From Plant Press, Vol. 7, No. 3 from July 2004.
By Robert DeFilipps
At one point John Kress, the Chair of Botany, felt compelled to remind speakers that the Smithsonian is a non-partisan organization. A few lecturers had given the audience a personal opinion about the politics involved in official United States reactions to world biodiversity treaties. But the incident was just a fleeting ray in the constellation of ideas exchanged at the Fourth Annual Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, held May 6-8 in Washington, DC.
A contingent of botanists, horticulturists, garden historians and landscape designers met under the aegis of the Smithsonian Institution, in collaboration with Dumbarton Oaks and the United States Botanic Garden, to hear and question the experts on the broad topic of “Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovations, and Cultural Changes.” Laid out in advance were the concepts to be devoured by the attendees, such as: “How did major developments in botany and horticulture impact gardens, gardening, landscaping, agriculture, and science?”, and “How did botany and horticulture contribute to larger changes in social and cultural practices?” The spatiotemporal context of those questions was easy to grasp: the entire history of the known world.
The lectures of the first two days were held at Dumbarton Oaks, a 19th century mansion in Georgetown, tastefully furnished in classical and medieval style, surrounded by 10 acres of impeccably kept lawns and gardens. To the uninitiated, its quiet, almost reverential, atmosphere is reminiscent of a monastic retreat. The Welcome and Introduction to the Symposium was provided by Michel Conan, Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton. From Conan’s remarks could be sensed the first inkling, by unwary botanists, that many researchers of gardens and landscapes are so deeply immersed in the classical literature, that they employ vocabularies replete with ethereal imagery and figurative allegory in order to praise the beauty, fragrance, contours and alluring desirability of plants. This form of sincere admiration is virtually never expressed in the field of taxonomic botany.
The Dumbarton lectures thus took “the language of flowers” to the limit, and were pleasantly peppered throughout with French, Arabic or other “foreign” phrases, reflecting a patrimony of investigation going back to ancient Europe, Africa and Asia. The aspirations of the Dumbarton garden lecturers are clearly beyond the realm of mulch, cow manure, weed-whips, and personal tractors. The third day of activities was held in Baird Auditorium of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
Sydney H. Aufrère (Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France) led the list of first-day speakers, and lectured on “The Vegetable Universe of Ancient Egypt, its Symbiosis and Religious Reinterpretation.” The ancient Egyptians were a very religious people, in a land where the NileRiver is reborn in flooding every year, and their culture seemed to be a symbiosis engineered by the Egyptian deities, including pleasure gardens that were a universe fulfilling the wishes of the people. The ancient Egyptian sacred tree reservations provided a contact with the divine, and included Balanites (Zygophyllaceae), 3 species of Acacia, and the branching doum palm (Hyphaene); the trees grew on sacred mounds, for example at the catacomb of Osiris at Karnak.
Maria Subtelny (University of Toronto, Canada) presented a lecture on “Visionary Rose: Metaphorical Application of Horticultural Practice in Persian Culture,” demonstrating a connection between medieval Persian garden culture and Perso-Islamic Mysticism. In Persia (present-day Iran) of the 13th century, the highly prized rose varieties included the eglantine, dog, red, 5-petaled, bi-colored, and musk roses; additionally, the most popular at the time was the cabbage rose (Rosa centifolia). Rosa damascena, the damask rose, was the source for making rosewater in Shiraz, Persia, which was exported to Syria, India, Egypt and then north to Europe. Rosewater was locally used in medieval Persia as a scent applied before handling the Koran. Roses in those days were grown for their scent, truly an example of, in Subtelny’s words, “sensory correspondences as they relate to olfactory perceptions.”
The scented Persian rose, a king (not queen) of beauty, was often paired with the bulbul (nightingale) bird in paintings, in order to characterize a form of spiritual intoxication called souk, in which the rose is the perfectly unattainable lover of the nightingale, but only the rose understands the plight of the nightingale’s love. According to the insight of the Persian Sufi mystics, every rose contains something of the secrets of “the All,” while in the Zoroastrian religion the dana is a rose, being the female deity of religion: flowers of Rosa centifolia thus were held to be the receptacle of the celestial deities. The gardens of Muslim Spain are direct descendants of the more ancient Persian rose gardens.
Eliott Wolfson (New York University) was unable to attend, so his paper on “The Rose in Jewish Culture in Medieval Spain” was read by Peter Jacobs of Dumbarton Oaks. In it he noted that the rose appears as a spiritual Eros, having to do with carnal sexuality, in three monotheistic religions: Muslim, plus the two Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity. The medieval Kabbala, in the Mantua edition of Zohar (1558), comments that the community of Israel has judgment and mercy, and the rose has attributes of mercy also. Thus, there is conceived the development of a link between females, mercy, and roses. The mystical medieval Jews believed that the rose has the ability to metamorphose, as does a woman, and thus the fluctuating character of the red-and-white rose became equated with the fluctuations of the female between menstrual and non-menstrual cycles; menstruating women were forbidden to their husbands. And, in the Kabbala, the perceived androgyny of the female (in terms of duplicity and instability) was taken as the equivalent of a rose.
Nurhan Atasoy (Istanbul University, Turkey) presented her lecture on “Links Between the Ottoman and the Western Worlds in Floriculture and Gardening,” in which she mentioned the Ottoman festival parades featuring paper yellow-flowered tulips 30-feet high shown by members of the florists guild; trays of flowers so beautiful they were sometimes used in bribery; and models of gardens made of sugar in commemoration of the circumcision of the sons of the Sultan. To the Ottoman Turks, the top of a cypress (Cupressus) tree was seen to be naturally bent at its apex, like the letter “A,” the same as in “Aleph” which is the name for God, and in fact, in the year 1458 during the reign of Mehmet II, the TopkapiPalace was planted with 20,000 cypress trees. An astonishing influx of Turkish bulbs from Constantinople (Istanbul), such as lilies, tulips and crown imperials, found their way into depictions in European herbals.
Susan Toby Evans (Pennsylvania State University) delivered a lecture on the topic of “Precious Beauty: The Aesthetic and Economic Value of Aztec Gardens,” among them being Chapultepec Park (named for a grasshopper) established by the Aztecs in the year 1420. Later the conquistadors and viceroys of Mexico used it as a pleasure palace, which was already in disrepair when the ill-fated team of Emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlotta appeared for their short term French-supported reign. Evans mentioned the concept of mimesis in garden design, which is evident in the Chapultepec dynastic park since it has a mimetic effect that echoes the physical environment: terraces and stairs of the park are mimicking the topographical gradients of the surrounding area.
In zoos during the years 1470-1500, plants from throughout the Aztec empire were on display, such as at Tenochitlan. The Aztecs can be credited with developing the first ethnic theme park, an urban amusement park where albinos of all kinds, including human, were on show as an “Albino Whiteness Exhibit.” Aztec kings controlled medicinal plants, and the Spaniard Hernandez is known to have collected some of them.
Yizar Hirschfeld (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) spoke on “Perfume and Power from the Ancient Near East to Late Antiquities,” observing that the true botanical identity of one of the most famous cultivated perfume plants in the ancient Near East, the balsam, is today disputed and unknown, since it became extinct in cultivation in the early 6th and 7th centuries. No physical remains of archaeological balsam exist, although it is postulated to have actually been a species of either Boswellia (frankincense) or Commiphora (myrrh, balm of Gilead), both members of the family Burseraceae.
Mohammed El Faïz (Cedimes University, Morocco), unable to attend, had his paper read by Rosy Lum of Dumbarton Oaks, entitled “Horticultural Changes and Political Upheavals in Middle-Age Andalusia.” He noted that botany and agronomy were auxiliary sciences that stimulated the Andalusian school of hydraulics, which was involved with constructing dams, weirs and aqueducts. These hydraulic schemes in Spanish Andalusian gardens allowed many fruit trees to be grown. From the East, sugar cane and bananas were acclimatized by Arabs in Andalusia, in fact constituting the first instance of acclimatization of tropical plants in Europe (= Spain). A specialty was developed in grafted citrus trees, such as the lime and Seville orange. Plants from wet monsoonal Asia such as rice were also tried out in the dry Arabic Spain of Andalusia. The audience learned that, to the lore of historical plant crazes such as the Victorian Fern Craze, Tulipomania and Orchidomania, can now be added the “Citrus Mania” that was spread by Arabs decorating their gardens in tune with the spread of different species and varieties of acclimatized Citrus.
Wybe Kuitert (Kyoto University of Art and Design, Japan) spoke on “Political Change and Cultural Values of Plants: Origins of Cherry Hybridization in Medieval Japan.” From the 7th century to the present time, pilgrims throughout Japan have made votive plantings of cherries (Prunus serotina, Prunus serrulata var. spontanea), which are indigenous to the secondary forests of middle-Japan: fertile double-flowered plants also occur there in the wild. In the 8th century the capital of Japan was moved from Mara to Kyoto, giving rise to the Edo period of 300 years of peace and gardening leisure among the nobility, attended by much poetry devoted to cherries.
An article relating to Kuitert’s presentation demonstrates an insight into the Japanese veneration of the cherry, since it analyzes in detail the fact that “militarization of mass consciousness through the appropriation of the cherry blossom symbol was intensified during the 1920s and 1930s, after the military seized power” and continues on through the cherry blossom effect on the subsequent motivations of kamikaze suicide pilots (Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. 2004. Betrayal by idealism and aesthetics. Anthropology Today 20 (2): 15-21).
Georges Métaillé (Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris) spoke on “Grafting as an Agricultural and Cultural Practice in Ancient China.” The acutely observant ancient Chinese noticed the occurrence of natural, spontaneous grafting of trees that had grown into each other, and parlayed the phenomenon into an acknowledgement by Heaven of the relationship of the Chinese sovereign (symbolized by the “stock”) to the millions of people (scions) leaning on him for support. Very adept in grafting pears, peonies and even golden lotuses, the Chinese had access since the year 1273 AD to a book that was ordered to be written by Emperor Kublai Khan, entitled “Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture,” which contained two chapters on grafting.
As Métaillé pointed out, Chinese philosophy recognizes different degrees of consciousness, not different degrees of nature, allowing for the perception of equilibrium between “yin” and “yang,” between host (stock) and scion (guest). Grafting was further transformed, based on those views, into a symbolization of the entry (or insertion) of a person into a clan. So, when a foreign emperor began to reign in China, it was accepted by some as a noble instance of grafting of the foreign emperor as guest or scion, onto the old stock of Chinese people. Very accommodating of them to do so, one must admit.
Saúl Alcántara Onofre (Tlalnepantla, Mexico) spoke on “The Chinampas Before and After the Encounter with Europe.” The Mexica group of Aztecs who tended floating gardens (chinampas) in the lake of Mexico City cultivated a multitude of plants including corn (maize), chili peppers (Capsicum annuum and C. frutescens), beans, soybeans, squash, garlic, six species of tomato, and willows (Salix bonplandiana). Other specialties of the early chinampas were the sapodilla Manilkara (Achras) zapota, sweet potatoes, jicama, quince, bottle gourds, Dahlia coccinea (national flower of Mexico) and the native marigolds (Tagetes). The Aztec God of Water, master of the chinampas, was Tlalocateuctli.
Spanish conquistadors who later dominated the scene were afraid of flooding and they drained the lagoons (which supported the floating chinampas), in order to preserve Mexico City from the dangers of flooding. The Spanish then introduced European food plants such as crucifers, cereals and legumes, and flowers. It is felt that the chinampas were enriched by having Mexican flowers growing next to the introduced European ones. As the European vegetables introduced via Spain, such as lettuce, cucumbers and cabbage, became very popular they were eventually included among the plants grown in chinampas. Another result of Spanish intervention was that the foreign flowers helped to obfuscate the cultural memories of the original flowers grown in the chinampas.
Mauro Ambrosoli (Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy) spoke on “The Contribution of Italian Peasants and Gardeners to the Conservation and Propagation of Species Diversity: An Investigation for the XVI-XVII Centuries.” Peasant gardeners, as defined in this study, are tenant people who earn a living through manual work, whether in a small or large garden, regardless of their income. On feudal Italian estates and orchards in the 15th century, such people planted mulberry trees for silk, walnuts, apples, peaches, cherries, hazelnuts, pears and apples. Around the late 1400s, asparagus and artichokes were much in demand, and thus were also grown in the gardens. Among plant interchanges at the time were three kinds of cauliflower sent from France to Italy for cultivation. But as the economic plants of the New World became better known and appreciated, production of neotropical vegetables (such as chili peppers, beans and tomatoes) became reserved for the profit of the larger, richer houses who controlled the endeavors of the peasants.
Michel Conan (Dumbarton Oaks) delivered a lecture on “Horticultural Utopianism in Late 18th Century France.” In the philosophical climate of 18th century France, the practice of horticulture brought men together for the common good of all. So-called “agricultural improvers” attempted to isolate the chemicals in plants. One of the improvers was the father of modern chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), who is credited with, among other things, discovering that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon; he lost his life in the French Revolution, an upheaval that itself stimulated the shared knowledge of the French Enlightenment.
One of the most influential persons of the age was André Thouin (1747-1824), horticulturist and botanist, who succeeded his father as head gardener at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, and produced books on grafting and gardening. The numerous French botanists who traversed the New World in the 1700s sent seeds and plants back to Thouin in Paris. His dreams for a better world included a plant naturalization project to cultivate coffee trees in France, and he proposed to make an experimental farm for the universal naturalization of the world’s useful plants. The horticultural Utopia fostered by Thouin had hopes of being useful for the benefit of all mankind. He is commemorated by the genus Thouinia Poiteau (1804, nom. cons.), a group of Mexican and Caribbean vines in the family Sapindaceae.
Daniel Martin Varisco (HofstraUniversity, Hempstead, New York) spoke on the subject of “Turning Over a New Leaf: The Impact of Qat in Yemeni Horticulture.” The plant under consideration is qat, botanically Catha edulis (Celastraceae), which is cultivated in Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen for the stimulating properties of alkaloids in the newly formed young leaves. Sufi mystics originally used qat, which is kept (stored) in the side of the mouth like chewing tobacco, to stay awake while reciting prayers. Today, qat is a social phenomenon that is utilized as a group activity in order to variously enhance mental alertness, endure sleeplessness, and lessen the desire for food and sex. A marker of the Yemeni national identity, this non-narcotic stimulant, which works like an amphetamine, is now an important cash crop in Yemen.
At the beginning of the third day of events, which was held at the National Museum of Natural History around the theme of “Contemporary Botany and Horticulture in a Changing World,” the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany was presented to David J. Mabberley, the renowned British botanist and author of The Plant-Book. His internationally renowned publication, which is a handbook-dictionary of the vascular plants, is known or owned by every plant taxonomist in the world. Mabberley’s first major research was on the pachycaul Compositae (Asteraceae) of Africa, and the coincidence was noted that Cuatrecasas had extensively studied the pachycaul Compositae of South America.
Next, Alain Touwaide (Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution) delivered a lecture entitled “From Dêmêtêr to Iris: Perception and Ordering of the Vegetal World in Antiquity.” A fountain of untapped originality, Touwaide is the first scholar to observe that Roman gardens of the 1st century selected and arranged the plants according to a system of botanical classification associated with Theophrastus, who had classified plants according to their leaf shape. The Greek writer of histories of Rome, Polybius, constitutes a link for the study of interconnections related to Touwaide’s conclusions. Gradually, Roman gardens that had started by simply growing cabbages were transferred from the countryside into the city, and gardens became an image in miniature of the Roman Empire.
Therese O’Malley (National Gallery of Art, Washington) presented a lecture on “Horticulture in Philadelphia during the American Revolution.” She observed that early Republican America had a great enthusiasm for gardening, and gardens belonged to the elite of society, for whom plants were the subject of conversation in genteel homes in cities such as Philadelphia, which was then in the midst of a scientific and aesthetic efflorescence.
Clem Hamilton (Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden, Claremont, California) spoke on “Urban Eco-for-ticulture in Modern Society,” pointing out the basic concept that Urban Horticulture, Environmental Horticulture, Urban Ecology and Urban Forestry are four terms for the same thing. Fields that are allied to Urban Horticulture include environmental engineering and landscape architecture, while the subfields of Urban Horticulture include horticultural taxonomy, landscape design, and even environmental psychology (Why do we feel good while walking in a garden?). He recommended that a homeoclimatic approach to gardening should be taken and native plants used if at all possible, while noting in that context, that only 0.1 percent of plants sold in Southern California nurseries are native plants. Hamilton’s research has indicated that, of the several suffocating, kudzu-like kinds of English Ivy that are now damaging the natural biodiversity of urban America, Hedera helix causes the worst damage, while conversely Hedera algeriensis ‘Gloire de Marengo’ may be planted as among the least likely ivy to naturally spread on a rampage.
Next came the awarding of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) Stafleu Medal, which went to David B. Lellinger, Emeritus Curator of Botany, National Museum of Natural History. His most recent comprehensive publication is “A Modern Multilingual Glossary for Taxonomic Pteridology” (Pteridologia 3: 2002). Lellinger remarked on the diversity of fern life cycles which caused a need for expanded terminologies, and noted that a Chinese language version of his Glossary is being prepared.
Peter Del Tredici (Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts) spoke on the topic of “Horticulture in a Changing World,” and observed that we humans as a whole are so readily adaptable to change, that we have become dangerously complacent about global (warming) climate change, while at the same time urban areas are a convenient window into the future because cities are much warmer and drier than other places. He recommended that the palate of different plants that gardeners choose to grow should be varied to include introduced species from various provenances, for as Del Tredici has noted elsewhere, “What I find particularly depressing about the ‘native species only’ argument is that it ends up denying the inevitability of ecological change” (see Del Tredici, P. 2004. Neocreationism and the illusion of ecological restoration. Harvard Design Magazine Spring/Summer: 87-89).
The next lecturer was Daniel Hinckley (Heronswood Nursery, Kingston, Washington) who addressed the topic of “New Plants for Research and Horticulture: The Problem of Invasive Species.” He started by saying that he only grows native plants in his garden---native to Earth! This spokesman of plant exploration seemed to radiate the special sort of transcendental enthusiasm that is typical of an ascended master of the Temple of Flora. He proceeded to discuss various plants that had been tracked down over the years for Heronswood Nursery and the USDA. On Hinckley’s travels he has encountered the submersed Loudinia rossii (Saxifragaceae) in Korea; seen vast variations amid acres of Turkish Colchicum speciosum; found groves of Cornus mas in Turkey being cultivated according to sizes of their fruits (Carnelian cherries); and met up with Epimedium chlorandrum, an endemic orchid of Szechuan, China, that produces different taxonomic varieties in different valleys, but which was extirpated by plant vendors in just six years due to its reputation as an aphrodisiac. Perhaps the most bizarre of the plants he has observed is the strangely shaped Rheum nobile of the rocky Himalayas, a plant whose sloping growth habit resembles a pink traffic cone, and is botanically a relative of rhubarb.
To combat the problem of plant invasiveness in your garden, Hinckley suggested the use of sterile plants (e.g. Hydrangea “mopheads”); planting fewer clones and using those known to have reduced seed viability; and planting unisexual species that will afford fewer opportunities for breeding. Taking Del Tredici’s and Hinckley’s lectures together, with just a touch of Mabberley (see below), as a study-unit if you will, one cannot help but surmise that much of current ethical and evolutionary philosophy tends to advocate, in the words of Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), “supporting a sensitive cultivation of all plants, whatever their geographic origin, that can enhance nature and bring both delight and utility to humans” (Gould, S.J. 1998. An evolutionary perspective on strengths, fallacies and confusions in the concept of native plants. Arnoldia 58 (1): 2-10).
W. John Kress (Chair, Department of Botany, Smithsonian), penultimate speaker on the third day, informed the audience concerning “Plant Exploration in the 21st Century: Intellectual Property Rights, Globalization, and Technological Tools.” He reported that the decade of 1890-1899 experienced the discovery and scientific description of more plants (ca. 65,000 species) than in any other decade for which Index Kewensis statistics are available. That decade roughly corresponds to the final decade of the Victorian Age (1891-1901), the twilight of an extended heyday of worldwide plant collecting and geographical exploration stimulated by government-sponsored expeditions as well as mass collectors in the employ of private commercial nursery establishments. A secondary spike in the publication of plant descriptions in previous centuries occurred around 1910-1924.
More recently, these has been an upsurge in the number of analyzed and re-named plants, undoubtedly stimulated by new waves of interest in discovering and deciphering the entire natural world as a precursor to conservation of the dwindling biodiversity now represented in it. This Age of the Environment has seen the publication of the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants, with coverage accounting as far as possible for every endangered, threatened, vulnerable and extinct vascular plant species in the world. Sadly, 12 percent of plant species are now considered extinct. Hotspots of biodiversity on the world’s surface have been discerned, and are being investigated. Yet, as Kress postulates, the 21st century is the Final Age of Plants, for sometime around the year 2032 the last plants will have been described before the complete degradation and devastation of the world’s natural habitats will have been achieved by the actions of humanity. However, by extrapolation Kress also predicted that 35,000 plant species are yet to be described, before the year 2032 when virtually all terrestrial plant species will have become known to science, i.e., described before it becomes impossible to find any more novel plants in the field. Some comfort may be taken in the fact that 80,000 species are now growing worldwide in botanical gardens, where they are being conserved and the mysteries of their existence are being probed in efforts to propagate them, and repatriate them into their original localities when feasible.
DNA sequencing technology (i.e., DNA barcoding of plants) will be coming to the fore in attempts to build a DNA Library of Sequences to help implement and facilitate the instantaneous identification of plants. And surprisingly, it should be only five years from now before hand-held DNA sequencers the size of a cell phone may be in use. So the scientific world has been on a long and continuing sequential journey to locate and describe species, to evaluate their relationships, to investigate and utilize their qualities for the benefit of humanity, and to conserve them.
The final speaker of the Symposium was David Mabberley (University of Leiden, The Netherlands and Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, Australia) whose lecture was entitled “Summary and Conclusions: The Way Ahead.” He summarized the scope and contents of the 3-day meetings, while intercalating much additional knowledge of the subjects gleaned from his experiences around the world. The participants were asked to recall that plants have been used over time as symbols of power, wealth, and gentility, as well as for their beauty and scientific values. Mabberley introduced the new conceptual terminology (new to most taxonomists, anyway) of “vegeculture,” referring to the growing of plants such as taro (Alocasia, Araceae) by means of shifting cultivation, and “semeculture” (“seed”-culture) which refers to settled cultivation such as practiced by Europeans and colonials.
Mabberley observed that the landscape of the whole world is due to, has been shaped by, human activity. That fact, when coupled with all the extensive human migrations and centuries of plant interchanges that have taken place across the globe, indicates that it is often impossible to tell whether the species in a given locality are native (indigenous) or introduced. Becoming slightly provocative (as he admitted it might be), Mabberley then remarked that allopolyploidy and evolution have shaped both wild and cultivated plants, yet significantly we still have different codes of nomenclature for the wild, as opposed to the cultivated, plants (rye and oats were once weeds of wheat, but “by stealth” became crops themselves). He concluded, based on the above premise, by suggesting that it is a “folly” that some published floras expunge introduced plants from the environment by means of excluding the introduced species from listing in the flora, and thereby pretending they do not exist in the range (environment) of the flora.
In the evening the official Reception and Dinner were held at the United StatesBotanic Garden, putting the perfect cap on a very successful and inspirational symposium.
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