All Words Lead to Native

In a nod to the game Wordle, played by me and many of my friends, I offer this silly take on it: all words lead to “native” plants. I did have to increase my version to 6 tiles per word so that it could accommodate the word native, and I had to use a flower for one letter so clearly this is way off from the original!

This is probably true for many folks with a passion – words about my hobby play a big part in my everyday life, to the point where I start to see them everywhere.

Speaking of words and plants, I just finished reading The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf. It is a fascinating account of a group of men in the 18^th century who shaped important concepts about plants (Carl Linnaeus was standardizing botanical names during this time, much to the dismay of those who came before him), increased the availability of them (John Bartram was sending plants from America), and wrote publications that helped make plants (and botany) more accessible to the middle class.

In the 1730’s, English merchants such as Peter Collinson were receiving boxes of seeds and plants from America. The book opens with a description of such a box in 1734 that contained “hundreds of seeds neatly wrapped in paper, a few living plants and, most extraordinary of all, two flourishing kalmia cuttings." From these boxes, shipped across the ocean on merchant ships and subject to many hazards, came the beginnings of what would become vast estate plantings of American plants: white pine, tulip poplar, Carolina allspice, rhododendrons, mountain laurel (Kalmia), Eastern redcedar, Atlantic whitecedar, red maple, sweetgum, and much more.

Inspired by drawings from Mark Catesby’s expeditions to Virginia and Carolina, Englishmen were willing to pay dearly to get these plants. Collinson (for whom the genus Collinsonia was later named) was especially fond of lady’s slipper orchids. This love affair with American plants continued for several decades. Around 1760, the Duke of Richmond’s Goodwood estate was described as having “400 different American species, all planted as wilderness. Some of the tulip poplars were higher than 40 feet and a Magnolia grandiflora was thirty feet.” Such a garden was quite the showplace, and the English enjoyed the fall foliage of American plants as much as they enjoyed the flowers and conifers.

[Likewise, American colonists were happy to received European seeds and plants in return. John Bartram enjoyed showing off the plants he received in return.]

Eventually, English ships went to other places and brought back plants from Africa, Australia, and warmer climates. Unlike the American plants, most of these went into hothouses, except for perennials such as Pelargonium (common name is geranium) which is still a poplar garden flower today there.

It was a very enjoyable read. The history on the standardization of names was fascinating; the English were mostly against the proposed changes by Linnaeus. His two publications, Systema Naturae (1735) for classification and Species Plantarum (1753) for botanical names, were not well-received but stood the test of time. Plant names were sometimes used to honor people (Kalmia for Pehr Kalm, a student of Linnaeus) while one particular fellow that was not well-liked had a stinky weed plant named for him.

It’s incredible to think that Magnolia grandiflora was once called Magnolia foliis lanceolatis persistentibus, caule erecto arboreo by one person while another called it Magnolia altissima, flore ingenti candido. Common names included “Greater Magnolia” and “Larger Laurel leave’d Tulip Tree.” According to the author, names grew longer as new but similar species were discovered and “some names ran to half a page.” Thank goodness for the binomial system!

P.S. Want a real Wordle copycat that plays on nature? Try A Greener Worldle here.