Fall 2008 Page 1 Botanic Garden News The Botanic Garden Volume 11, No. 2 of Smith College Fall 2008 Celebrating Asian Culture in Flower, Fabric, and Flavor Madelaine Zadik A s the fall season was made their way to Japan. winding down, hillsides once The Japanese have been ablaze with color faded into a breeding and growing winter gray. Everyone was busy them ever since, raking leaves and putting their perfecting the gardens to bed. At the same time, horticultural techniques. something very different was Smith College is one of unfolding inside the Lyman a handful of gardens Conservatory. outside of Japan that Since the early 1900s, grows chrysanthemums chrysanthemums have been in this labor-intensive painstakingly coaxed, pruned, and manner. In this year’s pinched into a variety of October/November issue unexpected shapes, and students of Horticulture have been using chrysanthemums magazine, our show was in hybridizing experiments. What featured alongside the probably began as a small display New York Botanical and learning experience for Garden’s show. For the students has, over the past Japanese obi hanging on Torii (gate) with a chrysanthemum crest, past months, our staff century, grown into quite an the Imperial Seal of Japan (in background). Photographs by Madelaine Zadik has meticulously impressive display, spilling over into a few nurtured and trained the plants into a greenhouses and showcasing a variety of colors variety of forms. Our display and unusual flower forms. Somewhere along the featured fans and cascades that lined line, it became an annual tradition. We searched the greenhouse walls, forming the Smith College Archives and found a reference hanging “waterfalls” of flowers. to the show in a student newspaper dated 1910. Standards, or exhibition mums, were However, we have never been able to pinpoint the pruned into single stems with giant exact date of Smith’s first “official” flowers, some reaching up to 8 Chrysanthemum Show. If you missed our 2003 inches across, atop 7-foot-tall plants. exhibit highlighting the history of the Fall Chrysanthemum design on kimono fabric Reflecting the Asian origins of the Chrysanthemum Show at Smith College, you can chrysanthemum and the Japanese still see it on our website: style of growing them, this year’s show www.smith.edu/garden/exhibits/alummumexhibit/mumalumsmain.html. expanded to become a Celebration of Asian Whereas the Smith Mum Show goes back only 100 years, the Japanese have Culture in Flower, Fabric, and Flavor. We been training and cultivating kiku (chrysanthemum in Japanese) for centuries. incorporated a Japanese-style Torii (gate), Although chrysanthemums originated in China, by the eighth century they had (Continued on page 8) Botanic Garden News Page 2 Fall 2008 Botanical Knowledge to the Rescue Elaine Chittenden Botanic Garden News is published twice a year O n a humid day this past June, I went for a bike ride along the canal by the Friends of the Botanic Garden walk that spans four miles from the bridge in my hometown of Suffield, of Smith College. Connecticut, to the Windsor Locks bridge. It turned out to be one of my The Botanic Garden of Smith College more interesting rides. This extremely thin strip of land supports prairie Northampton, Massachusetts 01063 grasses adjacent to the trail and larger expanses of floodplain forest where 413-585-2740 the Stony Brook empties into the Connecticut River. In September of 2007, www.smith.edu/garden I began collecting seed from the site for our Index Seminum, a list for an Director Michael Marcotrigiano international seed exchange program in which the Smith Botanic Garden Manager of Education and Madelaine Zadik has been an active participant over the past century. On this day, I was Outreach scoping out plants whose seed might later be collected for exchange with Manager of Living Elaine Chittenden institutions around the world. Many plants in our collection have made their Collections way here through this botanical exchange between gardens. Conservatory Manager Rob Nicholson Administrative Coordinator Sheri Lyn Peabody On my way back, when I was within a quarter mile of the parking lot on Office Assistant and Pamela Dods AC ’08 the Suffield side, I saw a man lying face up halfway across the 6-foot-wide Tour Coordinator path, legs down the steep slope on the river side of the canal. Probably a Summer Internship Gaby Immerman fisherman resting, I thought. As I got closer, I noted a policeman quickly Coordinator approaching on foot. Just as I was slowly passing the prostrate fisherman, Special Projects Coordinator Polly Ryan-Lane the police officer asked if I had any gum or candy on me. I replied, “No” (to Curricular Enhancement Nancy Rich Consultant the disbelief of coworkers), and he explained the man was a diabetic having Greenhouse Technicians Nathan Saxe a low sugar episode. The diabetic balked at the cost of an ambulance as the Steve Sojkowski policeman confirmed its deployment and said he just needed to rest a bit. Chief Arborist John Berryhill I immediately parked my bike and noted a Chief Gardener Tracey A. P. Culver squat mulberry bush at the top of the steep Asst. Curator & Gardener Jeff Rankin slope. It was a white mulberry, Morus alba, Gardener Manuel Santos with a few ripe fruit. I picked one and said to Friends of the Botanic Garden of the diabetic, “These are not bad, and if you Smith College Advisory Committee like ’em, I’ll pick you a handful.” He liked Lisa Morrison Baird ’76, Co-Chair them, commenting that they looked like Clara Couric Batchelor ’72 grubs. “They do, but they’re not,” I replied Molly Shaw Beard ’54 Susan Komroff Cohen ’62 and quickly picked the few ripe berries Paula V. Cortes ’70 available. At this moment I noticed how Donna S. De Coursey ’72 childlike this thirty-something adult was Paula Deitz ’59 acting. Meanwhile the policeman had Nancy Watkins Denig ’68 radioed that someone had “given him some Elizabeth Scott Eustis ’75 berries.” He asked me to wait for the Julie Sullivan Jones ’77 Missy Marshall ’72 paramedic when I got back to the parking Lynden Breed Miller ’60 lot. Emily Mobraw ’87 A red sports car with flashing blue lights and an official looking “police Pamela Sheeley Niner ’63 commissioner” vanity plate pulled up. A man quickly hauled a giant first- Cornelia Hahn Oberlander ’44 aid backpack out of his trunk. I told him they were not more than a quarter Sally Saunders Roth ’64 Barbara Palmer Stern ’72 mile down the canal and that I’d given the diabetic some white mulberries. Shavaun Towers ’71 After I repeated “white mulberries” he gave me a strange look and began to Ellen Wells ’91 jog toward the trail. As I headed home, sure enough, an ambulance came Marcia Zweig ’75, Co-Chair over the Enfield bridge. I don’t know whether the man got into the Ex Officio: Carol T. Christ, President, Smith College ambulance or what happened, but I felt proud to know that my botanical Botanic Garden News knowledge was useful in coming to the aid of a fellow citizen. Editor and Designer Madelaine Zadik Editorial Assistant Constance Parks Morus alba is a native of China and is known as the food of silkworms, which Botanic Garden Logo designed by feed on its leaves. It has been grown widely around the world for the silk Margaret P. Holden, copyright 1999 industry. In the United States, it has also been used in landscaping for erosion control and windbreaks, although Michael Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Plants, All photos in this issue may be viewed in full color on the newsletter page of our website: lists it as having no landscape value. In many areas it has escaped cultivation, www.smith.edu/garden/Newsletter/botgarnews.html often naturalizing, and there is some concern that it shows invasive tendencies. Botanic Garden News Fall 2008 Page 3 Tree Woes Continue Michael Marcotrigiano S ince my arrival as director in 2000, we’ve seen many large trees removed from campus, some over a hundred years old. Trees were eliminated for construction purposes, for example, to erect the Campus Center, and others may have declined from construction disturbance decades ago. It can take many years before a tree that has had major root damage shows any symptoms. In a few cases, trees were simply at the end of their life cycle and were removed for safety. Whatever the reason, the number of giant trees on campus has diminished significantly in the past eight years. The most recent major loss was a large sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, that was on the west side of Capen House. I always wondered why anyone would have planted such a large species just feet from the building, but when we finally calculated its age, it turned out the building was built around the tree! At about 130–140 years old, the tree appeared in good health unless you looked up carefully and saw the crack near the top. Close inspection revealed a limb stump that had begun to rot many years ago. The rot had spread internally, forming John Berryhill by Photograph a huge hollow cavity. This cavity once Capen sycamore in summer 2008, just before removal housed the nests of merganser ducks and notably in Massachusetts in the 1960s (Mader most recently squirrels but was uninhabited and Thompson, 1969). when we made the decision to take the tree The decline going on locally and on campus down. Our campus arborist, John Berryhill, is disturbing. Sugar maples are a major climbed the tree and his conclusion was the component of fall color, tourism, and campus tree was an immediate hazard with a new beauty, as well as the source of maple syrup for crack spreading down the trunk.