\u00ae Spirit II) and Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA4' (Incrediball\u00ae Blush). These two cultivars can be successfully sited in full sun locations (six or more hours of sun a day) in the region surrounding Mt. Cuba Center if they are planted in moisture-retentive but well-drained soils. Good soil moisture remains an essential component for successful cultivation of any of the smooth hydrangeas planted in full sun or near full sun conditions. The cutback comparison conducted over three seasons revealed some interesting trends. There was a slight delay in bloom (generally one to two weeks) in cutback plants and fewer but larger inflorescences. This increased diameter of the inflorescences can be attributed to a return to a more vigorous juvenile state in the cutback shrubs. On average the inflorescence increase was around thirty percent, while some examples increased between fifty to eighty percent in diameter. For some plants this effect was particularly noticeable especially if the inflorescences produced on a non-cutback plant were already of substantial size. For example, the cut back version of Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas' Halo', which produced the largest inflorescences (8\\\") of the trial on the control plants, produced a dramatic display of flower heads that were nearly a foot across. Cutback hydrangeas also formed a more compact habit in many cases. Some exceptions to this rule were compact cultivars such as Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA5' (Invincibelle\u00ae Wee White) and Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA3' (Invincibelle\u00ae Ruby) where there were few discernable differences between cutback and control plants. One unexpected effect of the cutback study was that cutback plants had improved sun tolerance. Not only might the cutback plants have had more efficient water-transporting stems, but their established root systems were supporting fewer water-demanding leaves compared to the controls. However, I would not recommend annual heavy pruning to increase sun tolerance over the long run or to make larger plants permanently more accessible to smaller planting spaces. The best practice is to select the right cultivar for the right garden location based on the ultimate size of the unpruned plants and the goals of the gardener. I recommend a more restrained approach to pruning, where only a handful of the oldest stems are removed on a yearly basis, to maintain some juvenile vigor in your hydrangeas. One unexpected but welcome benefit of hydrangea pruning in the trial garden was the observation of square-headed wasps (Crabronidae) using the pithy stems as a nesting site. On several occasions we observed adult wasps excavating the spongy, pith-filled cores of recently pruned stems. Once the cavity had been established, the adult wasp could be seen placing paralyzed flies in the hollowed-out stems for its larvae to feed on. The chambers were then sealed, protecting the developing larvae within. The larva eventually pupate, and emerge the following spring as adult wasps. Perhaps this observation would inspire people to tolerate and even embrace some dead wood in their shrubs if they knew what a benefit they could potentially be to wildlife. However, if spring pruning is required, it is still feasible to prune out full stems even if they have been colonized without interrupting wasp's life cycle. The discarded stems can be placed intact somewhere to allow emergence to occur later that year. In addition, there is an opportunity to further utilize the pruned stems by simply cutting them to lengths of eight inches to a foot and the bundling the stems together. These makeshift bee nesting sites will only further amplify the bee and wasp habitat in your landscape by using raw materials provided by your hydrangeas. In addition, Hydrangea arborescens is the larval host plant for the hydrangea sphinx moth and the hydrangea leaftier moth, although neither species was observed in the trial. Nine cultivars of smooth hydrangea were identified as top performers, and the highest rated plant of all was indeed Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas' Halo'. This cultivar, besides being my personal favorite smooth hydrangea, offers the perfect combination of horticultural merit and ecological value. This exemplary form of smooth hydrangea was originally selected by Frederick Ray in 2008, plantsman and former Delaware Valley College horticulture professor, from the Pennsylvania garden of Joan Haas. It was chosen for its upright, vigorous growth, and for its lacecap flower heads, upwards of eight inches in diameter, that display a greater number of sterile flowers around the perimeter than those of typical Hydrangea arborescens. A comparable, but decidedly more obscure, selection called Hydrangea arborescens 'Mary Nell' made the top performer list as well. It too produces abnormally large lacecap inflorescences, distinguished by a double ring of sterile flowers around the perimeter of each flower head. Hydrangea arborescens 'Mary Nell' was selected and named by Joseph McDaniel, who also introduced Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' in the 1960s. Unfortunately, Hydrangea arborescens 'Mary Nell' is rarely commercially available despite its substantial garden and wildlife value. Two more lacecap cultivars made the top performer list. Hydrangea arborescens 'Dardom' (White Dome\u00ae) is an older cultivar originally selected in Belgium in 1997 and introduced by Proven Winners\u00ae in the early 2000s. It boasts large lacecap inflorescences and attracted the highest numbers of pollinators of any hydrangea in the trial. Hydrangea arborescens 'Total Eclipse' is a vigorous, slightly more compact, and earlier-blooming selection of the species made by Jim Pyler of Natural Landscapes Nursery in West Grove, Pennsylvania. This cultivar also attracted the third most pollinators of any hydrangea in the evaluation. The remaining five top-performing hydrangeas from the trial produce mophead inflorescences. While these plants may not have the pollinator value offered by the lacecap top performers, they are still highly recommended from an ornamental perspective for gardens of the mid-Atlantic. Hydrangea arborescens 'Abetwo' (Incrediball\u00ae) and Hydrangea arborescens 'Bounty' are two white-blooming mopheads that offer excellent alternatives to Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' and Hydrangea arborescens 'Grandiflora'. Each features the classic hydrangea aesthetic that gardeners have valued for more than a century, but improve on their predecessors with sturdy stems that are resistant to flopping. Hydrangea 'SMNHALR' (Lime Rickey\u00ae), a unique mophead hydrangea from Spring Meadow Nursery, displays undeniably attractive, lime-green inflorescences in mid-June that are quickly followed by raspberry-colored fertile flowers later in the month. The sterile flowers rapidly fade to alabaster before reverting to their former green color as the fertile flowers complete their bloom. Last but not least are Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA4' (Incrediball\u00ae Blush) and Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA2' (Invincibelle\u00ae Spirit II). Both cultivars are some of the finest examples of the cutting-edge plant breeding that continues to push the boundaries of what is thought possible with hydrangea, redbuds, and dogwoods amongst many other woody plant genera coming from North Carolina State University and Thomas Ranney. These two cultivars feature attractive pink mophead inflorescences that are well supported by sturdy stems. Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA4' (Incrediball\u00ae Blush) is a great option for smaller landscapes thanks to its semi-compact habit of four to five feet in height and width, while Hydrangea arborescens 'NCHA2' (Invincibelle\u00ae Spirit II) eventually forms a much larger plant reaching six feet in height and eight feet in width. For more information on the top performing smooth hydrangeas from Mt. Cuba Center's latest trial, visit mtcubacenter.org\/research\/trial-garden\/. For me, the smooth hydrangea trial represents a turning point in my personal gardening journey which, just like the garden itself, is constantly evolving and is never truly complete. I went from largely looking at plants as a decoration for my home landscape, an admittedly narrow view, to choosing plants not just for me but for wildlife that I can support and provide refuge for in my garden. Seeing the surge in insects and birds and other wildlife at my home, a trend which I would like to think directly correlates to my native plant choices, has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and is so much more than just cultivating a place of objective beauty. It provides me with a purpose, the same purpose that the Copelands had when they envisioned the future of their property that would eventually become Mt. Cuba Center. Thanks to this trial, I have a newfound appreciation for the Hydrangea arborescens 'Grandiflora' that still resides at my home in Kennett Square, although my future hydrangea selections will be made for the benefit of pollinators. My personal journey into the world on native hydrangeas has not concluded with this trial, and in fact will only be expanded upon with Mt. Cuba Center's newly planted evaluation of oakleaf hydrangeas. This trial will be unique in that, for the first time, we are trialing a single species and comparing its many cultivated forms. Hydrangea quercifolia has many seasons of interest: it is well known for the oak-shaped leaves for which it is named, white to pink panicle inflorescences in summer, incredible burgundy fall color, and exfoliating cinnamon-colored bark that can be admired during winter months. The trial will assess cultivars that are tried-and-true garden classics as well as a handful of newcomers to the horticultural market. The oakleaf hydrangea trial will be sited in full sun; however, most of the subjects will also be grown under our shade structure for comparison. This will be an interesting trial for observing pollinator preference, because the percentage of fertile flowers per inflorescence in cultivated forms and selections of this species is quite variable. Oakleaf hydrangeas are one of my all-time favorite shrubs and I know I am in for more horticultural and ecological inspiration in the trial garden at Mt. Cuba Center before the results are of this latest trial are published in 2027."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Helwingia","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25817","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070b325.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"5","authors":"Gapinski, Andrew","start_page":"18","end_page":"19","article_content":"As a student of horticulture in the Midwest of the US, I was fascinated by the floral characteristics of the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis). The reddish-purple flowers and brown pea-like fruits are borne directly out of the bark of older wood of main trunks and stems rather than newly emerging growth. This phenomenon, known as cauliflory, is most prevalent in tropical species including coffee and cocoa. Although still intrigued every time I see it, I am even more enthralled by epiphylly, when flowers and fruits (as well as other structures) grow attached to leaves (often the midvein). At the Arnold Arboretum, epiphyllous flowering can be observed on a single specimen of Helwingia japonica (AA# 912*MASS) in the Explorers Garden, received in 1880, likely a propagule from the first introduction of the species into European cultivation. Alone in the Helwingiaceae, genus Helwingia contains four species occurring from the Himalayas to Japan. Either evergreen or deciduous, all are shrubby, epiphyllous, and dioecious (bearing male and female flowers on separate plants). The Arnold's 1880 specimen is male, and currently lacks a paired female plant for successful reproduction. In 2018, I traveled to the Shennongjia region of Hubei Province, China, as part of the North America-China Plant Exploration Consortium. Along with important germplasm for conservation, we collected seeds of two species of Helwingia: H. japonica and H. chinensis. Both were found growing on shaded rock outcrops in rich pockets of humus soil in association with the conifer Torreya fargesii. Helwingia japonica's broad, deciduous leaves sport umbels of tiny, four-petaled flowers in spring, developing into pea-sized black drupes in autumn. Helwingia chinensis, by contrast, is a semi-evergreen species with narrow leaves bearing purplish male flowers on long stalks (pedicels) in groups of 4-5; female flowers are nearly sessile (unstalked) and in groups of 1-3 with fruits ripening to a glossy cherry red. We now have one plant from each species in the Arboretum's Dana Greenhouses. The H. chinensis plant, a male, bloomed copiously this year. Over the past 150 years, we have made several attempts to cultivate this species in the collections\u2014each to no avail. If this collection is successful, we'll need to find it a mate by collecting it again."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Habitat of Childhood","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25818","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070b728.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"4","authors":"Caballero, Ana Maria","start_page":"14","end_page":"16","article_content":"Recently I took a small group of kindergartners on a forest walk atop an esker at the Arnold Arboretum. A treecovered, glacial ridge, it was a cool and shady spot on an otherwise sunny, hot, dry day. A red robin seemed to be leading the way, lowering its head while running and lifting it when stopped, keeping an eye on us as we observed it carefully. It disappeared behind a downed log covered in moss. The children were immediately drawn to it, touching the green velvet and looking for spiders and ants. Across the path, a child discovered the lower part of the downed log: a wide, hollowed-out snag that created a life size cocoon big enough for six children. They all quickly settled inside, perching on the damp decomposing wood continuing to look for spiders and other creatures. One child commented, \\\"Sometimes you can find salamanders in the woods,\\\" to which I replied that it's been so dry lately that most of them have gone deeper underground. \\\"That's because there is water underground, right?\\\" she asked. After a few silent moments she asked, \\\"Do you think we are walking on salamanders?\\\" I was so surprised by this insight and this moment: fearless children connecting to the natural world with curiosity and joy. Sharing such experiences of young children in nature, and how to promote more of them, is what prompted the convening of a panel of outdoor educators at Boston University this spring. As Outdoor Educator at the Arnold Arboretum, I support Boston Public School students who come for guided and self-guided field trips to learn in our landscape, as well as train our volunteers and offer professional development for educators throughout the year. As such, I have long followed research affirming the many benefits of nature to adults and children. Health benefits include lower blood pressure, reduced stress, a boost to the immune system, and increased anti-cancer proteins. Cognitive gains include improved focus and higher scores on standardized tests. Other benefits include fewer sleep difficulties, faster healing after illness, increased emotional resilience and stronger mental health. Recently, doctors have pegged Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) as a direct consequence of too much screen time, and there is a documented increase in myopia (nearsightedness) in young children. Surprise! Being outdoors can alleviate these symptoms, as children look out in the distance and relax the eyes. But the benefits extend far beyond this, as I have seen with the children who attend our field study programs\u2014two-hour landscape explorations of specific life-science content, which happen in small groups led by trained volunteers. Unlike a snake-oil salesperson, I can say that we truly have the remedy for so much that ails us. I've noticed so many benefits; at the BU panel I discussed just five, which I share with you here. Active Agency in Learning Learning outdoors teaches children a sense of scale and perspective, reinforces the cyclical nature of time and space, and introduces children to experiences and words upon which later learning is built. This is how background knowledge is created. Children become the star when they experience the concept: seeing the seasons change, following the germination and growth of a plant outdoors, discovering the effects of a rainstorm on the earth, breaking apart stones, \\\"climbing\\\" the shadow of a tree limb or coming face to face with a snapping turtle for the first time. These experiences introduce vocabulary and demand that children narrate what they see, hear, and feel. In response, they use words in context, invent words creatively, and make connections between English and their first languages. This is learning that integrates physical, cognitive, emotional, and social domains; this is learning that puts the child in the driver's seat. Context Being in nature brings book and classroom learning to life by putting all that information in context. We begin with the premise that science is learning about the world around us, and the world around us is the natural world. Vocabulary and concepts make more sense when children can touch, smell, hear, and explore these same words and concepts in real life\u2014in context. It is here that we can see that a holly leaf has sharp prickles to prevent herbivory, or that a hawk does not always catch the snake, or that vines have tendrils that curl \\\"just like my hair!\\\" This story illustrates the need for context: An elementary age child confessed to one of our guides that she was afraid of squirrels, with their big front teeth, rat-looking faces, and size. When the guide asked this child \\\"how big do you think a squirrel is?\\\" the child indicated with her hand an animal about two feet tall! This child had never really seen or noticed a squirrel in context, perhaps, but only in books or movies. I have seen firsthand how being in natural context has helped children overcome perceived misconceptions and fears. Once the child catches their first bee or centipede in a bug box, all worry, fear, and disgust at the task goes away\u2014they can't get enough of digging through leaf litter looking for critters, or appreciating the pollen baskets on bees' legs. Messiness The outdoors is messy! Unexpected things happen to frustrate, delight, and surprise every day. The rain begins to fall. You come across a dead squirrel. The salamander you so very much wanted to see didn't make an appearance. Someone left their dogpoop bag on the path. A tree has to be cut down because of a storm. A coyote follows a dog on a leash. When children encounter unexpected events, they learn to manage disappointment, and perhaps fear or worry, in proportion with the encounter\u2014especially when they are involved in addressing and finding solutions for the situation. They learn to be flexible and to come up with alternatives. Tolerating discomfort that comes from unpredictable and messy nature leads children to develop a sense of personal competence. Part of growing up is learning how to release these negative TREE OF LIFE Mesozoic Mystery Our picture of the rise of the angiosperms, and the extent of plant diversity when they first arose some 140 million years ago, is far from complete. Sadly, many of the now extinct groups of non-flowering seed plants that might help reconstruct the evolutionary history of the rise of angiosperms remain undiscovered. A species of Mesozoic plant, newly described from fossil evidence in a recent issue of the American Journal of Botany, may shed light. The authors suggest possible affinities between early flowering plants and the new species, a gymnosperm, which they have named Xadzigacalix quatsinoensis (the genus name incorporates the word for \\\"plant resin\\\" [xa'dziga] in Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw nations of northwest coastal North America, on whose traditional territory the fossil was found). The case is far from resolved, however: is the plant indeed related to early angiosperms\u2014and if so, does it have anything to tell us about their origin? How are other cupulate seed-bearing groups of Mesozoic plants related to each other and to flowering plants? While such questions remain topics of palaeobotanical debate, this much is clear: the buried remnants of the Mesozoic still have many secrets yet to be revealed. Klymiuk, A. A., Rothwell, G. W., and Stockey, R. A.. 2022. A novel cupulate seed plant, Xadzigacalix quatsinoensis gen. et sp. nov., provides new insight into the Mesozoic radiation of gymnosperms. American Journal of Botany 109 (6): 966-985. Image: Crosssectional reconstruction of Xadzigacalix quatsinoensis, through apex (micropyle) of ovulate reproductive structure. Klymiuk, Rothwell, and Stockey (2022). UAPC-ALTA P15375 D. CC BY 4.0 emotions in the face of inevitable stress. If kids never figure out how to do that, they're more likely to experience severe anxiety as teenagers. These experiences outside are often the most memorable of unexpected wonders. An adult's job is to help children navigate these surprises with respect, simplicity, and empathy. Global Citizenship Children who are outdoors learn from a very young age that their actions and interactions with the natural world affect the natural world. It is one thing to be indoors and learn about trash or talk about how cutting trees is bad for the environment. It is quite another to see the effects of human activity on our world. When children see trash in the water stream, a tree branch broken under the weight of a climber, or dry, yellowing fields at the height of summer, they are primed for conversations that can center on activism and purpose. Young children who learn to love the outdoors are more likely to become adults who work to preserve it for future generations. Magic So often after a session, young children tell us that they don't want to leave, they want to live here forever, they see the Arboretum as a magical place. They are filled with possibility. Very quickly, many children come to feel a sense of belonging that comes from the peace, calm, and happiness that they experience in the outdoors. Joy. They want to share this place with their families, they want to come back. As educators, parents, and caregivers, we need to be intentional in letting children be children for as long as possible. Childhood and the natural world are wonderful spaces to be in. This habitat of childhood needs to be tended and protected. If we do it right, this magic stays with them throughout life."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Sweetest Legacy","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25819","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070b76c.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"3","authors":"Reese, Carol","start_page":"11","end_page":"13","article_content":"The Holsteins were gone, and watching our hayfields and pastures being reclaimed by the wild offered a sad reminder that dairy farming was no longer economically viable in north Mississippi. The land called for new purpose, which led to years of fruit growing experimentation, searching for a crop that had, as my mother put it, \\\"maximum profit for minimal sweat equity.\\\" Eventually we found that crop in Asian persimmons (Diospyros kaki), but for years, our quest was not always fruitful (and yes, the pun is intentional). Our running joke was that our most valuable lessons were learned by killing plants, usually because they were not suited to north Mississippi. Plant death was not always the issue, however, as sometimes failure comes by other means\u2014as it did with our first project, a blueberry U-Pick venture. The local extension service had suggested rabbiteye blueberries (Vaccinium virgatum) could supply huge profits with minimal inputs. They were right about little input. On some of our ideally acid soils, those rabbiteye blueberries planted some forty years ago still produce ample fruit with minimal care. Other factors denied profitability: while U-Pick blueberries were popular, locals usually only picked a few gallons and were done for the summer. And despite our efforts to acidify those places in the field that had unsuitably high pH, large swaths of the orchard simply did not prosper. Realizing that blueberries weren't the answer, we set off on a series of jaunts to investigate other fruits and learn from other growers. We joined the North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) organization, attending the annual meetings that moved each year to different regions of the country. This generous community provided lifelong friends and mentors, from whom we learned to become decent grafters, with only minimal blood loss. We also learned, the hard way, that Mississippi has the perfect climate for growing disease. Plants we saw thriving in California, Michigan, Oregon, and New York swooned in our heat and humidity. My father, however, was a civil engineer, and adept at finding solutions. When it became obvious that southerners needed their own group, a drawling band of commercial and amateur growers came together to form Southern Fruit Fellowship. Like NAFEX, the meetings moved around to different regions, but always in the south, and it was in Florida that my parents bit into their first Asian persimmons (Diospyros kaki). My father said it was love at first bite. They took a picture of the smiling moment. This fruit fit the bill for a U-Pick business: it ripened in mild, beautiful October, and customers filled five-gallon buckets in a matter of minutes. The trees required little maintenance beyond pruning to develop low spreading trees, shaped to accommodate strolling fruit-pickers. Mowing between the rows was a task maintained intensively only during harvest season. There was still a learning curve. Our farm lay in Zone 7, the hardiness limit for most Asian persimmon cultivars, with wildly fluctuating temperatures in seasons of transition. We learned to plant in spring, giving trees time to settle in well before a challenging winter. We also had survival issues with trees grafted onto Diospyros lotus rootstocks, so began using American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana). They occurred naturally on our farm, so we collected and planted several seeds directly into the desired spot, selected the most vigorous of the seedlings to graft, and left a couple of ungrafted seedlings in place for a year or two alongside the newly grafted trees. These would serve as backup rootstocks, should the grafted plant come to ruin, and they helped shield the tender new graft from wind gusts or racing dogs. Later, these extras were transplanted into pots and grafted for orchard expansion or sold to local nurseries. Our first year of significant production found us in a new dilemma. Our delicious, beautiful Asian persimmons attracted very few customers! This was before the days of social media, and in an era of less cosmopolitan palates. Even more to the point, an aversion to persimmons was common among our usual clientele. As children, many had been tricked into biting into a firm American persimmon, which is astringent until it has softened. The memory of the lingering pucker caused by that unripe fruit made them understandably reluctant to be suckered (puckered?) again. Our first plantings were all non-astringent cultivars, however, and delicious even when hard as an apple. Could they be convinced to try one? Each fall, my parents set off for local farm markets and horticultural field days with cutting boards, sharp knives, and bushels of just-picked persimmons. For hours, they sliced the beautiful orange persimmons and challenged total strangers to try the crisp wedges. I helped occasionally and enjoyed seeing the expression of doubt change to delight as they gingerly bit into the crunchy sweetness. Converted! Faces went from wary to warm, and soon our booth would be buzzing with questions and conversations. Nearby Starkville had another customer base, eager and ready-made: its vibrant Asian communities. These excited new customers taught us proper pronunciation of the cultivar names, and the resulting friendships brought to our farm an unexpected and rewarding cultural exchange. Thanks to those early efforts, the crop now consistently sells out as fast as it ripens. The only advertising done is to announce opening day for picking season and hours of operation. My parents are buried not far from the orchard, and my little brother now runs the operation, but some of their early customers still come, as well as the children and grandchildren of those first customers. The tradition of picking brilliant orange fruit on a beautiful autumn day spans generations, and our farm's soil has become part of their growing families. Several years before their deaths, my parents told their seven children the only gifts they wanted were memories of time spent happily with family. I smile to think that Reese Orchard still provides that opportunity for so many, long after they are gone. It's a different measure of success, beyond an orchard's profitability, and is their enduring legacy. URBAN ECOLOGY Happy Bats, Healthy Cities COVID-19 was hard on the public image of bats, who already suffered a reputation as carriers of disease. In fact, they contribute to human health, checking populations of mosquitos and agricultural pests\u2014and many aid in pollination and seed dispersal, too. Since 2021, students supervised by Dr. Alison Robbins of Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University have studied bat populations in living laboratory of the Arnold Arboretum. This year, Conservation Medicine graduate student Christina DeJoseph (left, in the field) installed monitors to collect bat calls and the sounds of other species. Supported by the Arnold's Sinnott Award, DeJoseph is tracking acoustic biodiversity to map how bats contribute to public health and healthy ecosystems. With veterinary student Alex Debrindisi, DeJoseph also offered a series of public \\\"bat walks\\\" at the arboretum to foster public fascination. \\\"Taking interest in the other species we live with,\\\" DeJoseph points out, \\\"that's healthy, too.\\\" To learn more about the work of Cummings-School students in the arboretum's landscape, look for the bat \\\"wonder spots\\\" at arboretum.harvard.edu\/visit\/explore-with-us\/."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Incarnations of an Apple","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25820","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d070bb6f.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"2","authors":"Kaminsky, Matt","start_page":"8","end_page":"10","article_content":"It's fall in Massachusetts, and I'm traveling to a different apple orchard daily, making sure the fruit gets harvested on time from the different sites that I look after. Some days I find myself in the puckerbrush, tromping over blackberry and multiflora rose to reach piles of windfallen wild apples in abandoned pastures. Other days I spend my time with stately old trees laid out in rows. I love the variety of sites that I get to visit during this time of year. It's been very dry and mild this fall, so fruit is ripening nice and slowly. This allows plenty of time for making the rounds to the dozens of sites where I harvest. Starting with orchards located furthest south in my orbit, and ending with those furthest north, I will be busy during these twelve or so weeks ranging September to November. I've just stopped to visit to a few noteworthy, unique seedling apple trees on the side of the road, collected their offerings, and continued on. In my truck I have some ovate, crow's-egg-looking oddball apples from one tree, which tasted like pineapple, next to a crate of large, round, green, and sweet-tasting ones, and another crate of aromatic fruit from an old hollow beast just next to it, which might be an old grafted apple called Mother. But those are just the bonuses. Today, my real goal is to check on the hilltown Baldwins\u2014a very special instance of Malus domestica 'Baldwin'\u2014growing in one of my favorite places. Some years ago, I was introduced to this old orchard by a former professor of mine, located far up in the hills west of the Connecticut River, on a homestead site in Franklin County. This remote site experiences its own microclimate, a bit colder than the surrounding countryside, and the blossom and fruit development are always further behind the orchards down in the river valley. Last week, I helped the crew at an orchard seated down in the valley at the base of Mount Norwottuck cleanpick the remainder of their 'Baldwin' crop, which had been steadily dropping fruit for a couple of weeks already. I'd estimate that the 'Baldwin' orchard up in the hills hadn't dropped a single apple yet, but that they'd be coming along at their own pace, ready to harvest any day now. When I was first introduced to this special old orchard, it was in the middle of winter, and snow was falling. We couldn't tell what kind of apples the trees were. All I could see was perhaps two dozen hulking behemoths standing in the field, reveling in their dormancy. It also was apparent the trees hadn't been cared for in many, many years and badly needed pruning. My professor had described the fruit to me in rich detail, which made my imagination race with wonder and anticipation. Come the first harvest after pruning, we learned that all but just a couple of the trees were Baldwins. One of the most iconic Bay State apples, their intense fiery red skin, balanced, sharp, subacid flavor, and signature hardness (so hard it may register on the Mohs scale used by geologists) are unmistakable. However, these are not just any 'Baldwin' apples. Though they are grafted, and therefore genetically identical with all other 'Baldwin' trees, these ones hit different. They are ancient, massive trees. By counting the rings of limbs that I pruned off, and comparing to the size of the trunks, it is nearly certain that they pre-date WWII. History books and old timers alike hold that all the Baldwins in Massachusetts were killed by an unusually harsh winter in 1934, after which most growers gave up on the cultivar. Few intact 'Baldwin' orchards from that era remain. Some of the trees in this orchard have expressed the rootstock as multiple smaller trunks coming from the ground, producing different types of fruit than the main trunks, which produce Baldwin apples. Each individual tree's rootstock produces unique, intriguing apples, which don't resemble one another in any way. Their flavors are eccentric\u2014some are more interesting than the Baldwins! This signals to me that this orchard was originally grafted onto seedlings rather than a standardized rootstock. Of course, each of the seeds they planted wouldn't come true to its parent, but rather would produce a unique apple tree. This is due to the trait of extreme heterozygosity that Malus displays, hence why the auxiliary trunks produce such wildly odd fruit. Trees growing on seedling roots are generally known for their ability to thrive in adverse conditions, and indeed the soil here is somewhat inhospitable. From the fact that the main understory plant growing around the apple trees is lowbush blueberry, we can tell that it is very acidic. In most cases, soils that support prolific barrens of blueberries will prove too harsh for apple trees, which prefer a higher pH. Moreover, the extensive outcroppings of smooth, gray ledge throughout the orchard indicate that the topsoil layer is shallow. The roots have plunged through gaps and cracks in the stones to gain anchorage. It would be hard to imagine an apple more intensely flavored, saturated in color, and sound of form. Piquing, sparkling acidity is coupled with plentiful juice and lovely, lingering, winey notes of tart cherry and a full mouthfeel. The 'Baldwin' apples from these hilltown trees are smaller, firmer, redder, and more flavorful than the orchard down in the river valley, where the harvest is just finishing up. Those 'Baldwin' trees are grafted onto MM.111, a widely-established commercial rootstock common in the US since the 1950s, and are at least forty years younger than those in the hilltown orchard. The valley trees also have a leafier, more upright growing habit than the twisty, winding branches of their older counterparts. The fruit is more plentiful, larger in size, and less intense in color, with little bits of green showing through. The juicy, firm flesh is rich in flavor, with notes of cranberry, but doesn't linger and isn't as complex. They lack the intense phenolics present in the older hill Baldwins, which add texture and depth, though they're still enjoyable. The apples that I'm describing seem different from each other. In fact, if you didn't know that they were both 'Baldwin', you might not even be aware that they're the same type of apple, indeed genetically identical. How does the same scion, grafted and growing in two different locations, produce fruit so varied in appearance and flavor? An apple fruit represents the sum of all variables that are a part of the tree and its surroundings. The genetic material contained within an individual specimen is filtered through a set of environmental and cultural qualities, which can vary greatly from place to place. Nature is nurture, the marriage of genome and environment. It is subject to the influence of all life around it; the activity of other organisms interacting with the tree, the qualities of the soil it's growing in, the weather, the influence of humans, chemicals, the rootstock they are grafted on, and so on. What appearances of the fruit are caused by the interactions of insects or disease? What flavors of the fruit are imparted by a particular deficiency or nutrient surplus in the soil? What practical elements of using the fruit, such as storage quality or size, are impacted by the tree's environment? What factors are we unaware of? Once a variety like 'Baldwin' is widely established, the genetic blueprint, which is generally static and inextricable (except where mutations occur), is replicated many times via grafting. When it is grown over a wide geographic area and under cultural methods that differ greatly, we begin to see that many different incarnations of the same apple begin to appear. As with the valley Baldwins and the hilltown Baldwins, the differences, slight or significant as they may be, are immutable. When I consider that 'Baldwin', as well as most named apple varieties, originated as a seedling, it makes me wonder how different the apples I'm experiencing today might be from the original 'Baldwin' tree that was discovered in Wilmington, Massachusetts, in 1740. How did the fruit from that original 'Baldwin' tree taste? How many millions of 'Baldwin' trees have lived and died since 1740? How many incarnations of 'Baldwin' have apple growers experienced? These are the questions that run through my mind with all apples I am eating, whether some famed old heirloom like these Baldwins, or some as-yet-unknown seedling, from an old rootstock, a roadside wild apple, or a tree found growing in the woods. As seasons have come and gone, and I've had chances to taste the venerable 'Baldwin' apple from dozens of sites, from trees with different stories and different personalities, I can say with confidence that these oldest, most distinguished, and unique seedling trees produce my favorite incarnation. BOOK BRIEF Little Forest, Big Impact Mini-Forest Revolution Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World By Hannah Lewis Foreword by Paul Hawken Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, 224 pages Protected from cutting for centuries, the forests that cluster around Japan's Shinto temples are refuges for endemic trees and the myriad creatures they support. Inspired by these biodiversity hotspots, botanist Akira Miyawaki (1928-2021) developed a method for intensive, site-specific cultivation of forest soil and cover, densely planting 30-40 regionally appropriate tree species to shelter seedlings and encourage rapid growth. As Hannah Lewis explains in Mini-Forest Revolution, the Miyawaki Method aims for big effects at hyperlocal scale, unlike most large-scale tree-planting efforts (for the fraught history and environmental impact of afforestation, read the excerpt from Rosetta Elkin's Plant Life in this issue, beginning on page 40). Author Hannah Lewis pairs case studies of Miyawaki projects from Europe to India with guidance on turning back lots into tiny forests. Editor at Biodiversity for a Living Climate, based in Cambridge, MA, Lewis first encountered the Miyawaki Method while living in France."},{"type":"arnoldia","title":"Being Green","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25821","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d0708127.jpg","year":"2022","series":null,"season":null,"volume":"79","issue_number":"3","article_sequence":"1","authors":"Dosmann, Michael S.","start_page":"1","end_page":"2","article_content":"While singing Joe Raposo's \\\"Bein' Green,\\\" Kermit the Frog laments how he blends in\u2014and fails to stand out\u2014among more colorful and flashier things. Given how many plant species (including one third of trees) are threatened with extinction, \\\"it's not that easy bein' green\\\" should be their motto, too. In urban forests, tribulations trial our street trees to the point where we measure their lifespans in years not decades, leaving cities ever hotter and far less beautiful places. Plant blindness, the term coined by James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler, is at play. When people fail to see the plants around them, they do not notice their beauty. Worse, they undervalue their essential role in supporting all life on Earth. I wonder if some have become phytophobic, in their carelessness. As the world shifts from rural to urban and suburban living, we've become detached from plants, the very things that feed and oxygenate us. Even while many of us grow them, I fear we've also become alienated. To many, plants are just commodities, means to ends. I see it in the nursery catalogs we browse, the landscapes we design, the gardens we steward. We rush to buy the latest disease-resistant cultivar of elm, the hottest-off-the-press hydrangea, the newest, dazzling coneflower\u2014each a must-have due to superb pest-resistance, 5-season interest, drought tolerance, pollinator-friendliness, non-invasiveness, maximum winterhardiness, and a host of other traits folks claim the plants possess. We demand a lot from plants in our managed landscapes, and those qualities are essential for many to survive. Yet among the attributes of new garden plants, I see a glaring omission: a richly authentic connection to a human, something that makes each individual stem stand out among its green brethren. At the Arboretum, we do not grow trees: we jointly cultivate them and curate their narratives. Some of these are backstories that came with the plant; others emerge where they are growing. I may lecture to a class about Ernest Wilson's 1901 collection from China of the nowthreatened paperbark maple, Acer griseum; a docent may share with a visitor Connie Derderian's heroic efforts saving the bonsai and penjing collection while its curator from 1969 to 1984. This technique\u2014sharing their backstories\u2014 may be a surefire way to inspire others to see plants, but it still doesn't go far enough. The student returns home from the lecture hall; the visitor departs the Arboretum. Motivated as they may have been at the time, the moment can be fleeting. People need their own personal, authentic connections to plants, too. I'm lucky to have a garden at home, where I grow plants replete with backstories important to me. Don't get me wrong\u2014I grow quite a few eye-candy plants, too. Passersby from the sidewalk regularly ask the name of the shrub humming with bumblebees and awash with huge yellow blooms each July (Hypericum frondosum 'Sunburst'), and then follow-up wondering what that nearby mass of lacy, chartreuse vegetation is (Rhus typhina 'Bailtiger'). While they may be clickbait, these are not the real showstoppers. I get access to surplus seedlings from my own expeditions, and a dozen have found space at home. When I watch each bloom of Weigela decora shift from cream to rose, I recall that slightly rainy September day in 2018, collecting it with colleagues in Nikko, Japan. As I cut back the Hydrangea arborescens every spring, I harken back to 2014, gathering seeds in the Ozarks, shouting warnings to fellow collectors about the cottonmouths and rattlesnakes underfoot. I also grow a Stewartia rostrata collected by Peter Del Tredici in 2004, in Lushan, China. Every time I see it, I think of Peter and our friendship. None of these plants is the most glamorous of its kind, but I'd not trade them for the showiest of cultivars sold in fancy containers. I also grow plants passed down from family. A favorite is Rudbeckia laciniata 'Hortensia', often called golden glow, outhouse plant\u2014or its most colorful moniker, shithouse daisy. We called them \\\"grandpa's flowers,\\\" a name my mother grew up with, for her own grandfather dug them and other plants from the small farm in Hamlet, Indiana, loaded them in a horse-drawn wagon full of furniture, and drove the family to Sturgis, Michigan\u2014a three-day trip. Sure, the plant can be ratty, the leaves covered with mildew by the end of summer. But, when I see those bright yellow pompon blooms, I smile and think of generations of gardeners sharing the plant and the story. Plant lovers love to share plants. A decade ago, friends gave me fresh cuttings of a citronella-scented geranium (Pelargonium graveolens), which they in turn acquired as cuttings from a spontaneous plant sprawling on Mount Lycabettus, in Athens, Greece. My cuttings rooted and became houseplants that thrive under neglect. Last summer, I introduced the magic of plant propagation to one of the neighbor kids. Six-year-old Abe snipped a few stem cuttings, prepared and stuck them in a pot of basic soil (this geranium will root in anything!), and waited. They rooted, and a year later he has a lanky, smelly houseplant. Whether he tells the story of its Greek provenance matters little to me\u2014what does matter is that he has his own authentic backstory connecting him to the plant. By the end of his song, Kermit realizes that green is beautiful and exactly what he wants to be. Even when lacking fancy tradenames or cultivar epithets, the green beings in our gardens are beautiful when they have authentic backstories. As we grow the triedand- true (as well as novel-and-new) plants for ourselves, our clients, our cities, we must also make room for those with personal stories to learn, preserve, and share. If none come to mind, we write them by sowing a seed, rooting a cutting, or adopting a nearby street tree to call our own. In doing so, we will all better see the plants around us. They need this, and so do we."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"To Wander About","article_sequence":1,"start_page":1,"end_page":2,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25792","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15ebb6b.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Friedman, Ned","article_content":"To wander about among a vegetation which is new to one is pleasant and instructive. It is the same with familiar objects: in the end we cease to think about them at all. What is seeing without thinking?\nJohann Wolfgang von Goethe\nWe live in an age of ecosystems and genomes, where the scale of biology is usually presented at one of two extremes, global or genomic. There are good reasons for humanity's focus on the global scale of biology here and now in the Anthropocene. With human-induced climate change in the process of permanently altering the natural trajectories of nearly four billion years of evolution and ecological interactions between species, there is an intense focus on documenting and predicting what our single species has unleashed on the many millions of species of life with whom we have inherited and currently share the planet.\nAt the same time, the miracles of DNA sequencing technologies have allowed us to understand, in ways previously unimaginable, our own extraordinary evolutionary journey of becoming human, connecting us back in time to the first single celled forms of life. Reading the DNA has also provided amazing insights into everything from the genes responsible for making a flower to the genetic coding that maps out neural networks in fruit flies.\nIf one views the living natural world predominantly through the lenses of ecosystems and genomes, however, then something has been lost. I am an organismic biologist, a plant morphologist to be more precise. Simply put, this means that when I think of a 'unit' of biology, I am thinking about single organisms, just as you and I, as members of the human species, are single organisms. We are conceived as a zygote, develop into an embryo, are born, grow, learn to walk and speak, have interactions with other human organisms, and eventually complete an arc of life that returns our carbon to the earth. Of course, there is no such thing as a single organism all organisms depend on a web of myriad other species but I identify as an organism, knowing full well that there are roughly as many bacterial cells in my body as there are human cells. And the tree outside of my window, even though I know it has complex associations with mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria, is still a unit of biology that can powerfully be seen as an organism.\nI yearn to see organisms individual trees to meet them, witness them, learn from them, and indeed, to age with them. And this is the beautiful thing about the Arnold Arboretum and its roughly 16,000 accessioned woody plants. Each has provenance an organismic history with an origin story, and all that goes with siting, planting, and caring for an individual plant over decades and even centuries. I can reflect on the magnificent twisted European beech (14599*A) that was collected in the wild in France, transported to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and then sent on a journey to the Arnold Arboretum in 1888. I can imagine a mere sapling being planted in the ground on the south flank of Bussey Hill in the beech collection. My mind reels in the magnitudes of time as I reflect on the generations of horticulturists who have cared for this one individual. And here, more than a century later, I can rejoice in its magnificent fall colors, its snow-covered spiraling branches, the light-green and delicate newly-flushed leaves in the spring, and the deep greens of summer. At the Arnold Arboretum, everything is truly about paying it forward.\nNot long after settling into the Arboretum, I resolved that I would never let a week go by without getting out onto the grounds to look at and photograph the woody plants that had beckoned me here. On every walk, I bring my small pocket camera and take pictures. Each night, I select the better ones, and spend additional time reflecting on what was revealed to me. By simply taking the time to observe, I feel as though I have gotten to know these non-sentient organisms on their terms: not as extensions of me, but rather as fellow living beings that can reveal their lives, history, complexity, beauty, architecture, and basic natural history.\nOver the years, from these meandering walks, I appear to have developed several of what I now refer to as (healthy) obsessions with phenomena which, once I observed them in the Arboretum, I became acutely interested in seeing in all of their manifestations. These obsessions include my ongoing annual spring quest to witness the brilliant hues of ovulate (seed-bearing) conifer cones; the exuberance of budbreak among the horsechestnuts and buckeyes; a fixation on the magical dispersal of pollen from rhododendron flowers; magnolias in fruit (and always, the bigleaf magnolia in flower); smooth bark (especially among snakebark maples in the winter); the startlingly bizarre naked resting buds of India quassiawood and the Arboretum's single specimen of Caucasian wingnut; looking straight up the trunks of large trees in all seasons; acorns in August (and the mad dash to finish filling up the fruit in the early fall); and the act of shattering birch infructescences to gaze upon their minute, delicately winged seeds, which immediately lift from my palm and are carried off by the wind.\nDiscovering plants as individuals, organisms to be reckoned with and reflected upon, is a journey worth taking, and one that never ends. It is a journey that enriches my life every day, in ways that I could not have imagined as I made my first focused perambulation on the grounds of the Arnold Arboretum years ago. It is also a journey that will be unique (and uniquely rewarding) to each person who sets out to discover the essence of plants by meeting these magnificent organisms on their terms, simply by looking and reflecting.\nIf we are ever to save the planet from our destructive tendencies, of warring with nature and each other, I would like to suggest that it can start by regularly walking in a garden, a park, the woods, or one's backyard, and learning to rejoice in the extraordinary beauty of organisms that can't talk to us, and indeed are wholly indifferent to our very existence (although certainly not unaffected) but whose presence is a constant reminder of the nearly miraculous complexity and interconnectedeness of life."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Hedging Our Bets","article_sequence":2,"start_page":8,"end_page":10,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25791","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15ebb27.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Meyer, Mary H.; Kreevich, Nick","article_content":"Believe it or not, a hedge collection can be full of surprises. Take the row of 20-25 foot-tall Jack pines, Pinus banksiana, just one of the 73 taxa in the Hedge Collection at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum (MLA). These tough natives have great cold and drought tolerance but what are they doing, unpruned, in this formal hedge collection? The historical documentation of the collection provided crucial clues: From early curatorial records, we learned the Jack pine hedge was made up of plants grown from seed collected by Al Johnson, an early MLA curator, from a witch's broom in Chittamo, Wisconsin. In slides, we found pictures of plant people with witch's brooms, from which they coveted seed in hopes of finding new dwarf plants. While the story of the Jack pines is clearer now, broad questions remain: What did record-keeping look like in 1967? Whose idea was it to start the collection? Was there an initial donor or collection goal?\nThese were some of our questions when we began to write our new ebook, Hedges: A Brief History and the Minnesota Hedges Collection (pressbooks.umn.edu\/hedges), and document the institutional knowledge of the collection. Although each plant had its own record with basic provenance information, our questions were not easy to answer. When we tell people (even horticulturists) that we wrote a book about hedges, they often look puzzled; when we ask if they grew up with a hedge, or if they ever pruned a hedge, however, most often the answer is yes. We ask them to think about why the hedge was there, and what it might have meant to their family and neighbors. And for many people, a light comes on as they connect their hedge to the landscape and its cultural meaning.\nEstablished in 1958, the MLA began as a horticultural research site for testing winter hardiness of plants (USDA hardiness zone 4), including plants commonly used in hedges. The MLA Hedge Collection is one of the oldest such assemblages, due in part to the boom in popularity that hedges saw throughout the 1960s, thanks to the postwar building boom and the growth of suburbia.\nSifting through thousands of more-than-60-year-old, 3 5-inch accession cards, filed in Steelmaster card cabinets, is like discovering an old journal or generational photo album at a yard sale: as soon as you start moving your fingers across the edges of the cards, musty whiffs of past time bring on a feeling of nostalgia. With each flip of a card, organized alphabetically by generic, specific, and cultivar epithets, you begin to build a historical portrait of the MLA collections dating from 1958. These index cards, also known as accession records, reveal that acquiring a plant and giving it a number did not necessarily coincide with when it was planted. Documentation on the cards also includes notes on fall color, winter injuries, fruit set, and overall growth habit all important considerations when assessing the ornamental value of a hedge. It is clear from the records that prior keepers prized foliage density, foliage color, and winter hardiness above all. We could even trace the impacts of weather on the hedge collection, with two of the coldest winters in recorded history (1978-9, with an average temperature of 9.4\u00a1F, and '77-8, with an average temperature of 10.5\u00a1F) apparent in plant-record notes on injury and severe dieback. Natural selection certainly took its course with those back-to-back weather events, but also provided the staff with critical knowledge of how particular hedge plants respond to extreme cold.\nWe also interviewed a number of employees, current and retired, to record their memories and discover the origins of some of the more unusual plants in the collection. Kathy Allen, Andersen Horticultural Librarian, assisted with locating the early Arboretum annual reports, which add critical details regarding scope of and support for the collection. 'The collection was planted to show which plants were the best for formal hedges,' recounts Director, Peter Moe, himself a longtime MLA employee. 'There were fewer compact forms of many species at that time and many people tended to try to keep large plants such as Amur maple as medium-sized hedges.' Height, density, and diversity could be shown in a planting a variety of hedges, which at the time were an extremely common and desirable landscape element.\nThree taxa of boxwood (Buxus 'Glencoe' Chicagoland Green\u00aa; B. microphylla var. koreana, and B. sempervirens) are the only broadleaved evergreens in the collection. Notes from early Arboretum newsletters express interest in this genus, though it was thought not to be winter hardy by many. Accession records and notes from the '60s to '70s document the overturning of this wisdom, with comments such as 'best in collection' and 'very good hedge material.' Although the plants show winter burn in the spring many years, the hardiness of boxwood hedges is no longer a question.\nGuided by prior documentation standards at the MLA, evaluating our current hedge collection for ornamental value sometimes felt like being a judge for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, looking at one favorite after another. Usually, the first concern when pondering a hedge is its performance as a barrier. Yet not all hedges intend to create a barrier, but may instead provide ornamental value to an existing landscape or garden. The latter is mostly a matter of opinion: some may be wowed by the texture or height of a hedge, while others are more interested in the seasonal changes such as flower, fruit, and fall color.\nOur Thuja occidentalis 'Wareana' (American arborvitae) was the clear winner in terms of privacy, reaching heights of up to ten feet at maturity, with very dense, evergreen foliage. On the opposite end of the density spectrum, a hedge like Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' (smooth Hydrangea) needs consistent renewal pruning to provide what it is best known for: its large, rounded flower heads. While the 'Annabelle' hedge can reach heights that garner it semi-private status, there is no hiding behind this deciduous shrub come winter. Deciduous hedges vary greatly as the seasons change, and will react strongly to weather anomalies. Early in the growing season, Philadelphus coronarius 'Aureus' looks like a candidate for removal, but its charm and value for use in a hedge come to fruition in the summer, with its beautiful chartreuse foliage.\nSuch factors are boldly visible through the seasons at the MLA, when you drive over the crest of a small hill and 73 neat hedges suddenly spread before you. It is hard to not notice them! Our hedge collection is a document of human intervention in the landscape. While it is doubtful that we would plant a hedge collection in a public garden today, there is value in keeping historical horticultural garden elements intact for future study. This preservation effort encompasses both plants and the records we keep of them.\nAnd so a word of advice to anyone thinking of fleshing out historical documentation for a plant collection: much institutional knowledge exists only in the memory of long term staff. Documenting this tacit knowledge, with audio or video recordings if possible, as well as continuing to keep records beyond mere accession numbers, will help curators, horticulturists, and other Arboretum staff understand the goal and educational purpose of a collection. Rarely do we over-document the details of our plant collections. As authors on hedges, our perspective has become more complex, realizing that people subconsciously use hedges to take control of their property and show authority. Some may balk at using the word 'authority' in connection with a hedge. Our reaction to plants is often subconscious, however; we rarely realize how deeply they affect us. A well-pruned hedge subconsciously communicates human control, and implies a safe, managed landscape. Our species' role in the landscape is readily seen, but often not fully recognized, when we encounter a hedge."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Quest for Southern Red Oak-North of the Mason-Dixon Line","article_sequence":3,"start_page":11,"end_page":13,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25790","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15eb76f.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Zale, Peter J.; Aiello, Anthony S.","article_content":"While plant collecting is often romanticized as occurring in pristine natural habitats, much of the most successful seed collecting is done in more prosaic locations. This is especially true when searching for tree species, where roadsides or power line rights-of-way provide light (for tree growth) and ease of access to fruiting branches (for collecting convenience). This certainly was the case in September 2020, as we searched for Quercus falcata (Spanish oak, or southern red oak) in southern Chester County (PA). After a fruitless morning at the Goat Hill Serpentine Barrens Preserve, we found much better success along local county roads.\nWhy Quercus falcata? Based on biological and climatic threats to tree species traditionally grown at Longwood Gardens, we have focused recent efforts on native species that combine ornamental traits with disease resistance and greater heat tolerance. For example, red oak (Quercus rubra), one of the more prominent shade trees at Longwood Gardens, in recent years has been among the most susceptible to bacterial leaf scorch (Xylella fastidiosa), which can weaken and eventually kill mature trees. As possible substitutes for this and other susceptible oaks, we targeted populations of Quercus phellos, Quercus michauxii, and Quercus falcata native to southeastern Pennsylvania. Maturing at approximately the same size as red oak, all three are potential substitutes as high-canopy, overstory shade trees. Each of these three species, which are widespread further south, reach the northern limits of their native ranges in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Long Island. Southern red oak barely extends its range into southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and possibly Staten Island and Long Island. In fact, due to its rarity in Pennsylvania (fewer than fifteen populations are known in the state), the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program lists it as a species of special concern (an S1, for those familiar with the coding).\nFaced with travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in the late summer and fall of 2020, we decided to look for local opportunities for collecting seed, pursuing a range of regional collecting objectives that we had previously not achieved. This included targeting the southern ranges of northern species (such as Larix laricina) and, vice-versa, the northern limits of southern species (for example Quercus virginiana), with the goal of growing plants suitable for changing climatic conditions in the Delaware Valley. For those southern species that reach into the mid-Atlantic, the extreme populations might possess traits, including cold tolerance, that provide opportunities to grow these beyond their traditional horticultural ranges. Conversely, for the northern species, the southernmost populations could possess greater heat tolerance, allowing us to continue to grow these as their native populations retreat northwards in the face of warming climates.\nIn September 2020, we focused our collecting on nearby populations of Quercus falcata, which occur on serpentine soils and their associated barrens. (Serpentine barrens, with thin, nutrient-poor soils, support high levels of unusual, rare, or endangered species, in contrast to adjacent areas.) We had targeted Goat Hill based on recent herbarium records from this location, but we did not find any southern red oaks there. Collecting was easy along the county roads, however, where we made three separate collections from trees whose acorns were within reach of our pole pruners. These three populations, within two miles of each other, were made up of large mature trees that were at least 50 feet tall. Quercus falcata stand out among other oaks, having coarsely lobed leaves with sickle-shaped (falcate) terminal lobes, and dense grey down (pubescence) beneath. For two of these collections, the southern red oaks were mixed among other native trees species in a dense forest; the third location was a grove of separate mature trees growing in a heavily grazed cow pasture, all within sight of the Herr's Snack Factory, a local landmark.\nSeeking additional Pennsylvanian locations of Quercus falcata, we pored through herbarium collections shared through the Mid-Atlantic Herbaria Consortium. Historical records from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s show a distribution in southeast Pennsylvania along much of the Piedmont-Coastal Plain boundaries, including southwest Philadelphia. But due to urbanization of much of this historic range (which includes Philadelphia International Airport), herbarium collections since the late 1980s center on three areas: southern Chester County near the Maryland border, southern Montgomery County along Militia Hill in Fort Washington State Park, and southern Bucks County along the Delaware River.\nWhile collecting southern red oak within a few square miles of West Nottingham Township (Chester County), we came across a remarkable diversity of eight oak species in addition to Quercus falcata, we also encountered Q. alba, Q. ilicifolia, Q. marilandica, Q. prinoides, Q. rubra, Q. stellata, and Q. velutina. Though familiar with the local diversity of oaks in southeast Pennsylvania, we rarely see this number of species in a single day's outing. Together, these represent a significant portion of the 11 oaks reported by Hugh Stone in his two-volume 1945 Flora of Chester County Pennsylvania, and nearly half of the approximately 20 oak species found in Pennsylvania. This wealth of oak species serves testament to the richness of the Chester County flora, historically the most botanically diverse in the state, though heavily impacted by human activities since the publication of Stone's Flora.\nWe returned in 2021 to make duplicate collections from the easily accessible roadside trees found in 2020. Oaks are famous for having years of heavy acorn production (mast years) followed by years of lower production. In 2020, we experienced a post-mast year when looking for Quercus phellos in southern Bucks County. Despite seeing a few dozen trees during a day in the field, we did not see a single acorn on any of these. Our luck was better with Quercus falcata: in 2020 we collected a total of approximately 250 acorns, and in 2021, just under 200 acorns.\nAs with seed collecting, patience is the main ingredient needed to grow oak seedlings. To germinate, acorns usually need a few months of cold treatment, followed by warm conditions and the increasing day lengths of spring. Ultimately the seedlings derived from these collections will be evaluated in our Research Nursery for growth rate and form, disease resistance, and fall color, before being introduced into public areas of Longwood Gardens."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Hybrids Hiding in Plain Sight","article_sequence":4,"start_page":14,"end_page":15,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25789","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15eb36c.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Connolly, Bryan","article_content":"Last summer, while working as a consulting botanist for the Environmental Protection Agency's National Wetland Condition Assessment project in Allamuchy Township, New Jersey, I found an unusual colony of shrubby dogwood in the genus Swida (previously known as Cornus). The research plot was in a seasonally flooded meadow, with broad-leaved cattail (Typha latifolia), ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), and reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) present. The site was previously cleared and looked to have a long history of human disturbance. The location is now set aside as town open space, and secondary succession is occurring, with woody plants increasing in dominance. Swida, or shrubby dogwoods, are known as old-field colonizers, and also as wetland species. There were two species present at this locality, S. racemosa, gray dogwood, and S. amomum, silky dogwood. In my experience, S. racemosa is more of an old-field colonizer, while S. amomum tends to favor wetlands. The area was both an old field and a wetland, and so it made sense that the species were co-occurring and abundant at the site.\nI noticed one Swida colony that did not cleanly fit into either S. racemosa or S. amomum. Swida racemosa generally has narrow (lanceolate) leaves, white fruit, gray bark, white pith, and upright growth habit; while S. amomum has broader (ovate) leaves, reddish-purple bark, brown twig pith, blue fruit, and a mounded growth form. The atypical plant I spotted had S. racemose characters, including narrow leaves 2.5\u00d03.8 cm wide and verrucose gray bark on the older stems, but also displayed the S. amomum traits of blue fruit and brown twig pith. Additionally, the growth form was unusual: it was a tall plant, about 2\u00d03 m in height, and somehow both upright and mounded, intermediate between the habits of S. racemosa and S. amomum. The pedicels or flower stalks were also reddish-maroon, not the typical bright red of S. racemosa. With this combination of characters, I thought it was likely to be a hybrid of the two species. From my experience working with coauthors on The Vascular Plants of Massachusetts: A County Checklist, I remembered a Swida hybrid, though I couldn't recall the parental species or if it was named. Additionally, from my wanderings and botanical work in the Northeastern US, I have published many new records of hybrid taxa and I could not place this plant among them.\nAfter a long day in the field I returned to my hotel room, fired up Go Botany (the online database of the Native Plant Trust), and confirmed that S. racemosa and S. amomum do in fact hybridize. On the account of my vague Swida hybrid recollection and my previous encounters with hybrid taxa, I wasn't surprised that a cross was known, but was glad that my hybrid hypothesis was supported by the literature. To my delight, the hybrid was listed as a nothospecies (a direct hybrid of two species) with the name Swida arnoldiana. The original description, by Alfred Rehder, was made in 1905 from a row of shrubs growing at the Arnold Arboretum.\nThis individual could just represent variation found within S. racemosa, which occasionally can have brown pith or light blue fruit. But I find it unlikely that a plant would exhibit both these traits while also co-occuring with plants that have the morphology of S. racemosa and S. amomum. I thus believe this plant to be S. arnoldiana. If I am correct, then it is a state record for New Jersey! According to Flora of North America, the hybrid has only been found in Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.\nThe specimen voucher will be deposited at the Arnold Arboretum herbarium. This unique hybrid individual spotted in the field offered a nice little puzzle to solve and it was gratifying to learn that it is named after a wonderful arboretum I know and love!"},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Somewhere in the Panhandle of Florida","article_sequence":5,"start_page":16,"end_page":17,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25788","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15eb328.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Thomas, Elizabeth; Boland, Tim","article_content":"Somewhere in the panhandle of Florida, traveling for miles within a labyrinth of perfectly paved yet utterly empty roads, we blindly followed our guide, Bob, to a population of our target species, cracking jokes as we drove about the sinister fate awaiting us. We were in the ghost of a ghost town: the skeleton of a subdivision that was never built, planned for a population that never came. Every street is identical, save for the occasional cul-de-sac jutting into scrubby second-growth forest. Not only did the people never arrive, but the houses were never constructed; hundreds of miles of paved roads were laid here in the 1990s, only to be left abandoned, another suburban dystopia created by Florida's rich history of speculative development.\nBob pulled his Prius to the side of the road, and we parked behind him. We'd been put in touch with Bob, a local resident and active amateur botanist, by our contact in the Florida Forest Service; it had been Bob who discovered this population of Stewartia malacodendron, and he was eager to share it with trustworthy enthusiasts. Known commonly as 'silky stewartia' or 'silky camellia' due to its showy, camellia-like blooms, S. malacodendron is a small deciduous understory tree native to the southeastern coastal plain of the United States, from Virginia to the northeast and Texas to the southwest. Traveling from the Polly Hill Arboretum on Martha's Vineyard in the late summer of 2021, we had come to harvest fruits (and thus, seed) of this species to grow into plants for our ex-situ living collections. As co-holders of the Plant Collection Network's National Collection of the genus Stewartia with the Arnold Arboretum, we were hoping to collect from populations at the southernmost edge of its range, heretofore unrepresented in our living collections.\nGrabbing our gear, we ambled through the woody goldenrod and beautyberry, enjoying the fresh light of an early September morning pouring through the sparse canopy of southern magnolia and live oak. We were only about 100 feet from the road when we stumbled across our first stewartia tree, standing like a sentinel at the rim of a large, sunny slope dropping down to a sinkhole pond. Our satisfaction to find it fruiting quickly turned to excitement and then overwhelm as we spotted at least a dozen more of them spread across the face of the slope, each one dripping with plump, green fruits larger than we had ever seen before. Normally about an inch in diameter, these were more akin to fuzzy ping pong balls or small crabapples. Balancing on the scrubby slope and madly scribbling collection numbers on sandwich bags, we exchanged involuntary expletives as we took in the superlative bounty of fruits. Were we harvesting germplasm, or were we apple picking?\nOf conservation concern throughout most of its range, silky camellia is a protected endangered species in the state of Florida. Protected in theory, at least: as we began to stuff the plump green fruits into plastic bags, we gazed across the sinkhole, where a collage of zig-zagging tire tracks defaced the far slope all the way down to the shore of the pond. With its bleached, eroded sands, this local party spot is visible even from satellite images.\nLiz heard Bob holler from somewhere upslope to her left. Though she couldn't make out what he was saying, she knew he'd found yet another group of exceptionally fecund trees. This good news found her in a fluster of multitasking, as she scrambled to capture location coordinates on our GPS unit, measure and record specimen data and collection numbers by hand in our field book, label baggies and herbarium samples, take pictures, and collect fruit. Sharpie cap in mouth and hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, she wondered whether we'd be late to our next stop that morning, meeting our next guide at a site about three hours west. We'd expected this to be a quick roadside stop, not an absolute windfall.\nThis expedition is our most focused effort to collect this species since an Alabama excursion in 2007. Our founder, Polly Hill, was among the first private collectors to grow this plant, with our oldest tree dating back to 1962. The mild maritime climate and acidic soils of Martha's Vineyard happily support the cultivation of this stunning, small, flowering tree.\nMost of our expedition planning is done months ahead to arrange for a seasoned naturalist or professional botanist to lead us to target species. Admittedly, we get into some very wild places to collect the silky stewartia. Usually, we find them after rugged hikes into deep wilderness. Yet here on this fine morning, just off an intersection crossroad, we had found the most robust population of silky stewartia Tim has witnessed in 15 years of pursuing it. Slicing into the globose fruits, we found dark brown sclerified seeds that shone brightly in the late morning light.\nThis unexpected and surreal discovery was a vivid reminder that plants are both resilient and vulnerable. The silky stewartia is imperiled by habitat destruction, principally through logging or building development. On a previous scouting trip to Alabama in 2012, we bore witness to a new condominium development that destroyed a former thriving population. Somehow, this spectacular hillside of trees was spared the backhoe and bulldozer for now. With the same luck that brought us to this unique population of trees, we hope to return and see them in bloom someday. Perhaps the flower size will also be larger, or some of the petals streaked ruby red, as variants in the wild are known to do?\nWe looked at our watches to check our time; not surprisingly, we would be late to our next destination. However, the place, the trees, and the experience were worth it. As we gathered up our gear to move onto our next location, we did so in a suspended state of stewartia euphoria. The remainder of the trip was both productive and satisfying, but nothing would compare to this remarkable discovery in the unlikeliest of places."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Rhododendron prunifolium","article_sequence":6,"start_page":18,"end_page":19,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25787","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15eaf25.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Dosmann, Michael S.","article_content":"I have always been fond of Korean azalea (Rhododendron mucronulatum), that hardy shrub whose pink flowers crack open just as the snow recedes. At the other end of the season, and the last of our azaleas to flower, comes another personal favorite: Rhododendron prunifolium (plumleaf azalea).\nMost of the Arboretum's plumleaf azaleas grow along Meadow Road, amassed below towering black locusts in the Wolcott Bed. They escape notice until the middle of July, when their floral buds swell and burst open, when few woody plants bloom and temperatures are irrepressibly hot. Although it's not comprehensively accurate (color ranges from deep red to nearly pinkish-orange), in this portrait, I'll say the flowers are safety orange, that alarming shade reserved for prison jumpsuits and cautionary traffic cones.\nThis color should be taken as a warning, because Rhododendron prunifolium is rare in nature, limited to just a few dozen populations in the Chattahoochee River Valley and straddling the border of southern Alabama and Georgia. Neither disease nor insect is to blame; climate change (to date at least) is also not the culprit. Instead, the species totters on the brink simply because its preferred habitat mesic forests, stream sides, and ravines is disappearing due to logging and other development. In this respect, plumleaf azalea is like most other woody plants threatened with extinction: their natural homes are vanishing.\nShortly after the founding of the Center for Plant Conservation in 1984 (then based at the Arnold Arboretum), we began to collect the species in earnest. At present we grow thirty-four plants, mostly from Georgia's Dade, Harris, and Stewart Counties. Preserving wild populations remains the highest priority, but it is important to have a back-up; while they grow here, their story is shared with others, and scholars from around the world come here to study them.\nLet's not ignore the fact that Rhododendron prunifolium looks good in the garden. For endangered species, being charismatic and attracting attention is a gateway to its security (just look at the giant panda). This means we must equally care for species whose security is questionable simply because they are less charming, at least in appearance anyway. At the Arnold, we make room for these plants, too."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Beatrix Farrand on Mount Desert Island","article_sequence":7,"start_page":20,"end_page":31,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25786","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15eab6d.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Eason, Rodney","article_content":"I first visited the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, in Seal Harbor, Maine, on vacation with my then-fianc\u017de, now-wife, Carrie, in 1997. We were both young landscape architects practicing at different firms in Raleigh, North Carolina. The garden visit had been arranged by Carrie's college classmate, Sarah Richardson, who lived on Mount Desert Island. After days spent hiking through Acadia National Park's coniferous forests, granite peaks, and scattered blueberries and junipers, the refined curation of color within the borders of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden was a beautiful and dramatic contrast.\nSarah informed us that the Rockefeller Garden was designed by Beatrix Farrand (June 19, 1872-February 28, 1959), who also had designed Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. One of Carrie's classes at Penn State had made a trip to our nation's capital, where she had been awestruck by the beauty of that garden. The only images I had seen of Dumbarton Oaks came from books and slide lectures, and it would be roughly 18 years before I would encounter Farrand's work in depth, reading her biography by Judith Tankard, Beatrix Farrand : Private Gardens, Public Landscapes (2009).\nToday, through a set of fortunate circumstances, I get to live all year round on Mount Desert Island and have served as CEO since 2015 of the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve, which is entrusted with the care of three Farrand-influenced gardens, including the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. In case you have never visited the coast of Maine, I should point out that the indigenous vegetation is not exactly floriferous. Coniferous forest predominates, largely composed of red spruce, black spruce, and white pine. There are some deciduous trees on the edges of the coniferous stands, including alders and moosewood maples. The dominant native ground-floor vegetation is largely composed of rhodoras, sweet ferns, huckleberries, blueberries, and northern bayberries. Underneath this typical plant community on Mount Desert Island are numerous ferns, mosses, lichens, and sedges. This plant community makes for a mix of greys and greens, all in contrast to the pink granite outcrops and glacial erratics that you would frequently encounter. Spectacular in its own right, this landscape inspired the formation of Acadia National Park in 1916.\nWith English-style, mixed-herbaceous borders set off within this landscape, the Rockefeller Garden makes an evocative juxtaposition. Designed by Farrand for Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller Jr. from 1926 through the early 1930s, the garden is a sublime mixture of sophisticated design and a complex palette of plants. I was smitten from the outset with the combination of bold floral colors, statuary sourced from Asia, and Beaux-Arts symmetry, provided most prominently by two parallel axes that run the length of the garden and orchestrate the flow for the visitor. The entry axis, called the Spirit Path, is flanked by carved-stone warriors and priests from eighteenth-century Korea. The second axis, parallel to the Spirit Path, provides the central aspect of the garden and its colorful flower borders with a distant view of a round opening called the 'moon gate.' This gate frames the view of a eighteenth-century bronze Buddha in the Shakyamuni, or historical form, from China. As I studied Farrand's designs in more detail, I would learn how the use of such central orienting axes became a hallmark of her designs.\nMany years after visiting Mount Desert Island and the Rockefeller Garden for the first time, I was fortunate enough to visit Dumbarton Oaks. Like an unfolding, complex novel that you just cannot put down, the garden kept leading from one masterfully designed room to the next, with brilliantly placed plants and sublimely scaled spaces. I distinctly remember encountering the camouflage-print bark of a superb Chinese quince, Pseudocydonia sinensis, at the end of a pathway. Overwhelmed by the beauty of this gorgeous tree, I walked off the pathway and gave it a hug.\nWhat is now the Land & Garden Preserve, was conceived in 1970 as a way for Peggy and David Rockefeller to perpetuate the beauty of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. They co-inherited the garden with David's older brother, Nelson, after David's father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., passed away in 1960. Soon after Peggy and David formed the Preserve as a non-profit, then known as the 'Island Foundation,' they were asked to manage the nearby Asticou Azalea Garden. Asticou, or the Azalea Garden as it is known locally, had been built beginning in 1956 by Charles K. Savage, using mature plantings from Reef Point, Beatrix Farrand's Bar Harbor estate.\nAnother local garden, Thuya, joined the Preserve in 2000, after its trustees decided that the future of the garden would be in good hands with the growing organization. Thuya's origins date to 1912, when a Boston landscape architect and Northeast Harbor summer resident, Joseph Curtis, constructed his 'rusticator' lodge in Northeast Harbor, naming it for a prominent stand of eastern white cedar, Thuja occidentalis, growing nearby. Charles K. Savage became the trustee of Thuya after Curtis' death in 1929. In 1956, Savage began establishing gardens at both Thuya as well as Asticou, a story for which more detail will be provided below.\nTo celebrate his 100th birthday in 2015, David Rockefeller gifted the Preserve over 1,000 acres of land around Little Long Pond, including over 10 miles of carriage roads and 10 miles of hiking trails. This parcel, too, carried Farrand's legacy: When John D. Rockefeller Jr. was constructing the carriage road system from 1913 until 1940 on what is now both the Preserve and Acadia National Park, Farrand had provided pro-bono consulting on road layout and planting designs. When David Rockefeller passed away in 2017, the Farrand-designed Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden joined his gift to the Preserve. Beyond the beauty of the Rockefeller estate in Seal Harbor, Maine, she left an indelible mark within what is now Acadia National Park and the Preserve.\nHer ties to the place were deep. When Farrand was 10 years old, in 1882, her parents bought an ocean-front property called Reef Point in Bar Harbor, facing Frenchman Bay. Her childhood at Reef Point fostered a love of plants and landscapes, and for amusement she dug and transplanted native vegetation from the surrounding forests and combined these with cultivated ornamentals. Farrand's ethos of protecting the natural environment while cultivating intensive gardening spots of horticultural pleasure carries on today at the Preserve with over 1,200 acres of conserved, natural lands connecting our three ornamental gardens.\nAs her interest in landscape design and planting became more of a passion, she was introduced to Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of the Arnold Arboretum. Sargent agreed to guide Farrand in her self-education in horticulture and garden design from 1893 to 1894, since at that time, no formal training in landscape architecture existed. While studying at the Arnold, she worked with plants at the Arboretum, as well as at the Sargent family's estate, Holm Lea, in Brookline, Massachusetts. In addition to learning about the art and science of horticulture from Sargent, she learned to design landscapes to fit a site rather than change a site to fit a design.\nThe lessons she learned from Sargent carried over as well through the trialing of new plants at Reef Point and elsewhere. From 1946 to 1956, Farrand chronicled the evolution of her Bar Harbor garden along with the noteworthy characteristics of many plants in the 'Reef Point Gardens Bulletin.' Farrand found the climate of Mount Desert Island to be particularly hospitable to climbing vines and in the June 1954 bulletin, she describes some of her favorites. Among her descriptions of Aristolochia spp., Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, Vitis spp., and Lonicera spp., Farrand is particularly hopeful and enamored by a vine that 'Professor Sargent had scornfully described as a 'dud.' This Arnold Arboretum cast-off was Tripterygium regelii. I admittedly had never heard of this Celastraceae member until this mention in the Reef Point Bulletin.\nWhat began as a joint venture with her husband, Max, Farrand continued to develop, seeking to make Reef Point a public teaching garden after his passing in 1945. Max had been the first director of the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino, California. The Farrands divided their time between San Marino and Bar Harbor, with a dream of eventually making Reef Point a garden where aspiring horticulturists and garden designers could learn. In October 1947, two years after Max's passing, a massive wildfire burned almost a third of Mount Desert Island, including many grand, oceanside estates. These massive estates had provided the town with substantial tax revenues, now lost to fire. I mention this because Farrand had sought tax exemption of Reef Point as a public garden, and after these fires (which left Reef Point unscathed), the town had to increase tax assessments. With the burden required to keep her gardens afloat, Ms. Farrand ultimately decided to dissolve Reef Point as a lasting garden in 1955.\nBeatrix Farrand's article on 'The Azalea Border' in the April 15, 1949 edition of Arnoldia described the addition of azaleas and other acid-loving plants along Meadow Road by the Arnold Arboretum. Some of the azaleas mentioned in the article included: Rhododendron mucronulatum, R. dauricum, R. canadense, R. vaseyi, R. schlippenbachii, R. arborescens, R. viscosum, R. nudiflorum, R. roseum, and R. calendulaceum. After reading this article from 1949, I began to wonder if Farrand's interest in azaleas was in any way linked between her desire to see what would grow both in Jamaica Plain as well as at her Bar Harbor estate. As I will describe later, many of her plants were subsequently moved from Reef Point to the Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden by Charles K. Savage. Asticou Azalea has a substantial collection of azaleas, many of them species grown in the Arnold's Azalea Border. Farrand, along with her plant recorder, Marion Ida Spaulding, kept an herbarium of the Reef Point plants. Once Farrand decided to no longer keep Reef Point Gardens going, she sent their plant vouchers to the University of California, Berkeley's herbarium, where I have found 51 vouchers attributed to Reef Point.\nIn 1956, Farrand sold Reef Point to a Maine colleague, Reef Point board member and architect, Robert Patterson, who sold most of the plant collection to Northeast Harbor hotelier and fellow Reef Point board member Charles K. Savage. Lacking the $5,000 needed to purchase and move the collection, Savage was able to convince John D. Rockefeller Jr. to become a financial backer (that $5,000 in 1956 would be worth over $51,000 in 2022). Rockefeller and his wife, Abby, had worked with Farrand for over a decade on the design and construction of their Maine garden, what is now known as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. Documents in the Rockefeller family archives show that many of the drawings for the garden and planting designs were by Farrand. After a trip to China in 1921, Abby Rockefeller became enamored with the pink stucco wall around the Forbidden City in what is now Beijing. It served as the inspiration for the wall that surrounds the Abby Garden in Maine.\nOutside of her formal garden designs, Farrand often acted as a consultant to Rockefeller about aesthetic decisions regarding the carriage roads both during and after construction. In correspondence in the Rockefeller Archives Center in Pocantico, New York, Farrand commented that the engineers and tradesmen that Rockefeller had hired to landscape the carriage roads of Acadia National Park were lining trees up like soldiers. She urged Rockefeller toward a more natural arrangement, mixing conifers and deciduous trees of different species and sizes.\nFarrand understood that the natural character of the carriage roads through the park required a more relaxed style than was evident in her notable formal garden designs. In other writings and sketches to Rockefeller, Farrand suggested covering many of the stone bridges with vines such as Parthenocissus quinquefolia (Virginia creeper). In Acadia National Park today, you will find 16 stone bridges built by Rockefeller, none of them covered with vines. Last year I was hiking along Stanley Brook on the southeastern side of Acadia National Park, and I stopped to admire the Stanley Brook Bridge. I noticed that at both ends of the bridge, equally spaced, was a pair of sugar maples. Growing four sugar maples so symmetrically, on both sides of the bridge, would have been a profound work of art for Mother Nature, so I am going to put this down to Farrand at the very least, a reflection of her influence and love of symmetry.\nOnce Charles K. Savage, or 'C.K.' as he was known locally, was able to secure the $5,000 from John D. Rockefeller Jr. for moving the plants from Reef Point to Asticou Azalea and Thuya, he had to act quickly. Savage wrote a narrative to Rockefeller, describing the need for funding and urgency in the matter. The new owner of Reef Point, Robert Patterson, was now responsible for paying taxes on the property and wanted Savage to move the plants before the property would be sold again. The move was done quickly, and records for which and how many plants were relocated remain elusive. White & Franke Tree Service, of Brookline, Massachusetts, with the assistance of various local helpers including Savage's young daughter and son, moved as many plants as possible the 11 miles from Reef Point to Thuya in Northeast Harbor. The Preserve has several historical photos of these plant moves; we thus know that White & Franke assisted with the move, as their company name is on the door of the moving truck. These photographs show that the largest plants were hand-dug, balled and burlapped with drum-laced jute, and moved with what looked like a converted tow truck, the lift on the back of which acted like a small, mobile crane. The plants were healed in and surrounded by mulch at Thuya during the winter of 1956, while construction continued at Asticou with the hauling in of truckloads of soil and stones that would eventually form the framework for the garden. Construction continued at Asticou and plants were moved from their temporary locations at Thuya until the garden was completed in 1958. Savage had also selected plants from the Reef Point collection for Thuya, planted after the Asticou plantings were completed.\nI hoped there was a document to be uncovered in someone's basement, outlining all the plants purchased, moved, and planted by Savage. During research for this article I learned that even Farrand was unsure of what existed at Reef Point. As she was building the collections, she noted her continuous desire to correctly identify the plants in the garden, even bringing William Judd, the Arnold Arboretum's chief propagator, to Maine for help with inventorying the collection. Whether due to the rapid movement of the plants, the transfer of records and herbarium vouchers from Reef Point to Berkeley per Farrand's request, or the inadequate identification of the plants by their owner, the Preserve has never had a consolidated record of what was moved from Reef Point to Asticou and Thuya.\nThe current manager of Asticou Azalea Garden, Mary Roper, has worked to identify the plants under her care for over three decades, including some of the plants moved from Reef Point in 1956. Mary began working at Asticou in 1989, some thirty years after the moves were completed. Over the years, Mary, like Farrand before her, has assessed the nuanced details of flowers, leaves, and stems of the plants under her care to develop a proper identification. Beginning in late 2022, Grace Brown, the Preserve's plant recorder and lead gardener at Asticou, will begin sharing some of these plant records via our new plant records database, accessible at gardenpreserve.org.\nDespite the remaining mysteries, the spirit of what Beatrix Farrand envisioned at Reef Point lives on today at the Preserve, within the gardens of Asticou, Thuya, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, as well as in the forests and meadows of our natural lands. This is felt most powerfully at the Abby Garden, with its overall layout, plantings, and ornamentation preserved since the 1920s. Asticou and Thuya were designs of C.K. Savage, but it was the influence of Farrand's relocated plants that completed these garden arrangements. When I tell someone who has visited the Preserve that I work there, 'I just love (insert either Asticou Azalea, Thuya, or Rockefeller Garden here)!' is usually one of the first things I hear in response. When I ask why they love their garden of choice, the responses often embrace the spirit of these places. I felt that special spirit when I first visited the Abby Garden in 1997, and I still sense this every time I visit. When I walk through Thuya, as I brush up against the old Kalmia latifolia that came from Reef Point, a quiet, distinguished vibe seems to emanate from the plants that came from Farrand. Asticou Azalea's design and plant masses are calm and subdued, much like I assume Farrand was during her life. Yet during the spring when the azaleas and cherries burst forth with an explosion of blooms, I can see Farrand's love of beauty in plants and the art of arranging a garden for others to enjoy."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Transatlantic Arboretum in the Nineteenth Century","article_sequence":8,"start_page":32,"end_page":41,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25785","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15ea76a.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Elliott, Paul","article_content":"In the summer of 1850, Andrew Jackson Downing embarked on a trip to England, where he toured gardens and rural estates. Downing was then thirty-four years old and had already emerged as a leading American landscape designer and horticultural writer. On the trip, he made a special stop in the midland town of Derby to see a garden known as the Derby Arboretum. The eleven-acre arboretum had been established ten years before, on land given for that purpose by a wealthy local cotton manufacturer, Joseph Strutt. Each tree was clearly labelled, and the arboretum, for two days a week, was completely free and open.\n'As a public garden'the gift of a single individual' it is certainly a most noble bequest,' Downing wrote. 'I met numbers of young people strolling about and enjoying the promenade, plenty of nurses and children gathering health and strength in the fresh air, and, now and then, saw an amateur carefully reading the labels of the various trees and shrubs, and making notes in his memorandums-book.'\nThe Derby Arboretum was distinct for its commitment to the public'even providing access to books so that interested visitors could learn more about the plants growing in the landscape. This commitment, Downing was sure, meant that the Derby Arboretum 'is, and will be, one of the most useful and instructive public gardens in the world.'\nOften considered the first public arboretum, it was designed by the Scottish landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon, who was most responsible for popularizing the term and concept of 'arboretum' during the nineteenth century. Yet public tree collections like those at Derby, and the Arnold Arboretum in the decades to come, did not arise de novo. Rather, the development of these institutions in Britain and the United States during the 'long' nineteenth century (encompassing the period from 1780 to 1919) is best understood as a global' and particularly transatlantic'phenomenon, arising at a time of large-scale immigration, industrialization, and botanical exploration. In that sense, public arboreta were products of changing relationships with the environment and, indeed, among people.\nOrigins of Transatlantic Arboreta\nThe Atlantic world was fertile ground for the formation of tree collections in the parks and gardens of Europe and North America. The vast forests of North America, with their seemingly boundless numbers of trees (many new to European science), inspired the formation of tree collections in those places beginning in the eighteenth century. The biodiversity of the North American forests spanned from subtropical to boreal, from coastal to montane. This diversity across the vast extent of the continent persists to this day, as exemplified by the ninety-nine native species of conifers now believed to exist north of modern Mexico. By contrast, Britain and Ireland have only three native species of conifers'and, in general, far fewer native trees.\nTransatlantic arboreta arose from a combination of tree collecting for gardens and parks and systematic planting in physic (i.e. medicinal) and botanical gardens. American trees themselves played a large part in this process, and were often collected in places known as 'American Gardens' between around 1700 and 1840. The enthusiasm for collecting American trees was encouraged by publications such as Mark Catesby's Hortus Britanno-Americanus, published in 1763, which emphasized the value of these plants for timber, shade, fragrancy, and beauty, holding them superior to British trees. Many American trees and plants were brought over to Britain and Ireland in the colonial period and early decades of the United States, especially through the botanist and explorer John Bartram, who, in the mid-eighteenth century, sent many examples to the English botanist and gardener Peter Collinson. Settlers in the New World also brought numerous trees from'and via'Europe with them, bringing these and trees from eastern North America with them as they moved westwards towards the Pacific during the nineteenth century.\nPlant collectors like Bartram were crucial to the creation of transatlantic arboreta, and came to be seen as heroic figures, making expeditions on behalf of wealthy collectors, nursery companies, governments, and scientific institutions. In his Dendrologia Britannica, published in 1825, the Hull merchant and botanist Peter William Watson praised the 'bold and scientific travellers' traveling throughout North and South America and other regions and identifying thousands of species. One of the most famous plant hunters of the era was the Scotsman David Douglas, who trained at the Glasgow Botanic Garden and made three separate collecting expeditions to North America in the first half of the nineteenth century. His introductions into Britain from the West Coast included the Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), red alder (Alnus rubra), and many others.\nNursery companies in America and Britain came to specialize in obtaining and selling American plants. The Loddiges company in Hackney, London, for example, had an American Garden, and featured many American trees in their collections and sales catalogues. Loudon used their collections for his research. Wealthy British aristocratic collectors such as the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth'a landscape designed by Joseph Paxton, a noted English designer'spared no expense in obtaining 'exotic' trees from America and across the globe for their parks and arboreta with the same eagerness that they acquired antiquities and works of art.\nMeanwhile, in North America, a series of private gardeners began to establish systematic tree collections, although they were not always designated as arboreta. For instance, William Hamilton, a neighbor of the Bartrams, developed his estate known as the Woodlands on the Schuylkill River, then outside of Philadelphia. In the decades following the Revolutionary War, he formed what was then one the largest American tree collections, arranged in the style of an 'English garden.' He toured gardens in Europe and obtained specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden in London and other international sources. Private collections like this would inspire public institutions to come.\nLiving and Paper Arboreta\nOther inspirations for Atlantic world arboreta were the publication of arboriculture books, which were, in effect, 'paper arboreta.' The writing was informed by living tree collections. General studies of arboriculture grew from classic tree studies such as John Evelyn's Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees, from 1662. The popularity of works such as Erasmus Darwin's epic poem The Botanic Garden, published in 1791, demonstrated how systematic plant collections were gateways to enchanting and exciting scientific worlds. The poem was initially inspired by a botanic garden Darwin established near Lichfield, England, which successfully united landscape beauty with Linnaean botany'and the book was much reprinted in British and American editions.\nHorticultural periodicals such as Loudon's Gardener's Magazine and Downing's The Horticulturist (first issued in 1826 and 1846, respectively) helped build public enthusiasm for trees and landscapes. Both men advocated for the development of arboreta as part of suburban gardens. The collections could be associated with park development or collectively give the appearance of a country park through combination of private gardens, especially in the United States, where there were fewer walls and fences in between plots. Though space for such collections was sometimes limited, especially in Britain, Loudon argued that arboreta were ideal for middle class gardens, even for small houses and gardens.\nMoreover, a series of books on regional and national arboriculture provided lists of hardy British and North American trees and shrubs, contributing to the acquisition and collection of trees. The plants delineated in these publications often came from all over the world, and they were only 'British' or 'American' to the extent that they had proven hardy enough to be grown outside in those places. Watson's Dendrologia Britannica, for example, provided 103 plates of North American trees imported to Britain, alongside others from Southern Europe and West Asia.\nOne of the most influential of these paper arboreta was Loudon's eight-volume Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, from 1838, which inspired the creation of many tree places, including the Derby Arboretum. It was, in many ways, a transatlantic work that drew on arboricultural literature and catalogues from across the Atlantic world to provide a detailed history of trees and shrubs from antiquity to the 1830s . According to William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, Loudon's study was a work of 'vast importance' not just to Britain and Europe, but also to 'the temperate parts of North America.' Loudon made full use of a transatlantic network of botanists, gardeners, nurserymen, landowners, and plant collectors who provided him with information and drawings, specimens, seeds, and other tree parts.\nThe first volume of the Arboretum Britannicum included a chapter on American arboriculture informed by American contacts such as the printer Colonel Robert Carr, in Philadelphia, who, with his wife Ann Bartram Carr, had taken over responsibility for maintaining Bartram's Garden. Loudon believed that although American trees and shrubs had been available in British nurseries for decades, many remained under-appreciated, and he hoped the Arboretum Britannicum and the living arboreta it inspired would increase the number and popularity of more public tree places showing off 'living specimens' and capturing imaginations in a way dried herbaria never could.\nPicturesque Naturalism, Tree Planting, and Arboreta\nTrees were also essential to transatlantic conceptions of landscape design, providing beauty, color, contrast, structure, variety, seasonal change, and much more. The dominant Atlantic-world landscape philosophy of the nineteenth century was known as 'English' picturesque naturalism. This style idealized the English landscape, and was widely invoked in garden, park, and arboretum designs. Downing, for example, believed that the style developed in Britain by the English landscape gardener Humphry Repton, Loudon, and others should be applied across North America. According to Downing's pupil and friend the Ohio landscape gardener Frank Jesup Scott, who published a popular book on suburban gardening in 1870, 'compared with the English' the Americans were still 'novices in the fine arts of gardening' and the 'exquisite rural taste' even shared by 'the poorer classes' of England.\nPicturesque naturalism encouraged the positioning of trees and shrubs to achieve effects of openness and simplicity, shelter, shade, and beauty, to obscure boundaries through screen plantings, and to offer the occasional pleasure and sublimity of distant views. The designs often emphasized varied sensory experiences: sloping and terraced ground, shifting light patterns, the sounds of leaves and water, and the changing colors and aromas of trees and floral displays. The movement of birds and wildlife added to this multivarious experience for visitors, especially to the extent that animals (like plants) had their own degree of controlled agency.\nFurther development of this transatlantic landscape gardening philosophy was encouraged by immigration and the movement of people across the Atlantic. British and Irish gardeners and landscape gardeners working in North America brought ideas and methods from home which they adapted to local conditions and contexts. Notably, while Downing was on his British tour in 1850, he met the architect Calvert Vaux and persuaded him to immigrate to America, joining Downing's practice in Newburgh, New York. In the decade to come, Vaux, a Londoner, would employ picturesque naturalism when planning of New York's Central Park, which he codesigned with Frederick Law Olmsted.\nThe careers of Vaux, Downing, and Olmsted, and their many other professional interconnections, illustrate how an international approach to designing with trees took root on both sides of the Atlantic. In the second half of the century, Olmsted became a leading practitioner of picturesque naturalism. Successful picturesque landscapes, according to Olmsted, worked by adapting and evoking nature to produce a 'higher impression of grace than nature minus the agency of man would have produced,' stimulating the 'simplest, purest and most primeval' actions of the poetical side of 'human nature,' offering relief from the overly elaborate but stressful 'sophisticated and artificial conditions of their ordinary civilised life.' In practice, of course, the features held to constitute this language or tradition underwent considerable variation, although it remained particularly important to many North American and British landscape gardeners to claim to be following this tradition. While there was some introduction of formalism and Italianate features from the 1850s and 1860s, the languages of picturesque naturalism remained highly influential throughout the century.19\nArboreta as Public Institutions\nThe appearance of nineteenth-century public parks and arboreta was associated with the development of modern urbanization across the Atlantic world with its new institutions, suburbs, transport systems, built environment, and cultural experiences. Travelers, books, and ideas crisscrossed the Atlantic, encouraged by more rapid and cheaper steam ship lines and technological improvements such as telegraphy and undersea cables. While immigration to North America brought immeasurable human resources, it also increased tensions, clashes of identity, and problems of health and sanitation in towns and cities. As the pattern of immigration changed, bringing new peoples from across the globe, the question of how to adapt British and European landscape gardening ideas and practices to American contexts became more contentious. However, public parks were promoted as rational recreational institutions which could help facilitate assimilation, intercourse between the classes, and American patriotism.\nIn the United States, some of the earliest tree collections in designed public landscapes were associated with suburban garden cemeteries or 'rural cemeteries.' Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was established in 1831 and soon followed by others, including Laurel Hill Cemetery, in Philadelphia. The cemeteries represented the application of landscape gardening aesthetics and practices. In London, Abney Park opened in 1840 and included collections that were formally laid out, at least in part, as a labelled arboretum. The landscapes were portrayed as sacred places where family members and others could repose in quiet contemplation amidst appropriately somber planting, particularly yews (Taxus), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), and other evergreens and columnar trees associated with mourning.\nEncouraged by Loudon in particular, a series of public and semi-public arboreta were established in Britain from the 1830s, while many new public parks and botanical gardens also featured arboreta. Arboreta were opened at Derby (1840), Nottingham (1852), Ipswich (1853), Worcester (1859), Lincoln (1872), Walsall (1874), and other places, some by commercial companies such as the Walsall Arboretum and Lake Company but most increasingly by town councils. The picturesque arboretum in Nottingham was noteworthy for its integration within a larger parks system, which was made possible by a large-scale enclosure act in 1845, which freed up common land for housing and park development. The scheme included a network of tree-lined avenues and parks. However, the botanical aspirations of these institutions as systematic tree collections tended to decline as their role as public pleasure gardens increased.\nAs one of Loudon's few realized park designs, much notice was taken of the Derby Arboretum. Downing, of course, had visited while on his tour in 1850. At the time, he was designing extensive public grounds in Washington, which incorporated a garden of American trees and a living 'museum' of evergreens, and he was actively urging the creation of a large park in New York. His experience observing British and European parks undoubtedly informed his thinking about the role of planting systematic collections. Although it was not executed, his plans for a public park in Boston for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society included a scientifically arranged arboretum.\nThe public parks of Britain provided important inspiration for Olmsted as well. Like Downing, he embarked on a tour of Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe in 1850. While he did not visit the Derby Arboretum on that trip, he made an inspirational stop at a new public garden in Birkenhead, a suburb of Liverpool. Like the Derby Arboretum, the gates of Birkenhead Park were open to the public without a fee 'but in this case for the whole week. It had been laid out by Joseph Paxton, who had designed other noteworthy landscapes including the arboretum and pinetum in the Chatsworth House gardens' Downing's favorite. Olmsted described Birkenhead Park as the 'People's Garden.' He was delighted by the winding paths and avenues and clusters of trees, set within wide, rolling lawns.\n'All this magnificent pleasure-ground is entirely, unreservedly, and for ever the people's own,' Olmsted wrote of Birkenhead Park. 'The poorest British peasant is as free to enjoy it in all its parts as the British queen.' The design and public function of Birkenhead Park would later serve as inspiration for Central Park. Olmsted revisited it as part of his investigation on the development of Central Park for the New York commissioners in 1859. On the same trip, he also paid a visit to the Derby Arboretum.\nA Public Arboretum in North American\nDespite growing interest in arboreta on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century, a public arboretum with intentionally designed, labelled collections had yet to be established in the United States. There were proposals to plant the National Mall in Washington as an arboretum associated with the Smithsonian Institution, focusing upon American natives of some two thousand trees, and about two hundred species and varieties and counterpart to indoor natural history museum. Downing surveyed the landscape and produced designs for this in 1850 and 1851, after returning from his tour of British and European parks and arboreta. Support for concept of a national botanical garden had grown during the 1840s, including from Asa Gray, the professor of botany at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Botanic Garden. He had called for a national arboretum in 1844, emphasizing the research on American trees that had already been conducted by Andre and Francois Michaux and others.\nDowning's plan was for a public arboretum of labelled hardy trees and shrubs laid out in the natural style for educational and botanical purposes, and it included a pinetum. He also designed a picturesque garden surrounding the Smithsonian Institution formed with rare trees and shrubs. Although Downing's Washington plans were not implemented and Downing died in a boat accident in 1852 the concept of a national arboretum was ultimately realized outside the capital with the establishment of the Arnold Arboretum in 1872.\nThe Arnold Arboretum was integrated within a broader park scheme developed in Boston by Olmsted and the landscape architect Charles Eliot from the 1880s. The system, now known as the Emerald Necklace, consisted of a series of public parks connected by tree-lined parkways. Olmsted had proposed a similar concept in his report to the Brooklyn park commissioners in 1868. The integration of urban public parks using planted parkways hastened the development of urban forestry across the Atlantic world, and there was growing recognition that this was a distinctive endeavor which required special methods and expertise. There was also increasing emphasis upon the psychological and physical health benefits of trees in modern urban environments, although pollution, traffic, and buildings presented problems for planters.\nPart of Harvard University, the Arnold Arboretum would be free to the public all day, every day of the year. It expanded in a remarkably short space of time into a leading global arboretum guided by a director, Charles Sprague Sargent, whose longevity was hardly to be paralleled. However, the success also arose from its combination of elements of arboreta established across the Atlantic world over the previous century and collective body of arboricultural wisdom and experience. It combined picturesque naturalism with systematic tree collection, offering a place of study, recreation, and changing seasonal beauty. It was this that informed Sargent and Olmsted's collaborative design for the Arnold Arboretum.\nEgalitarian Ideals\nAlthough Loudon, Downing, and other arboretum promoters in the early and mid-nineteenth century argued that arboreta (like public parks generally) had recreational as well as scientific and horticultural functions, arboreta often remained associated with aristocratic and wealthy landowners and institutions with enough land, staff, and resources to form comprehensive collections with exotic trees and shrubs from around the world, some rare and expensive. The Arnold Arboretum's position as a part of Harvard University is a case in point.\nGiven these realities, nineteenth-century arboreta, like botanical gardens and parks, were idealized and often rather controlled, artificial, and regulated places. However, Loudon was motivated to promote them assiduously because he believed in their egalitarian possibilities, as did Olmsted. Loudon's gardening and natural-history magazines were intended to be forums that could be used by all social classes, from landed elites to gardeners, nurserymen, and women, and he strongly believed that gardeners ought to have a much fuller scientific professional education and have greater social status. As part of national, regional, or urban civic culture, arboreta had the power to transcend social divisions such as those between different social and ethnic groups (for example immigrant communities in North America) and between town and countryside, metropolis and nation.\nWhile nineteenth-century botanical gardens and arboreta were associated with trade, empire, and colonial exploitation, Loudon believed that this exchange of plant material would lead to global 'equalisation' of tree species, to the benefit all nations. 'If it is desirable for us that we should assemble in our country the trees and shrubs of every other similar climate,Loudon pointed out, 'it must be equally desirable that the inhabitants of every other similar climate should possess all those species for which their climate is adapted.'\nConclusion\nIn 1868, Josiah Hoopes, a nurseryman from West Chester, Pennsylvania, wrote that he believed his fellow American citizens were 'vastly behind' their 'transatlantic brethren' in the provision of tree collections' specifically collections of conifers. Yet, with the onset of the First World War, the initial decades of the twentieth century presented significant challenges for arboreta and gardens in Britain. Many of the arboreta established on country parks and estates declined because of general problems faced by the wealthy landed classes and their country houses after the war. British public arboreta such as those at Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Ipswich, and Walsall effectively ceased to be maintained as systematic tree collections for educational and scientific purposes and became indistinguishable from other urban parks.\nOn the other hand, with the professional development of forestry, urban forestry, and municipal horticulture, new arboreta were developed by the mid-twentieth century on both sides of the Atlantic. The most resilient British arboreta were those that remained parts of wealthy landed estates or academic institutions. Other long-term successes were arboreta that were acquired or developed by organizations such as the Forestry Commission or National Trust, the leading English quasi-governmental heritage organization founded in 1895 to 'preserve historical and natural places.'\nIn 1925, more than half a century after the creation of the Arnold Arboretum, Ernest Henry Wilson, the British plant explorer who became the Arnold's first keeper of the living collections, wrote that the number of visitors who journeyed from around the world to the tree collections in Boston increased by the thousands each year. He described the institution as 'America's Greatest Garden,' reasoning that because its raison d\u0550tre focused 'solely' upon the 'acclimatization, cultivation and study of hardy trees and shrubs,' the institution was entirely unique, even among European peers. Certainly, it had grown in a relatively short space of time into a peerless global institution, guided by Sargent, with a clear mission and supportive organizational structure.\nWhile Loudon's belief in the ideal of tree equalization across the continents is complicated in today's world of looming environmental crisis, the arboriculture practiced at the Arnold Arboretum from Sargent's day to the present has taken on a new urgency as the need to understand how trees respond to climate change becomes crucial. While Wilson's argument that the Arnold Arboretum brought man nearer unto man without boundary of race and creed remained an ideal rather than reality in an age of imperialism, oppression of Native American peoples, and continuing racial tensions, it is now beginning to be realized, aided by the collective desire to face the climate threat together as a global community, and to celebrate the symbolic value of public arboreta uniting trees from around the world for all to study and enjoy."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Drawn to the Edges","article_sequence":9,"start_page":42,"end_page":47,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25784","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15ea726.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Angell, Bobbi","article_content":"Living in southern Vermont, I am surrounded by lush forests and verdant fields. There is so much to observe while trying to decide what to draw! Hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) has always been one of my favorite shrubs, with attractive winter buds, brilliant white flowers that light up the edge of woods in the early spring, and rich fruits in the fall, soon after eaten by birds. A single seedling, such as Pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) is far simpler to draw, but equally satisfying to find and turn into a copper etching.\nI have been drawing plants professionally for over forty years, and have always been obsessed with the precise detail that can be achieved with pen and ink. Several years ago, master printmaker Brian Cohen introduced me to the intricate art of copper etching, and I was immediately smitten. Accustomed to working within a defined space for publication, I appreciate the sharp boundaries of a copper plate. And since an etched copper plate is printed as a mirror image onto the paper, I work on my designs in reverse, checking it out on tracing paper and lightbox.\nThe final sketch is transferred onto a waxy ground application on a copper plate, and then I 'needle' it, scratching the wax with a sharp needle under my microscope, impressing fine lines and stipples, creating soft tones dot by dot. The plate is then etched with ferric chloric acid, printed as a test, and then reworked two, three, or more times to add more detail and depth. I use oil-based ink, rubbed onto the copper, cleaned first with fine cheesecloth-like fabric and then wiped with my hand. Each print is done, one by one, on water-soaked paper on my Ettan Press. I add watercolor to a select few of my editions. The editions are limited, usually 20 or 30 prints.\nPrimarily a scientific illustrator, I am attracted to unusual plants, reflecting my long history working with botanists and horticulturalists. I created a collection of such etchings for an exhibit with Beverly Duncan at The Arnold in 2018 (Impressions of Woody Plants: Disjunction, Two Artists and the Arnold Arboretum). As Beverly and I walked around the Arboretum with Michael Dosmann, planning the exhibit, I saw the gorgeous Chinese sweetbush (Calycanthus chinensis) in full bloom. Having learned it had been introduced into cultivation in the 1980s, I eagerly went out to purchase a shrub to grow, and draw, in my own garden. Also impressive is seven son flower (Heptacodium miconoides), the elegant, fall-blooming flowers and fruits of which I had seen at The New York Botanical Garden. Arnold Arboretum staff had collected seeds from a garden in China in 1980, raising plants for other institutions, including the NYBG. Within a few decades, seven son flower, too, had become commercially available, and so I was able to grow it and turn it into a copper etching. Tea viburnum (Viburnum setigerum), too, I first encountered at the NYBG, where I learned it had been introduced by the Arnold's E. H. Wilson in 1901. Corylus fargesii was commissioned for Curtis's Botanical Magazine, describing the introduction of a wonderful woody plant from China. The Arnold Arboretum has over a dozen plants in the collection. Magnolia loebneri 'Merrill', one of the finest hybrids ever released by the Arnold Arboretum, and named in honor of director Elmer Drew Merrill, was in full bloom during an early-spring visit to Smith College, stunning flowers displayed before the foliage leafed out. I was quite pleased when the Arnold Arboretum chose to use the resulting illustration for a logo for Arnold Selects (see page 7), a newly created program to bring exceptional plants from the living collections to gardeners around the world. "},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"What in the World is a Species?","article_sequence":10,"start_page":48,"end_page":53,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25783","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d15ea36e.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Donoghue, Michael J.","article_content":"Many people are aware that species have formal names with two parts a genus name combined with what's called a specific epithet. Homo sapiens is a well-known example; for botanists, Ginkgo biloba will do. In their fullest form, they also include the name (or abbreviation) of the person or people who originally described the species. Homo sapiens was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, and in 1771 he named Ginkgo biloba, so you may see his initials after these names: Homo sapiens L., Ginkgo biloba L. There are very detailed (and ever-evolving) rules for how the description of a new species must be done for the name to be considered validly published. In botany, we refer to the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants for the exact procedures. It turns out that anyone yourself included can describe a new species if they follow these rules. You don't have to be certified as an authority to do this. Once you've published your new species, it generally would have one of two fates. Your new species could stand the test of time, in the sense that knowledgeable botanists would adopt it when they conduct their studies. However, unless you really know what you are doing, in 2022, it's likely you have named something that has previously been described. In this case, your proposed species name would be regarded as a synonym of the earlier one, and would henceforth be ignored.\nA key point is that you can validly publish a species name only to have it rejected by other botanists on the grounds that they don't consider it to be a 'real' species. This implies that there are some criteria being applied by scientists to judge whether something is a real species or not. It seems reasonable to assume that long ago there would have been agreement on what a species is on a species concept. This, however, is not the case. In fact, many different definitions of species have been published over the years, and to this day there are major camps of biologists who disagree (sometimes passionately) over which should be adopted as the universal standard.\nThe use of different species concepts by different scientists has a very important consequence: the various species that you are familiar with may not be equivalent to one another in ecological, evolutionary, or organismic terms. For the most part, however, we proceed as though they are. By 'we,' I mean not just the general public, but also the scientific community, who, despite knowing full well that multiple concepts are in use, still treat species as being somehow equal to one another. In reality, the only equivalence you can count on when you see species names is that they have been named according to some agreed-upon rules, and that they haven't been rejected by the scientific community. The potential non-comparability of species seems like a recipe for miscommunication. We proceed under the hope that species will somehow be 'equal enough' for most purposes, and that the differences among species won't interfere too much with scientific progress or public understanding.\nThe best-known definition, provided by ornithologist Ernst Mayr in 1942 and widely taught in introductory biology classes since the 1950s, is short and snappy: 'species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.' This is the so-called 'biological species concept,' which many biologists accept in theory, although information on which organisms can interbreed is almost always lacking in practice. So, one generally just assumes such gene flow based on similarities and differences in the visible characteristics of the organisms, hoping that actual interbreeding will be tested directly someday. It has long been pointed out, however, that interbreeding and reproductive isolation aren't relevant criteria for organisms that reproduce through asexual reproduction. Such is the case with many bacteria, for instance, and with some plants as well. And there's the associated question of whether any level of interbreeding could or should be tolerated. This has been a special concern for botanists, where hybridization is often possible between species that appear to be quite distantly related (consider all of the strange orchids that have been produced in this way).\nAlthough the biological species concept is the most widely known, there are a variety of alternatives that feature different criteria. One such alternative focuses on species as occupying particular ecological niches that differ from related species. Another one focuses on shared common ancestry, delimiting species based on evidence that certain organisms and populations share a common ancestor separate from related species.\nOne concept I find especially appealing is known as the 'evolutionary species concept,'proposed by the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson in 1951. Working with fossils of long-dead mammals, he wanted to take the emphasis off of interbreeding (which he certainly couldn't test). Instead, he conceptualized species in terms of a full evolutionary life cycle, from inception to extinction. Simpson said a species is: 'a phyletic lineage (ancestral-descendant sequence of interbreeding populations) evolving independently of others, with its own separate and unitary evolutionary role and tendencies.' Under this view, the populations that we study today are time slices through an extended lineage evolving independently of other lineages. This concept provides a nice image of species, though for many people, 'role and tendencies' have seemed a bit squishy and difficult criteria to apply in practice.\nOne very nice 'solution' to the species problem was proposed by herpetologist Kevin de Queiroz in 1998, and reinforced in his subsequent work (e.g., de Queiroz, 2005). He noted that all of these concepts focus on populations or lineages extended through time and evolving independently of one another. In his view, reproductive isolation, ecological differentiation, and exclusive shared ancestry may arise in different temporal sequences as the process of speciation (the origin of independently-evolving lineages) proceeds. At any given point in the process, species might have some of these properties, and not others. For example, gene flow may be cut off early in the process, perhaps by the simple geographic separation of populations, as compared to, for example, ecological differentiation.\nUnder de Queiroz's so-called 'general lineage concept' of species, phenomena formally viewed as necessary and sufficient defining criteria for species-hood, are instead understood to bear on whether, in fact, two lineages are evolving separately. If we find, for example, that the organisms in two populations are unable to breed successfully with one another, this provides pretty good evidence that the populations are evolving separately. Likewise, the finding that populations are occupying different ecological niches provides evidence of independence, as do consistent differences in morphological characteristics. These things don't define species, but instead help us to discover them.\nThe general lineage concept of species has been steadily gaining popularity among evolutionary biologists, but it is still far from universally accepted. Personally, I like it very much, but would stress a few additional points. First, I think that the delimitation of a species is best viewed as putting forward a hypothesis to be tested with evidence of lineage independence coming from as many different angles as possible. By this I mean to include not only information on breeding, but on geography, morphology, DNA sequences, ecology, and a host of other criteria. Second, I would like to preserve Simpson's reference to the future and predicting the likely fate of a lineage. It seems reasonable to add into the decision-making process whether it seems likely that two lineages will continue to evolve independently into the future. Evidence bearing on fate may also come in different forms. For example, consider the two species of tulip tree: the familiar eastern North American Liriodendron tulipifera, and the eastern Asian Liriodendron chinense. These can readily be hybridized, and the offspring plants (L. tulipifera chinense) are fertile. Living proof of this can be found at the Arnold Arboretum, on the lawn in front of the Hunnewell Building. But, it seems reasonable to suppose, based on their very widely separated geographic ranges, that individuals of these two species will not naturally be exchanging genes any time in the foreseeable future. Finally, I also really like the reference to 'tendencies,' as this highlights the idea that a separately evolving lineage will often show a propensity to generate certain variants again and again as compared to another species. Mind you, I don't at all mean to suggest that such tendencies should define species; rather, in keeping with the general lineage concept, they can potentially serve as evidence of independent evolution.\nAllow me to end with a few observations about my own favorite plant group, Viburnum. When I was a graduate student at Harvard, in the late 1970s, I lived on the grounds of the Arnold Arboretum, at what used to be 383 South Street. Of course, I wandered the grounds often, and it was there that I became well acquainted with around 40 of the roughly 165 Viburnum species, many of them from eastern Asia, where Viburnum is the most diverse. You can learn a lot about species differences in an arboretum, but not nearly enough to critically assess their evolutionary independence from one another. For one thing, you don't see the species that can't be grown in the arboretum (e.g., Viburnum species from tropical forests in Borneo, or from high elevations in the Andes), or the many species that could potentially be grown but have never been brought into cultivation. And, you really need to study organisms in their natural surroundings to understand the range of variation that they exhibit, their ecological niches, and which species might encounter one another in the wild.\nI did, however, manage to observe something about Viburnum species that has turned out to be more important than I ever imagined. I went out on a regular basis to record the times when plants of different Viburnum species were flowering in the arboretum. I found that they were flowering each year in a consistent sequence, staggered through the spring and early summer. In fact, these observations were the basis of my very first publication, in 1980, which happened to be in Arnoldia, and was entitled 'Flowering times in Viburnum.'\nAs we have learned since that time, related species of Viburnum living in the same geographic area very often flower at different times, which means that they are reproductively isolated from one another in this temporal way. For example, as shown recently by my former graduate student Elizabeth Spriggs, the species of the Viburnum lentago complex in eastern North America (nannyberry and its relatives) bloom at different times, and this minimizes hybridization between them where their geographic ranges overlap (Spriggs et al., 2019a; Spriggs, 2019). We know that individuals of these different species can breed together successfully. In fact, Viburnum jackii, a hybrid between V. lentago and V. prunifolium, was described from a plant first noticed in 1908 at the Arnold Arboretum. However, in the wild these species rarely do hybridize, simply because they are flowering a week or so apart. Importantly, given the discussion above, I am not supporting the biological species concept with this observation. Instead, I am adopting the general lineage concept and using this flowering offset as one line of evidence that these are time-extended lineages evolving on their own.\nI hope that these few reflections will heighten your appreciation of species when you see your next specimen label in the Arnold Arboretum-- perhaps even a Viburnum lentago L. plant in the superb Viburnum collection near the Centre Street Gate!\nReferences\nde Queiroz, K. 1998. The general lineage concept of species, species criteria, and the process of speciation. In D. J.\nHoward and S. H. Berlocher, eds. Endless Forms: Species and Speciation. Oxford University Press. Pp. 57\u00d075.\nde Queiroz, K. 2005. Ernst Mayr and the modern concept of species. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102: 6600\u00d06607.\nDonoghue, M. J. 1980. Flowering times in Viburnum. Arnoldia 40: 2\u00d022.\nMayr, E. 1942. Systematics and the Origin of Species. Columbia Univ. Press, New York.\nSimpson, G. G. 1951. The species concept. Evolution 5: 285\u00d0298.\nSpriggs, E. L. 2019. The Viburnum lentago clade: A continental radiation. Arnoldia 77: 10\u00d019.\nSpriggs, E. L., C. Schlutius, D. A. R. Eaton, B. Park, P. W. Sweeney, E. J. Edwards, and M. J. Donoghue. 2019a. Differences in flowering time maintain species boundaries in a continental radiation of Viburnum. Amer. J. Bot. 106: 833\u00d0849.\nSpriggs, E. L., D. A. R. Eaton, P. W. Sweeney, C. Schlutius, E. J. Edwards, and M. J. Donoghue. 2019b. Restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing reveals a cryptic Viburnum species on the North American coastal plain. Syst. Biol. 68: 187\u00d0203."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"A New Way for the Norway Mapl","article_sequence":11,"start_page":54,"end_page":57,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25782","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14e896b.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Contreras, Ryan","article_content":"The summers of my youth in Eastern North Carolina smelled of Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense) and Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica). As a kid, I loved playing with the tiny 'berries' of the privet and sucking the nectar from the honeysuckle flowers. Warm memories aside, these two species are landscape plants turned weeds, which escaped cultivation and invaded large areas across the Southeast. As someone who works with the nursery industry and specifically with this issue of weedy or invasive plants, it sometimes feels that folks believe all introduced plants are bad, and we should only grow natives to protect our ecosystems.\nWe should think, however, about what is it we are asking our landscape plants to do. In the city, we want them to survive stress, even to flourish. We want to punish them with drought, heat, pavement, and poor and compacted soils while still enjoying their shade, beautiful flowers, lovely scent, and fruit. Whether native or introduced, plants that thrive well enough to escape cultivation are doing exactly what we asked of them.\nI often hear that we should only plant native plants because they are best adapted to a site or region. If that is the case, how do the non-native and introduced species outcompete them? There also are 'native' plants that have become 'invasive': western juniper, for instance, now covers more than 2 million acres of grassland in Oregon, its spread aided by fire suppression. We need plants that do well in our cities. We should care less about their provenance and focus more on their behavior. The problem isn't trees that flourish, but trees that won't stay where we put them.\nTake the Amur and Norway maples, two resilient species commonly found in our cities. Easy for producers to grow, they thrive where other species may not survive. Amur maple is hardy to USDA Zone 2, fitting the bill for a small urban tree in regions short on options of plants from which to choose. Norway maple is hardy to USDA Zone 4, making it suitable as a medium to large tree in most of the US. Both are relatively free of major pest problems, and transplant well. Norway maple is also incredibly well-adapted to heavy clay and compacted soils, tolerates pollution, and holds up better to drought conditions than sugar maple. Unfortunately, both have done their job too well, and have escaped cultivation to invade native forests and cause real problems in several parts of the country. As an urban tree, however, they fit the bill incredibly well, helping to ameliorate the heat-island effect, manage stormwater, and beautify our paved metropolises. It is not surprising that such resilient trees can outcompete other species.\nOn Burnside Avenue in downtown Portland, Oregon, just down the street from Powell's City of Books, there is a planting of Norway maple that separates opposing lanes of traffic. The soil volume is tiny, and tall buildings loom on either side. Yet, these Norway maples are gorgeous; more than 35 feet tall and healthy, they cover most of the five-lane driving surface and cast shade on the sidewalks for pedestrians. Contrast this to urban instances of our native bigleaf maple, such as the large specimen near Valley Library here on the Corvallis Campus, or the majestic tree that greets you as you set out on the trail at Hoyt Arboretum in Portland. These are 'easy' sites for trees, with large soil volumes and little compaction. You will not find bigleaf maples adorning streets like Burnside Avenue, however.\nWe could alter conditions to suit bigleaf maple redeveloping our cities for more soil volume, less concrete, and less pollution but that does not seem likely. Alternatively, we could breed more resilient bigleaf maples a path that is being explored, but likely will take a very long time.\nMy research program is making great progress pursuing a third option: breeding Amur and Norway maples that stay put where we plant them. We want to provide growers, land managers, and the public the utility of resilient trees that are good for cities, but also do not reproduce in sufficient numbers to displace our native flora.\nHere, it's worth mentioning 'Bradford' pear. Perhaps the most numerous of the many cultivars of Pyrus calleryana, it has become the poster child for invasive plants. Smelly, weedy, fragile in ice storms, it's the tree people love to hate. 'Bradford' and other pears are self-incompatible, which means they need another genotype to fertilize their ovules and form seeds. Soon as new cultivars were introduced these genotypes started cross-pollinating and producing fruit, soon becoming the weed we know today. Pyrus 'NCPX2', the Chastity\u00a8 pear developed by Tom Ranney of North Carolina State University, by contrast, was recently tested for fertility compared to wild-type, and is not merely self-incompatible. Chastity\u00a8 is a triploid that is, it has three sets of chromosomes. This odd ploidy (number of chromosome sets) disrupts normal formation of pollen and eggs, resulting in a plant that infrequently or never produces viable seeds. The most famous triploid out there is banana. If you have enjoyed a 'Cavendish' dessert banana, then you have enjoyed a delicious fruit rendered seedless through triploidy.\nThough there are reported examples of Norway maple exhibiting reduced seed set or seed germination, in my experience these cultivars are perfectly fertile. It is unclear in what contexts the trees have set seed, but these cultivars are not sterile across environments thus my reluctance to use the word 'sterile' in context of seed set. As with most cases in nature, there is a gradient from perfectly fertile wild-type down to complete sterility. As such, I try to stick with 'reduced fertility' as the descriptor for cultivars that reproduce at such a low level as to pose no ecological threat.\nThe first step in the process was to induce chromosome doubling of standard diploid plants (containing two sets of chromosomes) to develop tetraploids (plants with four sets of chromosomes). We planted our tetraploids alongside diploid cultivars at our field in Corvallis and allowed them to open pollinate. We collected seed from the tetraploids, grew seedlings, and tested their ploidy level. Fortunately, most of these seedlings were triploid they received two sets of chromosomes from their tetraploid female parent and one set from their diploid male parent. Furthermore, these seedlings are not genetic composite (chimeras), but are triploid in all cell layers, and thus highly stable from one generation to the next.\nTen years after starting this project, I published the results of this work in 2020 in the journal Horticulturae. But the work in so many ways is just beginning. To produce the seedless trees we desire, they must be propagated clonally. Traditionally, Norway maples (and Amur, too, in some nurseries) have been chip budded, grafting the cultivar of interest to seedling rootstocks. While this production system speeds up the production and quantities of triploid clones, we need a new tactic. This is because we must avoid at all costs grafting our sterile triploids onto fertile diploid rootstocks rootstocks that can sometimes send up their own shoots and eventually produce seeds, which happened with callery pear. For Amur maple, this is not a major problem, as it readily roots from stem cuttings. For Norway maple, which does not, we have been working to optimize cutting propagation. We now have triploid genotypes of both species, which we are growing via micropropagation, using sterile culture in vitro to multiply plants in large numbers relatively quickly. This technique is used in many taxa that would otherwise be slow to increase using other methods, such as hazelnuts (Corylus avellana). It also is frequently used in red maple as a means to increase and distribute clean clonal material. Our triploid plants will be ready to come out of micropropagation and harden off to begin production trials during 2022.\nEvidence of reduced fertility gives us much reason to hope. Amur maple triploids in our plots have flowered in the presence of pollinators and fertile pollen donors and have produced no viable seeds to date. While this inspires confidence, I am not ready to bet the farm or rather, to have growers bet theirs. Our next step is to work with nurseries, universities, and public gardens around the country to install replicated tests of our trees to see how they perform in other environments. The stakes are too high not to verify.\nOf course, my title is Ornamental Plant Breeder, so the trees resulting from this work should have some aesthetic appeal. To that end, we are working with J. Frank Schmidt and Son Nursery along with Tom Ranney to evaluate seedlings of Amur maple selected at JFS in Boring, NC State in Mills River, and Corvallis, OR. Ten genotypes from each location were propagated during 2021 under production conditions to identify superior forms. Furthermore, the trees from micropropagation will be included in a parallel study. The end goal is to develop and test trees according to the best scientific methods we have, while working with growers to ensure that we are meeting their needs for trees that work in production.\nThere is no doubt of the need. Industry partners report more than 90% reduction in Norway maple sales, with steep declines in Amur maple as well. Certainly, overplanting of maples has reduced demand, but the invasive issue has also had an impact, and the industry is ready for cultivars of these species that could be sold in longstanding markets such as the upper Midwest and New England.\nEvidence indicates the trees I have developed (and those of my colleagues like Dr. Ranney) are 'sterile,' or close enough that they present no threat of invasion. The biological side of the problem is largely solved. What remains is the political aspect, which in many ways is more difficult. The story of 'Bradford,' damaging in its lack of nuance, has spread effectively, and plants like Norway maple may prove difficult to reintroduce as a result. Already it is illegal to plant A. platanoides in Massachusetts, and many other states a rule which leaves no room for reduced-fertility cultivar exemptions.\nWe need a national conversation on this topic in the Green Industry, to collectively establish the framework for reintroduction of sterile versions of weedy species. The specifics of individual plants are highly regional, and thresholds should be determined at a state level, but the issue is a national one. The shade of that tree you're enjoying on the east coast may have gotten its start here in Oregon. As such, the rules enacted in Massachusetts have wide-ranging impact. The need for education, collaboration, and nuanced regulation will only grow, so long as cities remain, and climate change increases the demand for resilient trees."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"What Clings to the Roots","article_sequence":12,"start_page":58,"end_page":59,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25781","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14e8927.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Battles, Matthew","article_content":"The morning we moved out of my childhood home, the new owner pulled up with a small tractor to uproot the Forsythia hedge, my mother's pride. It was late April, I think, as the bushes were in bloom; sprays of yellow blossoms shivered as the backhoe groaned and clawed at the plantings. I was shocked by how easily they came up, ungainly roots whipsawing as they shook loose from earth. My mother sobbed as we drove away. And yet soil clings to the roots; an ecology shifts intact. To uproot is an ambivalent move, metaphorically: is it about the fragility of attachments, or their stubbornness to endure?\nSalom\u017d Jashi's Taming the Garden opens with a tree shimmering on the horizon, rooted in the liquid tumble of the sea. Lashed to the deck of a barge, its headway is barely perceptible against the lowering sky. The barge sails under the orders of Georgian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose minions search farm and forest for the prodigious trees he has uprooted and moved to his 'dendrological park' in Shekvetili, a resort town on Black Sea coast. We never see Ivanishvili; no agents or officials sit to offer apologies or explanations to the camera. The oligarch's name is only occasionally uttered by workmen and townspeople, and he remains a minor character, his motives a mystery to the people whose trees he takes. One man claims to have read that 'it prolongs his life' to collect trees, if their age is greater than one hundred years. Some praise his enterprise, while others boggle at the cost of the operation. 'No matter how much a villain he is,' another exclaims, 'at least he's doing something!'\nTownspeople gawk at their trees on the move. Their faces register the dappled play of emotions, from grief to wonder, as workers cut, dig, and lever at giant trees a towering tulip, goblet-shaped and elegant; a bounteous linden growing close by an old house; a chestnut with two splayed leaders that swing like the arms of a drunken giant. Their slow severance from the earth is both clumsy and precise, a kind of terrestrial surgery, at once an amputation and a deliverance of tender care. Jashi allows the sensuous overwhelm of these labors to fill her frame: a trench dug round the tree, the earth wrapped with sheets and shored up with boards, and a framework of pipes bored through below, driven home with rust-streaked drilling augers. The scale of the work matters to Jashi: we see men chopping, sawing, dragging brush, dwarfed by walls and mounds of foliage. A backhoe swings into view, framing the shot like a great mechanized tree; from another angle, viewed downslope through a colonnade of what look like hemlocks, the same machine looks minuscule. During a break, the crew sit around a fire of brush and reminisce. They agree that the trees are very beautiful. 'Life takes strange turns,' says one.\nJashi is a generous storyteller, and patient. Long takes invite us to ponder how a mature tree organizes its surrounding space: the way the earth bunches muscularly at the roots; how its shade selects and prunes the vegetation; above all, the way it pigments and concentrates the air in its branches. And then we watch the slow, uncanny spectacle of this composition deconstructed, as yet another great tree is carved out of the ground, jacked onto a carriage, and towed off, leaving a crumbling pit of soil to fill up with new vegetation.\nI think of those islands of earth cut and carried away, with their cryptic assemblages of fungi and invertebrates, to be installed in the oligarch's faraway estate, ferns and flowering plants bobbing in the shade of a tree transported over the sea. The trees' communities exceed grasses, forbs, and fungi, however, rooted as they are in the loam of family and village. Local people gather in the night to watch as a towed tree sways in spotlight gleam. 'It's so beautiful in the night,' one says. 'Like a fairytale.' 'It won't survive,' says another, 'it's shrunk so much.' An old woman confronts the cutters: 'she planted this tree,' her companion warns the foreman; 'what we do in this world will be judged in the next.' Elders embrace, young people shoot video on cellphones, the tree moving stately through pines as flashlights lance through the galleries of boughs, the lights of the trucks closing in, filling the frame, branches of roadside trees snapping as the tulip shoulders through. Jashi stays with these shots a long time, lingering in the strangeness of a tree swaying in the still of night.\nWhat are we to make of Ivanishvili's uprootings? How do we weigh the ecological and social costs; how does his project compare to the collecting practices of public gardens and arboreta? Jashi eschews such ready questions and contrasts, preferring to dwell patiently in the confusion of the more-than-human encounter. Resisting easy critique, her eye is anthropological, tracing the exertions of people and trees with equanimity and affection. Along with townspeople and workers, we're invited to boggle, mourn, and wonder. And the trees in the end are beautiful, settled in their new home amid sprinklers and curving paths.\nIn his lavish account of Kublai Khan's pleasure palace, Marco Polo describes a hill planted with mature evergreens collected throughout the empire and carried to the capital by elephants. Historically, Marco Polo arrives on the eve of modernity and the coming Anthropocene before the forests of North America travelled upright over the seas in the form of ships' masts; before the forests of Asia and South America were felled for tea and palm and rapeseed. The ecological impact of Ivanishvili's Dendrological Park pales by comparison to such depredations. It's even beautiful in its way. Like the green hill of the Khan, the oligarch's park is lush, verdant, well tended. The birdsong there is fluting and evocative. And yet the trees are still rigged with the cables, bound fast like wild beasts. The oligarch wants his country to behave like a well-loved garden. And yet, as Salom\u017d Jashi reminds us, the memory of living soil persists amid the roots."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Of Trees and the City","article_sequence":13,"start_page":60,"end_page":62,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25780","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14e856f.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Stephens, Matthew","article_content":"Anyone who has planted and cared for a new tree knows that few things in life are as rewarding as this simple act. Planting day is unquestionably a stand back and be proud moment, but those of you who have planted one tree, or many, know that the real work (and appreciation) is just beginning. The watering, weeding, pruning, and care that is needed is an investment that will pay back dividends in seeing a tree grow bigger and bigger with each passing season.\nI happen to fall into a special category of tree planters: someone who can take credit for having played a significant role in planting over one million trees. This is becoming less of an incredible accomplishment given many places are now planting millions or billions of trees to combat climate change. However, there are few who can claim such a large bounty in an urban area, and specifically New York City. Prior to becoming the current President & CEO at Mount Auburn Cemetery, I helped to lead MillionTreesNYC, an effort to plant one million trees throughout all of New York City between 2007 and 2015. We planted trees along streets, in parks, and in cemeteries and botanical gardens work that will continue indefinitely, just as occurs in nature.\nOne question I have been asked about my work is, 'how do you plant a million trees in New York City?' The answer can be reduced to a simple instruction: one tree at a time! Further, New York City should be applauded for its efforts to use MillionTreesNYC as a springboard to further investment in pruning, permitting enforcement, and staffing tied to managing the urban forest.\nHaving landed at Mount Auburn in September 2021 as its new President & CEO, I was immediately entranced by the awe-inspiring collection of oaks and beeches. Without question, Mount Auburn has one of the best collections of mature trees anywhere in the United States, with nearly 4,700 trees of varying ages and over 650 taxa on its 175 acres. During a ten-minute walk on the grounds, you are sure to see specimens of multiple species of trees that will be some of the best you'll ever see! Our trees, some over 200 years old, have seen the world reinvent itself many times over, yet continue to reach for the skies with each passing year. For nearly 200 years our trees have received remarkable care in the form of watering, pruning, and other conscientious landscape maintenance techniques which have allowed them to thrive. Further, trees at Mount Auburn don't have the same competition as most urban trees.\nWhile tree planting traditionally gets the most fanfare and showy pictures, the years of effort and care leading up to a canopy-covered street tend to be overlooked. A few steps beyond our gates I am reminded of how tough it is to be an urban tree, especially a street tree. Between traffic, dogs, developers, climate change, and countless other variables, these trees face many stresses which shorten their lifespans. Struggling to keep up with necessary tree maintenance, cities worldwide have backed away from tree planting goals while also minting goals for canopy coverage. Ultimately, it is every urban forester's hope to invest resources, create policies, and develop stewardship to increase the canopy percentage over time.\nTrees happen to be quiet constituents. Rarely will an email, phone call, or press conference intervene when a community tree is suffering, unless an urban Lorax intervenes. Trees take time to grow; a future canopy doesn't develop on the schedule of politics and budget cycles. A tree planted today will take decades to equal the annual ecosystem services generated by the biggest and most beloved trees. This is a tough reality for trees in all our communities. However, the data that have been collected over the last three decades enunciate with extreme clarity: mature trees, and especially large shade trees, are exponentially much more significant providers of the ecosystem services. The math is simple: the larger the tree and more leaf surface area, the larger the benefits. For example, a newly planted tree, just a few inches in diameter, may sequester six pounds of carbon, or currently valued at about thirty cents; a mature tree greater than thirty inches in diameter, by contrast, will sequester over 6,000 pounds of carbon, worth some four hundred dollars. A thousand-fold increase! With that, how can trees continue to be overlooked?\nBeyond their value as carbon store, trees provide real and tangible benefits in the form of cleaner air, shade for buildings, or stormwater capture among many, many others. Many years ago I remember talking to Dr. David Novak with the US Forest Service who has dedicated his career to studying urban forests. Comparing the urban forest to other forms of infrastructure, he mentioned that we are just starting to fully realize the benefits of trees. Walk down the street where you live, and you will see some permutation of city infrastructure: fire hydrants to ensure buildings don't burn down, light poles to provide safety, or stop lights to allow traffic to be regulated, among others. Funded through local, state, or federal dollars, these investments improve the quality of life or safety of a given neighborhood. Compared to trees, however, light poles have lower dollar value in benefits and unlike trees, they decrease in value over time.\nWhy, then, have trees gone so overlooked as critical parts of urban infrastructure? Simple: trees are rarely considered a capital investment. But, if they were, it would provide urban foresters access to new and necessary sources of funding. Additional funding and pragmatic, focused local tree preservation legislation are long overdue. Trees should be funded, along with highly competent urban forestry managers to manage the urban forest which, like all critical urban infrastructure, is key to the safety and well-being of residents. In addition, many cities have a mechanism in place to raise capital monies through the selling of municipal bonds why couldn't trees be included along with other key infrastructure that elevates the quality of life of a locality?\nMany cities are making great strides, but there is still much work to be done. During my time in New York City, I would travel the country helping other cities figure out how to attract more funding for trees. Some cities were incredibly creative, but a clear thread emerged: urban forestry managers must scratch and claw for every dollar they get. And trees get pennies on the dollar compared to other urban infrastructure. In many cities, public\/private partnerships are aiming to fill the gaps. From Washington, DC, to San Francisco, to Portland, robust and sophisticated urban forestry nonprofits are filling the gaps left by public funding.\nOne irony of this struggle is that many cities or towns have left tree management\/urban forestry to a roads and sidewalks or public works department the areas of government that typically manage infrastructure. As a result, urban forestry programs have modest resources and\/or no meaningful political support given they are buried in large public works departments, and must compete against potholes or sidewalks for attention and funding. The reality, however, is that a well-sited tree likely will outlive all its infrastructure counterparts, outlasting sidewalks, stoplights, and even many buildings.\nFurther, local tree legislation that protects trees on public and private property is also lagging. Every city desires some level of development; however, it has also been the experience of many urban foresters that the impacts trees encounter from new construction, sidewalk\/driveway work, or other infrastructure projects lead to a significant number of removals or tree mortality after construction is completed. While a tree may not die immediately from construction impacts, my time working in New York suggests trees must be monitored for several years post construction to fully assess development impacts. When I met with developers in New York, they were quick to point out that they will likely spend more on doorknobs or cabinet handles than they will on trees even though the trees become part of infrastructure, and a community asset. When replacement is mandated by local legislation, it often merely requires a 1:1 planting ratio such that an old mature oak tree in its prime, for example, might be replaced with a newly planted red maple. We know from the data, however, that a newly planted tree can't replace a fully-grown tree in the urban infrastructure. There are few cities like New York City who are using a basal-area replacement methodology, which is a more appropriate way of calculating the true cost of removing healthy trees. That calculation not only more adequately accounts for loss, but protects trees by ensuring that any developer thinks twice before removing a tree.\nThe time for policy change is now. We need those who will speak for the trees, knowing they are a critical part of the urban infrastructure. Find fellow Loraxes, and organize. Approach your local elected officials and let them know how important the trees are to you and your community. Work with them to move forward thoughtful and pragmatic legislation. It will take time, steadfastness, and collective action by like-minded citizens who can speak and act civilly and passionately to make change change that will, that must, happen one tree at a time.\nIf you are in the Boston area, I encourage you to stop by Mount Auburn to check out our incredible canopy in a thriving metropolis. I guarantee you will leave feeling inspired by our one-of-a-kind landscape. Then, find a tree in your own neighborhood and start giving it some care. I am certain the time and energy you invest will be repaid in dividends. Enjoy your trees! "},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Deadheading Lilacs","article_sequence":14,"start_page":64,"end_page":64,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25779","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14e816c.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Guidarelli, Connor","article_content":"The Lilac Collection has been getting its very own special day of celebration, Lilac Sunday, every Mother's Day for the past 112 years. Flowering extends beyond this day, of course, running from the end of April to the beginning of June. Within 2 weeks of flower wilt, we begin preparation for next year's spectacle by deadheading the lilacs. This practice helps to ensure that the shrubs do not expend more energy in seed production, but rather use it to produce flower buds more prolifically.\nMany hands make quick work of this time-sensitive task, as interns, seasonal gardeners, and horticulturists make their way through over one hundred plants. Some shrubs are so large that we need our six-foot extendable pruners to reach many of the spent flowers. Orchard ladders extend our reach even further, making it easy to maneuver in and around a shrub. Between plants, we spray sterilizing solution on our snips to prevent the spread of pathogens like phytoplasmas, often called Lilac Yellows. All the cuttings are collected and composted, to return to the collection as a soil amendment come the fall."},{"arnoldia_cover":true,"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25778","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14e8128.jpg","title":"2022-79-2","volume":79,"issue_number":"2","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Arnold at 150","article_sequence":1,"start_page":1,"end_page":4,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25755","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170ab6e.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Friedman, Ned","article_content":"What is the Arnold Arboretum? This question has been at the center of my thinking for over a decade, especially now, as I enter the twelfth year of my directorship and the Arnold enters its 150th year. Of course, nothing should ever be static when it comes to the life of an institution. Founding nineteenth-century ideals need updating in the twenty-first century. Still, for all that has changed over the last century and a half, the core values of the Arnold Arboretum strike me as eternal.\nThe Arnold Arboretum has and will always serve as a crossroads for biodiversity and human diversity. Its founding was a testament to the enduring values of democratic spaces (free and open to all) and the belief that such places should uplift all who enter. The Arnold is also, from the outset, an institution defined by its association with Harvard University. Scholarship, born of a love of biodiversity and a desire to unlock its secrets, is central. An ethos of conservation and respect for the environment goes back to the founders and early leaders. The meanings of such an intermingling of sentient and nonsentient organisms (respectively, people and trees) can never be fully unpacked, even in a lifetime of pondering. Yet I will briefly reflect on my thinking.\nLet's begin with my definition of an arboretum: a collection of woody plants with provenance in a designed landscape. Here, provenance and designed landscape are essential characteristics that help us appreciate the varied and dynamic relationships that occur between people, uniquely identified botanical organisms, and arboretum landscapes. The concept of provenance is typically associated with museum objects (think artworks), and at the Arnold Arboretum, every organism has a documented and acknowledged history. Take, for example, a single specimen of the sand pear (Pyrus pyrifolia, accession 7272*C) that has grown on the top of Bussey Hill for over a century.\nWe know that Ernest Henry Wilson and his collecting team encountered the parent of this sand pear growing west of Yichang, China, in the late summer of 1907. They collected fruit, removed its pulp (perhaps by eating it?), and separated, dried, and packed the seeds. The packet then passed as cargo down the Yangtze River to Shanghai, made its way by steamer to the west coast of North America, and took the transcontinental trains to Boston. On April 15, 1908, an Arboretum propagator formally accessioned the seeds. A few years later, a spot for a young sapling was chosen, and a hole was dug. This wonderful organism has lived in this location ever since, battling plant diseases and delighting visitors with its extraordinary clouds of white flowers every spring. This specimen is not any sand pear. It is an individual with its own life history and standing, not interchangeable with any other sand pear on Earth, just as no two human beings are interchangeable. Such provenance granular and unique distinguishes almost all the Arboretum's roughly sixteen thousand accessioned woody plants.\nA designed landscape is also central to my definition of an arboretum, and the Arnold Arboretum is fortunate to have been designed by a visionary Frederick Law Olmsted. His intentional design is reflected in every inch of the grounds, like the majestic reveal as you round the bend on Hemlock Hill Road and unexpectedly view the dramatic mixture of spruces and firs, with their blues and seemingly endless hues of green. The intentionality can be felt as you stand under the cathedral-like oak collection or take in a seemingly endless run of mountain laurels in flower in the spring. This landscape was designed to affect us and, indeed, to lift our spirits every day.\nThe impact of these experiences is profound. Olmsted spoke of the power of institutions like the Arnold Arboretum 'to make life in the city healthier and happier. But, surely Olmsted, despite his public health credentials (as general secretary of the US Sanitary Commission during the Civil War), would never have dreamed of the slew of well-documented health benefits of beautiful urban green spaces such as the Arnold Arboretum. Those who regularly walk these grounds may experience (on average) lower blood pressure, improved postoperative recovery, improved birth outcomes, improved outcomes associated with congestive heart failure, improved child development, reduced mortality, reduced stress, reduced symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, reduced depression, and greater life satisfaction the list goes on. The Arnold Arboretum is literally interwoven into the healthcare system of Boston.\nOn a global scale, the research and conservation functions of the Arnold Arboretum have never been more critical. Fully three-quarters of the research now being conducted in the living collections is centered on understanding and combating human-induced global change, including climate change. How will trees and forested ecosystems function going forward, as climactic extremes mount by the year and invasive pests and pathogens circle the globe? The Arnold's working collection of woody plants is on the job providing essential insights into the coming biological Armageddon. Our plant expeditions throughout the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere emphasize the collection of germplasm from species and populations that are threatened with extinction. Ex situ conservation, the maintenance of living collections of endangered plants in botanical gardens and arboreta, has never been more critical to the Arnold's mission and to Earth's botanical biodiversity.\nI could go on but will finish by reflecting on the last two years of the Arnold Arboretum's existence. Through a raging and lethal pandemic, a reckoning over systemic racial injustice, an insurrection and serious challenge to American democracy, and the ever-more obvious extreme fires, floods, droughts, heat waves, and other threats to the world's four-billion-year evolution, the Arnold Arboretum did not close for a minute.\nThe Arnold Arboretum is not a mere amenity or simply a pleasure ground. It is an essential part of the public healthcare system, a place where the diverse population of Boston mixes, a bulwark for democracy, a leader in fighting global change and extinction, and a place where the next generation of ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and conservationists will launch their careers. And standing behind all of this are the magnificent plants with provenance in an Olmsted-designed landscape. What could possibly be more beautiful and meaningful as the Arnold Arboretum launches into its next century and a half?"},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Planting the New Lions of Kew","article_sequence":2,"start_page":8,"end_page":8,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25760","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170b76a.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Kirkham, Tony","article_content":"As head of the arboretum at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, I would walk the collection each day, choosing a different route and corner of the three-hundred-acre landscape. On the walks, I observed the growth of newly planted trees and built up a knowledge of the collection. I wanted to understand where gaps occurred and what we should plant to improve the wealth and diversity of the woody collections. I kept an eye out for important but ailing plants that should be repropagated. This daily practice remained valuable no matter how long I worked at Kew a tenure that spanned forty-three years in various roles.\nI describe the arboretum at Kew as a living reference library of woody plants from every corner of the temperate world that will grow outdoors (near London) without any form of protection during the winter. However, overseeing a collection like this isn't just about planting trees as they become available and looking after them. The collection is visited by two million people per year. It must meet the demands of a school educational program and remain one of the most diverse and authentic scientific collections of temperate trees in the world.\nThe age of Kew only adds to the challenge: how does a curator not only maintain but hopefully improve upon a tree collection that has been tended for more than 250 years? The gardens at Kew date to 1731, when King George II's son, Frederick Prince of Wales, leased the estate and began to develop the grounds. After his death, his wife, Princess Augusta, continued his work, and in 1759, on the advice of Lord Bute, her horticultural advisor, she created a nine-acre botanic garden with the planting of several newly introduced trees that we now know as the 'Old Lions.' Some of these are still growing today, including a maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba) and a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia). By 1768, the collection included almost five hundred hardy trees and shrubs, but it wasn't until 1840 that Kew Gardens was placed under direct government control and the first director, William Hooker, was appointed to restore and expand the arboretum.\nIt has been an amazing privilege to oversee such a collection, following in the footsteps of remarkable people like William Jackson Bean, the assistant curator of the arboretum between 1900 and 1922. He authored the monumental reference work Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, which is now online (with regular revisions) as Trees and Shrubs Online, courtesy of the International Dendrology Society. Even within such a storied landscape, the collections are ever-changing. Managing those changes is the essential work of a curator.\nA landmark turning point for the arboretum occurred on the night of October 16, 1987, when a hurricane struck the southeast of England, wreaking havoc to trees and woodlands, felling over fifteen million trees in its wake. At Kew, over seven hundred mature trees were lost that night. I remember waking up to loud bangs and crashes and my steel dustbin rolling down the road. I got up to retrieve it and was concerned by the strength of the winds. The following morning, all came to light with the news showing images and footage of devastation across the south of England. \nI was a young supervisor in the arboretum at the time, and when I finally made the journey into work, I immediately went out into the landscape to see how all my arboreal friends had fared through the night. As I picked my way through the limbs and uprooted trees, all I could think was 'doom and gloom.' It took us over three years to finally clear away the fallen, damaged trees. As I look back now, I consider this hurricane to be one of the best things that happened in the twentieth century for trees in the United Kingdom. It raised public awareness of the importance of trees nationally. At Kew, a new plant exploration program was started to replenish the gaps in the collections created by the storm, and new arboricultural practices were developed to improve the health of the remaining trees.\nI was fortunate to be a part of the team sent to collect new documented seed material to rebuild the tree collections. The species on the target lists and the parts of the world that would be visited were determined by an audit of what was still represented in the collections after the storm, looking at the taxonomic and geographic weaknesses. The first expeditions were to western China, South Korea, Taiwan, the Russian Far East, and Japan, and the material brought back over the past thirty-four years has greatly enriched the diversity and provenance of the tree collections. Much of this has not been done alone. Working with colleagues at other arboreta around the world has been important for sharing ideas, collections, and stories.\nI have never been one for pushing the boundaries of hardiness, especially as we increasingly experience unpredicted weather patterns. Still, I have been able to plant and establish species that we could not have grown outdoors forty years ago: for instance, the Taiwan coffin tree (Taiwania cryptomerioides), Kashmir cypress (Cupressus cashmeriana), and the paran\u2021 and bunya pines (Araucaria angustifolia and A. bidwillii), both from the Southern Hemisphere. On my daily walks through the arboretum, I would look for locations to position these and others. As curators, we all have our favorite areas and genera of trees, but we must ensure that other parts of the collection aren't neglected. I found that the wire cages used to protect our young trees provided a helpful visual cue. The cages are retained for five years, so I would stand in the arboretum and turn 360 degrees. If I failed to see one of the cages, this would signal to me a target area for succession planting.\nSeveral new introductions into the arboretum come to mind as highlights. In the autumn of 1996, on a collecting trip to China, I was fortunate to be granted permission to visit Jinfushan, a mountainous preserve in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, to see the Chinese silver fir (Cathaya argyrophylla). This species, discovered in 1955 by Chinese scientists, was something we had only heard about but never seen. We found it growing on the limestone bluff but could not collect seed, owing to a national embargo. Two years later, the embargo was lifted, and seed was distributed to forestry institutes and botanic gardens. The Forestry Commission's Bedgebury Pinetum was the first to grow this tree in the United Kingdom, and its curator gave me a two-year-old plant for our collection. This can be a miffy species and finding the best planting position can be difficult. More by luck than judgement, I got it right. The plant at Kew is now a beautiful specimen about twenty feet high. It has produced viable seeds, and the first generation of ex situ propagated seedlings has now been planted out in the arboretum, helping conserve this rare tree.\nAnother successful introduction is the Chinese hickory (Carya cathayensis). In 2008, on a trip to China to follow in the footsteps of Ernest Henry Wilson, I visited a market in Shanghai and saw nuts of the rare species being cooked and sold as candied pecans. We bought a kilo of uncooked seeds, and the propagator in Kew's nursery, after much experimental work, successfully germinated the seed and grew over twenty plants that are now sited in various locations across the arboretum. These are now gorgeous trees. They are very well-behaved, needing little if any formative training and producing a straight tapered trunk with an even distribution of lateral branches. The species is perfectly hardy in the United Kingdom.\nFor me, one of the main criteria for a successful and healthy treescape and collection is continual succession planting, maintaining a healthy population with generations of individual species, like a family, ranging from the great grandparents (the Old Lions) to the great-grandchildren (the newly planted trees this year). It was so rewarding to walk the collections seeing new introductions like the delicate Taiwan beech (Fagus hayatae), which we introduced as seed to the West in 1992, growing into strong, attractive specimens and enhancing the conservation value of the arboretum. Some of these, we hope, will be the Old Lions of tomorrow."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Plant Rescue on the Cliffs of O'ahu","article_sequence":3,"start_page":11,"end_page":12,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25761","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170bb6d.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Sugii, Nellie","article_content":"In 2004, the last remnants of an exceedingly rare Hawaiian species, Cyanea grimesiana ssp. grimesiana, bloomed and set fruit in the wild. Known only from the leeward slopes of the southern Ko'olau Mountains on the island of O'ahu, this shrub is one of seventy-eight species within an endemic Hawaiian genus commonly known as hh. The species could be found surrounded by koa (Acacia koa) and other common forest trees, and it has been rare since it was first documented in the wild in 1819. Significant surveys occurred in the 1990s, and by 2004, only two mature wild plants remained, with no evidence of recruitment or any significant ex situ collections. The situation became dire.\nAt the time, I was several years into my career as a researcher for the Lyon Arboretum's Hawaiian Rare Plant Program, where I'm now the program manager. Our work focuses on rescuing and recovering Hawai'i's most critically endangered plants, storing germplasm for ex situ conservation, and providing plants for in situ restoration. Our micropropagation laboratory is central to this effort a surreal indoor space where more than 170 of Hawai'i's rarest and endangered plant species are grown collectively in tens of thousands of test tubes. I often describe it as 'plant conservation through the looking glass.'\nWhen the hh remnants flowered, our team worked with collaborators, including the Plant Extinction Prevention Program, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Army's Natural Resource Program, to plan for protecting the species in the micropropagation facility. Field biologists monitored the two plants. The flowers emerged as white, arching tubes, streaked with vibrant purple. The fruits then ripened into orange, fleshy capsules. The biologists carefully collected the fruit and brought it to the micropropagation lab for germination. We knew it was a heavy responsibility when the precious seeds arrived, but excitement ran through the lab as we sorted, cleaned, and prepped the seeds for in vitro seed sowing.\nMicropropagation gained recognition as a viable propagation method for commercial applications in the 1960s, but the technique was initially viewed suspiciously due to associated terms and applied technologies such as cloning, anexic seed sowing, ovulo culture, and organogenesis. To some, even at the Lyon Arboretum, these technologies seemed contrary to conservation theologies of preservation and genetic integrity. Yet micropropagation has gradually proven itself as a useful rescue and recovery tool. It can be used to germinate immature seeds and rescue embryos from aborted fruit. It's also used for cloning wild plants at risk of extirpation in order to preserve genetic representation and establish clonal lines of its seedling progeny for restoration.\nAfter the hh germinated in our lab, we learned that the final wild remnants had altogether succumbed the species no longer existed in the wild. This knowledge brought bittersweet feelings as we watched the seeds germinate in the petri dishes and eventually grow into seedlings that we placed into individual test tubes. We knew that it was now our responsibility to establish perpetuity for this species by establishing clonal lines of the seedlings through microcuttings and maintaining the in vitro germplasm collection until a safe and secure restoration site free of threats became available.\nApproximately 88 percent of the native plants on the Hawaiian Archipelago naturally occur nowhere else in the world. This rich biodiversity serves as a unique example of insular evolution, but its fragility is evident by the scale of species on the brink of extinction. According to listings by the US Fish and Wildlife, about one-half of the nation's threatened and endangered plant taxa are from Hawai'i. Of the five hundred Hawaiian species assessed for the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List, about 87 percent are classified as endangered or threatened. Let us not mention the hundreds of rapidly declining species that are missing from either list but are at risk of extinction.\nOn August 23, 2013, over nine years after the eventful collection date, I gathered at a site in the Ko'olau Mountains with a group of individuals involved in the conservation of Cyanea grimesiana ssp. grimesiana. A festive mood spread among us. We had long awaited the moment when we would bring this species and a few associated plants back to its native habitat, within the Mnoa Cliff Forest Restoration site. Our small group of friends and family even a few children made our way through a forest of an invasive bamboo that had taken hold in the area. A few of our team wore backpacks containing plants, and most everyone else carried trays of plants or tools in our hands. A space opened in the bamboo, and a pocket (or kipuka) of near-intact native forest appeared before us. For those seeing it for the first time, the beauty of the area took our breath away. We all acknowledged that the enclosure represented a new beginning for this hh.\nBy 2021, the original Mnoa Cliff plantings had matured. The hh plants flower and produce fruit, and the seeds are collected and sowed for restoration purposes or stored in our program's seed conservation laboratory. We have now stored thousands of seeds from the different plants, and we continue to maintain the original clonal lines in the micropropagation lab, with long-term cryopreservation being our future and final ex situ storage goal. With many hands and great effort, we have brought Cyanea grimesiana ssp. grimesiana back home."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Thinking Outside the Quad","article_sequence":4,"start_page":13,"end_page":14,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25758","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170b36d.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Feldman, Carmia","article_content":"When Karyn Utsumi entered the University of California, Davis, majoring in environmental science and management in 2017, she didn't anticipate that she would eventually spend countless hours wearing waders and working with other students to restore a prominent water body on campus. Yet she knew that she wanted to turn her deep care for the environment into something that made a difference in her community. During her freshman year, she saw an announcement about the Waterway Stewardship internship with the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. She applied and was thrilled to be selected.\nThe UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden spans the entire 5,300-acre university campus, with a historic arboretum, founded in 1936, at the center. By applying the management and engagement principles of a public garden to the campus at large, the university aims to enhance how the entire Davis community views and interacts with its environment. Our student internship program, which Karyn joined, is our top initiative to do just that by developing the next generation of environmental leaders. The program is called Learning by Leading\u00aa. Students gain leadership and technical skills as they tackle critical environmental issues with real-world, hands-on projects. As students progress through the program, they take on more responsibility through our mentor-supported 'leadership ladder.' Students start as learners and then can work through a succession of leadership positions, including project leader, team leader, and apprentice.\nFor students in the Waterway Stewardship internship, their living laboratory is the Arboretum Waterway, a creek-like body of water that runs through the historic section of the arboretum. The waterway is part of the campus stormwater drainage system and is dammed at both ends. While it resembles a creek, the Arboretum Waterway is effectively a pond, which means that it comes with common pond issues: nutrient-rich water and unsightly algae formation. After Karyn was hired as her team's coleader during her junior year, she led her interns in developing a floating wetland with sedges and other native plants that take up nutrients from the water as they grow. From afar, the planting resembles a green island. She worked hard to create consequential experiences for her team, learning to see and celebrate each member's unique skills.\nOver seven hundred students have now gone through the Learning by Leading program since it began in 2008. Another student, Ricardo Black, transferred to Davis from Los Medanos College, a community college in Pittsburg, California, for his junior year in the fall of 2019. He became a student leader for our Habitat Horticulture team, which enhances the suitability of campus gardens for native pollinators and other wildlife. Ricardo and his team worked in the Pollinator GATEway Gardens in the arboretum proper. A series of GATEway Gardens have been designed collaboratively with academic departments to showcase their research and teaching to visitors. The Pollinator GATEway Gardens, highlighting plants important for native bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators, were created with the nearby School of Veterinary Medicine. The project aligns with the school's research on the interconnections between the health of people, animals (both domestic and wild), and their environment.\nRicardo's leadership skills were tested when the pandemic forced our normally hands-on, outdoor internships into a virtual format. He demonstrated fast, adaptive leadership as he navigated his team through the initial unpredictable months of the pandemic. He found that it became even more essential to develop peer-mentor relationships, which encouraged his growth as a communicator. Ricardo says, 'During the program, I was put in a position where leadership and innovation skills were needed to make things work in an environment that was unpredictable and always changing due to the pandemic.' Similarly, Karyn credits the Learning by Leading program for shaping her into the collaborative leader she is today. When she started the internship, she told herself, 'I need to work hard and figure everything out by myself.' Then, as she progressed through the program and gained leadership experience, she realized that strength comes through working together.\nKaryn also says that Learning by Leading helped her discover her twin passions for restoration and environmental education. She graduated in the spring of 2021 and immediately was hired by two local environmental organizations: the Putah Creek Council, where she organizes community volunteers to do creek restoration work, and the Solano Resource Conversation District, where she serves as an environmental educator. Karyn's growth as a leader and her impactful postgraduate jobs exemplify the power of reimagining the traditional university campus. All university campuses are more than lawns, sidewalks, and buildings they can be spaces where tomorrow's environmental change-makers learn to lead."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Water Comes First","article_sequence":5,"start_page":15,"end_page":17,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25757","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170af6a.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Bartlett Jr., Robert A.","article_content":"My decision to transform the R.A. Bartlett Research Laboratories and Arboretum into the living museum that exists today was centered on the need for water. My father, Robert Bartlett Sr., purchased the property in 1965, a few years after he became president of the family business, Bartlett Tree Experts. He intended for the 350-acre property, nestled in the rolling hills outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, to serve as a research laboratory and training center for the growing company.\nTo that end, the company established facilities and plots where staff scientists conducted experiments on plant care and pathology. Previously, this work had been performed in Stamford, Connecticut, where my grandfather had set up our first tree research laboratory and training facility in 1913. A portion of the original site still exists today as the Bartlett Arboretum and Gardens, although it has no affiliation with the company.\nPreviously, the Charlotte property had been a working horse farm with large fields and pastureland. When my father acquired the land, he planted azaleas (Rhododendron) and hollies (Ilex), along with other plants that form the basis of the collections we have today. In those early years, I remember seeing young trees begin to establish themselves and rise above the forage grasses.\nThe climate near Charlotte allowed the cultivation of species common in both northern and southern gardens, which was important since we had field offices throughout the United States (and now Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland). Still, the summers in Charlotte are hot and humid. To maintain the collections, we pumped water from one of three existing ponds to provide irrigation, but at first, the capabilities were technologically limited. The earliest systems consisted of gasoline-powered pumps sitting on the shore of the ponds and serving manually operated spigots. Remnants of those systems can still be found on the property, and portions of their piping are still in use today.\nDuring the first thirty years in our Charlotte location, it was apparent that some of the plants were beginning to suffer from our limited irrigation capabilities. In particular, the collection of azaleas that my father had started planting on an eighty-foot hill, now affectionately called Rhodie Hill, required extensive watering. In midsummer, it was challenging to stay ahead of the heat, especially because the water had to be manually hauled up the paths that wind around the hill.\nThe impact of a changing climate also became more apparent at this time. When my father bought the land, the property was categorized by the US Department of Agriculture as being in plant hardiness zone 7 (meaning the average minimum temperatures fell between 0 and 10\u00a1F); however, it is now considered zone 8 (averaging between 10 and 20\u00a1F). Due to changes in the weather patterns, longer dry periods developed, and more dramatic swings in rainfall became the new normal. It was clear that we could no longer sustain our collections without investing in a state-of-the-art irrigation system.\nAfter my father passed away in 1998, we began to make a significant investment to help maintain and develop the property. It would continue to serve as a research station and laboratory, complete with a training facility for clients and arborists and a diagnostic clinic where our researchers process thousands of plant and soil samples sent by our field offices. At the same time, we were determined to continue building the collections into a world-class arboretum. With this goal in mind, we decided to put in an irrigation system that could provide consistent water to the growing collections.\nWe installed a new distribution system to feed the early network of pipes and facilitate manual watering capability in adjoining areas. Most importantly, the system directed a large volume of water to one of our ponds. Now, with the ability to keep a single, large reservoir of water full at all times, the Research Lab and Arboretum was primed for much more extensive, and automated, irrigation operations. In 1999, we began installation of the first automated system. It allowed us to direct a precise amount of water overnight to specific areas on the property. The collections grew like never before. The system also made new locations available for dedicated research plots. Automatic irrigation was a game changer.\nAt that point, we began to strategically build our collections. We launched collaborations with other arboreta and research institutions across the globe and started adding to the diversity of our cultivated plants. Today, the collections are expansive, consisting of over twenty-six thousand accessioned plants in fourteen major groups. We have one of the largest collections of holly in the United States, along with extensive collections of elm (Ulmus), crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia), maple (Acer), witch-hazel (Hamamelis), linden (Tilia), and boxwood (Buxus). Seven collections are accredited through the Plant Collections Network, including the largest collection of Magnolia cultivars in the world. \nAmong the collections, those which were established early and added on to over the years continue to be among the most satisfying for me to watch through the year. Our main grouping of magnolias borders Youngblood Road, a two-lane highway that passes the arboretum. When you drive around the corner and see the magnolias in bloom, the sight of the different colors almost takes your breath away. There is just about every shade and hue of purple, pink, white, and yellow that you can imagine. Rhodie Hill is another favorite. The hill comes alive in a kaleidoscope of spring color, and with mature specimen trees overhead, the winding paths offer beautiful surprises around every corner.\nWe have now begun focusing on wild-collected plant material, especially prioritizing species of conservation concern. One of the plants that we are playing a role in conserving is a rare North American species known as the pyramid magnolia (Magnolia fraseri var. pyramidata). In an effort to understand the distribution of this species and increase documented holdings in cultivation, our arboretum has partnered with The Morton Arboretum, the University of Florida North Research and Education Center, the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, and the US National Arboretum to scout populations, assess their health, and collect seed (when present) for propagation and distribution. Through collaborative efforts like this, and with other strong networking partners such as the Arnold Arboretum, Longwood Gardens, and many others, we have made conservation of rare species a new part of our mission. \nLooking at all the natural beauty established here, visitors may find it easy to forget that this is a relatively young arboretum. We pride ourselves on the ability to adapt with the times and use our natural water resources to maintain the vitality and health of our collections. The key and catalyst to our success has been access to water and having the irrigation needed to help the plants thrive. Without it, we could not have created this botanical wonderland in such a short amount of time."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Metasequoia glypotostroboides","article_sequence":6,"start_page":18,"end_page":19,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25762","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d1708125.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Jahren, Hope","article_content":"If you head north, far above the Arctic Circle, you will find yourself in a land of blue sky, white snow, and gray ice. There will be pockets, here and there a lonely island, a sloping valley that are dry, dusty, and desolate. Dig down, through a crust of lichens, take out the smooth stones underneath, and burrow into the shaley, ancient mud. When you get to layers no less than forty million years old, you will find conifer needles. Not only that, you will find twigs, branches, cones, and even whole trunks, dusted in ancient sap. I have seen this myself, during the odd, dream-like hours that are born of twenty-four-hour light.\nForty-five million years ago, at 79\u00a1 north latitude, an immense conifer forest stretched in every direction, across what is now Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, quite close to today's North Pole. The idea of a forest so far north is nothing short of fantastic: today, the tallest plant in the region is a pussy willow and a stunted specimen at that. The temperature and the rainfall above the Arctic Circle were certainly very different forty million years ago. Still, one thing has not changed: total light for three months, soon followed by three months of total darkness. No modern trees can tolerate these conditions, yet forests once thrived under this ridiculous annual regime. Foremost among the trees was Metasequoia. We recognize them from their needles fossilized but so loose that they fall through your fingers like confetti.\nUntil 1948, most scientists assumed that Metasequoia was extinct, based on fossils from lower latitudes. That was the year the Arnold Arboretum received a package from Hu Xiansu, who trained at the Arboretum and returned to China with his doctorate in 1925. Hu sent bushels of seeds and other botanical materials, and he documented that they had come from wait for it live Metasequoia glyptostroboides growing in central China! Some of these seeds became the full-grown, magnificent 'dawn redwoods' that now stand throughout the Arboretum (accessions 3-48 and 524-48).\nBecause of these seeds and the trees they became, I knew something about the fossils that we excavated in Canada that I would never have known otherwise: ancient Metasequoia trees were deciduous. Deciduousness is a special type of dormancy meant to decrease the stress of maintaining leaves through the winter. This trait, uncommon in conifers, would make all the difference as the trees prepared for the extended Arctic darkness."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Third Fifty Years of the Arnold Arboretum","article_sequence":7,"start_page":20,"end_page":33,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25756","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170af26.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Dosmann, Michael S.","article_content":"Round the bend on Hemlock Hill Road and look across Bussey Brook and Kent Field to the north. Your eyes will skim a patchwork of conifer textures, colors, and forms. Among the trees is an upright individual with a rather abrupt taper at the top, the Arnold Arboretum's largest giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum, accession 1320-72*A), now standing eighty-three feet tall. After crossing the brook and walking up the slope, you'll see that the wide bole (almost five feet in diameter) begs to be hugged. Shift your gaze up along the orange bark to the sky, and you'll see the tree's candelabra-like branching pattern. Most of the branches seem normal, erupting out of the main stem at right angles,\nbut if you step back and keep your eye on the crown, you'll see an odd conglomeration where one branch over another attempted to bend skyward.\nBack in 1948 (the same year that Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the dawn redwood, arrived in North America), a supporter of the Arboretum, Chandler Hovey, collected giant sequoia seedlings from California and planted several near his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, a stone's throw from the Boston College campus. In 1972, in honor of the Arboretum's centennial, Boston College which had recently acquired the Hovey property donated the tree. That spring, a twenty-four-year-old, forty-two-foot-tall, pointy-topped tree was dug, transported, and transplanted in its current spot in the conifer collection. The magnificent specimen survived, but its central leader died due to transplant shock, leaving an oval-shaped form for decades. A new leader eventually took over: a dog-legged branch that formed fifty years ago from the initial crown's tip, some forty-three feet above the ground. I'm certain that the wooden rings within that branch would reveal not just what was going on with that single tree but the surrounding Arboretum landscape as well.\nThe First Fifty Years\nJust as the sequoia's history is written within its rings, branches, and form, the Arboretum's landscape and collections reflect a history rich in dramatic events and subtle ripples. Much has been written about them, and Charles Sprague Sargent's 'The First Fifty Years of the Arnold Arboretum' describes the first five decades with aplomb. At the time of Sargent's writing in 1922, Harvard's tree museum (founded in 1872) had expanded from 125 to 250 acres. Frederick Law Olmsted had reimagined Benjamin Bussey's farm with carriageways and pathways, collection areas and viewsheds. Sargent and his team transformed the landscape into a composite of taxonomic tree groups and research plantings, including an intensely cultivated shrub and vine collection, all nestled among a few natural and naturalized woodlands.\nBy 1922, botanical exploration particularly of East Asia and North America and horticultural exchange yielded a living collection of over five thousand taxa growing at the Arboretum. The institution was well on its way to meeting its initial charge (a nascent collections policy, if you will) to cultivate every tree, shrub, and vine hardy in Boston. While many of the plants were botanical taxa, including wild-origin species newly cultivated in North America, there was no shortage of infraspecific forms and varieties that we would now call cultivars. The herbarium of two hundred thousand sheets complemented a thirty-five-thousand-volume library and archival collection of nearly ten thousand photographs. With these integrated living, preserved, and archival collections, the Arnold Arboretum had become an international destination for scholars of woody plants.\nYet Harvard's tree museum was not just for the botanical connoisseur. This gem in Boston's Emerald Necklace of parks provided open space to an expanding and diversifying city. Because of the 1882 arrangement where ownership of the land shifted from Harvard to the City of Boston (who then leased the property back to the university for at least one thousand years), the space would be secured in perpetuity as both a scientific enterprise and public open space, free for all to enjoy. Without this arrangement some 140 years ago, I doubt if the Arnold Arboretum would exist today, or if it did, if we would recognize it in its current form. Had it remained a nonpublic, university-owned research station, I can imagine acres by the dozen being peeled away and sold with each-and-every economic crisis. If purely a municipal park, even if well maintained, it would not house one of Earth's most notable collections of woody plants. Luckily, these are just what-if scenarios.\nPerhaps knowing his grip upon the Arboretum's helm would not last much longer (though it did, for another four years), Sargent ended his half-century assessment with a few bold charges for his successors. Global environmental change was apparent to him, particularly the challenges to trees and forests worldwide. Thus, Sargent called for continued and ambitious documentation of forests in Asia and the tropics, as well as rigorous scholarship in forest pathology, entomology, and genetics. Within the Arboretum landscape, Sargent felt that a rose and a rock garden would be essential additions, no doubt to provide space for new collections development while simultaneously enhancing the horticultural display. Despite the growth of the initial Arboretum endowment from $103,847 to $808,175, Sargent knew that additional resources would be required not just for these new initiatives but to maintain current operations. Thus, he curtly ended his fifty-year report with one sentence: 'Only a larger endowment is needed to make possible these Arboretum activities and extensions.' Following his death in 1927, the Sargent Memorial Fund would raise over a million dollars.\nThe Second Fifty Years \nThe Arboretum's second half-century was dramatic and dynamic. The institution weathered a global economic depression, multiple leadership changes (one supervisor and three directors), the catastrophic hurricane of 1938, as well as another World War. There was also the Controversy (as it was referred to), which amalgamated the university's herbarium and botanical library collections (including most of the Arboretum's) under one roof in Cambridge. This coincided with the cessation of the Bussey Institution, which had opened as Harvard's center for horticultural and agricultural education in 1871, on property adjacent to the Arboretum. The institute grew into a center for genetic and cellular research. By the 1930s, most of the on-site scholarship in the Arboretum's living collections had waned. Likewise, the Arboretum's fieldwork in temperate areas, particularly to acquire germplasm to grow in the living collections, ceased almost entirely. However, botanical exchange of seeds persisted, with the 1948 acquisition of the Chinese dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, being one of the most celebrated feats even to this day.\nThe discipline of horticulture often considered the art and the science of growing plants matured in the mid-twentieth century. The genetic improvement of ornamentals hit a stride, as did advanced ways to propagate them clonally. As a result, cultivars (first given formal recognition in 1952) wantonly tumbled out of nursery catalogues and into gardens, parks, and other managed landscapes. The Arboretum's living collection was no exception.\nIn 1970, Donald Wyman, horticulturist in charge of the Arboretum from 1935 to 1970, wrote in these pages about the Arboretum's goal to improve the curation and care of the collections, and to use the collections as a living laboratory for horticultural introductions. Species plucked from the wilds in the Arboretum's first half-century would be assessed for their garden worthiness in the second. Novel hybrids, like crabapples (Malus) and forsythia (Forsythia) created by Karl Sax (a professor who then served as director from 1947 to 1954), were given growing space, with many introduced as cultivars after evaluation. Arboretum selections, and those from sister institutions and industry, were grown side-by-side, their performance recorded in Arnoldia and other publications.\nJust like there were changes to what the Arboretum grew in the collections and why, there were changes to where they were grown. The 1942 acquisition of the Case Estates in Weston, Massachusetts, provided a welcome relief valve for the space-cramped Boston collection. Shortly thereafter, several ornamental collections in Boston underwent redesigns: Landscape architect Beatrix Farrand's Azalea Border along Meadow Road added dramatic color and space for the deciduous Rhododendron that were performing poorly elsewhere. Crabapples, the dandy of mid- to late-twentieth-century landscapes, replaced most of the hawthorns (Crataegus) on Peters Hill during renovations from 1948 to 1952. The construction of the Dana Greenhouses in 1962 provided a sophisticated station where propagator Alfred Fordham could conduct his many experiments and publish them widely.\nCollections of the Third Fifty Years\nThe centennial in 1972 arrived with fanfare and excitement. Dick Howard, director since 1954, began his 1971 annual report to the Harvard University Provost by underscoring the Arnold Arboretum's essential service role to the City of Boston, particularly to local communities. Maintaining the Arboretum required considerable resources that were worth the expense and investment, and caring for the collections was his 'priority responsibility.' Thus, irrigation projects in both Boston and Weston would alleviate some of the growing and unmet demands for water. A bucket truck was added to the fleet, which made pruning or removing old, senescing 'stag-headed' trees easier. To replace some of the removals, horticulturists planted out nearly nine hundred specimens, completing a cycle of rejuvenation and renewal. Anticipating future databasing, Howard noted that the plant records office had wrapped up a major inventory campaign to assess and field-check every specimen in the collection.\nOver the Arboretum's third fifty years, the institution would be led by four directors: Richard Howard's tenure ended in 1978; Peter Ashton led from 1978 to 1987; Robert Cook from 1989 to 2009; and William (Ned) Friedman became director in 2011. During this time, the Arboretum experienced dramatic changes, as did the living collections. Staff actively contemplated what to cultivate, where to grow it, and how to do it better.\nMajor anniversaries like a centennial can elicit reflections and ambitions, so it is no surprise that shortly after Peter Ashton became the director in 1978, strategic planning was underway. One broad initiative, a restoration plan, included a substantial section for what should be in the collections. A formal living collections policy the first for this Arboretum and most botanic gardens was also published in 1979, remaining in force for almost thirty years. In this latter document, the Arboretum established and codified ambitious goals: to acquire all known woody species hardy in Boston (no different from the original charge of 1872); to have three individuals of each species; to prioritize wild-provenance plants above those of garden or nursery origin; and (assuming they met specific requirements) to continue to maintain taxa at infraspecific ranks (including cultivars, although these were considered lowest in any hierarchy).\nTo complete the collections, the 1979 restoration plan outlined the addition of over 2,900 taxa, spanning 90 families and 363 genera. These desiderata came almost exclusively from identifying which plants in the 1940 edition of Alfred Rehder's Manual of Cultivated Trees and Shrubs Hardy in North America were missing from the collection. To launch the initiative, staff set an ambitious goal of acquiring 1,500 taxa in the first five years.\nEven before strategic planning of what to add, the Arboretum reconsidered where new material would come from and how to acquire it: collectors would return to the field. In 1977, the Arboretum embarked on its first major collecting trip in some forty years, sending taxonomists Stephen Spongberg and Richard Weaver to South Korea and Japan for six weeks. In 1980, following the heels of the restoration plan, Weaver botanized in the Soviet Union, while Spongberg participated in the three-month-long Sino-American Botanical Expedition, which involved a team of thirteen Chinese and American collaborators. (China had not been visited by Western botanists since before the revolution in 1949.) The era of fieldwork had returned.\nThrough the 1980s and early 1990s, the infusion of wild-collected material from some seventeen expeditions occurred at a scale not seen in fifty years. In some years, the Arboretum sponsored multiple collecting trips. Destinations included those known to yield hardy material such as northwestern Hubei Province, China, and the Appalachian Mountains of the American Southeast, as well as fringe regions like North Africa, Mexico, and Taiwan. Coincident with fieldwork, the Arboretum also received new material from sister institutions, often selected from their annual seed lists (known as index semina).\nAlthough the restoration plan advised against 'returning to what must have been almost a jungle by the end of Sargent's tenure as Director,' there was no discussion as to where some five thousand new plants (an increase by approximately 30 percent) would be sited in the collections. Thus, limitations in capacity and resources facilities, staffing, and space hindered the restoration's full success. For one, the Arboretum lacked the facilities to propagate and produce the sheer magnitude of material arriving in such a short period. The plant records database is replete with notations from index cards of whole flats of accessions that perished due to the lack of production space (many were placed in the shade below the benches). Gary Koller, Wyman's successor as the lead horticulturist, has told me how, due to severe space constraints in the collection in the 1980s, sibling plants of the same accession were planted together in tight triads, about five feet apart. Only a few of the triads remain today, primarily sited along the roads and perimeter of Bussey Hill. Deaccessioning plants was taboo, so there were few other alternatives. The 1979 restoration document was successful as an acquisitions plan yet perhaps too ambitious given practical considerations.\nA decade later, following changes in Arboretum leadership (Robert Cook became director in 1989), a Living Collections Long-Range Planning Committee returned to the process of thinking about the collections. In 1991, the committee completed a planning document, edited by Stephen Spongberg, which acknowledged that the 1979 restoration may have been na\u2022ve. The committee noted the challenges in adopting a comprehensive collection (meaning one of every taxon) versus a synoptic or broadly representative collection. They observed that it would be difficult to preserve the integrity of the Arboretum's historic landscape in light of the aggressive drive to acquire new material. Nevertheless, the plan ended with a reaffirmation of the same ambitious collection policy goals articulated in 1979.\nTo accommodate this expansion while remaining sensitive to the Olmsted design (by not transforming the collections into a dense forestry plantation), the 1991 plan called for the prudent review and deaccessioning of low-value and out-of-sequence material. The authors proposed a long-term review process that would finally deal with many of the growing pains that had affected the Arboretum since (and perhaps prior to) the death of Sargent. Although there were no estimates of how many plants could be deaccessioned, the authors stated that such subtractions would be insufficient to accommodate the necessary expansion. The 1991 plan estimated that all Arboretum property must be designated for the purpose of housing an expanded collection, including the entirety of Peters Hill, Bussey Brook Meadow (formerly called the South Street Tract or Stony Brook Marsh), Weld Hill (formerly Weld-Walter Street Tract), and the Case Estates. Space was not the only resource required: the plan identified new staff positions necessary for curation, horticulture, and the greenhouse and nursery.\nShortly after the 1991 plan was completed, it was put on hold following a reorganization of the Arboretum's administrative structure in early 1992. A new Living Collections Department was created, with Peter Del Tredici leading. The ambitious goal of the 1979 and 1991 plans to form a comprehensive collection was admittedly unrealistic and abandoned. Instead, as Del Tredici outlined in 1994, collections development would take a more focused or prioritized approach. During the early 1990s through the mid-2000s, special recognition was reserved for conservation-status species (particularly those maintained in collaboration with the Center for Plant Conservation). As a theme, the floras of eastern Asia and eastern North America were given priority, particularly genera like Acer (maples) and Fagus (beeches), which became two of the initial five collections nationally accredited through the Plant Collections Network. (The Arboretum now has eight accredited collections.) The recently established North America China Plant Exploration Consortium (NACPEC) became a pipeline for novel germplasm from China. From 1991 to 2006, the Arboretum mounted six expeditions to China, two under the NACPEC flag, including the 1994 expedition to Hubei that infused the collections with new material like the paperbark maple (Acer griseum), which had most recently been collected by Ernest Henry Wilson in 1907.\nWithin a year of joining the staff in 2007, I organized a team to update collections goals and codify them in a new living collections policy. The scope of the collections would remain synoptic, with the highest priority assigned to core collections, such as the nationally accredited collections and conservation-status holdings. Historic lineages would be maintained through repropagation, while targeted acquisitions of cultivars would meet trialing, display, and research needs. The new policy (and its subtle revisions over the past fifteen years) prompted the review and subsequent deaccessioning of excessive or low-value accessions, as well as the repropagation of valuable lineages that had gone unnoticed.\nFieldwork continued, with another six expeditions occurring between 2007 and 2015, including a NACPEC expedition to the Qinling Mountains of China in 2010 and a more focused collecting of live oak (Quercus virginiana) from the northeastern edge of its range in Virginia in 2012. In 2015, the Arboretum launched the Campaign for the Living Collections, an initiative that followed several years of planning from the Living Collections Advisory Board. The campaign articulated a list of nearly four hundred target taxa, each linked to one or more priority themes found in the collections policy. Since the campaign launched, some twenty expeditions to destinations in the United States, China, Japan, and the country of Georgia have yielded over half of the desiderata. The COVID-19 pandemic paused expeditionary work for 2020 and 2021.\nWhile the Arboretum embarked on exactly fifty named expeditions over the past fifty years, plants of cultivated origin were added to the collections (or maintained) for their invaluable ornamental characteristics, stress tolerance, and other novel traits valued in managed landscapes. Cultivars of trees continued to grow alongside their wild-origin brethren particularly in the Rosaceous orchards of Peters Hill while new shrub cultivars appeared in the Bradley Rosaceous Collection (dedicated in 1985), the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden (dedicated in 2002), and other landscapes. In 1972, 14,058 plants grew in the Arboretum's collections in Boston, and only 14 percent were of wild origin. As of this writing, 44 percent of the 15,939 plants in the collections were derived from wild populations, and if one excludes over 2,700 accessioned plants in the natural areas (such as Hemlock Hill, which is a mix of wild and planted hemlocks), 53 percent of the collections are from the wild. That is quite the illustration of focused and deliberate collections development.\nDesigning the Collections\nPerhaps the most significant outcome from the 1979 restoration plan was the recognition of historical planting areas, as articulated loosely using the Bentham and Hooker linear sequence. Richard Weaver created maps for each family and major genus, using red colored pencil to illustrate where new plantings should go (or, in some cases, errant shrubs should be returned). This reordering was meant to fix what were perceived as random horticultural plantings, particularly those from the mid-twentieth century.\nAll gardens need redefinition from time to time, and many areas within the Arboretum received edits over the past fifty years. For instance, Rhodie Dell the collection of broadleaved Rhododendron along Bussey Brook at the base of Hemlock Hill was renovated in 1990 with the Davison Path laid out by Julie Moir Messervy. The landscape around the Hunnewell Visitor Center received a new look by Carol Johnson after the building was renovated in 1993. In 2007, Beatrix Farrand's Azalea Border along Meadow Road received an infusion of new material following the removal of declining individuals.\nOne of the major goals Sargent described in 1922 was the creation of a rose garden, and in 1985 the Arboretum made good on this promise. A gift by Eleanor Cabot Bradley and an innovative design by Gary Koller created the Bradley Rosaceous Collection. Located near the ponds and replacing the existing shrub collection (where many of the Rosaceous shrubs grew already), this semi-formal garden adjacent the Forest Hills Gate became and continues to be a public gathering space and programming site. Updates completed in 2011 (by Julie Moir Messervy) improved circulation and display potential, and two wrought-iron arbors designed by Peter Andruchow added spaces for climbing roses.\nWhile the Bradley created a significant destination for visitors, the diaspora of shrubs and vines from the earlier shrub garden led to a problem. Many of the vines were moved to chain-link fences on the perimeter, becoming challenges to maintain, while sun-requiring shrubs now grown in the shade under their arboreal cousins did not always fare well. To ameliorate this dilemma, the Arboretum needed a new shrub and vine collection, and with a gift from Frances Leventritt, the Victor M. and Frances Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden was created in 2002. Designed by Reed Hilderbrand, this formal garden would house sun-loving shrubs and vines on property to the north of the Dana Greenhouses, on space previously occupied by the old hedge and dwarf conifer collection. Unlike other areas of the Arboretum's collections, the shrubs and vines grown here were to receive intense horticultural care and inspire ideas for home landscapes.\nPeters Hill, often neglected due to a lack of resources and its distance from the hub of operations, began to receive attention starting with a curatorial review in 1993. Low-value plants were deaccessioned; new plantings (particularly crabapples and deciduous gymnosperms) followed; and a bus turnaround at the summit was removed and renovated to support plant collections in 1997. Another major change occurred in 1996 when the South Street Tract was combined with land owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the City of Boston, creating what is now known as the Bussey Brook Meadow, a twenty-six-acre urban wild with the Blackwell Path connecting Forest Hills Station to the South Street Gate.\nStewarding the Collections\nIn his 1971 report, Richard Howard noted that his highest priority was the maintenance of the living collections. His successors possessed the same agenda, mustering resources to support them as creativity and windfall allowed. Over time, work at the Case Estates waned to the point that by 1991 the horticultural staff in Weston shifted permanently to care for the collections in Boston. (The final sale of the Case Estates occurred in 2017.) Ongoing growth in the Arboretum's endowment, particularly during the capital campaign ending in 2000, allowed further staffing increases, and restricted endowments for areas like the Bradley Rosaceous Collection and the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden funded exclusive and dedicated horticulturists to care for each high-maintenance area.\nAnother major shift in resourcing occurred with the launch of the Landscape Management Plan in 2008, a charge led by Richard Schulhof (the deputy director) and implemented by Stephen Schneider (then the manager of horticulture). Recognizing the value of having already designated horticulturists in several areas, such as the Shrub and Vine Garden, the Landscape Management Plan expanded the perspective to all areas of the Arboretum landscape. The landscape was divided into zones, with individual horticulturists assigned to steward each according to goals specific to each area. The plan also directed the work of arborists as they rotated through the collections, and landscape staff as they maintained meadows, turf, and pathways.\nIn addition to performing the day-to-day care of the collections, horticulturists must contend with periodic natural disasters, pests, and diseases. Though not as cataclysmic as that infamous and unnamed hurricane that struck in 1938 (which destroyed some fifteen hundred trees), the 1997 April Fool's Day storm dumped over two and a half feet of snow on a collection previously plagued by past droughts. Over four hundred trees had to be removed that season, while another thirteen hundred remained but required arboricultural care. Pathogens and pests are a persistent threat to the collections. For instance, in the 1980s and 1990s, phytoplasmas plagued the lilac (Syringa) collection, and in 1997, hemlock woolly adelgid arrived at the Arboretum's doorstep to forever change the face of Hemlock Hill, a unique natural landscape where black birch (Betula lenta) are slowly replacing the hemlocks (Tsuga). And, in 2018, many old beeches (Fagus) were removed due to decline caused by the arrival of beech bark disease. All three of these collections the lilacs, hemlocks, and beeches are nationally accredited, so their stewardship in response to these outbreaks is especially significant. The Landscape Management Plan includes response plans for disaster and plant healthcare issues like these.\nIn late 2019, Andrew Gapinski, as manager of horticulture, transformed the third edition of the Landscape Management Plan into a dynamic, digital format known as the Landscape Management System. As part of the system, a smartphone and desktop application called ArbManager replaced the paper forms (the 'green cards') exchanged between horticultural and curatorial staff to communicate about work requests, while an internal website, ArbDashboard, synthesized horticultural and plant records data into a map-based system. Both of these tools provide living collections staff instant access to collections-care directives, whether they are in an office or fifty feet up a tree and accessing the information from a phone.\nRecording the Collections\nThe Arboretum is replete with uniquely accessioned plants, each richly documented with source histories, observations, photographs, herbarium specimens, and maps a tradition dating back to the institution's founding. In Howard's 1972 annual report, he noted how the card catalog entries the original paper database for the living collections, if you will were incorporated into the Plant Records Center of the American Horticultural Society. This initial digitization effort was championed by Howard when he was president of the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta. The shared database gave gardens the chance to store computerized records off-site (as a preservation initiative) and recall specialized lists of plants on demand (for instance, all plants in a given location within a garden).\nIn 1985, the Arboretum's plant records and systems (including definitions, workflows, and philosophies) seeded a new database eventually called BG-BASE. The Arboretum now had local access to its data, which revolutionized how the Arboretum and finally other gardens curated their collections. At first, the database only included living plants; however, funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in 2010 allowed staff to integrate legacy data from old index cards into BG-BASE, providing access to historic collections that had long ago perished. An earlier IMLS grant, in 2001, enabled the digitization of records for some fifty thousand vouchers from the herbarium of cultivated plants, adding even more data and research value to plants that grow or grew in the living collections.\nHand-drawn maps had recorded the locations of plants growing in the collections since 1938, and in 1987, cartography went digital due to support from IMLS. Initially, AutoCAD served as the digital platform; however, in 2010, the platform shifted into ESRI ArcGIS, a more robust geographic information system. This change was timely, as the IMLS grant in 2010 also allowed for the scanning and georeferencing of some two thousand hand-drawn maps, providing staff the ability to view like a digital flip-book the historic collections over time. Coincident with the legacy of mapping has been the annual inventory process, whereby all accessioned plants are field-checked on a five-year cycle. Whereas earlier field observations required paper cards, notebooks, and copies of maps, the current team led by Kyle Port, the manager of plant records, employs live connections to the database in the field using laptops and tablet computers. I wonder what Professor Sargent would think if he could witness such activities in action!\nWhile countless other initiatives over the past fifty years led to curatorial reviews and data acquisition, one final, and significant, venture was a multi-year verification project funded by the National Science Foundation in 1984. This project led to the vouchering (using herbarium specimens) of the living collections. The vouchers were then distributed to taxonomic specialists around the world who verified the identity of each plant. The effort yielded positive (as well as negative) identifications and fostered international research interest in the living collections.\nUsing the Collections\nWhile this article mostly reflects the living collections and their change over time, to leave out access and use would be a grave mistake. The Arboretum is not a private collection but is, in fact, very public. Due to the porous nature of the Arboretum, visitor counts have always been a rough guess. Until recently, estimates of annual visitors were in the 'hundreds of thousands,' which at the time may have been accurate. However, a people counter at the popular Arborway Gate one of more than a dozen entrances tallied some 825,000 hits from September 2020 to September 2021. This number includes ins-and-outs as well as pass-throughs, yet even with a conservative estimate of half this total (equal in and out hits) of 400,000 visitors at this single gate, it is safe to assume that well over a million people, and perhaps over twice that number, visit the Arboretum each year.\nAfter the Bussey Institution ceased to exist and much of the herbarium and library migrated to Cambridge, it had become more difficult for the living collections to readily serve scholars. However, engaging scholars to use the living collections has long been an area of interest of mine, even before joining the staff, and was one of the reasons I was hired into this role fifteen years ago. Luckily, much work had been initiated before my arrival. Five decades of field exploration yielded a collection rich in botanical diversity and wild provenance: research specimens little different from what a scholar could find in the natural environment. Year-over-year improvements in horticultural care provided healthier plants available for study. Ongoing vouchering, verification, and inventory initiatives add rich documentation to the plant records, all of which have been searchable online for over two decades.\nFunding also helped bring scholars to the collections. In 1988, initial support (and later an endowment) provided by George and Nancy Putnam created the Putnam Fellowship specifically for those conducting independent research and project work using the collections. These and other competitive awards have helped to remove financial barriers that might otherwise prevent research from occurring.\nLastly, in 2011, the Weld Hill research facility opened. While it was initiated and built during the administration of Bob Cook and opened and staffed shortly after Ned Friedman became director, the facility was inspired by Peter Ashton, who attempted to reinstall scholarship within the Arboretum landscape during his tenure. Now, after some seventy-five years since the Bussey Institution closed, research and its requisite facilities are unified with the Arboretum's living collections. As a result, visiting scholars from all over the world can work in state-of-the-art laboratories just footsteps from the living collections. Shortly after I began my work at the Arboretum, about a dozen projects occurred in the collections each year. Currently, some seventy-five to one hundred projects use the living collections, landscapes, and environments annually.\nThe Fourth Fifty Years\nThe year 2072 seems so far off. I doubt that I'll be above ground, or if I am, how well I will be able to peruse the collections as they celebrate their bicentennial. Still, if I am around at that time, just a few years shy of my own centennial year, I would like to see the trees from the 1977 expedition to Korea and Japan spreading their branches among the overstory of the collection. I would like to see plants from the Campaign for the Living Collections: some of those trees have recently been released from the nursery and are already taller than me. I'm confident that many will have become standouts the masterpieces of a new generation and subjects of research that we would find impossible to imagine in 2022.\nAnd of course, I would also make my way over to the giant sequoia that overlooks Bussey Brook, checking in to see how it had fared. No doubt, it will have weathered droughts and blizzards, perhaps even a lightning strike due to its ever-increasing height. But I like to imagine it will still be standing, a silent sentry watching over Harvard's tree museum."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Saving the World's Threatened Trees","article_sequence":8,"start_page":34,"end_page":43,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25754","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170a76b.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Alvarez-Clare, Silvia; Shaw, Kristy; Pocock, Sarah","article_content":"Hiking through the hot, dry canyons at the base of the Sierra La Laguna peaks in Baja California Sur, Mexico, it is impossible to miss the beautiful arroyo oaks (Quercus brandegeei). The trees border the banks of the seasonal streams (or arroyos) like kneeling giants washing their limbs in the refreshing water. What is less obvious is that these represent a relict species that can only be found here, along the riparian zones of the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve, a biodiversity hotspot with high levels of endemism and great beauty. Each November, the tree canopies fill with elongated acorns that cause a lively commotion as birds, beetles, and rodents frantically eat the fruit on the trees and underneath. Ranchers value the trees too, frequently building corrals under their merciful shade and collecting acorns to feed livestock. However, populations of the arroyo oak are declining. There is no evident seedling regeneration, and the remaining trees are all more than one hundred years old. Until recently, the cause for decline was mostly unknown.\nAcross the globe from the Sierra La Laguna, Mount Mulanje known as the 'island in the sky' rises from the plains of southeastern Malawi with such sheer contrast that it creates its own climate and flora. Best known and most impressive of the forest trees is the cedar that takes its name from these mountains. The Mulanje cedar (Widdringtonia whytei) is highly valued for its durable and fragrant timber, but due to overexploitation and illegal logging, the cedar has reached the point of near extinction. A similar fate is faced by a rare magnolia (Magnolia grandis) found only in the forested limestone mountains of southern China and northern Vietnam. With its large, leathery leaves growing to over a foot in length, this magnolia coexists in tiny forest fragments with other critically endangered species, including the strikingly unique Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. Recruitment of new seedlings is impaired by local agricultural practices in which farmers clear vegetation before planting cardamom and repeatedly weed out the magnolia to maintain their crop. Fewer than three hundred adult trees remain in small, isolated populations.\nThe loss of trees is a global problem. Evidence of declining populations, illegal logging, lack of regeneration, and new pests and diseases has been looming over our heads for decades. Until last fall, however, the complete picture of the status of the planet's tree diversity was unknown. The State of the World's Trees, published in September 2021, shares the results of the Global Tree Assessment the first conservation audit of most of the world's nearly sixty thousand species. The results show that 30 percent of all tree species more than 17,500 species are threatened with extinction. That's more than double the total combined number of globally threatened mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.\nThe Global Tree Assessment also reveals that at least 142 tree species are recorded as extinct. Losing even a single species can have severe consequences for an ecosystem. As primary producers at the base of the food chain, plants, including trees, are the building blocks of ecosystems essential to all life on this planet. Myriad species of plants, animals, and fungi are intrinsically linked to trees, often interacting within complex and fascinating relationships that both parties depend on for survival. In addition, individual tree species play numerous economic, ecological, and cultural roles. We depend on trees in our everyday lives they provide us with food, timber, and medicine. According to the assessment, at least one in five tree species has a recorded human use, and many have a variety of different uses. While the challenges and scale of the problem in maintaining tree species diversity are significant, we can do something about it.\nA Global Campaign\nThe State of the World's Trees is a sobering reminder that trees need our help. The Global Trees Campaign is coled by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) and Fauna & Flora International (FFI). Through this effort, researchers, conservationists, and on-the-ground partners have been working together since 1999 to reduce threats and secure or recover target populations of threatened tree species through in situ action. Since its establishment, the campaign has worked to conserve over four hundred threatened tree species in more than fifty countries, and the team has trained more than ten thousand people in tree conservation skills.\nBotanic gardens and arboreta have been vital partners in this effort. Since 2017, for example, The Morton Arboretum, near Chicago, has led a Global Trees Campaign project that aims to safeguard the arroyo oak (Quercus brandegeei) of Baja California Sur. Researchers collected genetic, phenological, and ecological data on this endangered species to explore the causes of decline and identify conservation and management actions needed to save it from extinction. The team established fenced exclosures to quantify the effect of grazing and trampling by free-roaming livestock on seedling survival and growth. They found that cattle and goats eat the seedlings while pigs eat the acorns a combination that prevents any natural regeneration from occurring. To combat these threats, Mexican scientists, land managers, ranchers, and international experts are working together to implement a management plan for this species. Among their actions, the team has conducted plantings within fenced areas to boost population recovery; they have encouraged ranchers to adopt oak seedlings and plant them within their fenced gardens; and they have worked with land managers to establish larger grazing-free zones within the reserve.\nAs illustrated by the work safeguarding the arroyo oak, effective conservation should be informed by accurate baseline information, including a thorough understanding of the species biology, specific threats, and potential actions to mitigate and reverse the decline. Scientific research is one of the cornerstones of the Global Trees Campaign. Once the baseline information is gathered, tree conservationists must develop a plan to improve the success of the interventions. The planning can prioritize individual species, like the arroyo oak or the Mulanje cedar, or larger groups of tree species present in the same area or experiencing similar threats.\nIn Kenya, for instance, Global Trees Campaign partners collaborated with the Kenya Forest Service and the Conservation Planning Specialist Group (part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature) to organize a series of online workshops focused on planning conservation action for Kenya's threatened trees. The workshops brought together key stakeholders to evaluate the results of an analysis for Kenya's more than 140 threatened tree species. This effort helped prioritize sites for conservation by grouping threatened species that are likely to benefit from the same conservation activities. During these workshops, the participants developed a joint vision statement and goals, and they identified actions at national and regional levels. The Global Trees Campaign plans to continue using this larger-scale approach in the future, maximizing efforts and often achieving more cost-effective results than approaches focused on individual species.\nComprehensive Information\nBefore the State of the World's Trees was published, comprehensive information was lacking on which tree species are threatened with extinction and where conservation efforts should be directed. Some assessments were available on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species and national Red List publications. Still, the information was not easily accessible, and the scale of the problem was unknown. To produce a global overview of the conservation status of trees, the Global Trees Assessment team collated existing assessments, and each species was assigned one of six risk categories: extinct, threatened, possibly threatened, not threatened, data deficient, and not evaluated. Although this effort alone was an enormous task that took more than five years and five hundred contributors, it also revealed the information gaps regarding many tree species. In the report, well over seven thousand species were classified as data deficient, meaning there wasn't enough information for an assessment. Moreover, assessments for many little-known tree species are often based on historic herbarium records that may misrepresent recent changes in land use or loss of populations. Further survey work is therefore required.\nThe information from the Global Tree Assessment can be accessed online via a public web platform, the GlobalTree Portal. The portal highlights the scale of the problem and provides information on the numbers of species found in at least one protected area (as well as species not represented in any protected areas). The portal also shows which species are present in, or absent from, ex situ collections, such as botanical gardens and seed banks. According to the GlobalTree Portal, approximately 56 percent of threatened tree species occur in at least one protected area, and 21 percent are maintained in botanic gardens or seed banks. Another online tool, Conservation Tracker, provides real-time information on who is taking conservation action for which species. These tools will be updated regularly, helping to guide ongoing conservation efforts. The idea is that on-the-ground efforts, such as Global Tree Campaign projects, will use this information and contribute new data as they evolve, creating an information feedback loop that will result in effective conservation actions.\nTargeted Action\nAccording to the Global Tree Assessment report, agriculture and logging are the leading threats to trees globally. When managed effectively, protected areas can provide vital protection against this kind of habitat loss, but in some cases, ecological constraints and threats within protected areas can still prevent or limit regeneration. For instance, even though the arroyo oak occurs within the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve, natural regeneration has been impossible due to grazing. Tree conservationists must therefore identify and remove barriers to natural regeneration, although additional interventions may be necessary for many species, such as those with extremely small populations. In such cases, planting can be an essential strategy to increase population numbers or reintroduce a species.\nIn the case of Magnolia grandis, with a global population totaling fewer than three hundred adult trees, targeted action was needed to ensure the future of the species. Since 2013, as part of the Global Trees Campaign, FFI has developed an outreach program with local cardamom growers at Tung Vai Watershed Protection Area in Vietnam. These efforts are paying off, with local cardamom farmers now willingly maintaining M. grandis seedlings, indicating a shift in attitudes and behavior towards this species. Over the same period, regular community monitoring and patrolling to protect trees from logging was introduced, resulting in no felling or damage to M. grandis individuals at Tung Vai since 2017. In addition, local communities have adopted fuel-efficient stoves, reducing pressure for firewood. Given the low number of individual trees in the original populations, tree conservationists are conducting booster plantings using nursery-grown seedlings. Natural regeneration of M. grandis is now occurring in other areas of the forest where previously there was none, indicating that recovery work over the last eight years has been successful.\nFor the Mulanje cedar (Widdringtonia whytei) from Malawi, illegal logging was so intense that it removed the natural seed source from the mountain, and increased man-made fires impeded recruitment of remaining seedlings and young trees. As part of a campaign project led by Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust, the Forestry Research Institute of Malawi, and BGCI, staff set up eight community nurseries around Mount Mulanje with more than eighty community members who had been taught to propagate the Mulanje cedar. Over four hundred thousand seedlings were purchased from community nurseries and planted by local people, providing employment opportunities and vital income. Restoration experts from the Ecological Restoration Alliance of Botanic Gardens are also helping to improve planting practices so that more trees survive and grow better. An extensive network of firebreaks is maintained on the mountain to protect planted seedlings.\nFurthermore, international trade of the Mulanje cedar was restricted when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (a multinational agreement often known as CITES) included the cedar on its list of species that are potentially threatened with extinction. Alternative sustainable uses of cedar are being investigated that could provide additional benefits to local people. Essential oils can be produced from the tree's wood and leaves, and researchers have investigated the components of this oil to identify commercial uses, like soaps. Communities around Mount Mulanje have planted Mulanje cedar hedges from which essential oil can be extracted, and distillation equipment and training are currently being provided. This effort offers local communities alternative incomes from the Mulanje cedar that don't damage Mount Mulanje or its plant resources. The conservation team also planted ex situ trial plots and woodlots elsewhere in Malawi. These actions aim to ensure the planted trees on the mountain remain safe for the long term.\nWhatever approach is taken to reduce threats, improve natural regeneration, or restore populations of the tree species, the full engagement and participation of local stakeholders is key to the success of all tree conservation initiatives. This ensures that the approach is appropriate to the local context, has local ownership and support, and is more likely to achieve a lasting impact.\nThreatened Trees in Restoration\nTrees capture carbon from the atmosphere a fact that has drawn increasing interest given that runaway levels of carbon dioxide are a significant driver of climate change. And trees are also essential components of many habitat-restoration projects. As a result, governments and organizations around the world are investing in large-scale tree planting. These tree-planting pledges and restoration projects provide an opportunity to deliver on conservation goals by incorporating threatened species into the planting plan. However, this opportunity is often missed; many tree-planting projects focus only on exotic species or, even in the case of restoration plantings, only a small number of native species.\nAt Jardim Bot\u00e2nico Ararib\u00e1, in the State of S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, a team has been working on a forest restoration project since 1987, intending to restore not only specific plant species but also the entire ecosystem. The efforts at the garden are an exemplar of how threatened species can be incorporated into a successful restoration program. The garden is situated on one of the few remaining fragments of Atlantic Forest. Despite the status of the Atlantic Forest as an important biodiversity hotspot, this forest type is recognized as one of the most degraded ecosystems on the planet. So far, the garden staff has restored about fifty acres (two-thirds of the site). Due to this restoration, headwaters that supply water to Amparo, the closest city, have reappeared. The restored forest protects the riverbanks, preventing silt build-up and protecting the river water.\nThe restoration plantings at Jardim Bot\u00e2nico Ararib\u00e1 feature threatened species, including the endangered brazilwood (Paubrasilia echinata) and another critically endangered species in the legume family, Chloroleucon tortum. The plants for the restoration are grown in partnership with a commercial nursery that also supplies these native tree seedlings to customers for planting in their local area. As a result, the species are becoming part of the local supply chain of native tree species in S\u00e3o Paulo.\nScaling Up Conservation Action\nWith such a vast number of trees at risk of extinction worldwide, a significant scaling up of conservation action is urgently needed. To increase effectiveness and avoid duplication of effort, tree conservationists should mobilize at national levels. It's also crucial to coordinate efforts around specific taxonomic groups, especially genera or families with a high number of threatened species. Species within the same taxonomic group share many characteristics, and they may be subject to the same or similar threats. Therefore, related species are likely to benefit from the same conservation actions.\nBGCI and the botanic garden community have established groups known as Global Conservation Consortia, which are developing comprehensive conservation strategies for highly threatened taxonomic groups identified by the Global Trees Assessment. The consortia aim to coordinate in situ and ex situ conservation efforts and disseminate species recovery knowledge. For example, the Global Conservation Consortium for Oak, led by The Morton Arboretum, mobilizes experts and local partners to conserve oaks, a culturally and economically important taxonomic group that cannot be protected in seed banks. As part of these efforts, the team has organized educational webinars, provided training on seed collection and species propagation, and coordinated regional meetings and workshops focused on filling knowledge gaps for species of conservation concern. To date, Global Conservation Consortia have been developed for six tree groups: oaks (Quercus), magnolias (Magnolia), rhododendrons (Rhododendron), maples (Acer), southern beeches (Nothofagus), and the dipterocarp family (Dipterocarpaceae). These groups include more than eight hundred threatened species, and the model is now also being applied to highly threatened non-tree groups.\nNational coordination of tree conservation efforts is also a valuable approach, as the collaborations in Kenya have demonstrated. The GlobalTree Portal allows tree conservationists to identify countries with high numbers of threatened tree species, especially those with high numbers of threatened endemics. These countries must be priorities for coordinated conservation. Indonesia, for instance, has almost seven hundred threatened tree species, with ongoing habitat- and species-level threats providing little chance for their recovery without dedicated conservation action. While many large-scale conservation programs are dedicated to the country's flagship animals (such as elephants, orangutans, and tigers) or to large areas of high-carbon forest, few initiatives are specifically designed around the conservation needs of individual threatened tree species in situ.\nThrough the Global Trees Campaign, FFI has successfully engaged the Indonesian government in threatened tree conservation. As a first step, FFI established the Indonesian Forum for Threatened Trees, a group of more than seventy members from at least thirty different institutions. The forum convinced the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to consider adding twelve threatened tree species to their list of priority species. So far, one of these trees, a critically endangered dipterocarp known as Vatica javanica ssp. javanica has become legally designated as a National Protected Species. In 2019, the Forum for Threatened Trees and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences published a ten-year national conservation strategy for the twelve priority species. At the same time, FFI also seeks to build capacity for organizations working on threatened trees and inspire new action for priority species.\nMobilizing a Global Community\nIn contrast to the numerous well-known flagship animal species, threatened trees have gained little attention from governments, funders, conservation organizations, the corporate sector, and the public. With 30 percent of tree species shown to be at risk of extinction, this needs to change. Tree conservation requires a concerted response from the global community, with all different regions and sectors engaging and taking action. Botanic gardens and arboreta are in a strategic position at the intersection of research, outreach, and conservation and can play a critical role in safeguarding the world's tree species. The urgency of the situation, however, requires an 'all hands on deck' approach.\nPolicymakers at all levels (global, national, and local) need to incorporate and prioritize threatened trees within legislative frameworks. Intergovernmental and international organizations need to promote and share data from the Global Tree Assessment with their networks and integrate threatened tree conservation into their programs. The corporate sector has an expanded role to play, particularly companies engaged in timber, agriculture, and extractive industries. Land managers, including governments, are key actors in securing critical habitat. Members of the conservation organizations need to prioritize threatened trees within their programs, supporting action on the ground and generating a higher profile for this issue. The tree-planting and habitat-restoration sector have an unrivaled opportunity to integrate threatened trees within their work, contributing significantly to saving species while meeting their other goals. There is a role, too, for the research community. Researchers are necessary for filling information gaps on threatened species and demonstrating the role of tree species diversity in ecosystem resilience. Moreover, there is a need for committed individuals global citizens who advocate on behalf of threatened trees. Now is the time to act."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Making of Arboretum Wespelaar","article_sequence":9,"start_page":44,"end_page":53,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25767","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14ea36a.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"De Spoelberch, Philippe","article_content":"Whether an arboretum has ten trees or thousands, many of the same management concepts hold true. Yet new collectors often progress through trial and error, as though no one else had gone through the same process. I began raising trees from seed in my garden in the late 1960s. As with many mad collectors (no matter what is being collected), I started the whole thing without much forethought it just began one day. But I kept going and expanded the collection into neighboring woods and meadows. In 2003, I established Arboretum Wespelaar as an independent institution in a small village north of Brussels, Belgium.\nMy family had operated the Artois brewery for generations, so I was fortunate to have the means and the space to begin such a collection. (Artois is now part of Anheuser-Bush InBev, and we are today just long-term family shareholders.) I also had the opportunity of starting early, having good advice from my father, who loved trees, and I was curious and determined to know more. I remember my father kidding me because I did not immediately see the difference between a young beech (Fagus) and hornbeam (Carpinus) or, worse, a spruce (Picea) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga). I would not get caught again.\nI returned to Belgium in 1969, after getting a graduate degree in business administration from Columbia University, with 150 seedlings in a big bag. In those days, you could carry about anything on a plane. Most of the seedlings had germinated in a wooden Borden milk box on the terrace of my apartment in New York. I had collected others during a trip to California just before my return. Fifty years later, the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) from that trip are the tallest and girthiest trees on the estate and arboretum.\nWhile working as a young brewery salesman in my late twenties, I visited dozens of gardens and arboreta around the world. I started buying plants at local nurseries and then European specialist nurseries. The collection spread from the garden around my house (twenty-five acres) into what was to become the arboretum (eventually fifty acres). For the first twenty-five years, I had the help of a single gardener. Now, five-full time gardeners manage the arboretum and the nearby garden at Herkenrode. Over the years, we learned by doing.\nPreparing the Ground\nWhen we began, two kinds of areas were used: meadows and woodlands. Both needed some kind of intervention. I learned this at my expense. Our first foray into the woodlands was done without concern for honey fungus (Armillaria mellea), which causes root rot. As trees were cut to open vistas, we left stumps, and the fungus soon got the best of many choice plants. We did not make this mistake when extending the collections into the old oak wood now in the arboretum: All shrubs and undergrowth were removed with a rotary cutter and uprooted. All deadwood was removed. We did not have additional honey fungus problems, but this exercise did little for the soil structure. It took years before moles arrived, finally suggesting improvements in soil structure and aeration (performed by millions of worms).\nThe old meadows required a different approach. Cattle had trampled and compacted the soils. As a result, it was necessary to plow these areas before planting. In one case, we even allowed a local farmer to grow corn for two seasons. Without soil preparation, the plants sulk, never sending roots beyond the planting hole and eventually drowning there, at least in a flat part of the world like Flanders. After plowing, we created mounds and planted the trees upon them, allowing the water to drain. Initially, it looked as if I was trying to create a minigolf course, but visitors were kind enough to say that the whole thing was not too ridiculous. By now, the result is spectacular. You can easily see that the trees planted on mounds are at an advantage, and the movement in the terrain provides some visual appeal.\nSourcing the Plants\nI have long enjoyed plant propagation. Like many kids, I was fascinated with seeing seeds burst into growth. I was even scolded in school for growing wheat in the inkpot of my desk. The arboretum and the nearby gardens currently contain almost eleven thousand living accessions of woody plants. Of these, 50 percent were raised by us from seed, cuttings, and collected seedlings. Many originated from expeditions to the wild. My first trip was to Nepal in 1975, and successive annual trips (often with the International Dendrology Society) have targeted every possible temperate locale, from California to Hokkaido.\nWhen seeds arrive throughout the autumn and winter, we place them straight into the refrigerator. A numbered label is added to the individual bag and accompanies the seed through subsequent steps. The label is essential. (It is embarrassing to admit that you do not remember the origin of a beautiful plant.) The seed lots accumulate until March, when they are sown in pots. Of course, many seeds could be sown outside when they arrive (the cold, moist winter conditions are generally suitable for this), but mice will always find them and have a feast. Ungerminated seed pots should be allowed to go through another winter, because belated surprises can always be expected. Seedlings are repotted when big enough to withstand the shock (two or four true leaves above the cotyledon) but basically when we have the time. Seedlings can stay crowded in a pot for many months.\nAs a precaution, always split a collection of rare seeds into several lots and treat each set differently. Some twenty years ago, I received a hundred seeds of a recently discovered species of magnolia (Magnolia decidua, then known as Manglietia decidua) from China. I kept fifty seeds and distributed the others in equal sets to five good propagators and magnolia enthusiasts. One morning, I had a look at my tray and realized that a fungus had killed all fifty seedlings. I was hoping that my five colleagues would have succeeded. One had died; one did not remember receiving the seeds. Of the others, Tom Hudson (of Tregrehan Garden in Cornwall) and Dick Figlar (of the Magnolia Society International) had managed to grow the seedlings and are responsible for all specimens of this species in cultivation, including the one at Arboretum Wespelaar.\nCuttings are collected between the end of May until mid-August. Every time we purchase a plant, we immediately take cuttings, given that cuttings from young plants often root more easily. For example, I took cuttings on a young Magnolia 'Elizabeth' three years in a row; out of five cuttings taken each time on the first, second, and fourth year, we succeeded at propagating five, two, and then none. The winter months are hard for the cuttings; even perfectly rooted cuttings will decay under the attack of fungi. Healthy white roots go brown, and the base of the unhardened cuttings does too; the cutting dries up. We have not been very good at keeping our cuttings growing, but these losses can be a relief. We still end up with too many plants: some five hundred cuttings and seedlings every year, which will have to be looked after for another three to ten years.\nSmall seedlings can be collected along roads and edges of woodlands. These will travel well if kept in relatively dry moss, packed in plastic bags or plastic water bottles. (Obviously, you must be respectful of rules and legal restrictions.) We also purchase plants, mainly in pots. The smaller, the better. I have had much disappointment with large plants. Small plants are, of course, cheaper and can be grown to a good size in one of our nurseries until ready for final planting in the arboretum.\nPlanting the Landscape\nWe have used three temporary nurseries around the garden and arboretum. Good woodland soil and shade from large trees provide the ideal growing conditions for our small plants and seedlings. It is ideal to observe your plants until they have suffered a bad winter. It gives you the time to decide where to plant them. They will transplant with a good lump of soil (unlike the miserable peat ball with circling roots that you find at the average garden center). We have seldom failed in transplanting a young tree or shrub raised in these woodland nurseries. On the other hand, we have lost many plants in the first few years in these sites. But better there than in the grounds after an expensive effort at planting!\nWe rarely place a plant directly into its final location. Most spend as long as five years in the nurseries. Few people like the idea; it seems like double work. But I consider not taking this intermediate step to be a grave mistake. Many recently acquired plants will die, and given this reality, I like them to die in the nursery. I have often thought it would have been much better to collect art of any kind and, like a dendrologist, throw two-thirds of the collection away and enjoy the remaining successes. At least, works of art generally gain value over time, whereas aging trees become an expensive problem.\nWhen it comes time for siting the plants, we use a homegrown method involving playing cards. I do not know who came up with the idea, but we have used it for fifty years. We staple two sets of plasticized playing cards (reds and blues) onto plants in the nursery. The identity of the plant and its card is written up on a special form. A corresponding set of playing cards is placed on 104 bamboo sticks, which are reused for several years. We then take a walk through the grounds, staking locations for each of the plants. We aim to get rid of all the bamboo stakes while trying to remain intelligent and effective and still get home in time for dinner. It takes us, in general, up to five hours to place two sets of cards. Of course, we could write the plant's name on the stick, but it is much easier to spot the cards from a distance.\nWe often situate the plants in taxonomic groupings. So, when we're placing the bamboo stakes, we first attempt to place a viburnum, for instance, within the viburnum section. If there is no space left, we find room elsewhere. Obviously, you must know what condition the plant enjoys, how big it will become, and so forth. One becomes better at this with time, but the proper planting distance is always a terrible illusion. Someone once pointed out that when there was a gap between two trees and you add a young tree between them, you end up with two additional gaps. I must admit that I have found myself planting two new trees in such spaces. Discipline is essential.\nLarge trees should be planted at least fifty feet apart, yet we have many at half that distance. We will remove one of them in due course. Trees should not be planted near the edge of a woodland, or they will grow slanted. Likewise, groups of three an arrangement beloved by landscape architects should be avoided as none of the three will end up as a balanced specimen. (This is not a problem for shrubs and small trees.) These conservative approaches will make your arboretum look rather dull for many years, so you have to suffer the irony of friends and guests. Most do not understand what is going on. I like to think that I do not need to see my trees in old age; I know what they will look like. Other plant collectors are more impatient.\nCataloguing and Labeling\nWhen beginning a catalogue for a plant collection, it is a good idea to think carefully over what software to use and then leverage its capabilities to the greatest extent. These days, you may want to consider using relational database software, but a single spreadsheet can be equally effective. Take some time to sit down and think over the structure. Some curators will suggest that at least twenty fields are necessary, but I recommend a minimum of six: accession number, name, landscape location, source, date planted, and condition. Most people will also want a field for any supplementary information. The printed catalogue at Arboretum Wespelaar presently uses nine fields, out of some twenty in our Access database.\nAccession numbers are a difficult concept for beginning dendrologists. I do not know why. An accession number is no more than a simple and unique sequential number given to each plant that comes into the collection. You can give the same number to several plants provided they are from the same source, same age, and in the same location. But otherwise, give them unique sequential numbers, or you will soon regret it. Further, there is no reason to include the date within the accession number.\nOf course, everyone will want to know the age of a plant. Most curators will include the date of planting on the label, which is a good idea. But we made the mistake of including the date as part of the accession number: Our first plant bears accession number 66001, which means it was the first accession in 1966. This system was useful until the year 1999. With the millennium, we got in trouble, as the first plant of the new millennium was 00001. And it shows up first in any numbered list. We had to add two digits for the sequential listing.\nWhen it comes to the name, it is best to refer to a single accepted list, thereby avoiding spelling errors and nomenclatural issues. The Royal Horticultural Society's Plant Finder is probably the only document to be sufficiently comprehensive and regularly updated. Synonyms and taxonomic changes of names are clearly indicated in annual updates. It even includes cultivated varieties. Still, if you specialize in a certain taxon (like magnolias), you may want to use a recent monograph on that group.\nOnce this record-keeping is complete, then comes labeling the curator's nightmare. I have always had an average memory and have not relied on it to know anything. This is probably why I have been so determined to make sure that our plants are properly labeled. Our labels include the name and accession number and are made on a thick ribbon of white PET plastic cut to length and engraved with an automatic engraving machine (a Gravograph). Labels are inexpensive: we estimate that it cost us one euro to make a label with a reasonably long name.\nLabeling problems, however, are never far away. I learned plants while visiting arboreta and botanical gardens all over the world. As I explored these collections on my own, I would go to a plant, take a picture, and then search for a name. I would be exasperated if I did not find a label and sometimes astonished at the number of wrongly labeled plants I encountered. Even so, at Arboretum Wespelaar, one of our members on a study day was surprised to find a label stating Abies rufinerve on a new maple accession. (Abies, of course, is the genus of fir trees the tag should have read Acer rufinerve.) So problems occur even in the best houses.\nChange in the Collection\nArboretum Wespelaar, like any plant collection, is in a constant state of evolution. Not only do plants grow and die, but interests and goals shift as well, changing the landscape over time. Although I fell in love with conifers initially (my first plant was a white fir, Abies concolor, accessioned in 1966), I soon switched to deciduous trees, particularly maples. Around 1969, I went to a local nursery that had a seemingly good catalogue and proudly ordered one of each maple on their list. I soon found that my collection of some twenty maples was far from what the world had to offer. Would I have given up if I had realized that there were more than 120 species, along with hundreds of hybrids and cultivars? My subsequent loves were rhododendrons, magnolias, and stewartias, as proven by the number of those plants in the collection. Today, the team at the arboretum aims to acquire all of the main species in all important genera and in particular plants from wild origin.\nIt is clear that gardens, if well-curated, can contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity. The Franklin tree (Franklinia alatamaha) is a memorable example: although it went extinct in the wild in the early 1800s, the species survived in Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia. While conservation is an additional objective of Arboretum Wespelaar, our primary purpose is to ensure that people can study and learn to love plants. We have no shop, no cafeteria, and nothing for children. Dogs and joggers are not welcome. The result is that our visitors actually look at labels and take notes. I have always intended that the garden and then the arboretum should be open to the public, recognizing that I have benefited from the generosity of botanists, plant collectors, and gardeners who have opened their collections to me. In turn, it's my pleasure to welcome others and inspire them to see and know plants.\nOnce a year, usually in November, we have a difficult day when we deaccession trees, removing them from the collection. This year, we will likely deaccession around fifty plants. These are painful choices but very necessary. We have planted too much with the knowledge that we would have failures and that others wouldn't last. I am adamant that as many as possible of our trees should have lower branches on half of the crown. In due course, aesthetic considerations will always rule above other imperatives. Within a changing collection, it is always nice to have too many good things."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"A Time for Trees, A Time for Arboreta","article_sequence":10,"start_page":54,"end_page":57,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25764","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170856b.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Donnelly, Gerard","article_content":"Planting and watching trees grow takes time. A long time. The lifespan of a tree may be the equivalent of multiple human generations. This is the good and patient work of arboreta, which requires considerable time horizons to achieve many of their purposes. At The Morton Arboretum, in Lisle, Illinois, we call this 'tree time.' The time required to establish, test, and evaluate tree collections and develop beautiful, planted landscapes that inspire people's interest and appreciation is such that only long-term, multigenerational organizations like arboreta can undertake them.\nGiven these timescales, I like to say that it is good to be old if you are an arboretum. This year, The Morton Arboretum is celebrating its centennial year, having been established by Joy Morton in 1922. Morton had been encouraged and advised by Charles Sprague Sargent of the then-fifty-year-old Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. The Arnold Arboretum is celebrating its sesquicentennial year, founded in 1872, the same year Morton's father, J. Sterling Morton, established Arbor Day in Nebraska. The Arbor Day Foundation, created fifty years ago, in 1972, upon the Morton-family legacy of planting trees, is advocating for tree planting on the occasion of its anniversary with a theme of 'A Time for Trees.'\nThe time for trees has arrived. There has never been a time when recognition of the value of trees and tree planting was greater than it is today. Trees are being planted globally at scale to sequester carbon and cool the planet. There is widespread appreciation for the ecosystem services that trees provide in urban areas by filtering air pollution, cooling hot cities, and mitigating stormwater pulses. Numerous scientific studies show how trees contribute to human health and well-being.\nYet time has not been good for trees over the past 50, 100, and 150 years. Burgeoning human activities have drastically reduced the size and health of the world's forests as well as the diversity of trees and myriad other organisms that depend on them. In addition, climate change is already impacting trees through altered weather patterns, violent storms and floods, drought, and ravaging forest fires. Trees long-lived, stationary organisms are highly susceptible to climate change because growing conditions are changing at rates that can stress and exceed tolerances and adaptability within their lifetime.\nHow serious is the threat? The recent State of the World's Trees report by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is alarming. Based on the organization's Global Trees Assessment involving contributions from arboreta across the globe, including The Morton Arboretum, the report documented that 30 percent of the 58,497 known tree species in the world are threatened with extinction.\nWith the majority of the world's population now living in cities, urban forests are recognized as key assets to ensure healthful, sustainable, and climate-resilient communities. However, urban centers are challenging settings for trees to grow in and survive, let alone flourish and contribute their full complement of benefits to people, communities, and the environment. Also, trees and their benefits are not equitably distributed across urban landscapes they often reflect the disparities of resources and human demographics.\nClimate change, tree extinction, tree planting, urban forestry, and environmental justice are significant challenges that all arboreta can play a key role in addressing. But the magnitude of these issues requires the power of coordinated collaboration to have a meaningful impact. No single arboretum can do it alone.\nFor this reason and others, ten years ago, The Morton Arboretum established ArbNet as a global network of arboreta. By working together, arboreta can be better equipped to champion the cause of trees. ArbNet has identified more than 2,100 arboreta in 133 countries, all of which have a common purpose of collecting and showcasing the diversity of trees and promoting their planting and conservation.\nArbNet offers an arboretum accreditation program that recognizes standards of professional practice at four different levels of institutional capacity, encouraging the achievement of higher levels of development over time. Lockerly Arboretum in Milledgeville, Georgia, provides a good example. Initially accredited at level two in 2017, Lockerly used ArbNet accreditation standards to set development goals, including the creation of a new horticultural internship program and expanding participation in scientific research. Upon meeting these goals, Lockerly achieved level-three accreditation in 2021. ArbNet helps member institutions exchange information, expertise, and models that others can use or adapt for their purposes.\nClimate change threatens trees as well as the arboreta that maintain living collections of them. Arboreta need to conduct tree performance evaluations and risk assessments to prepare for predicted changes in growing conditions. We also need adaptation strategies that include relocating species, varieties, or specimens to arboreta with more suitable future growing conditions. ArbNet can play a key role in this. Rather than have such exchanges handled variably on a case-by-case basis, an organized system and standardized process are needed to optimize these adaptive plans. The Morton Arboretum envisions a coordinated climate adaptation strategy and program for trees among the arboreta and tree-focused gardens in North America.\nArbNet's interactive network also provides an opportunity to test tree science questions using a 'common garden' approach at arboreta in different growing zones and environmental conditions. One example of this approach is a North Dakota State University study to evaluate adaptive variation among sets of genetically identical poplars (Populus) growing at eighteen arboretum and university sites across the United States (including the Lockerly Arboretum). Researchers are using whole-genome sequencing and climate modeling to predict how plants will respond to different climate conditions in the future and inform management approaches to build climate resiliency.\nTo halt the extinction of threatened tree species, arboreta must commit institutional resources and staff expertise. We must coordinate with one another on targeted tree conservation efforts, including through programs like the Global Conservation Consortia organized by BGCI. A prominent example is the Global Conservation Consortium for Oak led by The Morton Arboretum in collaboration with BGCI and dozens of arboreta and other partners involved in oak conservation. No single arboretum or garden can or should conserve all the world's threatened oak species, so a coordinated, global effort is needed. As part of these efforts, The Morton Arboretum is establishing conservation groves on-site for two threatened species from the southeastern United States: Georgia oak (Quercus georgiana) and maple-leaved oak (Quercus acerifolia). Over tree time in 50, 100, or 150 years curators will use these collections to ensure that the species are safeguarded from extinction risks, and researchers will study what can be done to help them survive in nature.\nTree planting has risen to the forefront as a solution to blunt global climate change, given the ability of trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Yet large-scale tree plantings for carbon sequestration often take the form of low-diversity tree plantations or forestry plantings that do nothing to protect tree biodiversity; they may even diminish it. Arboreta must lend their expertise in tree diversity, planting, and horticulture to improve approaches for carbon-focused tree planting and reforestation efforts. A new global biodiversity standard for large-scale tree plantings being introduced by BGCI will position arboreta and other botanical gardens as key resources to achieve these essential outcomes, ensuring effective carbon capture in addition to not at the expense of biodiversity conservation.\nArboreta also have an important role to play in supporting objectives to plant trees in urban environments to ameliorate heat, filter pollutants, mitigate stormwater flooding, and lower energy costs. Urban forests also add beauty and improve social cohesion, human health, and well-being. Arboreta know how to cultivate trees in designed and managed landscapes, but they must assert their involvement and influence with municipal planners, engineers, and landscape architects to enhance opportunities to develop healthy and sustainable urban tree canopies.\nWhen arboreta partner with community organizations and local government agencies, they can play a meaningful role in addressing the disparities in people's access to the environmental and health-related benefits of a thriving urban forest. Although this issue was not at the forefront of efforts by arboreta or botanical gardens fifty or one hundred years ago, arboreta should now actively seek funding (or commit their own resources) for equity-focused tree plantings that engage residents in participatory planning and provide training for tree planting and care. Arboreta can partner with tree nurseries and growers to provide not only the diversity of suitable trees needed for urban conditions but also at the sizes that can be managed in community and volunteer planting efforts.\nFurthermore, and aligned with the goal to engage and serve a broader spectrum of the public, arboreta must actively foster and support career paths associated with the work of an arboretum to new and different groups of people. Only with a diversified pipeline of tree experts, curators, scientists, horticulturists, conservationists, and educators will arboreta fully serve the public good.\nArboreta, with their beautiful trees and landscapes, attract a substantial public audience and provide immersive experiences and learning moments about the value of trees and nature. These are opportunities to register tree time the time it takes for a tree to reach its full potential over 50, 100, or even 150 years. These long timelines require commitments to tree planting for future generations, sustained efforts to protect them and their growing environment, and actions to address climate change and other tree threats.\nThe grand challenges of our time related to trees require arboreta and tree-focused botanical gardens to collaborate actively. Together, these institutions can achieve more meaningful and successful impacts, engaging their vast collective audience to encourage people to plant and advocate for trees and a more sustainable world. The year 2022 is certainly a time for trees and for arboreta."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Strangeness of Trees","article_sequence":11,"start_page":58,"end_page":59,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25763","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d1708528.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Damery, Jonathan","article_content":"The general form of a tree trunk, branches, twigs, leaves is so commonplace as to be completely unremarkable. Trees inhabit spaces that most of us experience daily, and, in fact, they often create those spaces. A low, widespread, and rather twisting elm stretches its branches over the patio of a cafe, not far from my apartment. It forms an enchanted ceiling, especially in the spring, when the samaras alight in the branches. Any tree we encounter is likewise defining its space. We move around them, beneath them, and sometimes even upon them. We're so familiar with trees that, for some of us, they feature in our earliest memories. In my case, it was a ten-foot-tall apple tree in a neighbor's backyard. (I filled a bucket with the forbidden fruit and was ordered to return it with an apology.) For Emanuele Coccia, an associate professor at the \u0192cole des Hautes \u0192tudes en Sciences Sociales, it was a trio of Italian umbrella pines viewed from the balcony of his childhood bedroom. He calls them his 'first image of the world.'\nCoccia recounts this memory in Trees, a book designed for an exhibit of the same name at Fondation Cartier, a contemporary art museum in Paris. The large-format book, published in an English translation, is the kind that you might see stacked on a coffee table in a furniture catalogue. It's filled with almost five hundred images, including field sketches, conceptual paintings, and film stills. Often, when parsing meaning from an artistic depiction of a tree, we turn to a standard suite of metaphors. We see the ancient oak, gnarled and twisted, as a symbol of endurance and solidity. We see a small tree growing from broken concrete as a reminder of perseverance. Scholars might examine specific depictions through the lens of post-colonial studies or otherwise. Yet many of the writers and artists who contribute to Trees suggest that, first and foremost, we must acknowledge trees' status as living beings, reconsidering the strangeness of their too-familiar forms.\nStefano Mancuso, the Italian biologist who is a prominent figure in the controversial field of 'plant intelligence,' leads this charge, pointing out the bizarro ingenuity of plant life. 'Like the negative of a photo, what is white in the animal world is black in the plant world,' he writes. 'Organisms that are so different from us that, as far as we are concerned, they may as well be aliens that evolved on a different planet.' Mancuso enumerates many of the differences between the lifestyles of plants and animals, including differences pertaining to movement, of course, and our inverse needs for carbon dioxide and oxygen. He emphasizes one difference as especially noteworthy: the distribution of specialized functions. While almost all animals have organs that cannot be separated from the rest of the body, plants spread these functions across their form in repeating modules. Plants, for instance, respire without organs that resemble lungs. They digest food without anything that resembles a stomach. Given this functional distribution, a Kentucky coffeetree can lose a large branch from a lightning strike (another one of my early childhood memories) yet retain its ability to produce the organic compounds needed to continue living.\nThis phenomenon of distribution, Mancuso suggests, can cause us to discount the liveliness of plants. We recognize that plants are living organisms, yet we see little of ourselves in their structure. Although we know that plants die, many of us aren't exactly sure what it means for them to be alive. Distribution, we come to recognize, is fundamental to the forms featured in Trees.\nAmong the most maximalist works in the book are Luiz Zerbini's large-scale paintings that situate trees within a jumble of urban textures. Zerbini's Mam\u00e3o Manilha shows a potted papaya (Carica papaya) growing alongside several bromeliads. Two papaya leaves sag along its trunk, preparing to join another that has already dropped to the ground. Above them, a bird opens one of several fruits, revealing the orange flesh and black seeds within, and above that, white flowers appear in large, loose clusters. The painting not only captures the modular form of the plant each leaf, each fruit, ultimately destined to be shed it also captures how this disposability becomes central to a web of other biotic interactions. The pot suggests that a human had grown the papaya in anticipation of the fruit, yet, in a war of attractions, a bird won the harvest. A series of leaf scars along the papaya's trunk also reminds us of the seasons of growth and disposal that have led to this moment. The painting is a composite an imagined place yet the plant seems to be a singular individual, forging an existence that is less than glamorous but nonetheless alive.\nThe book also includes works by Indigenous artists from several regions in South America, including the Gran Chaco, the semiarid plain that sprawls between the Paraguay River and the Andes. The works from this region are ink and paper drawings, and almost all capture interactions among trees and other organisms. A fascinating untitled work by Eurides Asque G\u2014mez shows lines of leafcutter ants trailing into their volcanic burrows carrying leaves of algarrobo trees (Prosopis nigra). The ants, in turn, are shown being picked off by partridges. According to the artist, who is quoted in an essay by Ursula and Verena Regehr, the partridges nest in grasses between the algarrobo, knowing that the ants are partial to the young leaves. Meanwhile, an ovenbird has built its nest in one tree, and birds perch on the branches of another. In this way, G\u2014mez showcases not only the modular, throw-away nature of the trees' emerging leaves a solution to being immobile targets for predators but the way that their modular structures become essential to other organisms.\nMoreover, Trees is a testament to the ways these omnipresent forms shape the lives of humans. G\u2014mez and other artists often include people in the web of arboreal interactions depicted in their art. An atmospheric scientist, Abigail Swann, describes how trees influence climate, choreographing weather patterns a fact among many in the book that reminds us that our disregard for the imperiled state of trees may precipitate our own demise. Yet, on a personal level, the artists and essayists are, themselves, residing among trees, sometimes building livelihoods around their forms. The ensemble of individuals includes landscape designers, a mathematician, the film director Agn\u008fs Varda, the American artist Charles Gaines, and many others.\nYet it is the botanist Francis Hall\u00e9 whose lifelong engagement with trees is most clearly documented in the pages. Hall\u00e9 offers forth drawings from field notebooks, prepared in rainforests around the world: Sri Lanka, C\u00f4te d'Ivoire, Peru, and elsewhere. In some sense, these field sketches represent the leaves of Hall\u00e9's career, collected and pressed within the covers of dozens of notebooks that he has labeled by date and location. 'You quickly realize that the shape of a tree, even when young is never random,' Hall\u00e9 says in an interview with Coccia. 'Each species has its own 'architectural model,' that is, a tree's growth and development follow a genetic program.'\nHall\u00e9's drawings endeavor to capture these unique forms. Among his most impressive works is a large drawing on tracing paper titled Forest Profile, which depicts dozens of trees growing in relationship with one another in French Guiana. He provides two views of the forest: from the side (a cross-section that shows the complex layering of tree canopies) and from above (showing the locations of the tree trunks and the spread of their branches). Even in this schematic form, Hall\u00e9 captures each individual's species-specific, non-random shape. His empirical approach seems like it would produce results that are more like traditional scientific illustrations, often beautiful but unsurprising. Yet through his careful attention to detail, and the disambiguation of these overlapping forms, Hall\u00e9 captures what many of the other artists in Trees likewise reveal: the strange reality of the still lives of trees."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Gardens for All","article_sequence":12,"start_page":60,"end_page":63,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25765","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170896e.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Mack, MaryLynn","article_content":"As an African American woman who has worked in public gardens for the past eighteen years, I often experienced firsthand the need for greater diversity. The lack of inclusion in the workspace is not an issue exclusive to public gardens, but it should be noted that many public gardens in the United States were founded by white people and many are primarily staffed by white people, despite being located in communities of color. Like many of my friends and colleagues in other industries, I was often asked to be the representative for all people of color when discussing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (a set of issues often known as IDEA). Being the 'only' in a room was disconcerting, but it also gave me access and opportunity to speak on important matters and empowered me to do my own self-reflection, do my own research, and do my best to connect and engage with as many communities as possible.\nOver my years working in gardens, I found myself having conversations with employees at other botanic gardens and arboreta who also served communities not reflected in their boards, staff, and volunteers. I may have been an 'only' in my workspace, but I was far from alone to bring forward the need for change. The American Public Gardens Association (APGA) also had conversations with its members and took the call to action to begin a more authentic discussion about the bias, barriers, and baggage in our industry. APGA is the leading professional organization for the field of public horticulture. Members include more than ten thousand individuals at over six hundred institutions, in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Canada, and twenty other countries. The organization's primary goals are to encourage best practices, offer educational opportunities, and advocate for members, so this dialogue was a crucial step toward action for public gardens as a whole.\nIn 2016, a group of eleven truth-seekers scheduled a phone meeting to talk about diversity and inclusion. This group wasn't appointed, but we were individuals who had asked questions or nudged the association to 'do something.' We represented generational, ethnic, gender, racial, and sexual-orientation diversity and worked in gardens throughout the United States. Only a handful held a high-level leadership position in their respective gardens. This inaugural group spent the first twenty minutes dissecting the definition of diversity. Through that process of discovery, we unearthed the varying degrees of knowledge, the chasm of feelings and opinions, and a quick understanding of just how different we all felt on how to move forward. While at times uncomfortable, we realized that within that uncomfortable space, we could reflect on our own bias. Thus began a year-long exploration of reading diversity articles, untangling historical perspectives steeped in garden history, and having informal chats about our own experiences while serving public gardens. The work was difficult and sometimes frustrating, without a guidebook of boxes to check.\nIt is important to note that regardless of where gardens and their staff stand in their work towards inclusion and diversity, everyone must start by addressing what they do not know. Starting with a garden's history, for example, gardens should bring to light what the land was before, and who lived on it and cared for it. One resource that is especially helpful when exploring this issue is a book, edited by Duane Blue Spruce and Tanya Thrasher, titled The Land Has Memory: Indigenous Knowledge, Native Landscapes, and the National Museum of the American Indian. It speaks to the rich history and contribution of indigenous people to the land in the Americas and is a thoughtful representation of how traditional Indigenous ways should be put into practice by cultural institutions.\nIncreasing individual knowledge in these and other areas is crucial. This work helps combat the collective unawareness that exists when members of a group believe that others in their group hold comparably more or less extreme attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. The term 'unawareness' is not meant to disparage the work currently happening in gardens but is a reminder that the work needs to start with recognizing that the struggles of communities of color are not new. Allies must take advantage of resources that include research reports, academic studies, and courageous conversations that bring to light past disparities.\nAfter a year of self and group discovery, the IDEA committee made plans to involve the membership at the APGA conference held in Hamilton, Ontario. Our inaugural session was scheduled for eight in the morning on Saturday, a tough time slot since it was the last day of a week-long conference and the morning after the traditional evening farewell celebration. We were nervous and truly had no idea how our stories and messages would be received. The agenda was informal: committee members had decided to simply introduce the topic of diversity and share personal experiences. With a mere five minutes before the session started, we had to request more chairs the room was already packed. What happened next showed us that public gardens were ready and eager for change.\nIn that crowded room, we had executive directors of large gardens, first-time attendees, educators, gardeners, and outreach coordinators who worked directly in their local communities. We listened, shared personal vulnerabilities, and publicly accepted a challenge to move forward in the work. Many conversations continued in the corridor after the session. We were all so excited, but we all had the question: What in the world needed to happen next?\nInclusion and diversity work is often slower than people might hope for. It takes time to develop authentic relationships, actively listen, and recognize that every public garden has different obstacles to overcome. It also takes time to build trust. Patrick Lencioni, author of Five Dysfunctions of a Team, writes about this, describing team-building steps that also work when creating a more inclusive environment. The fear of being vulnerable is often a barrier when speaking on matters of race, diversity, and equity, yet showing vulnerability builds trust in conversation and in relationships. Asking questions that allow people of color a safe space to share their experiences of microaggressions, gaslighting, and other forms of bias are first steps toward changes needed in the workspace and the garden.\nA few years ago, I had the opportunity to speak on diversity and inclusion at the Botanic Gardens Conservation International Congress in Warsaw, Poland. During the open time for questions, one attendee expressed his concern when broaching a conversation about race with someone in the workplace. This person was afraid of using the wrong words, saying the wrong thing, or inadvertently offending a colleague. We discussed the need to acknowledge your own bias and privilege, but then I ended by stating that you just need to 'step in it.' Not my most eloquent moment, especially since I was attempting to encourage this person to step bravely toward having the conversation rather than becoming immobilized and missing an opportunity to have an authentic exchange. Yet that became my tagline and the start of many meaningful conversations for the duration of the conference. This work is messy, imperfect, wonderful, and needed.\nMany public garden leaders have embraced this need for diversity and inclusion and entered into the work with vulnerability and passion. Brian Vogt has built a framework that infuses IDEA throughout every aspect of Denver Botanic Garden's operation, where he is the chief executive officer. For over ten years, the garden has devoted themselves to IDEA principles with board and staff committees, as well as extensive relationship development resulting in eighty partner organizations. When describing their approach at the garden, Vogt notes how they 'emphasize the power, not the pain, of IDEA work.' Today, their visitors reflect the diversity of their community as does the board itself, which is now 40 percent non-white. These changes have resulted in programming that lifts up diverse voices, exhibits, and communications.\u00caVogt further emphasizes, 'Don't get distracted authentic diversity and inclusion work makes\u00caeverything\u00cabetter.'\nOther gardens initially take an external approach and achieve sustainable results. Bruce Harkey, the president and chief executive officer of Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Columbus, Ohio, led an effort to improve the quality of life in the community by creating neighborhood-based outreach and educational programming. One recent example is the conservatory's participation in the HeART of the Protest, where the King Arts Complex produced forty-six days of artistic projects to honor the forty-six years of George Floyd's life. Franklin Park Conservatory hosted performances by dancer Candice Igeleke and musician K. Daniel. These events presented new work that focused on telling the story of Black Americans, from slavery to present day. Franklin Park recently added an internal focus: the board, leadership team, and staff work in unison to honestly assess their diversity, equity, and inclusion status. They then set goals and objectives for measurable improvements.\nThese and countless other examples show that our gardens are embracing change. After APGA's initial group session in Hamilton, members expressed a growing interest to hear and do more when it came to IDEA principles and practices. The following year, in 2018, when the IDEA committee presented at the Southern California conference in a capacity-filled ballroom, it became apparent we were more than ready to make inclusion a collective goal. The next year, in Washington, DC, the entire conference theme was Diversity. This resulted in a week-long conference filled with panel discussions, lectures, and facilitated sessions surrounding topics about diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in our gardens and beyond.\nOne key moment happened during our very first IDEA Caf\u017d, a keynote luncheon where a group of esteemed panelists talked about their own experiences in public gardens. One of the panelists was in a wheelchair and needed to use the elevator to get backstage. With mere moments before the group was to take center stage in front of an audience of hundreds, the hotel manager received a radio call that the elevator was stuck with our panelist inside! The situation was rectified but we decided to use what happened as a teaching moment. This was an example of how accessibility issues are always present and can impact a person's experience in significant ways. These shared experiences and conversations inspired us to build systems and best practices for the APGA sustainability index, gather feedback and success stories from gardens, and provide encouragement for those gardens who are just beginning to address these issues.\nI smile recalling Brian Vogt's charge to 'embrace the work of diversity and inclusion joyfully.' It is good advice. While our work with inclusion will never be done, the past two years have taught us that collective resilience and embracing change will sustain us along this journey. As I think about the diversity of plants in my garden, which experience stress and environmental adversity year after year, I'm amazed by how they somehow adapt and persevere through it all. They are resilient, and so are we."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Balling and Burlapping","article_sequence":13,"start_page":64,"end_page":64,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25766","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d14ea326.jpg","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Copeland, Chris","article_content":"Transplanting is a delicate process that ideally occurs during dormancy, at the beginning or end of the growing season. In the Arnold Arboretum's nurseries, we use traditional methods to ball and burlap our field-grown trees. To preserve the proper ratio between roots and shoots, we measure the diameter of the trunk: for every inch, we need a minimum root-ball diameter of fifteen inches. Because we cannot input every factor into an equation, we also exercise judgment, accounting for the tree's height and the anatomy of its root system.\nOnce we have determined the diameter, we sever the roots with a sharp spade and excavate a trench. The root ball should be deep enough to ensure that taproots are retained at least 65 percent the diameter. We shave away excess soil to minimize transport weight. The exposed root ball is wrapped with burlap and secured with sisal, using a drum-lacing pattern. We carefully rock the tree, freeing it from the soil below. At this point, the tree is ready to go."},{"arnoldia_cover":true,"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25759","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d170b726.jpg","title":"2022-79-1","volume":79,"issue_number":"1","year":2022,"series":null,"season":null},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Arnoldia Reimagined","article_sequence":1,"start_page":2,"end_page":5,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25736","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d25e856a.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Damery, Jonathan","article_content":"This issue of Arnoldia is devoted primarily to the world of nineteenthcentury horticulture and botany, the milieu that shaped the Arnold Arboretum upon its founding in 1872. Yet, in some sense, the issue also represents the culmination of a twentieth-century vision for the magazine itself. Next year, as part of the Arnold Arboretum's sesquicentennial celebration, Arnoldia will relaunch with a structure and approach that is dynamic and distinctly modern. The magazine will still appear in print every quarter and serve as a definitive source for novel and interdisciplinary research on trees, shrubs, and landscapes. Yet, an updated format will allow for new points of access\u2014new kinds of content. In the context of modern publishing, the production of a magazine like Gardener's Monthly, which began in Philadelphia in 1859, seems almost inconceivable. Its editor, Thomas Meehan, would have exchanged feedback with authors on handwritten manuscripts. That much can be expected. More miraculous was the printing. The final manuscript would have been typeset by hand, each page composed of thousands of individual lead characters. Once a page was complete, a proofreader would review a test copy, marking errors as an assistant read the original manuscript aloud. According to a detailed account of the process for producing Harper's Magazine, outlined in 1865, the initial proofs were often rife with errors. After all, the compositor prepared everything backward, in the inverse of the printed page. After corrections and additional proofing, the process would continue to the individuals responsible for operating the presses, folding machines, and so on\u2014an elaborate, labor-intensive coordination of both mechanical and human power.1 The Arnold Arboretum's first foray into magazine publishing was a monthly titled Garden and Forest. It debuted in 1888, weeks after Gardener's Monthly ended. Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of the Arboretum, oversaw the magazine for its ten-year run, but the editorial offices were in New York, a few blocks from the printer: Harpers and Brothers. (Harper's Magazine was produced in the same building.) Arnoldia was born as The Bulletin of Popular Information in 1911, and for the next fifty-nine years, the periodical was typeset by hand, using the same basic method employed for Gardener's Monthly. The final person to perform the tedium of creating Arnoldia word by word, line by line was Howard Allgaier, the printer for the Harvard University Botanical Museum. Allgaier began producing the publication in 1933, at the behest of Oakes Ames, the supervisor of the Arnold Arboretum. Ames, a bibliophile, was known to say that \"a botanist's research should be a jewel worthy of a proper setting.\"2 Ames also widened the purview of the Bulletin. For its first two decades, the periodical had focused almost entirely on plants growing at the Arnold Arboretum, but in 1931, the format shifted to standalone, topical articles. Ames wrote several of these, including one on the botanical drawings of John Singer Sargent. Arnoldia Reimagined Jonathan Damery Facing page: In the early 1930s, when Arnoldia was still known as The Bulletin of Popular Information, an interdisciplinary spirit emerged that continues to inspire the magazine today. Blanche Ames provided its first contemporary illustrations. ARCHIVES OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM His wife, Blanche Ames, began supplying botanical artwork of her own. The following year, their son coauthored an article about searching for beach plums (Prunus maritima) from an airplane. Authors would follow their wide-ranging lead. The name of the publication changed to Arnoldia in 1941, but otherwise, the structure and general approach remained the same. In 1970, Arnoldia relaunched under the production of a new printer, the Harvard University Printing Office. At least through the end of the decade, Arnoldia was produced on \"hot type\" machines, which meant that the words were input on a keyboard and cast from lead on the spot.3 This mechanical process had emerged almost a century before, but perhaps owing to the relatively simple one-article format of Arnoldia, it had remained feasible for Allgaier to continue setting the type by hand. The change in printers coincided with a dramatic reimagining of Arnoldia\u2014a project overseen by Stephanne Sutton, who took over the publication upon the retirement of Donald Wyman, the editor for twenty-nine years.4 The 1970 redesign was more than a visual makeover; it also brought new storytelling approaches. The 1960s is often considered an era of innovation in magazine publishing. Large general-interest magazines experienced circulation declines, attributed to the rise of television. (For instance, Life, which once claimed to reach the hands of one in four American adults, ceased publication in 1972.) At the same time, special-interest magazines began to proliferate.5 The redesign of In 1970, Arnoldia was reimagined as a special-interest magazine with multiple features per issue. The current logotype of Arnoldia debuted at the end of 1982. ARCHIVES OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM Arnoldia 5 Arnoldia firmly repositioned the magazine within this new publishing context. While Arnoldia had long hosted a diverse mix of subjects, authored mainly by horticultural professionals, it would thereafter contain multiple articles per issue and showcase a glossy image on the cover. Over the next five decades, Arnoldia went through several visual updates. Among those milestones: the current logotype and dimensions debuted in 1982, and the first color photographs appeared on the interior pages in 2001. Behind the scenes, the modes of production changed dramatically, but our graphic designer, Andrew Winther, skillfully maintained the visual continuity. He began working on the magazine in 1986, while in the art department at the Office of the University Publisher. At that point, the office used offset lithography, and the printing plates were created from photographic negatives of the text and images. By the early 1990s, Winther began designing the layouts on a computer, and ultimately, every aspect of prepress production has gone digital as well. Despite these changes, the basic architecture introduced in 1970 has endured, with each issue composed primarily of several long-form features. In 2022, when the redesigned Arnoldia launches, the feature articles that have long defined Arnoldia will remain central to each issue. But in the opening pages, we will provide a new, distinctive space for shorter narratives that capture behind-thescenes experiences of working with plants in the twenty-first century. We're also adding space for letters, to foster a public dialogue with you, our readers. In the back, we're creating a department composed of essays and opinions. We'll also incorporate contemporary artwork throughout the magazine, building on the legacy established by Blanche Ames ninety years ago. With the first issue of Garden and Forest, published on February 29, 1888, Sargent and the other creators described their commitment to sharing \"noteworthy discoveries\" in the realm of science and horticultural practice. They promised that the magazine would \"place scientific information clearly and simply before the public, and make available for the instruction of all persons interested in garden plants the conclusions reached by the most trustworthy investigators.\" Articles would cover landscape gardening, forest conservation, entomology, and more. The authors would deal both in history and news. Here, looking into 2022, we're doubling down on these longstanding commitments. Expect the first issue to arrive in March 2022. Notes 1 Guernsey, A. H. 1865, December. Making the magazine. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 32(187): 1-31. 2 Allgaier, H. J. 1984. The printing shop. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 30(1): 48-50. 3 Ashton, P. S. 1980. The director's report: The Arnold Arboretum during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1980. Arnoldia, 40(6): 238-293. 4 Howard, R. A. 1970. The director's report: The Arnold Arboretum during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1970. Arnoldia, 30(6), 201-250. 5 Abrahamson, D. and Polsgrove, C. 2009. The right niche: Consumer magazines and advertisers. In D. P. Nord, J. S. Rubin, & M. Schudson (Eds.), A history of the book in America: Volume 5: The enduring book, print culture in postwar America (pp. 107-118). University of North Carolina Press. Jonathan Damery is the editor of Arnoldia."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Trees of the Silent Dell","article_sequence":2,"start_page":6,"end_page":7,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25737","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d25e896d.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Barnett, David","article_content":"A cemetery, by nature, is a place where the past is always present. On September 1, 2021, I retired from Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the twenty-eighth anniversary of the day I started employment there. I had arrived in 1993 as the director of horticulture, having a background in public garden management and degrees in horticulture and ecology. At first, I only noticed the natural landscape and the spectacular collection of trees. Mount Auburn, after all, occupies a unique space in the history of American landscape design: It served as inspiration for other pastoral cemeteries in the mid-nineteenth century and, subsequently, for urban green spaces like Central Park and the Emerald Necklace. I didn't initially focus on the monuments and the other \"cemetery\" aspects of Mount Auburn. About two years after my arrival, I gave a tour of Mount Auburn to Richard Harris, my major professor from graduate school at the University of California, Davis, who had authored a textbook on arboriculture. We stopped in Consecration Dell, a natural amphitheater in the center of the cemetery, where paths on the shaded slopes overlook a small pond. I explained that we had just initiated a project to restore this area to the woodland habitat that existed when the cemetery was founded in 1831. In fact, Mount Auburn's first president, Joseph Story, delivered his consecration address in this very location, noting the importance of natural beauty when mourning loved ones. \"What spot,\" he asked, \"can be more appropriate than this, for such a purpose.\" I described how the restoration would require a phased approach to remove all exotic plants, especially invasive species such as Norway maple (Acer platanoides), and replace them entirely with native species of trees, shrubs, and woodland groundcovers. I felt proud to describe to my mentor how the restoration plan would allow me to put into practice ecological management concepts that I had studied in graduate school. We happened to be standing next to a spectacular Japanese stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia) planted in 1939. I noted that we would not remove the stewartia just because it was an introduced species, but that, when the stewartia eventually died, we would replace it with a native. I also pointed out that the stewartia had a memorial plaque on it with the name and birth and death dates of a woman who had recently passed away. As we talked, a woman who had been walking nearby came up to introduce herself. She was the daughter of the woman memorialized on the tree plaque. She told me that the family had chosen to purchase the plaque because Consecration Dell was one of her mother's favorite spots. The woman said she visited frequently to think about her mother and thanked me for making Mount Auburn\u2014and Consecration Dell itself\u2014such a beautiful, uplifting, and inspirational place. From that day forward, my relationship with the landscape changed. Talking to the woman beneath the stewartia, I came to understand the significance of Mount Auburn as a cemetery and the importance of serving our \"clients\" with compassion and sensitivity. The entire staff understands this\u2014it is embedded in our culture. My colleagues have all had interactions with visiting family members similar to the one I experienced that day. These encounters motivate us to continue achieving the high standards of maintenance of the grounds\u2014from the trees and gardens to the monuments and other built structures\u2014in order to ensure that Mount Auburn Cemetery remains the beautiful and inspirational place that Joseph Story and the rest of our founders envisioned in 1831. The successful restoration of the native woodland in Consecration Dell over the twenty-five years since that memorable conversation has been one of the highlights of my career. In place The Trees of the Silent Dell David Barnett Consecration Dell represents a nearly two-hundred-year-old vision for the naturalistic landscape at Mount Auburn Cemetery. PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR; MAP FROM HARVARD MAP COLLECTION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY of the Norway maples and other invasive species that we removed, hundreds of native trees and shrubs and thousands of ferns and woodland groundcovers now provide a valuable habitat for the birds, salamanders, and other wildlife residents of Mount Auburn. And yes, the magnificent stewartia remains as well. I like to think that the landscape looks just like \"the hill and the valley, the still, silent dell, and the deep forest\" that Joseph Story described so long ago. David Barnett was appointed president and CEO of Mount Auburn Cemetery in 2008. He retired from that position in 2021 confident that the course has been charted for a bright and successful future as an active cemetery, a historically significant cultural landscape, and a model of environmental stewardship."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Nauvoo Rose on Temple Square","article_sequence":3,"start_page":8,"end_page":9,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25738","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d160a325.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Henrichsen, Esther Truitt","article_content":"\"She brought it from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City in a teapot,\" my boss, Peter Lassig, told me. It was the spring of 1980, and we were standing in a quiet corner of Temple Square, in the heart of Salt Lake City. Before us, a small, unglamorous rose was beginning to produce its small, deep-red flowers. Peter had asked me to transplant it to a historic home garden, two blocks away. The rose was growing within a collection of special plants protected by the warmth and shade of a fifteen-foot wall made of adobe and sandstone that surrounds the square. Peter explained that the rose came from a woman named Elizabeth Hubble. \"She walked the thirteen hundred miles from Nauvoo,\" he said, \"but her rose rode in the wagon and was most likely the only luxury she allowed herself.\" Elizabeth was one of seventy thousand Latter-day Saints who made the trek across the plains along the Mormon Trail from 1847 to 1869 before the railroad connected the West to the rest of the continent. Elizabeth was among those who were expelled from their homes in Nauvoo, a city they had built. She would have had little time to dig the plant from her garden, and she made a real commitment to keep it alive for the rest of her journey. She would have watered it from the Platte River in Nebraska, the Sweetwater River in Wyoming, and Emigration Creek as she traveled down into the Salt Lake Valley. As Peter told me about the storied rose that late spring afternoon, we were standing across from the south door of the Assembly Hall, a beautiful, Victorian Gothic building, completed in 1882, that was about to go through an extensive renovation\u2014the reason it was necessary to move the rose. Temple Square is the most visited site in Utah, which is impressive for a state boasting five national parks. Its ten acres are dominated by the large, domed Tabernacle and the Salt Lake Temple, divided by the Center Mall. With a cathedral of fabulous American and European elms (Ulmus americana and U. laevis) overhead, Temple Square has served as one of the great urban spaces in the United States for well over a hundred years. The perimeter wall was built as fortification when Salt Lake City was still wilderness and now provides a peaceful space amid the noise of growing urbanity. The next morning, I took a shovel and a pot to dig the little Nauvoo rose, becoming one more in a line of gardeners who had cared for the plant and its provenance since Elizabeth's family had given it to Temple Square in the 1880s. Peter had been introduced to the rose in 1953, when he was fifteen, by his boss Irvin Nelson. In turn, Irvin had been charged with caring for it by his predecessor, who had gardened at Temple Square since the late 1800s. This location was the second placement for the rose on Temple Square. I was taking it to its first new home in nearly a hundred years. Towering over the rose were three Japanese tree peonies (Paeonia suffruticosa) that were the most tree-like peonies I have ever seen. They had been a gift in the 1930s from Brown Floral, a family-run nursery that is still part of the horticultural fabric of Salt Lake City. Each plant had at least thirty mauve blooms, and they were dug and moved to the garden south of the Temple. Several other plant treasures in this space would also be transplanted. In the spirit of its century of being a repository of gift plants, this garden between the Assembly Hall and the Temple Square wall was where, six years later, I chose to plant the seven-son flower (Heptacodium miconioides). This plant was sent to subscribers of Arnoldia when the story of this newly introduced species was published in the Fall 1986 issue. That Heptacodium grew into a glorious tree that every few years bloomed at the same moment as the monarch butterfly migration from north to south. You could stroll past the tree and be amazed as hundreds of monarchs were startled into the air. It was cut down a few years ago by a gardener who had no knowledge of its history The Nauvoo Rose on Temple Square Esther Truitt Henrichsen HENRICHSEN, E. T. 2021. THE NAUVOO ROSE ON TEMPLE SQUARE. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 8-9 and was cavalier about not wanting to learn from those who had come before. In the process of digging the rose that morning in May 1980, I was horrified when it split in two. But, this became an opportunity. I carried the little plants across the two blocks to the Beehive House, where I was the summer gardener and weed-puller. I planted them on either side of a path that led to a gate in the cobblestone wall. Brigham Young had built the wall in the 1850s around his two side-by-side homes, the Beehive House and the Lion House. The roses flourished there for two decades, until the cobblestone wall suddenly collapsed, killing one of the pair. The other was moved to another part of the Beehive House garden while the wall was being rebuilt and was never moved back. I was concerned for the future of the Nauvoo rose because it was difficult to find anyone in the next generation who was interested, but I eventually took three cuttings and have grown them in my home garden for the past decade. By the time this map of Salt Lake City was published in 1870, the Nauvoo rose had been growing in the community for two decades. The rose can now be found in the gardens of the historic Beehive House, mapped with a number 5. PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR; MAP FROM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, GEOGRAPHY AND MAP DIVISION I once keyed out the Nauvoo rose and believe it is a Rosa chinensis 'Minima', a variety (formerly known as Rosa indica minima) introduced into cultivation in the early 1800s. It grows about two feet high and two feet wide, and it blooms from spring to fall. In the intense high-desert sunlight of Utah, it prefers growing in a bit of shade. Compared to other roses, the Nauvoo rose may not seem very glamorous. Elizabeth, however, had the imagination to envision her little plant blooming in her new home in the Great Basin. Her descendants who donated the rose and the line of gardeners who cared for it since have all been connected by the love, care, and determination required to let it grow. Esther Truitt Henrichsen is the garden designer at Thanksgiving Point Institute in Lehi, Utah. Previously, after completing a master's in landscape history, she worked for many years as a landscape designer at Temple Square."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Five Generations of Russell's Garden Center","article_sequence":4,"start_page":10,"end_page":12,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25739","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d160a728.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Russell-Skehan, Elizabeth","article_content":"I felt the presence of the large video camera and mic over my right shoulder as I opened the photo album of Russell's Garden Center from the 1980s. \"There's the four of us,\" I said with a smile to my husband, Tim, who sat next to me. I was referring to a photograph of us with my mom and dad, wearing our teal Russell's shirts and sitting in front of our new sign on Route 20. The highway connects Wayland with Boston, about sixteen miles to the east. Our daughter Genevieve, the movie director, encouraged me to continue. \"Pretend there's no camera or mic here, and just tell me about the five generations of Russell's.\" I began my story, explaining how the business was established in 1876. \"My great-grandfather Samuel Lewis Russell was a butcher,\" I said, \"and his original store was called Russell's Provisions.\" He lived at the farm where Russell's is today, but his store was located about half a mile away, at the intersection of Route 20 and Pelham Island Road, in Wayland Center. It stood near a grocery store called the Collins Market, along with the library, post office, and several churches. Everything was within walking distance. \"There were no cars in 1876, for convenience,\" I said. Tim held up a picture of the Russell's Provisions storefront for the camera to capture. We were filming a documentary about our family business, aiming to tell the story of how our 144-year-operation\u2014one of the oldest garden centers in the country\u2014tackled the challenges of the pandemic by changing our business dramatically. For us, the family history was a central motivation for maintaining the garden center through the initial closures in March 2020, when we experienced more than a million dollars in losses. We worried that we might have to close the business altogether. Genevieve asked, \"Was your grandfather a butcher too?\" \"Not at all\" I replied. I explained how my grandfather, Lewis Samuel Russell, was a farmer. Like his father, he grew vegetables and cut flowers on the family farm, and he also raised chickens and sold the eggs. In 1920, he opened Russell's Market in the space where we now sell garden tools\u2014right next to his house. At that point, cars were becoming more common, which meant that my grandfather could close the original location in town. It wasn't just my grandfather running the market, I explained. \"My Grammy, Ruth Russell, would add up customers' purchases on a little pad of paper and collect cash and make change out of her apron pocket.\" Genevieve asked me to pause for a moment and instructed the cameraman to zoom in on my face. She then asked, \"What was it like growing up on a farm?\" I described how I would visit my grandparents almost every day. I would play in the fields with my sisters and cousins, while my grandfather and great uncle worked nearby planting, weeding, and picking crops. At that point, my parents were involved with the business, so we would often stop to see them in the office, before heading to Grammy's yellow house, which still stands along Route 20. She'd give us fresh bread and sweets that she'd cooked on the old black coal stove. In the evenings, when my grandparents babysat for us, we'd watch Lawrence Welk and Carol Burnett on the television as they counted the cash from the day at their kitchen table. Family and business were inseparable. \"They'd hide the cash in an oatmeal box in the cupboard,\" I said. \"Once it was full, my grandma would put it in her bra and ride the bus to deposit it in the bank.\" Tim flipped the page of an album from 1965 to reveal a picture of my dad, Lewis Samuel Russell Jr., watering rows of flowers growing in our greenhouses. The cameraman zoomed in with his lens. My dad joined the business after he returned from the Korean War. By then, a significant part of the business revolved around wholesaling Five Generations of Russell's Garden Center Elizabeth Russell-Skehan Facing page: Russell's Garden Center has been a family-owned fixture in Wayland, Massachusetts, for five generations. PHOTOS COURTESY THE AUTHOR; USGS MAP FROM HARVARD UNIVERSITY, HARVARD MAP COLLECTION RUSSELL-SKEHAN, E. 2021. FIVE GENERATIONS OF RUSSELL'S GARDEN CENTER. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 10-12 cut flowers to florists in the Boston area. My mom, Charlotte, worked as a bookkeeper and also managed the flower deliveries. Twice a week, she would load my sisters and me into the van and deliver flowers. We loved helping her carry the bunches of fresh flowers into the stores. After the energy crisis of the 1970s, we stopped growing cut flowers and closed our greenhouses every winter to conserve heat and save money. With specialization, airplanes and trucks could bring cut flowers from the southern regions of the United States and overseas, so Russell's stopped selling wholesale. My uncle had built several greenhouses, and my dad recommissioned them for growing annuals and vegetables. This transition was the start of the garden center as we know it today\u2014 and was yet another instance of the business evolving in response to changes in the market and technology. \"Because we were located on Route 20, we had plenty of customers driving by to stop in,\" I told the camera. \"We added houseplants, cactus, poinsettias, and potted mums and began selling more Christmas trees, wreaths, and fresh floral arrangements.\" At that point, my dad hired his best friend, Hugh McKenzie, who started the Garden Shop. Hugh added tools, fertilizers, and insecticides, along with garden statuary and supplies for birds. My mom worked long hours, too, and expanded the offerings to include vases, pots, silk flowers, candles, Christmas ornaments, and d\u00e9cor. At noon, Genevieve suggested we take a break. During the interview, her plan for structuring the film had shifted, and she wanted to run the idea past me. \"Mom,\" she said, \"I've decided to start with the history of Russell's before we go into the story of everything you all did to overcome the pandemic.\" I agreed that this was a great idea. We had already decided that the last thirty minutes of our movie would be about the remarkable response from our community once we were able to reopen the business in the spring of 2020, after more than a month of closure. We found that the community embraced gardening with newfound enthusiasm\u2014and in the end, Russell's not only survived 2020 but thrived. With the camera rolling again, Genevieve asked when Tim and I joined the company. Tim told the story of us joining in 1986. \"I'm a recovering mechanical engineer,\" he joked, \"and Elizabeth's expertise is in marketing and advertising. I quickly learned that this was a lot more fun than sitting in an office all day.\" I explained how, at this point, I'm delighted that our son, Dan Skehan, has joined us full time. He is the fifth generation to work at Russell's. With a background in accounting, human resources, and financial management, he was instrumental in helping us figure out how to stay in business through 2020. He secured payroll protection loans and helped us furlough and then rehire and train our employees. Moreover, he kept abreast with ever-changing guidelines from the Center for Disease Control and the State of Massachusetts. \"He remained calm and added a wealth of knowledge,\" I explained. \"I'm not sure we'd still be in business if we didn't know that Dan would be here to continue the legacy of Russell's Garden Center.\" Elizabeth Russell-Skehan is the president and vice president of marketing at Russell's Garden Center. They are now editing a full-length feature documentary film called Growing Through Covid- 19. To watch a trailer or to donate to the film, visit www.growingthroughcovid19.com. 12 Arnoldia 78\/5-6 \u2022 October 2021 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION (Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685) 1. Title: Arnoldia. 2. Publication number: 0004-2633. 3. Filing date: September 22, 2021. 4. Frequency: Quarterly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 4. 6. Annual subscription price: $20.00 domestic; $25.00 foreign. 7-8. Address of offices of publication, publisher, and editor: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, 125 Arborway, Boston, Suffolk County, MA 02130-3500. 9. Full names of publisher, editor, and managing editor: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, publisher; Jonathan Damery, editor. 10. Owner: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. 11. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total: 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: June 29, 2019. 15. Extent and nature of circulation. a. Average number copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 1,720. Actual number copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 1,750. b. Paid and\/or requested circulation: (1) Paid outside-county subscriptions: Average: 28. Actual nearest to filing date: 25. (2) Paid in-county subscriptions. Average: 1,181. Actual nearest to filing date: 1,193. (3) Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors, and counter sales: None. (4) Other classes mailed through the USPS: None. c. Total paid and\/or requested circulation. Average: 1,209. Actual nearest to filing date: 1,218. d. (1)(2) (3) Free distribution by mail. Average: 191. Actual nearest to filing date: 196. (4) Free distribution outside the mail: Average: 250. Actual nearest to filing date: 250. e. Total free distribution: Average: 441. Actual nearest to filing date: 446. f. Total distribution: Average: 1,650. Actual nearest to filing date: 1,664. g. Copies not distributed. Average: 70. Actual nearest to filing date: 86. h. Total. Average: 1,720. Actual nearest to filing date: 1,750. i. Percent paid and\/or requested circulation. Average: 73%. Actual nearest to filing date: 73%. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. Jonathan Damery, Editor."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Resilient Trees of Flower City","article_sequence":5,"start_page":13,"end_page":15,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25740","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d160a76c.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Quinn, Mark","article_content":"On March 4, 1991, I awoke to a knocking on my door. A coworker from the Monroe County Parks Department in Rochester, New York, planned to pick me up early to go to a trade show in Syracuse. When I glanced at the clock, however, I realized the power was out. The clockface was blank. I dressed quickly in the dark, and when I stepped out the front door, I found that the day's agenda was completely different than planned. My coworker had indeed arrived to pick me up, but looking down the street, I saw that ice covered everything. My twenty-five-foot-tall white birch (Betula papyrifera) was bent over, with the tip touching the ground. (This tree later sprang back, showing the amazing resilience of trees to crises.) We headed for Highland Park, the historic arboretum on the south side of Rochester, where we both worked as horticulturists. After multiple turnarounds due to trees blocking the road, we finally arrived at the Highland Park production greenhouses. The scene that met us was shocking. A huge limb from a one-hundred-year-old European beech (Fagus sylvatica) had fallen on our turn-of-the-century glass greenhouse. Like most of the largest trees in the park, this beech dated to the early 1890s and was planted by horticulturist John Dunbar according to plans drafted by Frederick Law Olmsted. We immediately set to work removing the limb and closing the hole in the damaged greenhouse, stapling poly film to the cypress bars in an attempt to save the delicate orchids inside. As we worked to keep the plants from freezing, we could hear the occasional snap of limbs breaking elsewhere in the park, but we still had not fully comprehended the scale of devastation around us. Rochester has a special affinity for trees. In the early 1800s, it was dubbed the Flour City, as waterpower of the Genesee River was used to grind enormous amounts of flour that was then shipped via the Erie Canal. By the second half of the century, however, Rochester became the Flower City, home to many of the country's largest and most prosperous nurseries. Two nurserymen played an especially pivotal role: George Ellwanger and Patrick Barry, owners of the successful Mount Hope Nursery, which they established around 1840. In 1888, Ellwanger and Barry donated land from their nursery grounds to the city to be used as a public park. Later named Highland Park, this land occupied a highpoint overlooking the city and the southern tier hills. Olmsted was enlisted to design a system of parks for Rochester, including North Park (now Seneca Park) and South Park (now Genesee Valley Park). Considering the interest that local nursery owners had invested in tree cultivation, Olmsted designed Highland Park as an arboretum. Many of the specimens to be planted were donated by Ellwanger and Barry. Park Superintendent Calvin Laney began acquiring additional plants for the park, but it soon became clear that more horticultural help was required. Dunbar was hired in 1891 to oversee the plant collections in the park. He quickly forged relationships with other prominent horticulturists, including Charles Sprague Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum. The similarities between Highland and the Arnold are not just superficial. Both arboreta were designed by Olmsted and were envisioned as features within larger park systems. Both have the distinct feel of an Olmsted design, with curving paths following the contours of the landscape. Dunbar and the horticulturists who followed him maintained an active relationship with Sargent and others at the Arnold. For many decades, The Resilient Trees of Flower City Mark Quinn QUINN, M. 2021. THE RESILIENT TREES OF FLOWER CITY. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 13-15 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, GEOGRAPHY AND MAP DIVISION Highland Park 15 the institutions exchanged plant material, supporting research at both sites. As time passed, the products of these efforts matured into beautiful collections. In Rochester, the public has come to expect these large, well-maintained trees throughout our arboretum and park system. Still, as a community of tree lovers, we often take for granted the tremendous asset left by our predecessors\u2014until crisis strikes. The ice storm of 1991 was one of these events. Having saved the orchids, staff turned their attention to assessing the damage to the arboretum. It seemed that almost everything in the collection was either damaged or destroyed. At first, opening roads and paths so people could get around was the priority. This effort to restore access took days. As the work progressed, we started to look at individual specimens and, to our dismay, found many of our most celebrated trees were no more. One public favorite, a katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), looked like the last few feet of every branch was broken and hanging. The tree had been received in 1919 from the nursery of Leon Chenault, in Orleans, France. Once the forestry team addressed safety issues elsewhere in the landscape, they turned to the katsura, spending days expertly trimming off every broken limb. Today, three decades later, no evidence of the trauma remains. The katsura has returned bigger and better than ever. The saddest loss for me was a Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica), which had been received from Veitch Nursery, in England, in 1892. The specimen\u2014perhaps my favorite tree in the park\u2014was fascinating, forming an impenetrable maze of eight- to sixteen-inch trunks with gray-green mottled bark. It had been completely uprooted and was lying on the ground. I remember cutting up the branches and wondering if another specimen as impressive as this one existed anywhere. Yet, sometimes having too much to do can play in our favor: with thousands of trees down and in need of work, our team deferred grinding stumps until later. That spring, dozens of new shoots sprouted from the overturned Parrotia stump. Over time, our team thinned the shoots, allowing space for some to grow. Now thirty years have passed, and the plant is once again a tangle of trunks\u2014 again one of my favorites. While so many trees were damaged and lost, others weathered the storm with remarkable ease. Walking through the park, you come to an impressive pair of zelkovas (Zelkova serrata), found in the valley behind the historic Lamberton Conservatory. One of the trees was received in 1899 from Thomas Meehan & Sons, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the other arrived in 1919 from the Arnold Arboretum. These trees stood strong against the ice. Likewise, at the corner of Highland Avenue and Goodman Street, a dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) did the same. The tree was grown from seed distributed by the Arnold Arboretum in 1948, when this newly identified species was first introduced to North America. The dawn redwood flexed under the weight of the ice but bounced back with little damage. Despite the losses to the ice storm, Highland Park recovered. Every morning, I drive through the pinetum, which includes hundreds of varieties of mature evergreens\u2014an uncommon and, I think, underappreciated asset for a city park. The pinetum is particularly impressive in the winter with snow on the trees, giving the impression of being in an evergreen forest far north of Rochester. As I pull into my parking spot, I glance to a nearby hill where I see two magnificent fernleaf beech trees (Fagus sylvatica 'Asplenifolia') standing amongst a grouping of beech trees of other varieties. These two were donated from Ellwanger and Barry's Mount Hope Nursery in 1892. Looking to the left, I can see an American chestnut (Castanea dentata), about thirty feet tall and starting to succumb to blight, a remnant of a former crisis. Each of the trees stands as a living history\u2014a testament not only to their own resilience but to the commitment of the generations of horticulturists who have built and stewarded the plant collections in Flower City. Mark Quinn is the superintendent of horticulture for Monroe County Parks, in Rochester, New York. He oversees the cultivation and care of the botanical collection at Highland Park and all the parks throughout the County Parks System. Facing page: The author stands with one of the celebrated trees at Highland Park\u2014a katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) received in 1919. PHOTO COURTESY THE AUTHOR"},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"The Prince Family: Pioneers of American Horticulture","article_sequence":6,"start_page":16,"end_page":23,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25741","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d160ab6f.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Casscles, J. Stephen","article_content":"It was a beautiful day on August 1, 1782, when Prince William Henry, the third son of King George III, was received at the home and gardens of William Prince Sr. in Flushing Landing, New York. The American Revolutionary War had effectively ended the year before when the British surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown. Yet, the sixteen-year-old visitor, who would, in 1830, rise to the throne as King William IV, had come to present a stand of colors to the King's American Dragoons, encamped three miles to the east of the Princes. The British soldiers were invited for a barbecue of a whole roasted ox at the Prince home, not the kind of warm reception that an American patriot would have given to a future British monarch and his troops. Prince was a nursery owner, almost forty years older than William, and the visit suggests the prominence of both Prince and the nursery. During the visit, Prince and William discussed their shared interest in growing and breeding plums, a specialty of the nursery. Plums were a critical fruit crop because they could be dried and stored for long periods and used as a nutritious food by the British Navy. Prince had introduced new plum varieties to Long Island, observing the acclimatization of the green gage plum (a common form of Prunus domestica). He even developed new varieties of plums, including 'Yellow Gage', which he would officially introduce the year after William's visit. In 1789, another group of illustrious visitors stopped at Prince's nursery: the newly elected president of the United States, George Washington, and his entourage of vice president John Adams, New York governor George Clinton, and the president of the Continental Congress, John Jay. Washington was less impressed with the nursery than William had been. He noted a large number of young fruit trees but described the shrubs as \"trifling\" and the flowers as \"not numerous.\" Flushing had been under British military occupation for the past seven years, and little plant material could be shipped during those long years of hostility. Nonetheless, by the 1790s, the Prince Nursery was likely the largest propagator of grafted fruit trees in the United States. It would grow to become even more: a center of horticultural learning. The Prince family's horticultural enterprise originated with William Prince's father, Robert, who was born in the 1690s. (His birth year has been variously presented as 1692 and 1699.) By 1723, Robert had begun collecting, growing, and propagating trees for his fruit farm. The plants included varieties of apples, pears, plums, nectarines, peaches, cherries, and small fruits. Throughout Robert's life, the nursery slowly evolved into a vibrant commercial operation, occupying eight acres directly south of what is now Northern Boulevard. This first Prince homestead was a beautiful structure with rounded shingles, set in a bank of flowering shrubs on the western edge of his property, next to the Flushing Creek. Flushing\u2014in northern Queens County\u2014was an ideal location for a nursery that would grow to become national in scope. It sits on the Long Island Sound, where winters are milder than most other parts of the state and where summers are cooler and less humid than colonial centers to the south. Flushing boasted high-quality topsoil, rich and fertile, with few stones. An underlying subsoil provided good water drainage while retaining sufficient moisture to allow plants to grow quickly. Flushing's location relative to the Port of New York meant that plants could readily be shipped to other parts of the country and Europe. Moreover, Flushing benefited from the cultural and financial rise of New York City. These factors would, in the nineteenth century, induce many other prominent nurseries to establish operations in Flushing. Robert and his wife, Mary Burgess, had six children. Their oldest son, William, took over the nursery by 1745, the year before Robert's death. Under William's leadership, the nursery ultimately expanded to twenty-four acres. The diversity of plants increased, as did the total sales. At the time, the standard American practice for propagating fruit trees, especially peaches (Prunus persica), was to grow seedlings and not to graft a tree to a suitable rootstock. Because of this seed-grown method, the quality of orchard trees was unknown until they came to maturity. Prince realized the commercial value of predictability and often budded or grafted his fruit trees to keep the variety true. The nursery expanded quickly between 1750 and the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1776. William published his firstknown notice of advertisement on September 21, 1767, which stated, \"For sale at William Prince's nursery, Flushing, a great variety of fruit trees, such as apple, plum, peach, nectarine, cherry, apricot and pear. They may be put up so as to be sent to Europe. Capt. Jeremiah Mitchell and Daniel Clements go to New York in passage boats Tuesdays and Fridays.\" The nursery's first-known catalogue appeared in 1771, a single-page broadsheet. The list contained over 230 plant selections, which was sizable for a nursery in colonial America. In addition to fruit crops, the offerings included evergreen trees, timber trees, and shrubs. Among the ornamental selections, tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) and lilacs (three varieties, presumably Syringa vulgaris) were among the most expensive. An advertisement published in the New York Mercury, dated March 14, 1774, stated that William Prince was selling more than one hundred Carolina magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) that were over four feet tall, raised from seed. He also advertised ninefoot- tall catalpas (Catalpa speciosa). The Revolutionary War halted the shipment of Prince's plants to most parts of the American colonies, except for areas under British control, such as Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, and parts of the South. These wartime closures hurt the business. Reports variously state that somewhere between three thousand to thirty thousand grafted cherry trees were either purchased or confiscated by the British, to be used as hoops for making barrels. Yet, the Princes were likely British Loyalists and benefited from military protection. In fact, William's daughter Sarah married a British Army Major, Charles McNeill, who resigned from his military service after the war. And the British General Lord Howe ordered army units to guard the nursery, posting soldiers at the entrances. When George Washington visited the Princes with his entourage in 1789, his assessment of the poor quality and low diversity of the ornamental plants may suggest that nursery was still recovering from the war. Yet, by the summer of 1791, secretary of state Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republican James Madison of Virginia visited the nursery and reported more favorably. The men were touring New York and New England to study botanical curiosities, wildlife, and historic battlefields. They maintained that the tour was for health reasons and scientific exploration. Yet, those versed in politics noted that the trip was conducted through the country's Federalists strongholds of New York and New England instead of areas dominated by Jefferson's political base of Democratic-Republican support. Jefferson desired to improve domestic agriculture and arranged the nursery stop to discuss his ideas with William. Among the topics, they talked about Jefferson's vision for promoting the cultivation of sugar maples (Acer saccharum) for syrup production. Jefferson also took the opportunity to order plants for himself: sugar maples, highbush cranberries (Viburnum trilobum), balsam poplars (Populus balsamifera), and Beurre Gris pears (a variety of Pyrus communis). Later, he expanded his order to include stone fruits and nut trees, along with an array of ornamental trees, shrubs, and roses. As the United States grew towards the close of the century, so did the Prince Nursery. By 1793, William Prince, at the age of sixty-eight, turned over operations to his sons Benjamin and William Jr. Benjamin maintained the original family nursery for many years, calling it the Old American Nursery, but it was William Jr. who became the primary mover of the family business in the third generation. In 1793, he purchased twenty-four acres directly northeast of the original nursery. There, on the banks of \u222b Flushing Creek, he established his Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery. He designed it as a showplace to educate the public on botanical matters, including native plants, new varieties bred in the United States, and plants imported from Europe and farther afield. William Jr. and his son William Robert Prince took up the cause of identifying and describing plant material so that it could be offered to the public\u2014and they were highly invested in acquiring newly introduced species. In 1804, for instance, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked upon the Missouri River to explore the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase. The expedition had been commissioned at Jefferson's request, and when the explorers returned east, they came bearing seeds and other botanical collections. The Princes were among the first nursery operators to grow and distribute plants from the expedition, and the Oregon grape holly (Mahonia aquifolium) became one of their most successful new products. The Princes were also among the first American nurseries to offer ornamental species from East Asia, like the golden rain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata), lacebark elm (Ulmus parvifolia), and Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis). By the mid-1830s, William Jr. had ten nursery outbuildings, of which several were greenhouses that contained tropical and subtropical plants from Africa and Asia. Visitors could pay an admission fee to experience the warmth and humidity of the greenhouse\u2014a rewarding respite to escape the dark, cold New York winter. The nursery catalogue listed ten tropical hibiscuses (Hibiscus) and two gardenias (Gardenia) that bloomed in their greenhouses. Prince grew tropical fruits and flowers specifically for winter viewing. For variety, they also exhibited insectivorous plants such as sundew (Drosera), pitcher plant (Sarracenia), and Venus flytrap (Dionaea). Moreover, in 1833, The New-York Annual Register reported that the gardens and nursery covered up to forty In 1793, William Prince Jr. purchased twenty-four acres alongside the original nursery, naming the new property the Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery. In the decades to come, a cohort of nurseries would open in Flushing, including Parsons Nursery and Bloodgood Nursery, both mapped nearby in 1841. SMITH, 1841\/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, GEOGRAPHY AND MAP DIVISION ies cultivated in America, other than apples. (While the father and son intended to treat apple cultivation with a third volume, the work was never published.) Like A Short Treatise on Horticulture, this book was widely read in America and became influential among aspiring horticulturalists. Moreover, the Princes paid particular attention to the nomenclature of the fruits covered in all of the publications, untangling confusion occurring in the field. This interest in the accurate classification of horticultural plants began with the work of William Sr., and it was among the family's most significant contributions to American horticulture. As a testament to William Jr.'s interest in classification, he displayed in his home a bust of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who formalized the modern system of botanical nomenclature. William Jr. received the statue in a presentation by New York governor DeWitt Clinton at a meeting of European and American scientists to honor Linnaeus's birthday in 1823. A simultaneous celebration in Virginia was officiated by Thomas Jefferson, an honorary member of the Linnaean Society of Paris. By the time William Jr. died in 1842, Flushing had become a vibrant center for American horticulture. Bloodgood Nursery had been established there in 1798 and would become known as a specialist in maples. (A common Japanese maple even bears the name of the nursery: Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood'.) G. R. Garretson Nursery, a seed company specializing in flowers and vegetables, was established in 1836 and would grow to cover one hundred acres, supplying wholesale seeds to nurseries across the United States and offering retail via mail order. But the most famous of these newer operations was Parsons Nursery, established in 1838; the Parsons family would later play a central role in introducing plants from East Asia, especially Japan. Meanwhile, William Robert had been assuming increasing responsibility for the Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nurseries. In the 1820s, he expanded the nursery, purchasing three large parcels so that his land holdings may have totaled up to 113 acres. These properties were located adjacent to a house he bought for himself in 1827. The home had a wide center hall, \u222b 20 Arnoldia 78\/5-6 \u2022 October 2021 acres and contained approximately ten thousand species of trees and plants, with particular attention devoted to grapes and mulberry trees. Visitors had free access to the outdoor gardens every day, except for Sundays. At the same time, the commercial operations of the nursery expanded rapidly, as evidenced by William Jr.'s increasingly thicker plant catalogues. He also began to subdivide the products among smaller specialized catalogues. In addition to his standard Annual Catalogue for Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Plants, which covered his earlier offerings, he began to issue catalogues that focused on items such as bulbous flowers and tubers, greenhouse plants, chrysanthemums, and vegetable and flower seeds. William Jr. attracted additional attention in 1828 when he published one of the first strictly horticultural books to come from the United States: A Short Treatise on Horticulture: Embracing Descriptions of a Great Variety of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, Grape Vines, Bulbous Flowers, Green-House Trees and Plants, &c. The book described all the plant offerings at the Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery, in some sense serving as an extended advertisement. The treatise also comprehensively covered horticultural topics, such as planting, pruning, and propagation. It even included information about soil preferences and methods for fungal disease control. Over the next three years, William Jr. worked with his son, William Robert, on two additional books, for which his son was the primary author. The first, A Treatise on the Vine, was published in 1830 and was the first significant book written in America on grape cultivation. The Princes had systematically tested scores of European grape varieties (Vitis vinifera), along with improved varieties of native North American grapes (like V. labrusca and V. riparia), and interspecific hybrids. The book described over two hundred European grape varieties and eighty American. This work helped to establish viticulture as a fullfledged branch of American horticulture, and for William Robert, grape breeding and cultivation remained a lifelong interest. The second book, The Pomological Manual, published in 1831, was a two-volume cyclopedia that attempted to catalogue all fruit varietwith two solid Dutch doors on either end and a bust of Linnaeus (likely from his father) on a bracket against the wall. The house's formal gardens contained two ginkgos (Ginkgo biloba), which were among the oldest in the country, and an old cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) that the Princes had imported from France. Under William Robert's leadership, however, the business began to struggle. In the 1830s, he speculated heavily in the domestic silk industry and may have been a key contributor to the skyrocketing prices for mulberry trees (Morus alba), the food source for silkworms. He imported more than one million mulberry trees from France in 1839, and shortly afterward, the price for mulberry trees crashed. When this venture failed, the Princes could not keep up with mortgage payments on the nursery, and by 1841, they lost the Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nurseries in foreclosure. These events spawned a bitter controversy with the property's new owner, Gabriel Winter, who was married to one of William Jr.'s cousins. Although William Robert continued to raise and sell plants from an adjacent nursery property, he and Winter competed in horticultural publications over the right to sell plants as the Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nurseries. Ultimately, the Princes kept the name, and Winter sold the remaining plant inventory and subdivided the original property for housing development. By 1846, the finances at the new Prince nursery began to stabilize, and William Robert published Prince's Manual of Roses, his third and final significant contribution to horticultural literature. At his new botanic garden, William Robert grew over seven hundred rose varieties, and the book provided detailed descriptions of varieties and featured many roses from China. He also included information about horticultural care and propagation. It was one of the very best works on this subject. Still, it was eclipsed in popularity by Samuel B. Parsons's book published the following year: The Rose: Its History, Poetry, Culture, and Classification. Parsons\u2014the proprietor of Parsons Nursery in Flushing\u2014ultimately revised his book as Parsons on the Rose: A Treatise on the Propagation, Culture, and History of the Rose. The competition between these books suggests the horticultural foment that was occurring in Flushing during this period. William Prince Jr. and his son William Robert Prince (above) authored seminal American horticultural manuals. In A Treatise on the Vine, published in 1830, they promoted new grape varieties, including 'Isabella', which became a favorite of American viticulturists. HEDRICK, 1908 AND 1911\/ARCHIVE OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM 22 Arnoldia 78\/5-6 \u2022 October 2021 Later, William Robert went on two extended botanical expeditions, to California (in 1849) and Mexico (in 1850). While these trips suggest that the business was doing reasonably well, William Robert began to gradually withdraw from the day-to-day management of the nursery around 1855, at the age of sixty. Instead, he devoted his energy to other botanical interests, including research on botanical medicinal remedies. He also continued to breed and evaluate new varieties of fruits and ornamental plants, especially grapes, strawberries, and roses. His oldest son, William III, meanwhile assumed increasing responsibility for the enterprise. William Robert's career reflected the changes that were going on in the American horticultural community. His father had been a founding member of the New York Horticultural Society in 1818 and joined the Massachusetts Horticultural Society after it was established in 1829, but he was also a member of the Linnaean Society of Paris, the Horticultural Society of London and Paris, and the Academy of Georgofili, based in Florence, Italy. William Robert invested his energy into the increasingly sophisticated American horticultural societies rather than those in Europe. He contributed many articles to the leading American agricultural magazines of the day, such as The Rural New Yorker and Gardener's Monthly. Moreover, he was a member of the American Institute of the City of New York and the American Pomological Society. On March 28, 1869, William Robert died at his home in Flushing, and as it turned out, the esteemed business died with him. William III had enlisted for the United States Army during the Civil War, and he chose to remain in the military. William Robert's second son, LeBaron Bradford, pursued a career in law and politics. Gardener's Monthly printed a two-page obituary for William Robert. It was a sad and respectful tribute to his horticultural brilliance while nonetheless remarking on his combative personality. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society issued a full resolution commemorating his life as a \"pioneer in the field of horticulture,\" a title that seems equally appropriate for the three generations of Princes that came before him. In 1939, efforts were made to move William Robert's house to the site of the New York World's Fair, to demonstrate a historic colonial homestead, but the campaign came to no avail. Later, New York City park commissioner Robert Moses rejected a proposal to move the structure to Flushing Meadow Park. Moses's vision for a \"modern city\" had little space for old wooden buildings. In its last few years of use, the structure served as a rooming house and a club. The shabby, unpainted building was then boarded up and surrounded by billboards and a gas station. The house was torn down in 1942. Of course, by that point, the lush greenhouses that once welcomed winter visitors had long ago disappeared, and the nursery property had been subdivided and sold for development. Yet, the 150-year story of the Prince family lives on today. The family built a foundation for commercial horticulture in the United States. They championed the cultivation of plants from across the country and around the world, and their publications promoted best practices in horticulture. They even helped with establishing a more systematic approach for horticultural nomenclature. Moreover, the success of the Prince nurseries is inextricably linked to the subsequent generation of horticulturists who established businesses in Flushing. This expanding group of nursery owners became leaders in their own right. In this way, a horticultural legacy that began with one family who lived on the edge of Flushing Creek became a national and international story. Acknowledgment I'm grateful for the support of Susan Lacerte, who recently retired as executive director at the Queens Botanical Garden, located near the former Prince Nurseries. Susan's knowledge of horticulture in Flushing, both present and historical, has been an inspiration. References Cornett, P. 2004, January. Encounters with America's premier nursery and botanic garden. Twinleaf: 1-12. Downing, A. J. 1845. The fruits and fruit trees of America: Or the culture, propagation and management in the garden and orchard of fruit trees generally; with descriptions of all the finest varieties of fruit, native and foreign in this country. New York: Wiley and Putnam. \u222b The Prince Family 23 Gager, C. S. 1912, October. The first botanic garden on Long Island. Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record, 1(4): 97-99. Hedrick, U. P. 1911. The plums of New York (Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station). Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon Company. Hedrick, U. P. 1908. The grapes of New York (Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station). Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon Company. Hedrick, U. P. 1925. The small fruits of New York (Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station). Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon Company. Hedrick, U.P. 1933. A history of agriculture in the State of New York. Printed for the New York State Agricultural Society, Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon Company. Hotchkiss, T. W. 1934. Prince house, Lawrence Street & Northern Boulevard, photographs, written historical and descriptive data. Dist. No. 4, Southern New York State, Historic American Building Survey, HABS No. 4-19. Jacobsen, A. and Williams, J. D. 2009. Prince family nurseries (ca. 1737- post- 1851). Bulletin of the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation, 21(1): 4-7. Johnson, J. 1887. The village of Flushing, map of desirable building lots, Flushing: A historical sketch. New York: John P. Stock, Printer. Manks, D. S. 1967. How the American nursery trade began. Plants & Gardens, 23(2). McGourty, F. 1967. Long Island's famous nurseries. Plants & Gardens, 23(3). Munsell, W. W. 1882. History of Queens County, New York, with illustrations, portraits, & sketches of prominent families and individuals. New York: Press of George MacNamara. Prince, B. and Mills, S. F. 1823. A treatise and catalogue of fruit and ornamental trees, shrubs, &c., cultivated at the Old American Nursery. New York: Wm. Grattan. Prince, W. 1771. To be sold, by William Prince, at Flushing-Landing, on Long-Island, near New- York, a large collection of fruit trees, as follows. New York: H. Gaine. Prince, W. 1790. To be sold, by William Prince, at Flushing-Landing, on Long-Island, near New- York, a large collection, as follow, of fruit trees and shrubs. New York: H. Gaine. Prince, W. 1825. Annual catalogue of fruit and ornamental trees and plants, bulbous flower roots, green-house plants, &c. &c., cultivated at the Linnaean Botanic Garden, William Prince, proprietor. New York: T. and J. Swords. Prince, W. 1828. A short treatise on horticulture: Embracing descriptions of a great variety of fruit and ornamental trees and shrubs, grape vines, bulbous flowers, green-house trees and plants. New York: T. and J. Swords. Prince, W. R. and Prince, W. 1830. A treatise on the vine; Embracing it history from the earliest ages to the present day, with descriptions of above two hundred foreign, and eighty American varieties, together with a complete dissertation of the established culture, and management of vineyards. New York: T. & J. Swords. Prince, W. R. and Prince, W. 1831. The pomological manual; or a treatise on fruits: containing descriptions of a great number of the most valuable varieties for the orchard and garden. New York: T. & J. Swords. Prince, W. R. 1846. Princes' Manual of roses: Comprising the most complete history of the rose, including every class, and all the most admirable varieties that have appeared in Europe and America, together with ample information on their culture and propagation. New York: Clark & Austen, Saxton & Miles, Wiley & Putnam, and Stanford & Swords. Ross, P. 1902. A history of Long Island: From its earliest settlement to the present time. New York: Lewis Publishing Co. Smith, E. A. and Hayward, G. 1841. The village of Flushing, Queens County, L.I.: nine miles east of the city of New York: lat. 40\u00b0 45' 1\"N, lon. 73\u00b0 09' 58\"W. [Flushing?: s.n., ?] [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https:\/\/www.loc. gov\/item\/2008620796 St. George's Episcopal Church, Baptismal Records, 1800- 1840, Flushing, N.Y., 135-32 38th Avenue, Flushing, N.Y., Rev. Wilfredo Benitez, Rector. Trebor, H. (Ed.) 1938, October. Garden center: The four Princes\u2014William of America. So This is Flushing. Flushing, N.Y.: Halleran. U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1976. The Prince family manuscript collection: A register of their papers, in the National Agricultural Library (Library list 101). Beltsville, MD: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library. Waldron, R. K. 1958. Prince's plants. The Call Number, 20(1). J. Stephen Casscles is an attorney, winemaker, and horticultural writer living in the Hudson Valley. His publications include Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada, published by Flint Mine Press."},{"has_event_date":0,"type":"arnoldia","title":"Such a Fine Assemblage: The Jesup Collection of North American Woods","article_sequence":7,"start_page":24,"end_page":49,"url":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/action\/directLinkImage?assetId=25742","featured_photo":"https:\/\/assetbank.arboretum.harvard.edu\/assetbank-aahu\/servlet\/display?file=b34509f9d4e0d160af27.jpg","volume":78,"issue_number":"5-6","year":2021,"series":null,"season":null,"authors":"Mauz, Kathryn","article_content":"It was a beautiful day on August 1, 1782, when Prince William Henry, the third son of King George III, was received at the home and gardens of William Prince Sr. in Flushing Landing, New York. The American Revolutionary War had effectively ended the year before when the British surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown. Yet, the sixteen-year-old visitor, who would, in 1830, rise to the throne as King William IV, had come to present a stand of colors to the King's American Dragoons, encamped three miles to the east of the Princes. The British soldiers were invited for a barbecue of a whole roasted ox at the Prince home, not the kind of warm reception that an American patriot would have given to a future British monarch and his troops. Prince was a nursery owner, almost forty years older than William, and the visit suggests the prominence of both Prince and the nursery. During the visit, Prince and William discussed their shared interest in growing and breeding plums, a specialty of the nursery. Plums were a critical fruit crop because they could be dried and stored for long periods and used as a nutritious food by the British Navy. Prince had introduced new plum varieties to Long Island, observing the acclimatization of the green gage plum (a common form of Prunus domestica). He even developed new varieties of plums, including 'Yellow Gage', which he would officially introduce the year after William's visit. In 1789, another group of illustrious visitors stopped at Prince's nursery: the newly elected president of the United States, George Washington, and his entourage of vice president John Adams, New York governor George Clinton, and the president of the Continental Congress, John Jay. Washington was less impressed with the nursery than William had been. He noted a large number of young fruit trees but described the shrubs as \"trifling\" and the flowers as \"not numerous.\" Flushing had been under British military occupation for the past seven years, and little plant material could be shipped during those long years of hostility. Nonetheless, by the 1790s, the Prince Nursery was likely the largest propagator of grafted fruit trees in the United States. It would grow to become even more: a center of horticultural learning. The Prince family's horticultural enterprise originated with William Prince's father, Robert, who was born in the 1690s. (His birth year has been variously presented as 1692 and 1699.) By 1723, Robert had begun collecting, growing, and propagating trees for his fruit farm. The plants included varieties of apples, pears, plums, nectarines, peaches, cherries, and small fruits. Throughout Robert's life, the nursery slowly evolved into a vibrant commercial operation, occupying eight acres directly south of what is now Northern Boulevard. This first Prince homestead was a beautiful structure with rounded shingles, set in a bank of flowering shrubs on the western edge of his property, next to the Flushing Creek. Flushing\u2014in northern Queens County\u2014was an ideal location for a nursery that would grow to become national in scope. It sits on the Long Island Sound, where winters are milder than most other parts of the state and where summers are cooler and less humid than colonial centers to the south. Flushing boasted high-quality topsoil, rich and fertile, with few stones. An underlying subsoil provided good water drainage while retaining sufficient moisture to allow plants to grow quickly. Flushing's location relative to the Port of New York meant that plants could readily be shipped to other parts of the country and Europe. Moreover, Flushing benefited from the cultural and financial rise of New York City. These factors would, in the nineteenth century, induce many other prominent nurseries to establish operations in Flushing. Robert and his wife, Mary Burgess, had six children. Their oldest son, William, took over the nursery by 1745, the year before Robert's death. Under William's leadership, the nursery ultimately expanded to twenty-four acres. The diversity of plants increased, as did the total sales. At the time, the standard American practice for propagating fruit trees, especially peaches (Prunus persica), was to grow seedlings and not to graft a tree to a suitable rootstock. Because of this seed-grown method, the quality of orchard trees was unknown until they came to maturity. Prince realized the commercial value of predictability and often budded or grafted his fruit trees to keep the variety true. The nursery expanded quickly between 1750 and the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1776. William published his firstknown notice of advertisement on September 21, 1767, which stated, \"For sale at William Prince's nursery, Flushing, a great variety of fruit trees, such as apple, plum, peach, nectarine, cherry, apricot and pear. They may be put up so as to be sent to Europe. Capt. Jeremiah Mitchell and Daniel Clements go to New York in passage boats Tuesdays and Fridays.\" The nursery's first-known catalogue appeared in 1771, a single-page broadsheet. The list contained over 230 plant selections, which was sizable for a nursery in colonial America. In addition to fruit crops, the offerings included evergreen trees, timber trees, and shrubs. Among the ornamental selections, tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) and lilacs (three varieties, presumably Syringa vulgaris) were among the most expensive. An advertisement published in the New York Mercury, dated March 14, 1774, stated that William Prince was selling more than one hundred Carolina magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) that were over four feet tall, raised from seed. He also advertised ninefoot- tall catalpas (Catalpa speciosa). The Revolutionary War halted the shipment of Prince's plants to most parts of the American colonies, except for areas under British control, such as Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, and parts of the South. These wartime closures hurt the business. Reports variously state that somewhere between three thousand to thirty thousand grafted cherry trees were either purchased or confiscated by the British, to be used as hoops for making barrels. Yet, the Princes were likely British Loyalists and benefited from military protection. In fact, William's daughter Sarah married a British Army Major, Charles McNeill, who resigned from his military service after the war. And the British General Lord Howe ordered army units to guard the nursery, posting soldiers at the entrances. When George Washington visited the Princes with his entourage in 1789, his assessment of the poor quality and low diversity of the ornamental plants may suggest that nursery was still recovering from the war. Yet, by the summer of 1791, secretary of state Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republican James Madison of Virginia visited the nursery and reported more favorably. The men were touring New York and New England to study botanical curiosities, wildlife, and historic battlefields. They maintained that the tour was for health reasons and scientific exploration. Yet, those versed in politics noted that the trip was conducted through the country's Federalists strongholds of New York and New England instead of areas dominated by Jefferson's political base of Democratic-Republican support. Jefferson desired to improve domestic agriculture and arranged the nursery stop to discuss his ideas with William. Among the topics, they talked about Jefferson's vision for promoting the cultivation of sugar maples (Acer saccharum) for syrup production. Jefferson also took the opportunity to order plants for himself: sugar maples, highbush cranberries (Viburnum trilobum), balsam poplars (Populus balsamifera), and Beurre Gris pears (a variety of Pyrus communis). Later, he expanded his order to include stone fruits and nut trees, along with an array of ornamental trees, shrubs, and roses. As the United States grew towards the close of the century, so did the Prince Nursery. By 1793, William Prince, at the age of sixty-eight, turned over operations to his sons Benjamin and William Jr. Benjamin maintained the original family nursery for many years, calling it the Old American Nursery, but it was William Jr. who became the primary mover of the family business in the third generation. In 1793, he purchased twenty-four acres directly northeast of the original nursery. There, on the banks of \u222b Flushing Creek, he established his Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery. He designed it as a showplace to educate the public on botanical matters, including native plants, new varieties bred in the United States, and pOn May 18, 1885, an important exhibition heralded as a \"noble gift to the city\"1 opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Beneath the high ceilings of the exhibition hall, glass cases displayed 350 specimens as the Jesup Collection of North American Woods. Each was a whole log, about four and a half feet tall, still cloaked with bark as in life, with the upper half cut away to reveal the wood inside. Many of the specimens were accompanied by original watercolor illustrations of foliage, fruit, and flowers. A writer announced of the exhibit in Harper's Weekly, \"The average visitor will be impressed and surprised by the beauty of some and by the extreme oddity of others.\u2026 The various coloring of the woods, often rich and sometimes startling, and running into the most delicate shades, and the strength or grace or whimsicality of form, as traced in the divers[e] coursings of the grain, are matters to attract even the casual eye, and to stamp as absurd the hasty judgement which would say that a collection of logs can not be interesting.\"2 Over the coming years, the collection grew to include more than five hundred species. It represented the scientific and philanthropic vision of two noteworthy individuals: Morris Ketchum Jesup, one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History, and Charles Sprague Sargent, the director of the Arnold Arboretum. The collection remained a cornerstone of the museum's exhibits for more than six decades. The fact that an exhibition of this magnitude could almost entirely vanish from the public memory seems almost improbable. Yet, the story of its exile is as intriguing as that of its origins. A Generous Friend On the occasion of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, William H. Brewer, a professor of agricultural science at Yale University, observed, \"America has long been described by geographers and naturalists as the wooded continent, distinguished for the luxuriance and extent of its forests and the number of its arboreal species.\"3 At that time, scientists were beginning to comprehend the vastness of North American forests, but popular appreciation of this forest wealth lagged behind. At the Exhibition, audiences were introduced to displays of American woods and wood products through exhibits mounted by individual states and by the United States Department of Agriculture, which showcased specimens representing four hundred tree species from around the country.4 Such exhibits distilled an abstract general abundance into the remarkable variety of trees that comprised the country's forests. The Exhibition's millions of visitors vastly exceeded the number of people who had ever traveled across the country or explored its forested lands, and early efforts to organize around the idea of forest conservation took root at that gathering. At the time, there was not a museum in the country that possessed a similar, permanent exhibit that could perpetuate the transient awe from the Centennial Exhibition into an enduring educational mission. In 1880, such an exhibit\u2014but one even more monumental\u2014 became Jesup's vision for the American Museum of Natural History. A forest lover himself, Jesup was also keenly interested in the uses of forests and, increasingly, in the roles forests played in the wider landscape of human settlement and industry. Jesup and the museum's director, Such a Fine Assemblage: The Jesup Collection of North American Woods Kathryn Mauz Facing page: The Jesup Collection of North American Woods revealed the wonder and scientific diversity of North American forests by showcasing wood samples from more than five hundred tree species. As one commentator later said, it was \"a perfectly unique collection which cannot anywhere be repeated.\" AMNH RESEARCH LIBRARY DIGITAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 31642 MAUZ, K. 2021. SUCH A FINE ASSEMBLAGE: THE JESUP COLLECTION OF NORTH AMERICAN WOODS. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 24-49 26 Arnoldia 78\/5-6 \u2022 October 2021 Albert S. Bickmore, discussed the possibility of developing this exhibit at the museum for the expressed purpose of showcasing the contributions of American forests to industrial and artistic endeavors. In August 1880, while attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Bickmore approached Harvard botany professor Asa Gray for advice. He described the museum's planned Department of Economic Botany, which was primarily to feature important products from the forests of the country. Gray directed him to interview Sargent, who at the time was in charge of the census of American forests for the Tenth Census of the United States. Bickmore spent an afternoon at Dwight House on Sargent's Holm Lea estate in the suburb of Brookline. Although Sargent was away conducting fieldwork, Bickmore toured the grounds and learned about the work Sargent was pursuing for the forest census. Bickmore soon wrote to Sargent in care of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where Sargent was briefly stopped along the last leg of his grand tour of western forests. As Bickmore explained, a \"generous friend\" of the museum wished to develop an \"instructive and attractive collection\" of the wood products of North American forests, \"placing it in a tangible, visual form before our citizens and our tide of visitors from all parts of the continent.\"5 Of course, that unspecified friend was Jesup, who would become the museum's president from 1881 until his death in 1908. His foresight had led him to Sargent, whose zeal and breadth of knowledge were positively suited to realizing this singular goal, and whose awareness of his own expertise prevented him from letting the opportunity pass to someone else. Jesup also sponsored other collections and many expeditions in varied fields of study during his tenure at the museum, and Sargent simultaneously expanded the Arnold Arboretum's living collection and pursued an astounding schedule of publication. Yet, the wood collection was seen as a crowning achievement during the lifetimes of both men. It was, according to one commentator, \"a perfectly unique collection which cannot anywhere be repeated.\"6 ARCHIVES OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM AMNH RESEARCH LIBRARY DIGITAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 2A5200 The Jesup Collection emerged from the collaboration of Morris K. Jesup (right) and Charles Sprague Sargent. Jesup Collection 27 Unprecedented Activity Following his return from the west, Sargent met with Jesup and Bickmore in New York in the first week of November 1880. In response to the proposed project, he sent a seven-page letter describing his \"suggestions\" for the wood collection and its exhibition, which in effect were stipulations to guarantee his participation. Sargent believed that the collection should incorporate every tree species that grew naturally in the United States, even those that were of limited distribution or held little economic value. As a reflection of his recent and ongoing work on the forest census, he argued that only this approach would allow the collection's importance to be realized by both the public and scientists, who, he would later assert, \"will value it in proportion to its completeness.\"7 Further, Sargent insisted that the exhibit be arranged according to the botanical relationships of the species, following the organization of his report for the forest census, and that the labels should incorporate the data from his investigations as to each species' geographic distribution and the properties of its wood. He shared Jesup's interest in including foliage and fruit to illustrate the aspect of the living trees, as well as the products derived from the trees that were important to commerce and the trades.8 In essence, it would be a full-scale adjunct to his census report, one that Jesup hoped would also have popular appeal and that all concerned believed would be an asset to the museum.9 Sargent's primary role in the project was to direct and coordinate the field efforts and, later, to provide interpretation for the resulting specimens. By mid-December 1880, once a general plan for