Mother of Gardens” Pursuing Seeds and Specimens in Sichuan
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Botanizing in the “Mother of Gardens” Pursuing seeds and specimens in Sichuan by Jonathan Shaw Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 he first thing the explorers noticed when they tum’s keeper of the living collections, and Andrew Gapinski, man- reached the dam was that their guide was wearing ager of horticulture there; Wang Kang, director of education at the gaiters that stretched above his calf. Everyone knew Beijing Botanical Garden, and Quan Jian, assistant to Beijing’s man- what it meant: there would be terrestrial leeches on ager of living collections; and graduate student Li Huaicheng from this hunt. The second thing they noticed was the Chengdu’s Institute of Biology—gathered in Chengdu, the capital guide’s long, wood-handled tool, with a short, curved of Sichuan, on September 19: late enough in the season for fruit Tiron blade. He was leaning on it as the team exited the van, while he and seeds to have set, but before leaf- and snowfall. The next day, ran a critical eye over everyone’s attire. He said a few words in Chinese, after picking up supplies at the institute—portable plant presses, and Wang Kang, a seven-time veteran of these expeditions, relayed seed-collection bags, and a telescoping, 12-foot pole pruner that their meaning to the Americans. “Tuck your pants inside your socks, clips and then holds specimens—they drove north, stopping once and then put rubber bands around for gas at the last known filling the top. The leeches will try to get station on their route, where the inside your socks.” fuel had to be siphoned from oil Though it might seem like a drums. Their destination was a commission from another centu- 245-square-mile national nature ry, the hunt to locate and collect reserve in the heart of the Min rare plants from around the globe range, named after its highest so they can be grown for scientific mountain, 18,334-foot Xuebaod- study and long-term observation ing (Snowy Treasure Peak). is very much alive, and carries new In other words, the expedition urgency. One in five plant species team (with an observer from this on Earth is endangered. Chang- magazine) was about to enter the ing patterns of temperature and heart of hardy plant biodiversity. rainfall, competition from inva- The contemporary collectors had sive species, and loss of habitat are certain advantages over Wilson— spurring new exploration—par- airplanes, motorized vehicles, and ticularly in biologically rich areas. GPS mapping—instead of reli- Though only slightly larg- ance solely on foot, pack animals, er than the United States, Chi- and a 25-person entourage of hired na—spared during the Pleisto- laborers. But once in the botani- cene glaciation that ended 11,500 cally rich, undeveloped parts of years ago—has three to four China, twenty-first-century plant times North America’s botani- collecting is still rough work. cal diversity, making it a natural And so they shouldered their place to search for rare and un- packs, grabbed their equipment, usual plants. The prolific explorer and followed their guide, clear- Ernest Henry Wilson, who col- ing the way with his reaphook, lected on behalf of Harvard’s Ar- across the dam and into a bam- nold Arboretum from 1907 to 1922 RIGHTAT AND OPPOSTIE SECOND PAGE FROM TOP RIGHT ANDREW BY GAPINSKI/THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM boo thicket. From the river’s edge, and is credited with introducing The Arnold Arboretum’s Michael Dosmann with a Rodgersia leaf the terrain rose sharply, requiring more than 2,000 plants from Asia and plumes of Astilbe grandis. Opposite page, clockwise from hand-over-hand climbing. After 25 upper left: the lake above the dam at Si’er Cun, with the Min to Western horticulture, called Mountains beyond; collecting a voucher specimen; fruits of the minutes of thigh-burning ascent, China the “mother of gardens.” He tea crabapple; climbing a ridge; fruits of Phoebe faberi; a planta- they reached the top of a ridge, elevated temperate Sichuan Prov- tion of Magnolia officinalis; Wang Yongming, the group’s first elevation 6,900 feet—where they ince, slightly larger than Califor- guide; Hydrangea bretschneideri; the end of the road for the van discovered that they’d taken this nia, a step further, calling it “the garden of China.” route because the guide believed they wanted to see a giant panda. So it was that a two-week expedition there last September brought The misunderstanding was amusing, but also fortuitous, because plant hunters—botanists in the North America-China Plant Explora- it led to several desirable plant collections. Atop the ridge, the fruits tion Consortium (NACPEC), including representatives of the arbo- of a lanky crabapple tree, reaching for light in a forest of bamboo retum—back to beautiful, challenging terrain. The group is part of a (a staple in pandas’ diet), immediately registered with Dosmann, larger effort focused on collecting wild specimens from across their who recognized Malus hupehensis, the tea crabapple. More than a cen- full geographic range, at altitudes high and low; the goal is to capture tury earlier, Wilson, the first keeper of the arboretum (Dosmann is the variation, and underlying genetic diversity, within species. Differ- just the second to hold the title), had discovered this tree in Hubei ences between one isolated population and the next range from the Province; he considered it the finest deciduous flowering tree he observable or aesthetic—the color of the bark, leaves, or flowers that had introduced to Western cultivation. In spring, deep pink buds might catch a gardener’s eye—to the functionally important: cold fade to white as the floral display crescendos; in fall, ornamental hardiness, heat and drought tolerance, or disease and pest resistance. yellow fruits tinged with red produce a second show, evident even The team on this particular trip—Michael Dosmann, the arbore- in the latticework shade cast by the bamboo canopy. Photographs by Jonathan Shaw, unless otherwise noted Harvard Magazine 33 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 As the group deposited the tiny crabapples in a muslin collection The Pillared Forest bag, monkeys began calling. “Apparently, they like this species of As the group hiked upslope deeper into the forest, Dosmann Malus,” Dosmann wrote in his field notes, “and may not be happy noted species characteristic of this region: a smallish magnolia, that we are collecting it.” For each acquisition, he recorded place whose leaves when crushed smell like anise (Magnolia liliiflora); the name, GPS coordinates, elevation, habitat, slope, soil type, measure- common birch-leaved viburnum (Viburnum betulifolium, a species so ments, and a description of the plant (including bark, leaves, any highly variable that Wang made it the focus of his Ph.D. disserta- fruit or flowers), and other species growing nearby. tion); and a towering, thick-trunked specimen of Betula albosinensis, a While Dosmann logged these observations, Gapinski prepared birch that doesn’t like the extremes of the North American climate, five voucher specimens, or representative samples. After carefully se- he said. Amid such abundant botanical riches, knowing what not lecting characteristic terminal branches that included stems, leaves, to collect proved a critical skill. and fruit, he laid them on a sheet of newsprint labeled with the sci- Moving into progressively older, more densely shaded forest, the entific name and the collection number, beginning with 001. Then explorers found that the trees had grown so tall, they frustrated he covered them with another sheet, and sandwiched the whole sampling, and even Gapinski’s height—he is six-foot-five—com- between two pieces of cardboard. These he stacked and loaded into bined with the 12-foot telescoping pruner could not help. From a portable press resembling a bicycle courier’s pouch, cinched tight the ground, they stared longingly toward the remote canopy or in with straps, which he threw over his shoulder—the first step in a wonder at thick trunks of birch and larch so tall that it was hard journey to herbaria at Harvard, the National Arboretum in Wash- to connect them to their crowns, making it hard to identify the ington, D.C., the Beijing Botanical Garden, the Chengdu Institute, species. Even a climbing hydrangea they hoped to bring home had and a regional herbarium in Pingwu. grown so high that it had set no seed within reach. While they walked, Li Huaicheng, who had come to gain expe- A Broadened Scope of Field rience in fieldwork, shared some dried yak meat to stave off pre- Since 1991, a dozen Chinese and North American member institu- lunch hunger. tions of NACPEC have shared the costs and the rewards of these Eventually, they entered a light-filled glade beneath an opening in roughly biennial expeditions to China. The aims include conser- the dense canopy, where they saw a large, open-crowned tree with vation, evaluating and introducing ap- what looked like foot-and-a-half long propriate new species, selecting orna- streamers cascading from high branch- mental forms, broad sampling of the While they walked, es: a towering, large-winged wingnut wild genetic pool of species already in (Pterocarya macroptera), a relative of cultivation, improved understanding Li Huaicheng hickory. The streamers were actually of botanical diversity in China—and strings of connected, winged seeds. better national and international col- shared some dried Dosmann, who has curated the arbore- laboration among botanists. Wang, tum’s living collections since 2007, was an exemplar of this latter aim, has yak meat to stave off eager to acquire this tree because the brought deep knowledge of China’s specimen growing in Boston, collected flora, as well as logistical expertise, to in 1997 from Emei Shan, a mountain to seven such trips.