Botanical garden refugee camps for plants

Please understand that every botanist TPP knows would like to take measures to stop or reduce global warming.  However, botanists are a pragmatic bunch and here is a news article about an endangered plant rescue plan that uses botanical gardens as refugee camps and way stations.  Let's consider the two closest big botanical gardens: the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Chicago Botanical Garden.  It takes about 5 hours to drive between them on a largely north-south vector.  But there is a good one and a half to two climate zones between them.  If things keep going the way they seem to be going in another 40 years the climate at the Chicago Botanic Garden will be like it is now in Missouri.  Of course then Missouri will be even hotter and drier (?) maybe something like the Texas panhandle.  So the idea is to shift endangered species from one refugee camp to another as way stations because there is no way they could migrate on their own, and they are setting up a network for this purpose now.  How grimly pragmatic is that?

Botanical Geek Tour #4

Final grades are not quite ready and the semester isn't quite over, but WTF.  It's time for our fourth botanical geek tour.  Our garden itinerary consists of Longwood Gardens, Bartram Gardens, the Scott Arboretum (Swarthmore), the Morris Arboretum (U Penn), and for a bit of bio-balance the Phillie Zoo.  My travel advisor has also scouted the area for restaurants because eating well is an important part of geek tours.  These may include Moshulu, the Iron Hill Brewery, and a seafood place (?) in Reading Terminal, but otherwise we'll make it up as we go along.  So this is your last chance to try to influence our travels with your recommendations.  Hopefully some blog reports and photos will follow if time and facilities allow blogging, so if Phytophactor blogs are a bit in frequent, then just eat your hearts out about the trip.  In particular this trip was planned before it was obvious our spring would be so weird in terms of early flowering times and we are curious about the conditions of these gardens.  Only our latest Rhododendrons are still flowering.

The value of botanical gardens

In the minds of many of us, botanical gardens are institutions ideal for teaching botany, but many people just think of them as pretty places to walk through. Quite a number of years ago our campus, which has a distinguished collection of trees, was designated an official arboretum. And one day while walking across the campus with a VP, she commented on how nice the campus looked and then said she'd like to visit the arboretum some day. Yes, most of our admins simply think the campus is the landscaped space between buildings. The Phactor has argued for years that the arboretum was the biggest and most frequently used classroom the university has, and a VP didn't even know she was in it. You can read or obtain a nice article over at Art Plantae on the value of botanical gardens. It's worth reading; it's worth sending it to your dean.

Botanical Geek Tour 2010

Every now and then the Phactor, Mrs. Phactor, the Dean of Green and his lovely wife take a few days to tour botanical gardens, a passtime inspired by a book called 1001 gardens you must see before you die. This is one of those gifts that will cost me hundreds of times more than the original purchase price. Thus far we are only 4% through the list. The grand plan was to cross about 5 gardens off the list with a visit to Barcelona, unfortunately none of those lottery tickets was a winner, so our scaled back plans took us north to Wisconsin to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in Spring Green, the Olbrich Botanical Garden in Madison, and then back into Lincolnland to visit the Anderson Japanese Garden in Rockford. Taliesin is in the book, but not for any good botanical reason (patio garden shown), although the tour was quite interesting and well worth taking, it's for the architecture and learning more about the infamous Mr. Lloyd. Go see it before it falls apart. Seriously. Wandering rural roads can lead to other finds like the world's best coleslaw in Cross Plains, and you know, it just might be. Both botanical gardens are relatively small, but both are very well done, very handsome, with some very interesting plantings, landscapes, and plants. The rose garden at Olbrich is one of the most handsome of any garden's; the Phactor usually avoids the geometric rows of roses common at most gardens, reminders that quite ugly, ungainly plants can still have pretty flowers.