·arno ~aVolume 58 Number 3 1998

Arnoldia (ISSN 004-2633, USPS 866-100) ispublished quarterly by the Arnold Arboretum ofHarvard University Second-class postage paid atBoston, Massachusetts

Subscriptions are $20.00 per calendar year domestic,$25 00 foreign, payable in advance Most single copiesare $5.00 Remittances may be made m U.S. dollars,by check drawn on a U.S. bank, by internationalmoney order, or by Visa or Mastercard. Send orders,remittances, change-of-address notices, and all othersubscription-related communications to CirculationManager, Arnoldia, The Arnold Arboretum, 125Arborway, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130-3500.Telephone 617/524-1718; facsimile 617/524-1418;e-maM arnoldiaCa~arnarb.harvard.edu

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Karen Madsen, EditorAndy Wmther, Designer

Editomal Committee

Phyllis AndersenRobert E CookPeter Del Tredici

Gary KollerStephen A. SpongbergKim E. Tnpp

Copyright © 1998 The President and Fellows ofHarvard College

Page

2 In the Shadow of Red CedarWade Dams

11 1 The First and Final Flowering ofMuriel’s BambooPeter Del Tredici

18 Nature Study Moves into theTwenty-First CenturyCandace L. Julyan

25 Native vs. Nonnative: A RepriseLetters to the Editor

e’

30 Native Plants: Another ViewHarmson L. Flmt

Front cover: Bigleaf maples (Acer macrophyllum)on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula photo-graphed by Graham Osborne.

Inside front cover: Branchlets and cones ofwestern red cedar (Thu7a plicata). Photograph byPeter Del Tredici.

Inside back cover: Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis)and ferns in Skagit Valley, Washington. Photographby Graham Osborne. -

Back cover: Western red cedar and hemlocks

(Tsuga heterophylla) m Mt. Raimer National Park,Washington. Photograph by Graham Osborne.

In the Shadow of Red Cedar

Wade Davis

In the shadow of red cedar, along a stream col-ored by salmon, in a place where plants drawfood from the air and small creatures living ondew never touch the forest floor, it is difficult toimagine a time when the coastal temperaterainforests of North America did not exist.

Today, these immense and mysterious forests,which in scale and wonder dwarf anything to befound in the tropics, extend in a vast arc fromnorthern Califorma 2,000 miles north and westto the Copper River and the Gulf of Alaska.Home to myriad species of plants and animals,a constellation of life unique on earth, theyspread between sea and mountain peak, reach-ing across and defying national boundaries asthey envelop all who live within their influencein an unrivaled frontier of the spirit.

It is a world anchored in the south by giantsequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum), themost massive of living beings, and coast red-woods (Sequoia sempervirens) that soar 300 feetabove the fogbanks of Mendocino. In the north,two trees flourish: western hemlock (Tsugaheterophylla), with its delicate foliage andfinely furrowed bark; and Sitka spruce (Piceasitchensis), most majestic of all, a stunninglybeautiful species with blue-green needles thatare salt tolerant and capable of extracting min-erals and nutrients from sea spray. In between,along the silent reaches of the midcoast of Brit-ish Columbia, behind a protective veil of Sitkaspruce, rise enormous stands of Douglas fir(Pseudotsuga menziesii). Intermingled withhemlock and fir, growing wherever the land ismoist and the rains abundant, is perhaps themost important denizen of the Pacific slope, thewestern red cedar (Thula plicata), the tree thatmade possible the florescence of the great andancient cultures of the coast.To walk through these forests in the depths of

winter, when the rain turns to mist and settles

softly on the moss, is to step back in time. Twohundred million years ago vast coniferous for-ests formed a mantle across the entire planet.Dinosaurs evolved long supple necks to browsehigh among their branches. Then evolutiontook a great leap, and flowers were born. Whatmade them remarkable was a mechanism of

pollination and fertilization that changed thecourse of life on earth. In the more primitiveconifers, the plant must produce the basic foodfor the seed with no certainty that it will be fer-tilized. In the flowering plants, by contrast, fer-tilization itself sparks the creation of the seed’sfood reserves. In other words, unlike the coni-fers, the flowering plants make no investmentwithout the assurance that a viable seed will be

produced. As a result of this and other evolu-tionary advances, the flowering plants came todominate the earth m an astonishingly shorttime. Most conifers went extinct, and those thatsurvived retreated to the margins of the world,where a small number of species maintained afoothold by adapting to particularly harsh con-ditions. Today, at a conservative estimate, thereare over 250,000 species of flowering plants. Theconifers have been reduced to a mere 700 spe-cies, and in the tropics, the hotbed of evolution,they have been almost completely displaced.On all the earth, there is only one region of

any size and significance where, because of par-ticular climatic conditions, the conifers retaintheir former glory. Along the northwest coast ofNorth America the summers are hot and dry,the winters cold and wet. Plants need water and

light to create food. Here in the summer there isample light for photosynthesis but not enoughwater for most deciduous trees, except in low-

lying areas where broadleafed species such asred alder (Alnus rubra), cottonwood (Populusbalsamifera ssp. trichocarpa), and vine maple(Acer circinatum) flourish. In the winter, when

Western red cedar and hemlock in Stoltmann Wilderness, Bmtish Columbia.

4 1

both water and light are sufficient, the low tem-peratures cause the flowering plants to losetheir leaves and become dormant. The ever-green conifers, by contrast, are able to growthroughout the long winters, and since they usewater more efficiently than broadleafed plants,they also thrive during the dry summer months.The result is an ecosystem so rich and so pro-ductme that the biomass m the best sites is eas-ily four times as great as that of any comparablearea of the tropics.Indeed it is the scale and abundance of the

coastal rainforests that overwhelm the visitor.White pine (Pinus strobus), the tallest tree ofthe eastern deciduous forests, barely reachestwo hundred feet; in the coastal rainforeststhere are thirteen species that grow higher, withthe redwoods reaching nearly four hundredfeet, taller than a twenty-five-story building.Red cedars can be twenty feet or more across atthe base. The footprint of a Douglas fir wouldcrush a small cabin. The trunk of a westernhemlock, a miracle of biological engineering,

stores thousands of gallons of water and sup-ports branches festooned with as many as 70million needles, all capturing the light of thesun. Spread out on the ground, the needles of asingle tree would create a photosynthetic sur-face ten times the size of a football field.These giant trees delight, but the real wonder

of the forest lies in the details, in the astonish-ingly complex relationships: a pileated wood-pecker living in the hollow of a snag, tinyseabirds laying their eggs among the roots of anancient cedar, marbled murrelets nesting in adepression in the moss in the fork of a canopytree, rufous hummingbirds returning eachspring, their migrations timed to coincide withthe flowering of salmonberries (RubusspectabilisJ. In forest streams dwell frogs withtails and lungless salamanders that live byabsorbing oxygen through their skm. Strangeamphibians, they lay their eggs not in water buton land, in moist debris and fallen logs.

Invertebrate life is remarkably diverse. Thefirst survey to explore systematically the forest

Vine maples, Acer circinatum, near Lake M~lls, Washmgton

r 5

Mossy branches of bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum, OlympicPemnsula, Washington.

canopy in the Carmanah Valley of VancouverIsland yielded 15,000 species, a third of theinvertebrates known to exist in all of Canada.

Among the survey’s collections were 500 spe-cies previously unknown to science. Life isequally rich and abundant on the forest floor.There are 12 species of slugs, slimy herbivoresthat in some areas account for as much as sev-

enty percent of the animal biomass. A squaremeter of soil may support 2,000 earthworms,40,000 insects, 120,000 mites, 120,000,000nematodes, and millions upon millions of proto-zoa and bacteria, all alive, moving through the

earth, feeding, digesting, repro-ducing, and dymg.None of these creatures, of

course, lives in isolation. In

nature, no event stands alone.

Every biological process, eachchemical reaction, leads to theunfolding of other possibilitiesfor life. Tracking these strandsthrough an ecosystem is as com-plex as untangling the distantthreads of memory from a myth.For years, even as industrial log-gmg created clearcuts the sizeof small nations, the coastalrainforests were among the leaststudied ecosystems on the planet.Only within the last decade ortwo have biologists begun to

understand and chart the dynamicforces and complex ecologicalrelationships that allow these

magnificent forests to exist.One begins with wmd and ram,

the open expanse of the Pacificand the steep escarpment ofmountains that makes possiblethe constant cycling of waterbetween land and sea. Autumnrains last until those of spring,and months pass without a sign ofthe sun. Sometimes the ram fallsas mist, and moisture is rakedfrom the air by the canopy of theforest. At other times the stormsare torrential, and daily precipita-tion is measured in inches. The

rains draw nutrients from the soil, carryingvital food into rivers and streams that fall awayto the sea and support the greatest coastalmarine diversity on earth. In the estuaries andtidal flats of British Columbia, in shallows thatmerge with the wetlands, are six hundred typesof seaweed, seventy species of sea stars. Fartheroffshore, vast, underwater kelp forests shelterhundreds of forms of life, which in turn supporta food chain that reaches into the sky to nour-ish dozens of species of seabirds.The land provides for life in the sea, but the

sea in turn nurtures the land. Birds deposit

excrement in the moss, yielding tons of nitrogenand phosphorus that are washed into the soil bywinter rains. Salmon return by the millions totheir native streams, providing food for eaglesand ravens, grizzly and black bears, killer

whales, river otters, and more than twenty othermammals of the sea and forest. Their journeycomplete, the sockeye and coho, chinooks,chums, and pinks drift downstream in death andare slowly absorbed back into the nutrient cycleof life. In the end there is no separation betweenforest and ocean, between the creatures of theland and those of the sea. Every living thing onthe raincoast ultimately responds to the sameecological rhythm. All are interdependent.The plants that dwell on land nevertheless

face particular challenges, especially that ofsecuring nutrients from thin soils leached byrain throughout much of the year. The tangle ofecological adaptations that has evolved inresponse is nothing short of miraculous. Asmuch as a fifth of the biomass in the foliage ofan old-growth Douglas fir, for example, is anepiphytic lichen, Lobaria oregana, which fixesnitrogen directly from the air and passes it intothe ecosystem. The needles of Sitka spruceabsorb phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium,and their high rate of transpiration releasesmoisture to the canopy, allowing the lichensto flourish.On the forest floor thick mats of sphagnum

and other mosses filter rainwater and protectthe mycelia of hundreds of species of fungi;these elements form one of the richest mush-room floras on earth. Mycelia are the vegetativephase of a fungus, small hairlike filaments thatspread through the organic layer at the surfaceof the soil, absorbing food and precipitatingdecay. A mushroom is simply the fruitingstructure, the reproductive body. As the myce-lia grow, they constantly encounter tree roots.If the species combination is the right one, aremarkable biological event unfolds. Fungusand tree come together to form mycorrhizae, asymbiotic partnership that allows both to ben-efit. The tree provides the fungus with sugarscreated from sunlight. The mycelia in turnenhance the tree’s ability to absorb nutrientsand water from the soil. They also producegrowth-regulating chemicals that promote the

production of new roots and enhance theimmune system. Without this union, no treecould thrive. Western hemlocks are so depen-dent on mycorrhizal fungi that their roots barelypierce the surface of the earth, even as theirtrunks soar into the canopy.The story only gets better. All life requires

nitrogen for the creation of proteins. Nitrates, abasic source, are virtually absent from theacidic, heavily leached soils of the rainforest.The mycorrhizae, however, contain not onlynitrogen-fixing bacteria that produce this vitalraw material but also a yeast culture that pro-motes the growth of both the bacteria and thefungus. There are scores of different mycor-rhizae-the roots of a single Douglas fir mayhave as many as forty types-and, like any otherform of life, the fungus must compete, repro-duce, and find a means to disperse its spore. Thefruiting body in many cases is an undergroundmushroom or a truffle. When mature, it emitsa pungent odor that seeps through the soil toattract rodents, flying squirrels, and red-backedvoles, delicate creatures that live exclusively ona refined diet of truffles. As the voles moveabout the forest, they scatter droppings, neatlittle bundles of feces that contain yeast culture,fungal spores, and nitrogen-fixing bacteria-inshort, all that is required to inoculate roots andprompt the creation of new mycorrhizae.Fungi bring life to the forest both by their

ability to draw nutrients to the living and bytheir capacity to transform the dead. In old-growth forests twenty percent of the biomass-as much as six hundred tons per hectare-isretained in fallen debris and snags. There is asmuch nutrition on the ground as there is withinit. The moss on the forest floor is so dense that

virtually all seedlings sprout from the surface ofrotting stumps and logs, which may take severalhundred years to decay.When a tree falls in the forest, it is immedi-

ately attacked by fungi and a multitude ofinsects. The wood provides a solid diet of carbo-hydrates. To secure proteins and other nutri-ents, the fungi deploy natural antibiotics to killnitrogen-fixing bacteria. Chemical attractantsemitted by the fungi draw in other prey, such asnematode worms, which are dispatched withexploding poison sacs and an astonishing arse-

- 7

Western red cedar near Port Angeles, Washmgton.

8

Douglas firs at sunmse.

nal of microscopic weapons. The assault on thelog comes from many quarters. Certain insects,incapable of digesting wood directly, exploitfungi to do the work. Ambrosia beetles, forexample, deposit fungal spores in tunnels boredinto the wood. After the spores germinate, thetiny insects cultivate the mushrooms on minia-ture farms that flourish in the dark.

In time other creatures appear-mites andtermites, carpenter ants that chew long galleriesm the wood and establish captive colonies ofaphids that produce honeydew from the sap ofplants. Eventually, as the log progresses throughvarious stages of decay, other scavengers join

the fray, including those that consumewhite cellulose, turning wood blood-red and reducing the heartwood to dust.An inch of soil may take a thousand

years to accumulate. Organic debrismay persist for centuries. Dead trees arethe life of the forest, but their potentialis realized only slowly and with greatpatience.

This observation leads to perhaps themost extraordinary mystery of all. Lushand astonishingly prolific, the coastaltemperate rainforests are richer in their

capacity to produce the raw material oflife than any other terrestrial ecosystemon earth. The generation of thisimmense natural wealth is made pos-sible by a vast array of biological inter-actions so complex and sophisticatedas to suggest an evolutionary lineagedrifting back to the dawn of time. Yetall evidence indicates that these forests

emerged only within the last few thou-sand years. In aspect and species com-position they may invoke the greatconiferous forests of the distant geo-logic past, but as a discrete and evolvingecosystem the coastal temperaterainforests are still wet with the inno-cence of birth.Some twenty thousand years ago,

what is today British Columbia was aplace of turmoil and ice. The land wasyoung, unstable, given to explosiveeruptions that burst over the shore. A

glacial sheet more than 6,000 feet deepcovered the interior ot the province, torgingmountains and grinding away valleys as itmoved over the land, determining for all timethe fate of rivers. On the coast, giant tongues ofice carved deep fjords beneath the sea. The sealevels fell by 300 feet, and the sheer weight ofice depressed the shoreline to some 750 feetbelow its current level. Fourteen thousand yearsago, an instant in geologic time, the ice began tomelt, and the glaciers retreated for the last time.The ocean invaded the shore, inundating coastalvalleys and islands. But the land, freed at last ofthe weight of eons, literally sprang up. Within amere one thousand years, the water drained

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back into the sea, and the coastline becameestablished more or less as it is today.Only in the wake of these staggering geologi-

cal events did the forests come into being. Atfirst the land was dry and cold, an open land-scape of aspen and lodgepole pine (Pinuscontorta). Around ten thousand years ago, evenas the first humans appeared on the coast, theair became more moist and Douglas fir slowlybegan to displace the pine. Sitka spruce flour-ished, though hemlock and red cedar remainedrare. Gradually the climate became warmer,with long seasons without frost. As more andmore rain fell, endless banks of clouds shelteredthe trees from the radiant sun. Western hem-lock and red cedar expanded their hold on thesouth coast, working their way north at theexpense of both fir and Sitka spruce.

For the first people of the raincoast, this eco-logical transition became an image from thedawn of time, a memory of an era when Ravenslipped from the shadow of cedar to steal sun-light and cast the moon and stars into the heav-ens. Mythology enshrined natural history, forit was the diffusion of red cedar that allowedthe great cultures of the Pacific Northwest to

emerge. The nomadic hunters and gathererswho for centuries had drifted with the seas

along the western shores of North Americawere highly adaptive, capable of taking advan-tage of every new opportunity for life. Althoughhumans had inhabited the coast for at least fivethousand years, specialized tools first appear inthe archaeological record around 3000 B.C.,roughly the period when red cedar came into itspresent dominance in the forests. Over the nextmillennium, a dramatic shift in technology andculture occurred. Large cedar structures werein use a thousand years before the Christian era.A highly distinct art form developed by 500 B.C.Stone mauls and wooden wedges, obsidianblades and shells honed to a razor’s edge allowedthe highly durable wood to be worked intoan astonishing array of objects, which in turnexpanded the potential of the environment.

* * *

In Oregon and Washington only ten percent ofthe original coastal rainforest remains. In Cali-fornia only four percent of the redwoods havebeen set aside. In British Columbia, roughly

sixty percent has been logged, largely since1950. In the last two decades, over half of alltimber ever extracted from the public forests ofBritish Columbia has been taken. At currentrates of harvest, roughly 1.5 square miles of oldgrowth per day, the next twenty years will seethe destruction of every unprotected valley ofancient rainforest in the province.

In truth, no one really knows what will happento these lands once they are logged. Forests areextraordinanly complex ecosystems. Biologistshave yet to identify all of the species, let aloneunderstand the relationships among them.Although we speak with unbridled confidenceof our ability to reproduce the ecological condi-tions of a forest and to grow wood indefinitely,there is no place on earth that is currently cuttinga fourth generation of timber on an industrialscale. The more imprecise a science, the moredogmatically its proponents cling to their abilityto anticipate and predict phenomena.

Forestry as traditionally practiced in thePacific Northwest is less a science than an ide-

ology, a set of ideas reflecting not empiricaltruths, but the social needs and aspirations ofa closed group of professionals with a vestedinterest in validating its practices and existence.The very language of the discipline is disingenu-ous, as if conceived to mislead. The "annualallowable cut" is not a limit never to beexceeded but a quota to be met. The "fall downeffect," the planned decline in timber produc-tion as the old growth is depleted, is promotedas if it were a natural phenomenon when it isin fact a stunning admission that the forestshave been drastically overcut every year sincemodern forestry was implemented in the 1940s."Multiple-use forestry"-which implies thatthe forests are managed for a variety of purposes,including recreation, tourism, and wildlife-begins with a clearcut. Old growth is "har-vested, " though it was never planted and no oneexpects it to grow back. Ancient forests are"decadent" and "overmature," when by anyecological defimtion they are at their richestand most biologically diverse state.The most misleadmg of these terms is "sus-

tained yield," for it has led the public to believethat the trees are growing back as fast as theyare being cut. But they are not. In British

10

Columbia alone there are 8.7 million acres of

insufficiently restocked lands. We continue tocut at a rate of 650,000 acres per year. Every year2.5 million logging-truck loads roll down thehighways of the province. Lined up bumper tobumper, they would encircle the earth twice. Inpractice, sustained-yield forestry remains anuntested hypothesis: after three generations weare still cutting into our biological capital, theirreplaceable old-growth forests. As a scientificconcept, sustained yield loses all relevancewhen applied to an ecological situation thebasic parameters of which remain unknown. At

best, sustained yield is a theoretical possibility;at worst, a semantic sleight of hand, intendedonly to deceive.Anyone who has flown over Vancouver

Island, or seen the endless clearcuts of the inte-rior of the province, grows wary of the rhetoricand empty promises of the forest industry. Fish-ermen and women become skeptical when theylearn that logging has driven 142 salmon stocksto extinction and left 624 others on the brink.Timber for British Columbia mills now comesfrom Manitoba. Truck drivers from Quesnel, apulp-and-paper town in the center of the prov-ince, haul loads hundreds of miles south fromYukon. Just one of the clearcuts southeast ofPrince George covers five hundred square kilo-meters, five times the area of the city ofToronto. This, after sixty years of official com-mitment to sustained-yield forestry. The lamentof the old-time foresters-that if only the publicunderstood, it would appreciate what we do-falls flat. The public understands but does notlike what it sees.

Fortunately, this orthodoxy is now beingchallenged. Many in the Pacific Northwest,including the best and brightest of professionalforesters, recognize the need to move beyond, toan era in which resource decisions are trulybased on ecological imperatives, in which thegoal of economic sustainability is transformedfrom a cliche into an article of faith. To makethis transition will not be easy, and it willinvolve much more than tinkering with theedges of an industry that generates $15.9 billiona year in the province of British Columbia alone.Dispatching delegations to Europe to reassurecustomers, or devising new regulations that if

implemented may mitigate some of the worstecological impacts, will neither restore thepublic’s confidence and trust nor addressthe underlying challenge of transformingthe economy.Any worker who has wielded a saw or ripped

logs from a setting knows that in the end it allcomes down to production. The enormouswealth generated over the last fifty years hasbeen possible only because we have been willingto indulge egregious practices in the woods thathave little to do with the actual promise of for-estry. Spreading clearcuts ever deeper into thehinterland is a policy of the past, crude andanachronistic, certain to lead to a dramaticdecline in the forestry sector and to bitternessand disappointment in the communities thatrely upon the forests for both spiritual andmaterial well-being. Revitalizing cutover landswith vibrant tree plantations, implementingintensive silviculture to increase yields, estab-lishing the finest model of forest managementon a finite land base-these are initiatives thatwill both allow communities to prosper andenable them to fulfill a moral obligation to leaveto the future as healthy an environment as theone they inherited.There is no better place to pursue a new way

of thinking than in the temperate rainforests ofthe coast. At the moment, less than six percenthas been protected; the remainder is slated to belogged. If anything, this ratio should be reversed.We live at the edge of the clearcut; our handswill determine the fate of these forests. If we donothing, they will be lost within our lifetimes,and we will be left to explain our inaction. If wepreserve these ancient forests, they will standfor all generations and for all time as symbols ofthe geography of hope. They are called oldgrowth not because they are frail but becausethey shelter all of our history and embrace all ofour dreams.

Wade Davis is an ethnobotanist and prolific wnter.This article is excerpted from his most recent book,Shadows m the Sun- Travels to Landscapes of Spmt andDesire, published by Island Press/Shearwater Books/1.800.828.1302 or www.islandpress.org).

Photographer Graham Osborne specializes in alpineand coast subjects. The photographs in this article andon the covers have been published in his book Ramforest,published by Chelsea Green, Vermont.

The First and Final Flowering of Muriel’s Bamboo

Peter Del Tredici

Regular readers of Arnoldia can appre-ciate the many satisfactions that comefrom working at the Arnold Arbore-tum, with its endless opportunitiesfor studying plants. Even after twentyyears of daily contact, there’s alwayssomething new and exciting. Somedays it is the first flowers on a recentlyplanted specimen; on others, it is

stumbling, sometimes quite literally,across an amazing old plant neverbefore noticed. The highlight of the1998 season was definitely the discov-ery of flowers on Muriel’s bamboo,Fargesia murielae, which appeared atthe Arnold Arboretum for the first-and last-time.

The FloweringFargesia murielae is native to themountains of central China, where itgrows at elevations between two andthree thousand meters. The species isone of the principal foods of the giantpanda bear and arguably one of themost ornamental of the hardy speciesof bamboo. Its graceful, arching stemsreach two to three meters in heightand add a measure of exotic eleganceto any garden. As a clump-formingspecies it expands slowly, in stark con-trast to bamboos that spread by long,underground stems-the "runningbamboos"-which are often the bane of unwarygardeners. Experienced bamboo growers are uni-versal m their praise of Fargesia murielae, notonly for the above-mentioned traits, but alsobecause Muriel’s bamboo is among the hardiestof the entire family, growing well m USDA zone5 and, with protection, into zone 4.

For all of its attractiveness, however, themost interesting feature of Muriel’s bamboo is

Mumel’s bamboo, Fargesia mumelae, m the full flush of its sprmg growth.

its monocarpic life cycle-it flowers once in itslife and then dies. Gardeners are used to seeingsunflowers germinate, grow, and die m a singleseason, and foxgloves die after two years, butthe idea of a plant flowering after eighty to onehundred years and then dying seems more thana little strange. And strange indeed it is, beingfound only among the "woody" monocots, suchas the well-known century plant (Agave sp.), ),

12

a few genera of palms (most notably in thegenus Corypha), and an Andean bromeliad oftree-sized proportions (Puya raymondii), whichtend to come into flower when they reach acritical size.’

Monocarpic bamboos are unique even amongthis unusual group because they do not floweraccording to their size, but according to a prede-termined maturation cycle, the length of whichappears to be genetically fixed for each species.2The eighty-to-one-hundred-year flowering cycleof Muriel’s bamboo, while certainly not thelongest on record, is among the most widelyknown and well documented. Indeed, it was thewidespread flowering and subsequent death ofthe umbrella bamboo in China in 1971, alongwith that of several closely related species, thatcreated worldwide concern about the survivalof the giant panda. The panda population incentral China, it was found, had become overlydependent on the high-elevation species ofFargesia after bamboo species growing at lowerelevations were eliminated by land clearance foragriculture.3Even more remarkable than their long flower-

ing cycle, many bamboos are also synchronousin their flowering behavior. This term refers tothe tendency of most or all of the individuals ofa given species to come into flower at more orless the same time. This unusual behavior hasled some authors to postulate that flowering inthese bamboos is controlled not by climatic fac-tors but by some sort of internal clock. In real-ity, however, the synchromcity is less precisethan generally believed, particularly whenplants m their native habitat are compared withsame-aged cohorts in cultivation that have beenrepeatedly propagated by division.4 It may bepropagation by subdivision that affects culti-vated bamboos, but in any case their floweringcycle occurs as much as twenty years later.While many authors have speculated on the

possible evolutionary and ecological signifi-cance of the monocarpic habit in bamboos,nothing has been proved. One theory, proposedby Daniel Janzen,s is that the long delay in flow-

ering is a strategy for preventing a buildup ofpredators that would feed on the highly nutri-tious seeds if they were produced on a predict-able schedule. However, this idea does notexplain why the flowering intervals of manybamboos greatly exceed the lifespans of mostanimals that would feed on their seeds. Morelikely, the real reason is inextricably embeddedin a complex matrix of physiological, ecological,and evolutionary factors.

The Introduction

The history of the plant’s introduction into cul-tivation in the West, like that of so many otherplants, is cloaked in mystery and confusion. Itwas first collected by the Arnold Arboretum’smost famous plant collector, E. H. Wilson, whoassigned it number 1462. The Arboretum hasmost of Wilson’s field books in its archives, andthose for his first Arboretum expedition, fromFebruary 1907 through April 1909, contains thefollowing entry: "1462. Bamboo, 12 ft., stemsgolden, thickets, 7000-9000 ft, Fang. Plants, -_ - "6 Unfortunately, the last three words ofthe passage are unintelligible, but one impor-tant piece of information is unequivocal: livingplants, along with the usual herbarium speci-mens, were part of this collection.With the help of Alfred Rehder, Wilson

reworked his field notes and published them inPlantae Wilsonianae a work in three volumesthat appeared in sequence in 1913, 1916, and1917. The reference to the umbrella bamboooccurs on page 64 of volume II:

Arundmama sp. Western Hupeh: Fang Hsien,uplands, alt. 2000-3000 m., April 17, 1907

(No. 1462; 2-4 m. tall, stems golden). Withoutflowers. This plant is in cultivation. It forms onthe mountains of north-western Hupeh densethickets and with its clear golden slender stemsis one of the most beautiful of Chinese Bamboos.A picture will be found under No. 0111 of thecollection of my photographs. E.H.W"8

The photograph that Wilson referred to isfound in a bound volume entitled "Arnold Arbo-retum Second Expedition to China: 1910-1911.

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Photographs by E. H. Wilson." Photograph#0111 clearly shows a clump-forming bamboogrowing below a group of fir trees (Abiesfargesii). According to the notes on the accom-panying label, the photograph was taken on June19, 1910, and the plant, Wilson’s #1462, is seengrowing "behind Fang Hsien" at an altitude of8,000 feet. Wilson’s diary for this day includesthe following entry:The rain had ceased when we woke at 5 am &

though dark mist obscured everything from ahundred yards above & around us I prophesied afine day. It remained fine for about two hours &

then commenced to rain steadily. It mcreased asthe day advanced & we had a fine soake. All weresoon drenched to the skin & everything becamesodden. We hurned on as fast as possible &

reached the head of the pass at 10 am ... Muchof the Bamboo has been burned and cut awayfrom the path which is considerable improvedsince our last visit... This bamboo is the hand-somest I know with its bright golden yellowculms some 10-15 ft high shrubs and with arch-ing plume. It must be very hardy for the climatehere is very mgorous. Patches of original forestremain here and there & especially near water-course silver fir & many Birch with willows

and Rhod. are practically thesole constituents.

The final reference to bam-boo #1462 in the Arboretumarchives comes from an un-dated notebook in Wilson’sown handwriting entitled:"Numerical list of seeds [no.1-1474, 4000-4462], collectedon his Arnold Arboretum expe-ditions to eastern Asia, 1907-09, 1910, which were plantedin the arboretum nurseries."9Under #1462, a single bambooplant is listed as being locatedin the "Greenhouse & Frames" "

area of the nurseries. Unfortu-

nately, the Arboretum’s perma-nent records of plants growingon the grounds do not containany mention of #1462, stronglysuggesting that the plant wasnever cultivated out-of-doors.

Fargesia murielae photographed byE H Wilson in its natme habitat,Fang Hslen, Chma, at 8,000 feet.The plants are ten to fifteen feethigh with yellow culms Abies

fargesia stand m the background.Below is Wilson’s field book entryfor collection #1462.

14

The first scientific description of Wilson’s#1462 did not appear until 1920, in an article inKew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, 10under the name Arundmaria murielae Gamble.In the notes following J. S. Gamble’s Latin de-scription, W. J. Bean, Kew horticulturist, notedthat, "By Mr. Wilson’s special wish the speciesis dedicated to his daughter, Muriel Wilson."Bean went on to detail the plant’s history:This Bamboo was presented to Kew from theArnold Arboretum in the autumn of 1913. Asmgle plant came in a pot, and this was dividedup into about half a dozen pieces, which were

repotted and grown for a few months m a green-house. They were then planted out m the collec-tion of Bamboos near the Rhododendron Dellwhere they have grown luxuriantly and promiseto be as ornamental as any hardy species. Theyare at present (October 1920) about 8 ft. highforming dense masses of culms, the outer ones ofwhich arch outwards towards the top and givethe plants a very graceful appearance ... On thewhole A. munelae is a distinct and most attrac-tive addition to hardy bamboos.

At the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, the onlyrecord of Wilson’s #1462 is in the accessionbooks, which noted its arrival on December12, 1913.Wilson’s only other reference to # 1462 is in A

Naturalist in Western China, published in Lon-don in 1913 and New York in 1914. On page 49he describes the vegetation behind Fang Xian byparaphrasing his journal entry of June 19, 1910:The summit is of hard limestone with rareoutcroppings of red sandstone. Stunted wmd-swept Silver Fir and various kmds of Currantextend to the summit. Rhododendron and adwarf Juniper (j. squamata) are also common.The descent was through woods of Birch andBamboo to an open, grassy, scrub-clad, slopingmoorland, through which a considerable torrentflows. The Bamboo, so common hereabouts, isvery beautiful, formmg clumps 3 to 10 feetthrough. The culms are 5 to 12 feet tall, goldenyellow, with dark, feathery foliage; the youngculms have broad sheathmg bracts protectingthe branchlets. Taken all in all, this is the hand-somest Bamboo I have seen.’

The footnote at the bottom of the page reads:"In 1910 I successfully introduced it into culti-vation." In the revised edition of the book, pub-

lished in 1929 under a new title, China, Motherof Gardens, Wilson makes clear that the name-less bamboo mentioned in the 1913 edition wascollection #1462 by removing the footnote andadding the following to the end of the above-quoted paragraph: "In 1910, I successfully intro-duced it into cultivation. It has been namedArundinaria Murielae in compliment to mydaughter.""From all this information, it appears that only

one plant of Wilson’s #1462, collected on May17, 1907, survived the long journey from FangXian in China to the Arnold Arboretum, whereit was observed growing in the greenhouse in1910. In December 1913, without ever beingcultivated out-of-doors here, the plant was sentto Kew Gardens where it was divided-it musthave been quite large-and planted out in thebamboo collection. Although Fargesia murielaewas widely distributed throughout Europe dur-ing the first part of the century, the ArnoldArboretum did not get another plant until1960, when the U.S. National Arboretum inWashington, D.C., sent one (under the nameSinarundinaria murielae) that had beenimported in 1959 from the Royal MoerheimNurseries in Dedemsvaart, Holland. 12

Flowers at Last

The first flowers of Fargesia murielae in theWest appeared in Denmark in 1975.13 Whilethese plants were clearly representative of thespecies, it is not certain that they were part ofWilson’s #1462 clone. The plants were said to besmaller than Wilson’s, and they came intobloom several years earlier than plants knownto be divisions of #1462.While the origin of the Danish plants will

never be determined with certainty, the factremains that in 1998 the flowering of knownclones of Wilson’s Fargesia murielae appears tobe virtually complete, more than ninety yearsafter it was collected from the wild. Some of the

plants of #1462 have produced seed, but it isimportant to remember that they are the resultof self-pollination, and as such they are likelyto suffer from the deleterious effects of inbreed-

ing depression. Only by re-collecting the speciesin central China-from seedlings that germi-nated following the widespread flowering that

15 s

History of Fargesia murielae in the West

1892: The French missionary P. Farges collects a herbarium specimen of an unknownflowering bamboo in Szechuan Province, China. In 1893, the French taxonomist A. Franchetassigns it to a new genus, Fargesia, with the specific name spathacea. 14

17 May 1907: On his first expedition to China for the Arnold Arboretum, E. H. Wilson collectsplants and three sterile herbarium specimens of an unknown bamboo at Fang Xian, Hubei,under collection #1462.

[1910]: Wilson makes note of a single plant from his collection #1462 growing in the "green-houses and frames" area of the Arnold Arboretum.

10 June 1910: On his second Arboretum expedition to China, Wilson revisits Fang Xian andphotographs #1462, labelling the photograph #0111.

12 December 1913: One plant of Wilson’s #1462 is received by Kew Gardens from the ArnoldArboretum. The plant is divided into six pieces that are planted out in the bamboo area.

1916: Wilson labels #1462 as Arundinaria sp. in volume II of Plantae Wilsonianae, but hststhe wrong collection date.

1920: Wilson’s #1462 is given the name Arundinaria murielae by J. S. Gamble.

1935: T. Nakai of Japan reclassifies Arundinaria murielae as Sinarundinaria murielae.

23 December 1959: U.S. National Arboretum botanist F. Meyer arranges for the importationof plants of Sinarundinaria murielae (PI #262266) from the Royal Moerheim Nurseries,Dedemsvaart, Holland. The plants are probably divisions of Wilson’s #1462. One of them isreceived by the Arnold Arboretum on 8 November 1960, under accession #1239-60.

1975: Plants of Sinarundinaria murielae in Denmark, possibly divisions of Wilson’s #1462,come into flower.

1979: Based on the flowering specimens of the Danish plants, T. Soderstrom proposes the nameThamnocalamus spathaceus, for the umbrella bamboo. Based on the same specimens, otherbotanists argue that the species should be classified as either Fargesia murielae (Gamble) orF. spathacea (Franchet).

1988: At Kew Gardens, the original plants of Wilson’s #1462 come into flower for the first time.

1995: C. Stapleton makes the case for preserving the name Fargesia murielae, but proposescorrecting the spelling of the specific to muriehae.’s

May 1998: Arnold Arboretum plants of Fargesia murielae, received from the U.S. NationalArboretum in 1960, come into flower for the first time.

1G f

The flowers of Fargesia munelae are inconspicuous

occurred there during the 1970s-can we hopeto obtain material comparable in quality to theoriginal Wilson #1462.

The story of the introduction of Muriel’s bam-boo is typical of the interplay between meticu-lousness and confusion that often surrounds theintroduction of a new plant. That we can followthe Fargesia story as well as we can bears wit-ness to the care and effort that the Arnold Arbo-retum in general, and Wilson in particular, putinto the process of collection and documenta-tion. The story illustrates another point as well:the importance of sharing plants among botani-cal gardens. Kew Gardens, and especially itshorticulturist W. J. Bean, deserve credit forpropagating and eventually distributing theplant throughout Europe. Distributing rareplants is an act both of generosity and of self-preservation : if you have two plants and giveone away, you can get it back when you lose theone you kept. Such losses happen frequently,

but the tradition of sharing plants provides animportant safety net that greatly increases thechances of successful introduction. Given therate at which the forests of the world are disap-pearing, failure to thoroughly document collec-tions-and to share them-can represent theloss of a resource that can never be recaptured.

Endnotes

~ S. A. Renvoize, Thamnocalamus spathaceus and itshundred-year flowenng cycle. Kew Magazme (1991)8(4) 185-194.

z E. J. Fortamer and R. H Jonkers, juvenility andmaturity of plants as influenced by the ontogeneticaland physiological aging. Acta Horriculturae (197G~56: 37-44.

3 G. B. Shaller, J. Hu, W. Pan, and J. Zhu, The GiantPandas of Wolong (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1985).

4 Renvoize, op cit. ’

°

5 D. Jansen, Why bamboos wait so long to flower AnnRev Ecol Syst /197G[ 7: 347-391.

~ E H. Wilson, AA Manuscript #39526. First

expedition for Arnold Arboretum; Feb. 1907-Sept.1909; collectmg numbers 1-1474 (undated).

7 C. S. Sargent, ed., Plantae Wilsonianae 11 (ArnoldArboretum, 1916), 64.

8 Wilson’s diary entry for April 17, 1907, makes nomention of any bamboo, but when I checked theherbanum specimens that document #1462, 1 foundall of them dated "17/5/07" m Wilson’s handwriting.In the absence of any ~ournal for the month of May1907, this discrepancy in dates was resolved bycheckmg Wilson’s other herbarium specimenscollected at Fang Xian Accordmg to formerArboretum director R. A. Howard, m his 1980 article"E H Wilson as Botamst" (part I, Arnoldia 40(3):102-138; part II, 40(4): 154-193), the Fang Xianmaterial all had collection dates m May 1907. Thisclearly suggests that the date of April 17 published mPlantae Wilsonianae is an error, and that May 17,1907, noted on the specimen, was the actual date forthe collection of Fargesia mumelae

9 E. H Wilson, AA Manuscnpt #39611: Numerical listof seeds [no. 1-1474, 4000-4462], collected on hisArnold Arboretum expeditions to eastern Asia, 1907-08, 1910, which were planted m the arboretumnursenes (undated, probably 1910-1911 [.

lo J. S. Gamble, in Anon, Decades Kewenses~Plantarum novarum in Herbano Horti Regil

17 7

Fargesia munelae at Kew Gardens, hfeless at the conclusion of its flowering m 1997

conservatarum Kew Bulletm of MiscellaneousInformation (1920) 10: 344-345

11 Perhaps Wilson used 1910 as the date for

"successfully" introducing Fargesia mumelaebecause it was then that he inventoried hiscollections for those that were actually alive "m thearboretum nursenes." An alternative, and ratherunlikely, interpretation is that Wilson recollected thebamboo in 1910 and simply recycled #1462 fromthe 1907 expedition. Of course, one can not discountthe possibility that Wilson ~ust made a mistakein giving 1910 as the date for the introduction ofF munelae

12 At the National Arboretum the plant was giveninventory number 262266; at the Arnold Arboretum,it became accession number 1239-60

13 T R. Soderstrom, The Bamboozling Thamno-calamus. Garden (1979) 3~4/: 22-27; Renvoize, op cit.

la M_ A Franchet, Fargesia, nouveau genre deBambusees de la Chme Bull Mens Soc Lmn ~Paris,1893~ 2: 1067-1069.

ls C. Stapleton, Muriel Wilson’s Bamboo. Newsletter ofthe Bamboo Society (European Bamboo Society,Great Bntam, January 1995), 21.

AcknowledgmentsThe author would like to express his thanks to Dr. Chns

Stapleton, consulting taxonomist at Kew Gardens, forhis help in sorting out the complex history of theintroduction of Fargesia munelae, and to Keiko Satoh,Putnam Research Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum, forhelp in sifting through the Wilson Archmes, housed atthe Arnold Arboretum.

Peter Del Tredici is Director of Living Collections at theArnold Arboretum.

Nature Study Moves into the Twenty-First CenturyCandace L. julyan

The veining of the leaves and the construction of the stalks... are as interesting to meas the construction of a locomotive is to an engineer. When you get to know the plants,you feel as though you ought to have a garden where you can take care of real plantsand study them.

Plants move, though many people do not know it. It is true that they do not move witha jerk, but they move very slowly. When the corn gets beaten down by a heavy rain orhail storm, it gradually works itself up again, although it never gets perfectly straightas before. When we move, we bend our joints. That is the way also with the corn. Itbends at the nodes.

-Reports from fourth-grade students at the Francis Parker School, Chicago, 1915.1 1

In many respects these reportscould be more readily attributed tostudents today than to those at thebeginning of this century. Thestudy of plants is now considered aroutine part of the elementary cur-riculum, and reports are a standardform of communication betweenteacher and student. However,classroom practice that encouragesstudents’ observations of nature,considered laudable today, wasmuch more controversial at thebeginning of the century. At theArnold Arboretum, education forchildren has been shaped by ourstrong belief that the most power-ful learning happens out in thelandscape, a belief that was articu-lated at the turn of the century byparticipants in the "nature-studymovement." The fourth-gradersquoted above, students at a schoolfounded on the principles of thismovement, had studied plants byobserving corn growing in theirschoolyard, rather than by readingabout it in a textbook. A closer

19

look at the tenets of nature-study servesto identify the roots of our beliefs and toilluminate new ways to approach thestudy of nature.The nature-study movement, which

peaked between 1890 to 1920, was partof a progressive education philosophythat proposed a child-centered approachto learning by encouraging engagementand play in contrast to more traditional,text-driven practices. Nature-study edu-cators (who used the hyphen to signifythat their nature study included a peda-gogical approach) proposed that learningabout the natural world was as impor-tant as studies of reading, writing, arith-metic, and grammar. The key precepts ofthe nature-study movement can be sum-marized briefly:· The objects of study can be ordinary,seasonal phenomena.

· Direct observation is central to learn-

ing ; drawing can be a useful, comple-mentary tool.

. The teacher guides the students’

exploration; fostering discussions isconsidered more critical than memori-zation.

· Truly significant learning about nature takesplace outdoors, "in nature." "

· Education should instill a love of nature inthe child.2

Much of the impetus for this movement camefrom a concern that the rigid approach to teach-ing was not resulting in significant learningby students. Samuel Jackson, an importantspokesman for the movement, summarized thedissatisfaction of many with traditional book-centered study:

Instead of providing the child with proper condi-tions which cause him to grow out of the oldinto the new, usually, the teacher merely smiteshim wnih a defmztlon The child is finally bela-bored into saying, "The earth is round like a

globe or a ball," and the matter is dropped; butmost of his geography forever conforms to hispicture of the old flat earth of his childhood.3 3

Such misgivings were certainly not new.Over two centuries earlier, the Moravian monk

John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) wrote a cri-tique of the approach to children’s educationat that time:

Hitherto the schools have done nothing with theview of developing children, like young trees,from the growing impulse of their own roots, butonly with that of hanging them over with twigsbroken off elsewhere. They teach youth to adomthemselves with others’ feathers, like the crowin Aesop’s Fables. They do not show them thingsas they are, but tell them what one and another,and a third and a tenth, had thought and writtenabout them, so that it is considered a mark ofgreat wisdom for a man to know a great manyopinions which contradict each other .4

Comenius developed his ideas in the firstillustrated children’s book, Orbis Plctus, pub-lished in 1658 and focused on topics familiar toyoung people. The book’s small woodcut graph-ics are accompanied by short texts that dealwith a wide range of topics drawn from bothnature and ethics-from clouds, trees, and ani-mals, to honesty, respect, and love.

20

Another writer influential in the develop-ment of the nature-study movement was JeanJacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Many of hisideas were incorporated into the movement’sphilosophy: the principles of science are discov-ered by the child, not learned as facts; learningshould begin with observation of commonphenomena; the order of learning should bedetermined by the learner’s interests and expe-riences, not by the organization of science; andthe objective should be enthusiasm for the dis-cipline and methods of science, rather than abody of memorized facts.sAs the nature-study movement gathered

momentum in the late nineteenth century, itsleaders built upon these ideas to create an

approach to education with careful study of theoutdoor environment as its centerpiece. While a

growing number of teachers found these ideasexciting and in line with their own thinking,many others were baffled by the idea of teachingwithout books and using natural objects andphenomena to help children understand theworld around them. Ultimately the movementlost strength as educators turned away from theideas of progressive education in favor of moretraditional approaches.

The Relevance of Nature-Study TodayWhile the philosophy of the nature-study move-ment could be found in small pockets of schoolsthroughout this century, the ideas gained favoragain in the 1960s and 1970s with the growth ofenvironmental education and of science educa-tion that focused on experience and, morerecently, in the 1980s and 1990s, with a renewedfocus on science education. The notion of a

compatibility between science and nature-study was not prevalent at the turn of the cen-tury. Although exceptions existed, such as LouisAgassiz, a nineteenth-century scientist whosecredo was "Study nature, not books," generally,nature-study educators and professors of scienceheld significantly different ideas, as suggestedin these passages written by Anna Comstockin 1911:

For a long time botanical science, in the popularmmd, consisted chiefly of pulling flowers topieces and finding their Latin names by the use

of the analytical key. All the careful descriptionsof the habits of plants in the classic books wereviewed solely as conducive to accuracy in plac-ing the proper label on herbarium specimens.Long after the study of botany in the universitieshad become biological rather than purely sys-tematic, the old regime held sway in our second-

ary schools; and perhaps some of us today knowof high schools still working in the first ray thatpierced primeval darkness....To-day nature-study and science, while they

may deal with the same objects, view them fromopposite standpoints.... The child, throughnature-study, learns to know the life history ofthe violet growing in his own dooryard, and thefascinating story of the robin nesting in the cor-nice of his own porch.b .6

Comstock explained that nature-study "doesnot start out with the classification given inbooks, but in the end it builds up a classificationin the child’s mind which is based on fundamen-tal knowledge; it is a classification like thatevolved by the first naturalists, it is builton careful personal observations of both formand life."’She would, no doubt, be surprised to learn

how the teaching of science has shifted in theintervening years. In 1994, the National Acad-emy of Science convened a large group of scien-tists and educators to consider how and whatchildren should learn about science and theenvironment. The conclusions of this group,published in 1996 as the National Science Edu-catlon Standards (NSES/, suggest certain "bigideas" to be addressed at each grade level andpropose an approach to teaching that in manyways resembles the one endorsed by the nature-study authors at the turn of the century:

Learning science is something students do, notsomething that is done to them. In learningscience, students describe objects and events,ask questions, acquire knowledge, constructexplanations of natural phenomena, test thoseexplanations in many different ways, and com-municate their ideas to others 8

The Arboretum’s work with children employsa combination of the nature-study philosophyand scientific practice. Begun in 1984, theArboretum’s Field Studies Experiences are

designed for small groups of elementary stu-

21

dents who come to the Arboretum to observeclosely and make sense of what they see. In thefall, students look for seeds and determine theirmode of travel; in the spring, they discover thestages of transformation from flower to fruit. Inboth of these activities, careful observation issupplemented by conversations with the guides,who help students make sense of what they see.This program is based on a belief that childrenlearn best through experiences in the landscape,guided by attentive adults.A decade later, we explored ways to add data

collection to these observation-based activities.In 1995, with funding from the National ScienceFoundation (NSF), the Arboretum began thedevelopment of a program that could serve as amodel for partnerships between elementaryschools and institutions involved in science.While based on many of the principles of nature-study, this new project, called Seasonal Investi-gations, also includes an emphasis on keepingsystematic records of observations and sharingthose data with others using a computerweb site.

A Design for Nature Study in the Twenty-First Century

Before I investigated a twig in winter, I justthought that the leaves fell off a tree and gradu-ally grew back. But boy, did I learn a lot abouttrees from Just one little twig!Maybe I should tell you about some things I

learned... I learned the names of the different

parts of a twig, hke the Terminal Bud, which isthe bud at the tip, and the Lateral Buds, the littlebuds on the sides. I, myself, liked the names ourclass made up better. Like the name I gave to theTerminal Bud, Kiss-End Tail (an off-spnng fromthe expression "Kiss and Tell"[. I.Another thing I learned from my twig is that

the different colors along the twig signal yearlygrowth. We also determined the yearly growthfor 1995-96 by loolang at the first ring from thetop. Then we measured from that ring to the

very tip of the twig. Get this, my twig grows onecentimeter less each year! So next year, if mytwig only grew one centimeter since 1995, mytwig will probably stop growing. Or maybe itwill start a whole new growth. I think thatthe reason my twig’s health has been declining isbecause of the harsh winters we’ve been having.Well it’ll sure be a big surpnse [this spring] !

My twig was a veryinformative source. I

learned more abouttrees than I could everfit into one report. So I ~

better go before I start an-other paragraph telling youabout how great trees are!"

"

-Report from a fourth-gradestudent at the Murphy School,Boston, 1996.

Like the student reports from B1915 quoted at the beginning, thisone displays an enthusiastic, obser-vation-based consideration of the sub-

ject. The author is a student in one ofthe classrooms participating in theArboretum’s Seasonal Investigationsprogram (originally called the Commu-nity Science Connection), designed tohelp elementary teachers strengthentheir science curricula by replacmg theusual one- to two-week unit based ontextbook explanations with a year-long study of trees in the schoolyard.To date, we have worked with fifty

teachers from the Boston, Newton, andBrookline school districts; all attendedsummer institutes at the Arboretumbefore guiding their students throughthe study. The goals of the program arevery similar to those of the nature-studymovement:

. to encourage use ot the outdoors as an ex-

tension of the classroom, whether in theschoolyard, the Arboretum, orthe students’ neighborhood;

. to provide the structure of ayear-long study of individual trees

-,

that incorporates close observations, sys-tematic data collection, and guidance inmaking sense of the data;

. to give the students opportunities to com-municate on the web with others studyingthe same topic.The program proceeds through three seasons.

The fall investigation focuses on the generalcharacteristics of trees and on the ways speciesdiffer, such as in the dates that leaves change

22

color and fall from the tree. In the winter inves-

tigation, students learn to "read" a twig and usetheir new knowledge to determine which wasthe best recent growing year for the schoolyardtrees. The spring investigation revisits thefeatures examined in the winter to learnwhether and how those features change in thespring and to determine when the flowers are"open for business."

iThe student report quoted

above was written as part of thewinter twig investigation. Thetwigs, initially viewed by studentsas a bag of sticks, constitute themajor focus of the class investiga-tion. Each twig soon becomes atreasured resource. Students beginby making careful drawings andidentifying features of the twig,later naming the features. Thesenames are often revealing. Forexample, one student named theannual growth-ring marks "grow-ing up lines." Many students pre-ferred their own names to thoseof scientists, but they were fluentin both.

The Role of the Web Site

Now in our final year of NSF fund-

ing, we are designing a web sitefor Seasonal Investigations that webelieve will support both the class-room and outdoor work and allowa greater number of teachers totake part in the project. While theprogram can be (and sometimesis) completed successfully usingonly the classroom and school-yard, the on-line environment pro-vides an important support for thefour activities central to the proj-ect-observation, data collection,communication, and publication-with a web site feature dedicated toeach of these activities.The Spotlight feature changes

weekly throughout each seasonalinvestigation; the topic of eachentry is chosen to encourage

closer observation. In the fall investigation, stu-dents were invited to consider patterns of leaf

change, to view other students’ drawings of pat-terns they found, and to share their observationsabout leaf patterns with others. Another Spot-light entry asked them to consider how bark ac-commodates the expansion of a tree’s girth.Three possibilities-fissures, plates, and peels-were illustrated with photos; students were

23

asked to look at their school-yard trees and report their

findings.The Tree Talk feature facili-

tates communication amongclasses, from initial letters ofintroduction to later conversa-tions about questions or find-ings. Contributions to most ofthese "conversations" can bemade and viewed at any time;in addition, there is an optionfor a live, scheduled chat witheither Arboretum staff or otherclassrooms.The Activities feature pro-

vides the structure for sharingdata among classes. Studentsare asked to provide specificdata about their schoolyardtrees, changing or adding to thedata as the study progresses.The combined data provideopportunities for discussion in the classroom orwith other students.The Publication feature is intended to elicit a

creative activity at the end of each investiga-tion, perhaps a report or drawing, that bringstogether the ideas, surprises, and discoveriesfrom the investigation.The first three years of the project were spent

perfecting the model and developing a set ofinvestigations that could be completed in the

schoolyard, with supporting visits to the Arbo-retum. During this, the last year of the project,the focus is on perfecting the web site to ensurethat the program will continue after NSF fund-

ing ends.Even before the project’s completion, the

framework of Seasonal Investigations has beenadopted as a model by other institutions

engaged in science education. Descanso Gar-dens in Los Angeles is replicatmg the entire pro-gram as a pilot project with the Los AngelesUnified School District. The Garden’s director,Richard Schulhof, had first-hand experiencewith the project as a member of the Arboretumstaff at the time it began, and is enthusiasticabout using the program as a new approach toscience teaching for his own staff as well as forthe Los Angeles teachers. In addition, the Mas-sachusetts Audubon Society is using the Sea-sonal Investigations framework to develop bothteacher institutes and investigations of vernalpools in three locations across Massachusetts.

Future Directions , , I

Many of the ideas of the nature-study move-ment are alive and in practice in today’sprograms at the Arboretum, but new issues

24

are also being raised. What role can the webplay, not as an end in itself but as a springboardto investigations outdoors? How might it pro-vide an avenue for sharing our educationalideas, many of which have century-old roots,with interested educators around the globe?

In many ways, the words of Anna Comstockhave as much relevance at the end of this cen-

tury as they did at the beginning:When the child has become acquamted with theconditions and necessities of plant hfe, how dif-ferent will the world seem to him! Every glanceat forest or field will tell him a new story. Everysquare foot of sod will be revealed to him as abattlefield m which he himself may count thevictories m the struggle for existence, and hewill walk henceforth in a world of miracle and of

beauty,-the miracle of adjustment to circum-stances, and the beauty of obedience to law."9

The young author who wrote about her twigis one of a growing number of students whosescience experiences have been shaped, eitherdirectly or indirectly, through a connection withthe Arboretum and its staff. As we enter the

twenty-first century, we continue to seek oppor-tunities for sharing our ideas about the compat-ibility of nature, science, and technology withteachers and students eager to learn about treesand plants. Our hope is that ideas aboutchildren’s education, developed and nurtured atthe Arboretum, can grow into viable "seeds"locally and around the country.

Endnotes

1 From the Francis Parker School Year Book, vol IV,June 1915 (Archives of Gutman Library, HarvardUniversity).

z Culled from W. S. Jackman, Nature-Study andRelated Sub7ects for Common School, Part II (NewYork: Henry Holt, 1891); A. C. Boyden, Nature Studyby Months (Boston: New England Publishmg, 1898);G. L Clapp, "Real and sham observation by pupils,"Education, January 1892; C. B. Scott, Nature-Studyand the Child (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1901); A. B.Comstock, Handbook of Nature-Study (Ithaca, NY:Comstock Publishing, 1911 /.

3 Quoted in Jackman, op. cit, pp. 9-10.

4 Quoted m N. A. Calings, "History of ObjectTeaching," Barnard’s American Journal of Education(December, 1962) 12: 637.

5 Quoted m T. Mmton, "The History of the Nature-Study Movement and Its Role m the Developmentof Environmental Education" /Unpublished dis-sertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,1979), pp. 30-31.

6 Quoted m G. F. Atkmson, First Studies of Plant Life(Boston: Ginn & Co , 1901), p. m.

7 Comstock, op. cit., p.5.

8 National Research Council, National ScienceEducation Standards (Washington, D.C.: NationalAcademy Press, 1996), p. 20.

9 Atkmson, op. cit., p. v

Candace Julyan is Director of Education at the ArnoldArboretum.

Native vs. Nonnative: A Reprise

Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

I thoroughly enjoyed the article "An Evolutionary Perspective on Strengths, Fallacies,and Confusions in the Concept of Native Plants" by Stephen Jay Gould (ArnoldiaSpring 1998). Gould uses the native plant issue to clarify some of the common mis-conceptions surrounding the basic theory of natural selection. He also reasserts him-self as one of Darwin’ prevailing "bulldogs." I do not take issue with anything thatGould includes in his analysis, but rather what he fails to include. Little effort ismade to address the evolutionary ecology perspective in the concept of native plants.Gould touches lightly on the merits of native plants by indicating that they "have

generally been present for a long time and have therefore stabilized and adapted" tolocal conditions. This is for me a key reason, from an evolutionary perspective, forpromoting native plants, since natives have presumably coevolved with other localorganisms and the chemical and physical environment. An ecological balance has,therefore, generally been struck that prevents the unbridled increase in any onespecies’ numbers. Exotic plant species (i.e., nonnative plants), on the other hand,have a greater propensity for rampant population growth. Darwin even comments onthe ecological consequences of invasive exotic plant species and points out in chap-ter three of On the Origin of Species that:

... cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughoutwhole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several of the plants now most numerousover the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclu-sion of all other plants, have been mtroduced from Europe.... In such cases the geometri-cal ratio of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains theextraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion of naturalized productions in their newhomes.... when a plant or ammal is placed m a new country amongst new competitors,though the climate may be exactly the same as in its former home, yet the conditions ofits life will generally be changed in an essential manner.

Irruptions of invasive exotic plant and animal species typically occur, as Darwinimplies, because they do not generally have the competitor, predator, or pathogenload typically associated with native plants. Exotic species are new players in anenvironment and do not adhere to the "rules" that govern native species. Admittedly,the vast majority of exotic species are not invasive since they do not seem to com-pete well with native plants. Those that are invasive, however, have wrought havocon local and regional ecosystems. Many native plants are maligned as mvasivebecause of their weedy nature, but there is a distinct difference: native weeds do notdisrupt natural communities nor do they tend to form monocultures. (I would like to

27

see the term "invasive" restricted to ecologically disruptive exotic plants and theterm "aggressive" adapted for native weeds.)Gould also gives little mention to the ecologically disruptive consequences of

invasive exotics to biodiversity other than saying that he "treasures nature’s bounte-ous diversity of species," and that "cherishing native plants does allow us to defendand preserve a maximal amount of local variety." This is precisely why native plantsshould be the first choice for landscaping among ecologically sensitive individuals.Second choice should be exotic species that are not invasive or those that have avery low potential for becoming invasive. I am not suggesting that we adopt the"Naziesque" approach to plant material choice. I too am awed by our "bounteous"species diversity but it is only diminished by invasive exotic species. And I hopethat Gould, by pointing out that the argument for using native plants is evolution-arily fallacious, has not encouraged what he so stridently abhors: a misconstruedDarwinian alibi for depraved behavior-in this case, using ecologically disruptive,invasive plant species.

Organisms, native or otherwise, respond to their environment through the adaptivecreativity of natural selection. Theirs is a life without intent. There is no desire

among plants to become a garden pest or to disrupt natural communities. Humans,by purposefully homogenizing the world’s flora, have forced the occurrence ofunlikely species interactions, some of which we greet with delight (culinary herbs,vegetable crops, and the majority of ornamentals) and some with dread (kudzu, privet,and water hyacinth). Gould weakly dissuades the introduction of invasive exoticplant species by maintaining that there should be "sensitive and respectful mixing ofnatives and exotics." From this I read: proceed with caution. I feel that a strongerposition needs to be taken on this issue. Invasive exotics are a major threat tobiodiversity and the genetic diversity contained within. I therefore challenge botani-cal gardens and arboreta, plant nurseries, and private gardeners to promote the use ofecologically judicious plant choices in our public and private gardens.

John RandallConservation Curator, North Carolina Botanical Garden ofthe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

To the Editor:

Stephen Jay Gould ("An Evolutionary Perspective on Strengths, Fallacies, and Con-fusions in the Concept of Native Plants," Arnoldia Spring 1998) offers an excellentargument for his characterization of the concept of native plants as "a remarkablemixture of sound biology, invalid ideas, false extensions, ethical implications, and

Grapevmes (Vitus sp.) m northeastern Connecticut.

28

political usages." It seems worth adding to his commentary, written from an evolu-tionary perspective, an argument from the perspective of practical horticulture.But first, I hasten to point out that in 1998, we in the arenas of botanic gardens and

horticulture are already working to promote the use of environmentally appropriateplants specific to the requirements and use of the planted site. Plantsmen are not rec-ommending aggressive exotics as landscape plants of preference regardless of environ-mental consequences. That would not only be irresponsible but would ultimatelydestroy the green industry and its important contribution to the U.S. economy.The primary criteria for plant selection in managed environments today is whether

a plant is reasonably well adapted to the site and, hence, will survive and thrive with-out requiring regular use of pesticides, and within that context, whether the plantsatisfies the ornamental, agricultural, and/or functional demands of the site and itsconstituents. Given these criteria, there are many instances when exotic plants arethe clear choice for a given landscape-especially when we recall that not all exoticsare invasive or aggressive (in fact only a small minority have proven to be so), and thatnot all natives are nonaggressive (for instance, our native staghorn sumac). The realchallenge, of course, is to determine with intelligence and sensitivity to site con-straints what are the environmentally appropriate species for a given site that arelikely to succeed there. And, I might add, what may be the appropriate cultivars,which are capable of great phenotypic and physiological divergence within onespecies-in some cases, even greater divergence than the wild-type species can offerwithin a genus.We cannot ignore the reason that invasive exotics have been used in the first place,

which is: Managed environments (cities, residential neighborhoods, parks, disturbedwetlands, timber production lands, and so on) are already drastically altered and havealready been interfered with, resulting in significantly inhibited natural selection andthe ability of the prior extant site natives to thrive. For this very reason, a managedenvironment often requires conscious choice of potentially aggressive plants if thereare to be any plants at all that live there.One of the reasons that botamc gardens, arboreta, and many types of public gardens

maintain living collections of plants is to allow for evaluation and comparison ofplant growth and development, and landscape performance long-term in real time ina given regional landscape. The ability to carry out these evaluations allows us toselect well-adapted plants for an area. The broader the palette of well-adapted plantsavailable, the more effectively an environmentally sound landscape can be built.

All sites, whether managed or wild, including severely disturbed and altered stress-ful environments (such as urban parks), require plants adapted to the conditions onthat site. A well-adapted plant for a managed site may or may not be a regionalnative, depending on the specific stresses associated with the given managed environ-ment. We cannot effectively plant many of the natives of the humid Northeast UnitedStates in, for example, parking lot beds, or even in many new suburban garden sitesthat have been stripped of topsoil (excepting only such broadly adapted and aggres-sive natives as, for instance, poison ivy).

29

Many Asian natives serve as good landscape plants in the Northeast preciselybecause they are well-adapted to our most common types of "disturbed" landscapes.The climatic and soil similarities between eastern North America and eastern Asia

are well documented and widely understood and accepted. Should we, in spite of thisnatural botanical gift, restrict the plants grown on these sites to a few U.S. nativesthat will thrive there because they will basically thrive anywhere? Do we want ourmanaged outdoor stressful environments to be planted with only a limited palette ofregionally native aggressive plants? Would the residents of Washington, D.C., reallywant us to replace the flowering Asian cherries with native pin cherries (which areactually more susceptible to tent caterpillars)?How do we define "regionally native," in any case?-plants found growing within

a 100-mile radius of the site now, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago? Plants found grow-ing within the state now, 50 years ago, 100 years ago? Plants found growing withinthe region now, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago?Much as we may wish to, we cannot turn back the clock and erase the huge distur-

bances that we have thoughtlessly imposed throughout most of our native habitat.This makes it even more critical that we preserve and protect what small acreages of

undisturbed habitat remain, as much as is possible.Unfortunately, with increasing population and urbanization, the likelihood is that

over the next 100 years, these small acreages of undisturbed, or little-disturbed, orrestored habitat will become even more fragmented, pressured, and fragile. It isimperative that we learn to manage our expanding areas of managed environmentswisely, usmg a diversity of plants that result in environmentally sound as well asbeautiful, productive, and functional landscapes. We cannot achieve that goal byrelying solely on "regionally native" plants for every single managed landscape nomatter its location or purpose.

Clearly, a reasonable, moderate, thoughtful, site-specific, and non-arbitraryapproach to plant selection is required for each individual landscape. Known rampantinvasives, regardless of provenance, should not be planted. The decision process forwhat plants to include in a native wetland restoration project should clearly be dras-tically different from that of choosing plants for an urban pocket park. In all cases,effort to use plants suited to the region and the site must be made.

I write this response to remind us of what we all as plantsmen are already workingto achieve, that is, to bring reason, responsibility, knowledge, and moderation to bearon the process of how we choose plants for managed environments, and what choiceswe make. In the face of the next hundred years of increasing pressure on the land, thefuture of our flora and the quality of our lives depends on this.

Kim TrippDirector of the Botanic Garden of Smith Collegeand Arnold Arboretum Associate

Native Plants: Another View

Harrison L. Flint t

To close this circle, for the time being, we reprint very nearly verbatim anarticle from Arnoldia, Winter 1982-1983. When we asked Professor Flint toupdate it to serve as a companion to the letters to the editor, he found verylittle, and nothing at all of substance, that he wished to change.

Following the tradition of such greatmidwestern naturalists as Jens Jensen, AldoLeopold, and May Theilgaard Watts, contempo-rary landscape planners have grown in aware-ness of native plants and their usefulness indesigned landscapes. The movement towardlandscaping with native plants now has spreadwidely and has not yet reached its full potential.Its ultimate expression is found in re-creatingnatural plant communities, a stepwise andtime-consuming process now being carried outby relatively few landscape planners. Such plan-ners usually are sophisticated horticulturistsand landscape architects who have elected tospecialize in this particular area.

Yet, while many landscape planners havedeveloped close familiarity with a great range ofplants, carefully selecting those most appropm-ate for the situation at hand, less-sophisticatedmembers of their profession have eschewed allforms of vegetation that are not "native." Forsome this position is taken with a sense of mis-sionary zeal; for others it may simply offer con-venience in requiring knowledge of a smallernumber of landscape plants.To select landscape plants on the basis of

whether or not they are native, one must firstdetermine which species are "native." In NewEngland, for instance, is it permissible to selectblack locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), a commonwild tree in much of the area, yet native onlyfarther south and west? Must redbud (Cerciscanadensis) be excluded in southwestern Wis-consin, since it is an exotic species in that state,even though it grows naturally a dozen milesaway in northwestern Illinois? In Indiana, mustanother tree legume, American yellowwood

(Cladrastis kentukea, formerly C. lutea), berestricted in use to only those few countieswhere it is indigenous?Any question about species eligibility for use

in re-creating or preserving a natural plant asso-ciation finds its answer in the planner’s knowl-edge of the association. Clearly, only certainplants "belong." But in other areas of landscapeplanning, divisions between native and nonna-tive species blur-and perhaps are best leftblurred, allowing selection decisions to be madeaccording to criteria relating to function.

Exclusion of nonnative plants on principle isbased upon several generalized claims, all ofwhich hold at least a grain of truth:

(1) Nonnative plants look out of place inthe landscape.If one’s objective is to preserve a natural land-scape, ample justification exists for removingnonnative species as weeds. The same is true inre-creating a "natural" landscape, but in othercases the question is not so easily answered.Must a woodland gardener in New Englandbe asked to plant no other species of wildginger (Asarum) than the native A. canadense?Must sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus),galax (Galax urceolata), box huckleberry(Gaylussacia brachycera), and yellowroot(Xanthorhiza simplicissima) be left to theirmore southerly native haunts? And must theNew England gardener be sure to omit lily-of-the-valley (Convallaris majalis) and English ivy(Hedera helix) as European natives? Perhaps,but only as a matter of taste.

(2) Plant species are better adapted to theregion in which they are native than

31

elsewhere, because this region has "made" "

them, through distinctive selection pressures.As logical as this view may seem at first, it hastwo flaws. First, it excludes the possibility ofpreadaptation. For example, the climate ofnortheastern Asia so closely parallels thatof similar latitudes in northeastern NorthAmerica that many Asian species have been pre-adapted to our climate long before they haveseen it, and turn out to be some of our most use-ful landscape plants.A second flaw is the tacit presumption that

the soil and climate of a particular landscapesite are similar to those of the natural region inwhich it is located. Landscape designers andcontractors know that this is not true. Most

landscape sites, especially urban ones, are

exposed to soil and climatic stresses that sel-dom exist in wild areas nearby. Soils may begreatly modified by construction and subse-quent restoration. Patterns of wind, solar radia-tion, and temperature fluctuation are modifiedin developed sites. Perhaps most important ofall, patterns of rainfall, runoff, and absorption ofwater into the soil are drastically altered. Inshort, developed sites are so greatly changedthat they may differ much more from nearbynatural areas than do certain natural areas onthe other side of the earth.

(3) Nonnative plants are weedy, reproducingfreely and mvading areas where they are notwanted.

This is a valid criticism of several nonnative

species, such as buckthorns (Rhamnus sp.),certain Asian honeysuckles (Lonicera sp.),kudzu vine (Pueraria lobata), some species ofElaeagnus, Euonymus, and others. But it is nota fair generalization. In fact, it seems a contra-diction to generalize that nonnative species arenot well adapted yet reproduce to the point ofbeing a nuisance. Again, it is necessary to knowwhich species, both native and exotic, are

weedy and exclude them in situations in whichthey might get out of control.

(4) Natme plants are less susceptible to msectand disease problems than nonnatives and soneed less maintenance.

We as often hear the counterclaim: that nonna-tive plants separated from their ecosystems are,

at least for a time, free of many of their naturalenemies, and examples of native species withmajor problems are easily found. American elm(Ulmus americana) has been decimated inmany areas by Dutch elm disease and phloemnecrosis. The most promising sources of resis-tance to Dutch elm disease are Asian speciesand their hybrids. The majestic Americanchestnut (Castanea dentata), nearly wiped outby blight in its native habitat decades ago, isfinding its closest replacement in the disease-resistant Chinese chestnut (C. mollissima) andits hybmds.

Crabapples native to eastern North America(e.g., Malus angustifolia, M. coronaria, andM. ioensis) are susceptible to cedar-apple rust, aserious enough problem to rule them out aslandscape plants in most localities where redcedar (Juniperus virginiana), the alternate hostfor the disease organism, is present. Asian

crabapples are relatively free of this problem. Inareas where red cedar does not grow wild, thedisease can be largely controlled by substitutingjunipers of Asian origin for red cedar.

Resistance to insect and disease problems istoo important a consideration in selecting land-scape plants to be left to generalization. It is bet-ter dealt with directly by selecting troublefreeplants than indirectly by selecting only nativeor nonnative plants, in the expectation that theywill tend to be more resistant to problems thantheir opposite numbers.

(5) We need to make better use of thetremendous pool of genetic diversity inherentin native plant species, a pool that has beenbarely sampled thus far.Amen! And the same can be said for nonnative

species. How often is our knowledge of an Asianspecies, for instance, limited to a few clones orat best a narrow slice of the germplasm thatexists m the natural range? Intrepid plantexplorers have introduced to us many new spe-cies from remote corners of the world. Notwith-

standing the many collections made over thepast decade, we have largely failed to follow upon their discoveries by assembling largersamples of those species for evaluation, just assurely as we have neglected to observe fully thevariation that exists in native species. As a

32

result, our narrow knowledge of diversity inplant species confounds the issue of theirnativeness.The U.S. Department of Agriculture has

taken an important step to improve this situa-tion with regard to crop species through its net-work of plant germplasm repositories. It is upto other institutions, including botanical gar-dens and arboreta, to develop stronger programsrelating to preservation and development ofgermplasm of value to landscape improvement.There are, of course, landscape situations

where nonnative plants are clearly inappropri-ate and so to be avoided. This includes preserva-tion, restoration, and re-creation of natural areasand plant associations. In many other situationsthe constraint of using only native plants,intended to produce a natural effect, itself

becomes artifact. In such situations it is moresensible to return to the basics of plant selec-tion, considering adaptability and intendedfunction first, then maintenance requirementsand seasonal interest. When a pool of plantshaving the desired requirements has beenassembled, final selections can be made on thebasis of individual taste.The search for a broad range of prospective

landscape plants, and their thoughtful use, hasmade our landscape increasingly functional andinteresting. Continuing the search will enrichour lives in the process.

Harrison Flint is professor emeritus of horticultureat Purdue University m Lafayette, Indiana. He is

the author of The Country journal Book of Trees andShrubs and Landscape Plants for Eastern NorthAmenca, 2nd edition.

U.S. POSTAL SERVICESTATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION

(Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685) _

1. Publication Title: Arnoldia 2. Publication No: 0004-2633 3. Filing Date’ 12 November 1998. 4. Issue Frequency:Quarterly 5 No of Issues Published Annually 4 6. Annual Subscription Pmce: $20.00 domestic; $25.00 foreign. 7.Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication. Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plam, SuffolkCounty, MA 02130-3500. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters of General Business Office of Publisher:Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plam, Suffolk County, MA 02130-3500. 9. Full Names and CompleteMailing Address of Pubhsher, Editor, and Managmg Editor Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plam, SuffolkCounty, MA 02130-3500, publisher; Karen Madsen, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plam, MA 02130-3500, editor. 10. Owner: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain, Suffolk County,MA 02130-3500 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Secunty Holders Owmng or Holdmg 1 Percent orMore of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: none. 12. The purpose, function, and nonprofit statusof this organization and the exempt status for federal mcome tax purposes have not changed during the preceding 12 2months. 13. Publication Name. Arnoldia 14 Issue Date for Circulation Data Below. Summer 1998. 15. Extent andNature of Circulation. a. Total No. Copies. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: 4,450.Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 4,500 b Paid and/or Requested Circulation. (1) (Sales Through Dealers and Carmers, Street Vendors, and Counter Sales. Average No. Copies Each Issue DuringPrecedmg 12 Months: 129. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 440 (2~ Paid and/orRequested Mail Subscriptions Average No. Copies Each Issue Dunng Precedmg 12 Months: 3,352 Actual No. Copiesof Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date’ 3,500 c Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation. Average No.Copies Each Issue During Precedmg 12 Months’ 3,481 Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to FilingDate: 3,940 d Free Distribution by Mail. Average No. Copies Each Issue Dunng Precedmg 12 Months: 187. ActualNo. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 175 e. Free Distribution Outside the Mail: Average No.Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months 230. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to FilingDate: 325. f. Total Free Distribution- Average No Copies Each Issue Dunng Precedmg 12 Months: 417. Actual No.Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 500 g Total Distribution’ Average No. Copies Each IssueDuring Preceding 12 Months: 3,898. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date’ 4,440.h Copies Not Distributed. ( 1 ~ Office Use, Leftovers, Spoiled. Average No Copies Each Issue During Precedmg 12Months. 650. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date 235. (2) Return from news agents.Average No. Copies Each Issue Dunng Preceding 12 Months. none. Actual No. Copies of Single Issue PublishedNearest to Filing Date’ none. i. Total. Average No. Copies Each Issue During Precedmg 12 Months: 650. Actual No.Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 235 Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation AverageNo Copies Each Issue Dunng Precedmg 12 Months: 85% Actual No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest toFiling Date: 78%. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. Karen Madsen, Editor

The Arnold ArboretumF , - , " 1 , , 8

Field Studies Are Inspired by the Work of VolunteersDiane SyversonManager of School ProgramsA fourth-grade teacher from theBaker School brought her class tothe Arboretum this October for a

field study called Plants in Autumn:How Seed,r Travel Her response to

the question, "What did you like

most about your experience at the

Arboretum>" was:

I really admire the fact thatthis program is staffed by vol-unteers. I think it’s importantfor kids to see people donatingtheir time and energy because

they want to. Additionally theatmosphere was invitmg,which made the experiencethat much better.

Volunteer guides who arepersonally invested in their workcreate an invigorating learningenvironment for school classes that

come to the Arboretum for Field

Study Experiences. Visitingschoolchildren find themselves in

a group facilitated by any one ofthe 25 men and women who guidechildren on these fall and springprograms. Each guide is trained tosupport the children’s science

learning, as together they examinethe plants and habitats within theArboretum landscape.

As volunteers, the school

program guides are dedicated toenriching children’s connectionwith science, nature, and theArboretum through the FieldStudy Expenence. These volun-teers are men and women whose

commitment might originate

from a personal interest inchildren’s education. they includeformer teachers, a school librarian,an education graduate student,grandparents, and a person consid-ering a career change to education.Other volunteers come with per-sonal experience and interest inlife science: as do a part-timescience teacher who saves a day perweek to "teach" at the Arboretum,an ex-biology instructor, a retmedchemist, a self-employed horticul-turist, and many impassioned gar-deners. Many of our volunteersknow and love the Arboretum

from the perspective of neighborand supporter; it is from this per-

spective that they invest in shar-ing its richness with others.

School program guides makea one-year commitment to their

job that includes thirty hours ofField Study Expenence training;weekly guiding of elementary agechildren, fall and spring; andattendance at education meetingsduring the winter months. Formore information or to observe a

field study program, phone DianeSyverson, manager of school pro-grams, at 617/524-1718 x163.

No Complaints HerePeter Del Tredici, Director of Living Collections

Gardeners are notorious for their cold. The right amount of snow is

ability to complain endlessly great, but too little or too much

about the weather. If it’s not too is always a problem. And so onwet, then it’s certainly too dry; if down the lme. This tendency init’s not too hot, it’s certainly too . contznued on page 3

Former InternReturns as PutnamFellow

Laura Brogna, Putnam Fellow

I’ve been fortunate, as a child of a

foreign service family, to travel inAsia, Europe, and the U.S. and tolive in very different kinds of

places, including suburban north-ern Virgima, downtown Tokyo,and the rural Northeast Kingdomof Vermont. Somewhere along theway, noticing my surroundings, I

became a student of landscapesand landscape history.

I consider my Putnam fellow-

ship an opportunity to continuemy investigations into the work-

ings of New England landscapes,which I began officially as agraduate student in landscapearchitecture at Harvard’s Graduate

School of Design (GSD). One ofmy projects here will be the studyof planning and land managementissues, including development andtourism pressures on workingfarms and forests. I also will inves-

tigate how the Arboretum func-

tions within its three increasinglyurbanized watersheds in order to

prepare a stormwater maintenance

plan for the site. Finally, I willresearch the land-use history ofthe area proposed for a new sun-loving shrub and vine collection.

Farewell to Peter StevensThe imminent departure of Peter Stevens, professor of biology anda curator of the Arnold Arboretum and Gray Herbama, representsa serious loss to the Arboretum’s group of specialists in Asian

botany. Peter will be joining his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Kellogg-known to us all as Toby-on the faculty of the University ofMissouri at St. Louis. Toby will hold the E. Desmond Lee Chairin Botanical Studies, Peter will be a professor of biology, and bothwill also hold adjunct positions at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Peter joined the staff of the Arnold Arboretum as an assistantcurator in 1973 after three years as a botanist in the Papua NewGuinea Forest Service, and worked his way up through the ranks:

quite a feat at Harvard! He has pursued two groups of interestshere. One has been in theoretical aspects of the history and

practice of systematics, and particularly how botanists use thecharacters of plants in classification and to interpret evolution.But Peter may well be remembered most for his elegantly craftedsystematic treatments, in the St. John’s wort family, Clusiaceae,and especially its large and subtly varying tropical tree genusCalophyllum; m the rhododendron family, Ericaceae; and in vari-ous other taxa that have presented interesting problems to him.

Peter has played a seminal part in the teaching of plantsystematics at Harvard. His undergraduate course Bio 103,Evolution and Diversification of Flowering Plants, and his gradu-ate course Bio 218, The Families of Flowering Plants, haveattracted a growing number of students who found them dense

and therefore difficult but, thanks to Peter’s ebullient enthusiasmfor his subject, immensely stimulating.We wish Peter and Toby good success in this new phase in their

careers and will welcome their future visits here.

Peter Ashton, Director, 1978-1987 7

During my tenure as PutnamFellow, I am dividing my timebetween the Institute for Cultural

Landscape Studies (ICLS) and theDepartment of Living CollectionsBy straddling departments, I amallowed a wonderful balance in

my work. I may spend one daydevoted to ICLS in the Widener

Library stacks at Harvard, track-ing down references to farmland

conservation or cultural geogra-

phy. The next day (after studyingUSGS topographical maps and

poring over city wastewaterflow diagrams), I’m out followingthe course of our own BusseyBrook.

I first joined the Arboretumas a horticultural intern in the

summer of 1995. After graduaungfrom the GSD in 1997, I spentone year working in a landscapearchitecture firm before returningto the Arboretum in September ofthis year. I’m thrilled to be back

and feel happily at home hereamong the trees.

. from page 1

gardeners has only been exacer-bated over the course of the last

ten or twenty years, as weather

extremes become the norm and

the so-called hundred-year floodseems to happen once a decade.

All of which takes me to the

point of this article, namely, thatthe living collections department,which has certainly done its shareof complaining about the weatherin the past, doesn’t have anythingto complain about this year. Thewinter was mild and the spnngwas cool and moist. Remarkably,the summer, which was consid-

ered very dry over most of theEast Coast, was no problem inBoston where we enjoyed adequaterainfall through the treacherousmonths of July and August.Indeed, nearly every time wetalked about watering our newlyinstalled plants, it started raining.And the same is true for the fall.

Two weeks never passed withoutsubstantial rain.

Taking full advantage of this"anomalous" weather pattern, the

grounds crew planted more than120 comfers in the collections

from mid-September throughmid-October. It was particularlygratifying to plant these trees,given that the Pmetum area was

badly damaged by the blizzard ofApril 1, 1997. While it requires acertain amount of imagination onthe part of the visitor, it is now

possible to envision the appear-ance of the Arboretum twenty

years into the future, when thenew plantings reach adulthood.

This fall’s planting list washeavily laden with arborvitae(T’bu~a occzdentalu and T. plrcata),but we also accessioned many

pine, fir, larch, and spruce. As it

happened, during the long Colum-bus Day weekend, and just a fewdays after we planted our last tree,

it ramed more than four inches in

three days, saturating the groundin a way that no amount of hand

watering or irrigation ever could.

Remarkably, the umversal law ofcompensation seems to have

worked its mysterious magic at

the Arboretum, making the prob-lems of the past few years seem

like distant memomes. Unfortu-

nately, I’m sure that next year willbe a completely different story.

Dr. Peter Ashton Receives Honorary MedalOn October 15, the MassachusettsHorticultural Society (MHS)awarded Peter Ashton the Thomas

Roland Medal of Honor duringthe MHS Annual Awards Cer-

emony at the Boston Harbor

Hotel. Dr. Ashton served as direc-

tor of the Arnold Arboretum from

1978 to 1987 and currently is theCharles Bullard Professor of For-

estry at Harvard University.First bestowed in 1927, the

Thomas Roland Medal was

awarded in recognition of "excep-tional skill in horticulture." In

presenting the award, Dr. John C.Peterson, president of MHS,lauded Dr. Ashton "for his exten-

sive work that has ensured a won-

derful public treasure in Boston’sArnold Arboretum, and for thedemonstration of what is without

question exemplary skill in thefield of horticulture."

---------------------------

Dr. Peter Ashton, ArnoldArboretum director, 1978-1987

Dr. Ashton’s successor as

director of the Arnold Arboretum,Dr. Robert Cook, extended the

congratulations of the entire staff."Peter is also the world’s foremost

authonty on the tropical forestsof Asia," Cook noted. "We thankPeter for bringing the Arboretumto a position of leadership forconservation of Asian tropicalforests."

"

Arnold Arboretum Council members WendyPearson, Sarah Jolliffe, and Bob Bartlett prepare toembark on a tour of the living collections followingthe fall Arboretum Council meeting. Councilmembers serve as advocates for the Arboretum,advise the director in their specialized areas ofexpertise, and support the institution in a variety ofways. Events of the day included presentations onnew initiatives, ongoing projects, and a panelpresentation of landscape maintenance issues.

Two Collaborative Projects of the AA/NPS Win ASLA AwardsBoth Fazr.rted: A Cultural Landscape Report for the Frederzck Law OlmstedNatzonal Historic Szte, Volume l: Site Hzrtory and Landscape Explorers:Llncoverzng the Power of Place won 1998 Merit Awards from the Amer-ican Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). Both publications arethe result of collaborations between the Arnold Arboretum and the

National Park Service that began in the early 1990s.Fairsted, the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in

Brookline, Massachusetts, was the home and professional office ofFrederick Law Olmsted and the subsequent firms headed by his sonsand others. The National Park Service acquired the site in 1980. TheFairsted Report, produced jointly by the Olmsted Center for LandscapePreservation of the National Park Service and the Arnold Arboretum,includes a detailed history of the landscape of Fairsted by the notedOlmsted scholar Cynthia Zaitzevsky and an afterword that describesthe horticultural and cultural context of the Olmsted’s work by thegarden historian Mac Gnswold. Peter Del Tredici, director of livingcollections of the Arnold Arboretum, participated in the evaluation of historic documentation of the siteand provided valuable expertise in plant identification from historic photographs. This report is an integralpart of the restoration process for the Fairsted landscape, which began in 1991.

Although the report documents a site of only 1.76 acres, it is (to quote the ASLA) "a fascinating look atOlmsted’s most intimate work: the design, literally, of the master’s own backyard." Copies of the report have

been distributed to libraries nationwide. Individual copies can be purchasedthrough the Eastern National Bookstore at the Frederick Law OlmstedNational Historic Site, 99 Warren Street, Brookline, MA 02446. For mail

orders, contact Alan Banks at 617/566-1689 x221.The ASLA calls Landscape Explorers "the first-and thus far-the only

curriculum designed to teach elementary-school students about the impor-tance of landscape and place in everyone’s lives." This unit of study invitesstudents to explore the landscape from the perspective of an artist, a historian,or a naturalist. The stated hope that drives the unit is that "children whounderstand the role of’place’ in their evolving sense of self tend to becomeadults with a commitment to conserving and enhancing their immediate

neighborhoods and the larger landscapes of which they are a part." Theauthors of this work are Diane Syverson, manager of school programs at theArboretum, and Liza Stearns, education specialist for the Frederick Law

Olmsted National Historic Site. Participating students begin their exploration of place by examining theirown schoolyard and learning what it means to "read" a landscape. They then apply those newly learned skillsin a visit to the Arboretum, exploring this landscape in one of the three distinct ways described above. Forfurther information about Landscape Explorers, contact Diane Syverson at 617/524-1718 x163.

Give the Gift of MembershipMembership in the Friends of the Arnold Arboretum makes a unique gift for family andfriends at any time of year. The special recipient of your gift will enjoy a year’s worth of

exciting benefits.

Please help support the Arnold Arboretum by purchasing a gift membership today!Call the Membership Office at 617/524-1718 xl65 for more information.