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The saga of the Lewis and Clark Plant Collection and the Irish nurseryman Bernard McMahon’s unwitting role in its fate!

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This week I’m posting a different botanical illustration of the Pacific Northwest native plant named for Bernard McMahon- and not one of my own. This actual botanical illustration was very possibly created in McMahon’s home. To find out how read on.

Tall Oregon grape. Mahonia aquifolium syn. Berberis aquifolium. Illustrated by Frederick Pursh in his Flora Americae Septentrionalis, 1814.
 According to Joseph Ewan (Frederick Pursh 1774-1820 and his Botanical Associates)
 you can see where Pursh traced the plant from the dried specimen in the Lewis and Clark Plant Collection.

The Lewis and Clark Plant Collection and Bernard McMahon’s role in its fate.

While researching my last blog – Nurseryman Bernard McMahon and the Oregon native plant with an Irish connection– I promised to return to the story of Bernard McMahon’s, sometimes unwitting, role in the fortunes of the Lewis and Clark Plant Collection.

“The convoluted history of the seeds and plants collected by Lewis and Clark, their passage from Washington and Oregon into the botanical record was nearly as arduous as the journey itself… Working largely behind the scenes, one obscure figure, Bernard McMahon, assumed a primary role in nurturing the seeds from field to page.”

Robert S. Cox

From the Pacific Northwest to McMahon’s nursery.

In order to understand how this happened let us go back a little and look at the history of this famed collection once it arrived back in the eastern U.S. The collection was shipped back east in two stages. The first shipment was sent back in 1805 and the second brought back by Lewis & Clark in 1806. There were two parts to the collection- the dried specimens and the live seeds. The dried specimens were sent to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia where, it was understood, Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton would assist Lewis in preparing their description for publication. The seeds were divided between McMahon and William Hamilton who were to propagate and grow them in secret until such time as Lewis would bring the account of his travels and the plant collection to print. Apparently, McMahon proceeded immediately to germinate the seeds whereas Hamilton was slower to set to the task.

From under his nose!

While Jefferson and Lewis were counseling McMahon to keep the precious live plant collection secret fearing some unscrupulous botanist might, on discovering its existence at McMahon’s nursery, rob Lewis of his right to describing them first, in the end it was the dried specimens that were more at risk of being spirited away. Ironically, this was not done by some outside interloper but by the very person McMahon recommended to assist Lewis bring his work to publication; and it was this assistant who ultimately published the collection first, not in the United States but in England – adding insult to injury.

MacMahon helps speed up the plant collection’s journey to print.

For a variety of reasons both Barton and Lewis delayed in preparing the material for publication. McMahon, wishing to be helpful and possibly anxious to shorten the “quarantine” period of the secret plants he had in his care, recommended the young German botanist Frederick Pursh for the job.  Pursh was probably already familiar with some of the dried specimens, having been employed by Barton at the time that the first shipment of plants had arrived back east.

Difficult working conditions bring Pursh to MacMahon’s home.

By all accounts Barton was a difficult person to work for and things did not go well between him and Pursh- so much so that by early 1807 Pursh had moved into MacMahon’s home and begun working on Lewis’ plants there. At this time Lewis was Governor of the Louisiana Territory and living in St. Louis. MacMahon wrote several times to St. Louis seeking instruction on Pursh’s behalf but with no success. He also took it upon himself, while waiting for the arrival of Lewis, to pay Pursh to describe the dried specimens (which had been brought from Barton’s Herbarium.) Pursh had the work more or less completed by early 1809 and grew restless waiting for further instruction. However, in 1809 Lewis died in tragic circumstances. Clark, as executor of Lewis’ will, took over responsibility for the collection material but, while MacMahon kept the live and dried specimens in safe keeping for Clark, Pursh left (or should I say absconded?) with the drawings and descriptions- and as it turns out some of the dried specimens as well.

Somehow, amazingly, during all this time (over a year) while Pursh was living at MacMahon’s and working on the collection, he never discovered the live specimens growing at the nursery (Joseph Ewan- Frederick Pursh 1774-1820 and his Botanical Associates.)

Finally published in London, England.

A description of the well-travelled collection was finally published in England by Pursh in his Flora Americae Septentrionalis (1814.) It is not clear to me if Pursh was ever properly reimbursed  for the work he did for Lewis. Nonetheless does that excuse his behavior? Does a combination of frustrated ambition and impecuniosity justify his conduct? His mysterious disappearance from the U. S. and reappearance in London a couple of years later caused much speculation and criticism amongst American botanists at the time and maybe it is for this reason that his Flora never sold well.

What of the live plant specimens at McMahon’s Nursery?

According to Ewan the first evidence of McMahon advertising plants for sale from the collection was 1815. Sadly he didn’t live long enough to benefit from such sales, dying the following year. But as I mentioned in my last blog, his life and work was memorialized by the botanist Thomas Nuttall who, in 1818, named the genus of shrubs Mahonia for him in his flora, The Genera of North American Plants. According to the record this flora was much more successful than Pursh’s.

Aislinn Adams

American Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, and Irish Fall Color?

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Sweetgum

© Aislinn Adams 1998

My first American Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua.

The first time I saw an American sweetgum was in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland. It was autumn and I was a first year horticulture student attending college there. Ireland is not known for its fall color but that sweetgum, growing on a small island in the “pond”, stopped me in my tracks; its glowing orange-red-purple leaves took my breath away. Such a marvelous display would have done New England proud.

I know there’s a whole series of chemical reactions, triggered by temperature and day length, which make leaves turn the colors they do but seeing that sweetgum made me wonder – if Ireland had more N. American native trees like sweetgum would we have better fall color too?

An American native plant.

Sweetgum is native to the eastern U.S.A. but can be found growing in many parts of the country, including on my own street here in Salem, Oregon. It is not popular with many of my neighbors because its shallow roots push up through the concrete pavement causing large cracks. Even though several neighbors have replaced the sweetgums with smaller, more sidewalk-friendly species, there are still enough on the street to give a striking autumnal show- one I look forward to every year.

Ireland can have good Fall color too.

The botanical watercolor illustration above is part of a series I created for Birr Castle Visitor’s Center in Ireland (and part of my botanical watercolor greeting card series.) I worked on these botanical illustrations while staying in Washington D.C. and was happy to use sweetgum plant specimens from my D.C. neighborhood. I have visited Birr Castle demesne many times (I grew up about 20 miles from Birr) but I don’t recall seeing sweetgum growing there. I have no idea how good the Birr sweetgum looks in an Irish Fall but decided to paint it with good fall color anyway as I like to believe that it too can give as good a show as any of the trees here in the U.S.A. After all, the National Botanic Gardens’ sweetgum looked great.

Aislinn Adams

The Common Fig, Ficus carica, the First Cultivated Plant.

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The story of the common fig, Ficus carica,  needs more than one blog.

I started writing about the common fig in my last blog- The common fig, Ficus carica, Fruit, Flower or Carnivore? As I uncovered its story I realized that it would take more than one blog to share its long and complex history.  I illustrated the common fig, Ficus carica, several times for the “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post. This week I post a botanical illustration of Ficus carica “Negronne” to illustrate this entry. This natural dwarf variety can be grown in containers and is particularly suited to the Pacific North West, where I live.

The common fig, Ficus carica, and the first farmers.

It seems everything I read currently brings me back to the first farmers. Recently while reading about the Burren region in the west of Ireland I learned how the first farmers impacted that environment, using only a simple axe as their main tool. Then, while researching the common fig, Ficus carica, for this blog, I discovered that it was probably the first plant cultivated by humans: predating the Neolithic farmers’ “eight founder crops” -einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, lentils, chickpeas, barley, flax, bitter vetch, and peas, Wikipedia– by many centuries.

Neolithic Farmers.

The Neolithic period (starting c. 9500 BCE) marks the beginning of farming and the common fig comes from the region where farming began, the Middle East. Common fig subfossils found in the Neolithic village of Gilgal 1, 13 Kilometers north of Jericho (present day West Bank,) date from 9400-9200 BCE.

Parthenocarpic figs and human selection.

This first fig crop was a parthenocarpic type i.e. the fruit is produced without pollination (see my last blog for more on this subject.) This means that these fig plants were “cultivars” i.e. plants selected and propagated from cuttings by humans rather than grown from seed. We have been growing and eating figs, as well as introducing them to different parts of the world, for over 12,000 years. Parthenocarpic varieties helped this spread because they don’t need a local insect to pollinate the plants in order to produce fruit.

How much do I know about the food I eat?

Reading about the common fig makes me realize how little I know about the food I eat. I’m not talking about which farm my food comes from, whether it is organic or conventional, what variety it is, or how far it has traveled to reach the grocery shop’s shelf. Rather, I am talking about food’s cultural history. I wonder what it means that we have been eating figs since the end of the last ice age? What a long human-plant relationship this is. Have we co-evolved together?

Plant or human selection?

In my last blog I also wrote about the high nutritional value of figs, especially in relation to our human needs. Is this just a happy coincidence? Science may explain the selection and success of figs as a food crop through a mixture of human interference and natural selection but I wonder if those first farmers choose the fig knowing how nutritional it was to eat or just because it tasted good? Or, could it be, as Michael Pollan suggests in his book The Botany of Desire, that the common fig chose us to guarantee its survival?

Agriculture- from Neolithic times to today.

Agriculture has come a long way since Neolithic times. The highly intensive form that we now practice, with its heavy dependence on chemicals, limited selection of crops grown in vast monocultures and enormous use of fossil fuels and other natural resources to produce the crops, is a far cry from those early days. I imagine those first farmers, mostly women undoubtedly, scratching their heads in amazement. Learning about the common fig’s story raises my awareness of our dependence on nature to sustain us: the long and critical relationship we humans have with the plant kingdom- the source of most of our food- and the role this small fruit has played.

Aislinn Adams

The Common Fig, Ficus carica, Fruit, Flower or Carnivore?

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The Common Fig, Ficus carica, unwelcome bounty!

I originally started writing about the common fig, Ficus carica, because of my annual battle with it. Our neighbor’s fig tree leans over the fence onto our yard and rains its bounty of figs onto our vegetable garden every year.  Unfortunately, neither I nor my husband or daughter eat figs. I find them too sweet, preferring fruit with a more tangy taste. Every year I spend hours cleaning up semi-rotten figs after they have smashed their way through our tomato plants before embedding themselves, like small, sticky bombs, into the mulched paths. Then the clouds of fruit flies follow. It is not one of my favorite gardening moments in the year.

Coming to terms with the common fig.

Even though I don’t like to eat figs I do feel guilty that I am allowing this food source to go to waste. I ask friends and neighbors to come and pick but to date no one has taken me up on the offer. In an effort to come to terms with this dilemma I started researching the common fig. Maybe knowing more about the plant would help me change my attitude and even motivate me to eat some of them or make more of an effort to pass them on to others at least.

I have illustrated the common fig several times for the Digging In gardening column of the Washington Post. Both times I used my neighbor’s tree for reference. I love drawing botanical illustrations, regardless of the subject, especially when I can use a live specimen, and there is no shortage of live specimens of fig in my garden!! I feel I owe this tree something seeing as it has helped me out in the past.

The common fig, a fascinating story.

Once again I start researching a plant and find myself drawn into a long and intriguing story that brings me all the way back to Neolithic times and the first farmers. By coincidence I am reading a book at the moment that has spurred on my research- The Fruit Hunters, A Story of  Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession. This book by Adam Leith Gollner is a great read and even if you have only the slimmest interest in plants you will find it full of great stories to edify and entertain.

Too good a story for just one blog entry.

The story of the common fig, Ficus carica, is a complex and multi-faceted one that merits a book or indeed a series of books. There are two aspects of the fig’s story that have delighted me and sent my imagination into over-drive.

1. The reproductive cycle of the fig and its pollination strategies.

2. The first farmers (Neolithic) who domesticated the fig.

For this reason I’m writing two blogs on the subject starting with the reproductive cycle of the fig and its pollination story.

A fruit that is not a fruit!

I should write ‘false fruit’ or ‘multiple fruit’ when referring to the fig because what we eat is in fact the flower or inflorescence (an arrangement of multiple flowers.) The fig ‘fruit’ is a flower turned inside out: its juicy, red interior made up of lots of individual flowers and seeds growing together. The pollinator, a small female fig wasp that depends totally on the fig for its life cycle, must enter through a small opening in the fig, loosing her antennae and wings en route, to lay her eggs on the female fig flowers.

Fig tree pollination-well, sometimes?

Before all you fig lovers start spitting out your figs let me reassure you. Figs have several ways of producing fruits and most of the varieties in our gardens (Adriatic, Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Brunswick, and Celeste) are self-fertilized i.e. parthenocarpically. This means that they do not need pollination to produce their fruit.

Carnivorous figs?

The fig varieties that are pollinated by female wasps (e.g. Calimyrna, Marabout, and Zidi) consume the wasp after she has done her job laying her eggs and pollinating the flowers (Does this make the fig a carnivore?) When these eggs mature into female and male wasps the males (who are wingless) mate with the females and chew a tunnel through the fruit creating an opening through which the female wasps can escape. This suggests to me that the wasps may have left the fruit to find new fruits to pollinate before the fig is eaten but one account I read said that we eat the wasp’s eggs with the fruit- extra protein for us all?

Great nutrition- keep eating your figs.

I hope my account of the coevolution of the fig and fig wasp and their symbiotic relationship doesn’t put all you fig lovers off your figs, but rather fills you with the wonder and awe that nature continues to inspire in me? Who needs science fiction when we have nature all around us. I do eat dried figs and now that I’ve learned what a nutritious food it is, I plan to eat more. According to Wikipedia, figs are one of the highest plant sources of calcium and fiber and USDA research on the Mission variety found that dried figs are richest in fiber, copper, manganese, magnesium, potassium, calcium and vitamin K, relative to human needs. They also contain many antioxidants.  So keep eating your figs and maybe I’ll figure out a way to dry some of my neighbor’s next year.

Aislinn Adams

Botanical Illustration of Kalmia latifolia, Mountain Laurel.

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Mountain Laurel

Botanical illustration of the beautiful Kalmia latifolia, mountain laurel.

One of the many botanical illustrations I drew in my first year for the “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post was Kalmia latifolia or mountain laurel. In the ten years of botanical illustration for the newspaper I drew this flowering native shrub twice.  I like this native plant so much that I chose my more recent illustration of it as the subject for one of my greeting cards in my botanical illustration series #1, created from my Washington Post work.

 

My first time seeing this lovely native shrub in flower.

I didn’t think about the other Kalmia latifolia illustration from that first year until recently. A friend, while admiring my botanical illustration greeting card series, told me that Kalmia latifolia was her favorite plant. Her remark made me think back to the first time I saw it flowering. It was on the side of the road in rural Carroll County, Maryland.

 

Mountain laurel is a favorite plant for many.

My friend is not alone in her choice of favorite plant. Michael A. Dirr in his “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants” describes Kalmia latifolia’s flower as the “most beautiful flower I know…. especially as the buds are opening”. The unique, “intricate beauty” (Dirr) of the mountain laurel flower buds remind me of ornamental icing on a traditional wedding cake; rows of tiny, perfectly formed dollops ending in minute peaks. The Kalmia latifolia flower buds- often dark pink on the outside opening up into pale pink flowers- are so perfectly formed they look almost unnatural.

Flowers with an ingenious strategy for pollination.

 

I took my time preparing those botanical illustrations.  Not only the buds, but the flowers too, are challenging to draw-and just as beautiful. The ten stamens of each flower curve into little pockets in each petal- spring-loaded if you will. When the pollen is ripe the slightest touch of a visiting insect will cause the bent stamen to spring forward showering pollen into the air. What an ingenious strategy to aid pollination. I often wonder what the insect “thinks” when the stamen filament is suddenly released slapping it in the eye or anther? Maybe after the surprise of the first time the insect grows to expect it and enjoy it even. I certainly enjoy the challenge of drawing such intricate botanical illustrations.

Aislinn Adams

Ten Years of Botanical Illustration

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Pruning Hydrangea – my first botanical illustration
for the “Digging In” gardening  column in the Washington Post.

Looking back on ten years of illustration –botanical, entomological and more!

As I complete ten years of botanical illustration for the “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post I am more prone to remembering. Looking back on that collection of 500 plus illustrations, mostly botanical but sometimes entomological and more (after all you never quite know what you might find in your garden!) I am reminded of all the changes I myself have gone through in that time. After only a few weeks of illustrating the column from my studio in Washington D.C, my husband and I upped everything and moved to the Pacific North West. Then, within a year I became a parent for the first time giving birth to a beautiful, energetic and feisty baby girl. It has been quite a journey and all that time I never once missed a week in the gardening column.

Weekly practice of producing a botanical illustration.

Creating the botanical illustration became a welcome weekly practice for me, a ritual almost. I enjoyed the discipline of it all, most especially the quiet time I needed in order to create such detailed illustrations. For some folks it may seem like madness to use the technique of millions of tiny black dots to painstakingly record in minute botanical detail every flower stamen, leaf vein and tiny bud, but for me it was a kind of meditation.

Botanical illustration as meditation?

During that time every week I stopped, became very quiet, and immersed myself totally in the process. Sitting there bent over the drawing board I lost all sense of time. Often I would have to jump up with a start when I realized that I had to pick up my daughter from school with only five minutes to spare. Luckily we live a short walking distance from her school. I am surprised how much I miss my weekly ‘meditation’ already.

Finding an illustration style that suited black and white drawing for botanical illustration.

My illustration style changed over the years also. I started out using a simple cross hatching, seen above in my first illustration for the “Digging In” gardening column –Pruning Hydrangeas. That style began to change before the first year had ended, evolving into the more detailed and time consuming illustration style of stippling.  This change was necessitated by the traditional newspaper medium itself. I discovered that the stippling worked well for botanical illustration and reproduced well in black and white print. With the stippling I was able to show more detail. This was done to help readers recognize the plant more easily.

A greeting card business and a new decade.

Usually I don’t allow myself time to stop and reflect in this way.  As soon as one botanical illustration is finished I am on to the next one, hardly stopping to draw breath.  By choosing to write this illustration blog I am forced, and happily so, to stop regularly and go inside, to remember and reflect. I realize that this is not only the start of a great new adventure for me- launching a greeting card business and illustration blog- it is also the start of a new decade for us all. Who knows where the next ten years will bring us?

Aislinn Adams

My First Blog and Last Botanical Illustration

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My last botanical illustration for the Washington Post- Southern magnolia Alta

As I write this, my first blog, I also work on my last illustration for the “Digging In” gardening column of the Washington Post newspaper. I have been producing a weekly botanical illustration for this column for ten years. My last illustration is of a southern magnolia Alta, Magnolia grandiflora “Alta”- an upright, columnar, tree. I’m glad to have it as the subject of my last illustration as I love its flowers and leaves. I want to do a good job, create something beautiful.  There are southern magnolias growing on my street here in Salem, Oregon but it is March and not the season for blooms.  I could draw the whole tree in its conical shape but I don’t think that would be as interesting as a close-up drawing of its large, dramatic white flowers and big, shiny, evergreen leaves.

Native plants of the Appalachian Piedmont Region.

In search of some references I “google” southern magnolia Alta and the first image I click on is from Mt Cuba Gardens, Delaware in the eastern United States. I take this as a good omen as I know the garden well.  I had been an intern there in the spring of 1997, my first year in the USA. Mt Cuba is well known for its extensive collection of plants native to the Appalachian Piedmont Region. I sought an internship there so that I could study these native plants. That spring at Mt Cuba I was surrounded by beauty. Every day I watched the garden come alive as a diverse array of spring ephemeral flowers woke up from their winter slumber. I felt very lucky to be able to work in such a bewitching place alongside thoughtful gardeners who were very passionate about what they did and shared their knowledge generously. As I pour over photos of Mt Cuba and wander down memory lane I picture myself in those pictures amongst the plants.  Even after so many years the garden is still familiar to me. I recognize where I worked and remember how I had carefully stepped between the creeping phlox and bluets in search of any weeds that might have escaped attention.

Spring blooms in the eastern United States.

My first spring in the eastern United States is a vivid and forceful memory.  I had no idea how dazzling a display nature could bring forth.  I was totally bowled over by the spectacle. I wonder if many of you, having grown up with this annual display, are now so accustomed to it that you take it for granted.  Being from Ireland and seeing it for the first time that spring was intoxicating.  I was charmed and delighted by every new plant discovery and marveled at what seemed like a never-ending parade of blooms- red buds, choke cherries, tulip poplars, mountain laurels, dogwoods- so many species, so much color. Later that same year I was delighted once again by the southern magnolias.

I’ve heard that our strongest sense for memory is smell but my memory of that first spring is an extremely powerful visual one. I find it difficult to pull myself away from the Mt Cuba pictures. It is an effort to come back to today and my last botanical illustration for the “Digging In column”. I have a deadline and time is slipping away. The southern magnolia Alta beckons.

Aislinn Adams