Garden History from Monticello - 18C Chesapeake Gardeners' Diaries

In the Company of Gardeners

The Flower Diaries of President Thomas Jefferson, Virginian Lady Jean Skipwith, 

and silversmith & clockmaker William Faris

by Peggy Cornett, Twinleaf, January 2000

Thomas Jefferson was the quintessential record keeper. He kept account books and both a Garden and Farm Book throughout his adult life. Although he died just a mile from the place of his birth, Jefferson traveled extensively and often made careful notes on the gardens he visited in this country and abroad. Through the sheer volume of his writings, Jefferson documented hundreds of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, and we find his plant references in letters, drawings, and memoranda to his workers, family, and friends. Record-keeping was as much his passion as music, reading, architecture, and gardening.

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

Jefferson's records, however, do not stand alone in his time. Other important and useful garden diaries, such as those belonging to Lady Skipwith and Maryland clock-maker William Faris, have survived in tact. The highly educated Jean Skipwith left remarkable lists of flowers that she grew in southern Virginia between 1785 and 1805. At the age of forty, she became the second wife of Sir Peyton Skipwith and they settled in the rolling countryside of Mecklenburg County. There they built a large Georgian-style house named Prestwould, after the Skipwith family seat in England. Jean Skipwith was a skilled gardener and she possessed an astute knowledge of botanical Latin. The libraries at Monticello and Prestwould both contained copies of Philip Miller's eighth edition of the Gardener's Dictionary, 1768, and Lady Skipwith often cited this botanical tome. Skipwith's floral documents, as described by Ann Leighton in her classic American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century "For Use or for Delight," were either left on the backs of old bills or neatly recorded in lists with such titles as "bulbs to be got when I can ..." and "Wildflowers in the Garden."

William Faris' diary reveals a middle-class American gardener of this period. Similar to Lady Skipwith, William Faris' plant lists span the years between 1792 and 1804, the last twelve years of his life. Historian Barbara Sarudy's recent book, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805, gives us a wonderful portrayal of his late 18th-century residential garden. According to Sarudy, the ornamental beds Faris created in Annapolis were akin in design, if not grandeur, to the more elegant geometric gardens that Chesapeake gentry were busy building about the same time. She describes an artisan who, in his spare time, grew thousands of tulips, narcissus, and other bulbs, selecting and breeding them in his modest 366' by 200' lot. In the spring of 1804, he counted 2,339 tulips in his garden, some named after statesmen such as President Washington and Madison, which he invited his neighbors to view. Visitors would mark varieties they fancied with a coded stick, and Faris would dig them in June for the neighbors to purchase.

Many of the plants that Jefferson, Skipwith, and Faris grew in common were reflective of current floral styles and availability. Tulips figured prominently in early American gardens long after the Dutch "tulipomania" of the 1600s. But, another common "root" of the Colonial Period was the tuberose, Polianthes tuberosa. In 1736, when Peter Collinson sent Williamsburg's John Custis roots of tuberose, Custis replied that they were already common in Virginia and that he need not send any more. This tender Mexican rhizome was especially prized for its heavy, sweet scent. Although the tuberose requires digging and storing over winter in colder climates, it still was planted by Jefferson, Skipwith, and Faris. Jefferson succeeded also with the double-flowered form, which he received from McMahon in 1807 and brought to flower at Monticello August 12th.

The Yellow Autumn Crocus or Winter Daffodil (Sternbergia lutea), a hardy southern European amaryllis, occurs on Lady Skipwith's list, and is a bulb John Custis described in the 1730s as the "Autumn Narciss with yellow Crocus-like flower." Elizabeth Lawrence, a Southern garden writer of the 20th century, noted in her book The Little Bulbs that "They have bloomed in Virginia gardens for many generations, and according to tradition grew in the Palace Gardens at Williamsburg in colonial times."

Like tulips, roses are another dominating class of heirloom flowers, and the gallica roses are considered among the most ancient. Jefferson ordered a number of distinct varieties from the William Prince Nursery of Flushing, New York in 1791, including Rosa Mundi (Rosa gallica versicolor). This sport of the Apothecary Rose is probably the oldest and best known of the striped roses, with petals vividly streaked light crimson and splashed with palest pink to white. Many legends surround this rose; the most romantic, but as yet unconfirmed, being that it was named for Fair Rosamund, mistress of Henry II in the 12th century. The variegated Rosa Mundi is likely what Jean Skipwith called her Marble Rose, which Bernard McMahon listed as a variant of the Rosa Mundi.

Mallows and hibiscus (formerly known also as ketmias) remain a confusing group in early garden literature. When Jean Skipwith included "Crimson Mallow" in her list of "Plants" she was likely referring to Great Red Hibiscus, Hibiscus coccineus, a magnificent, bright red-flowering perennial native to the coastal swamps of Georgia and Florida (but hardy to Philadelphia). The Great Red Hibiscus grows to eight feet in a single season. According to Ann Leighton, it was also cultivated by George Washington at Mount Vernon. Jefferson's "Scarlet Mallow," however, specifically referred to "Scarlet-flowered Pentapetes,"the seeds of which he received from Bernard McMahon and planted in his flower border in 1811. Pentapetes phoenicia is a handsome annual of the Old World Tropics with brownish-green stems and scarlet, mallow-like blossoms that open at noon and close at dawn. It is rarely cultivated in America today.

Jefferson grew relatively few houseplants, yet both he and Faris mentioned the scarlet, single-flowered Geranium (Pelargonium inquinans), a South African species and parent of our modern hybrids. It was first introduced into America in the late 18th century and is immortalized in Rembrandt Peale's famous 1801 portrait of his brother Rubens holding a potted geranium. President Jefferson kept a plant in the President's House and, upon his retirement from his second term, gave his rather neglected geranium to Washington socialite Margaret Bayard Smith. The "Rose Geraniums" mentioned by Lady Skipwith were likely varieties of scented geraniums, also from South Africa, many of which were offered by American nurserymen.

Of the scented flowers, few can compete with Poet's Jasmine, Jasminum officinale. The mere word "jasmine" conjures fragrance and romance, and the delicious odor of this flower, which pours forth at evening, is often the muse of amorous poetry. Jefferson included the "white jasmine" among his "Objects for the Garden" in 1794, and in 1809 he planted "star jasmine" in an oval flower bed. "White Jasmine," likewise, was on Jean Skipwith's list of "Flowering Shrubs." Although this shrubby, Himalayan vine can grow to thirty feet, Virginia winters keep the Poet's Jasmine as a low-growing, woody perennial. Further north it can be grown indoors in pots.

Likewise, wallflowers (Cheiranthus cheiri) ranked highly among the favorite perfumed blooms in early American gardens. Cheiranthus means "hand-flower," and in the Middle Ages it was carried in the hand at festivals. Parkinson wrote: "the sweetnesse of the flowers causeth them to be generally used in Nosegayes and to deck up houses." A double red form was among the six varieties Parkinson grew, and likely the famous "Double Bloody Warrior" that Lady Skipwith mentions by name. "Yellow Stock Gilliflower" was once the term used for the "Yellow Wallflower," and should not be confused with "Gillifowers" and "Clove Gilliflowers," which referred to pinks and carnations. In the late 1800s a miniature double yellow, now known as Harpur Crewe, was rediscovered by and named for the British Rev. Henry Harpur Crewe.

Annual flowers in the gardens of Jefferson, Skipwith, and Faris varied from the delightfully fragrant to the foul smelling and from the delicately beautiful to the bizarrely curious. Mignonette (Reseda odorata), a native of Egypt, was first described in Philip Miller's Dictionary, 1752, as a flower "of a dull colour, but hav[ing] a high ambrosial scent." It became so popular in London that in 1829 a writer remarked: "whole streets were almost oppressive with the odour." Napoleon is credited with collecting mignonette seeds during his Egyptian campaign and sending them to the Empress Josephine at Malmaison. She set the fashion of growing mignonette as a pot-plant for its perfume. At Monticello in 1811 Jefferson situated this flower near the NW cistern.

French marigold (Tagetes patula), on the other hand, was reputed to be poisonous, probably due to its offensive smelling foliage, which was described as hateful, if not injurious. Although native to Mexico, the French marigold, also known as the lesser African marigold, was introduced to Europe by way of North Africa by 1535. In 1808 Jefferson mentions the "2 kinds of Marigold," suggesting he had both the French and African (T. erecta). Faris simply wrote "Marigold;" but Jean Skipwith gives a more precise reference when she wrote "Striped French Marigold," indicating the newest sensation that William Curtis' Botanical Magazine featured in 1791: a lovely yellow-flowered marigold distinctly streaked with red.

Even though Jefferson once wrote that he had no time for "mere curiosities" in the garden, balsam apple (Momordica balsamina) would certainly fall into this category. This unusual vine produces lush, shiny green foliage and pale yellow blossoms followed by curious, bright-orange fruits. These will pop open revealing sticky, bright red seeds. Although the green, immature fruit is used in Asian cooking, it's more fun to watch them ripen and explode on the vine.

The ever-popular, biennial hollyhock (Alcea rosea) was another flower grown by all three. It has been cultivated for centuries and, although probably originating in Asia Minor, now is naturalized throughout the world. By the mid 18th century, Philip Miller's Gardener's Dictionary referred to both the single and double forms as old-fashioned. Jefferson first recorded hollyhocks in June 1767 and charted them in his 1782 "Calendar of the bloom of flowers" as blossoming from mid-June to mid-July. Hollyhocks have persisted in gardens, becoming the centerpiece of late 19th and early 20th-century "Grandmother's Gardens" and continuing in the modern flower border.

This brief collection of flowers mentioned 200 years ago offers a fleeting glimpse into three very personal and private gardens. While Thomas Jefferson, Jean Skipwith, and William Faris lived worlds apart, leading vastly disparate lives in many ways, they were alike in this: their passion for growing flowers and their wherewithal to keep records of their plants. Today, we can only envision the great friendship that might have transpired if circumstances had ever united these three remarkable gardeners.

NOTE:

Lady Jean Skipwith is best known today as the mistress of one of the most important gardens of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The detailed records she kept of her garden at Prestwould make it one of the best-documented gardens of the period and were invaluable to the Garden Club of Virginia, which undertook an interpretive restoration in 1980. The plan, consisting of a grid of walks with garden beds in between, is quite like the kitchen gardens of James River and other southern plantations, but several elements show that it was carefully adapted to Lady Skipwith's needs as a plant collector and experimenter. A traditional garden, for instance, would have been on axis with the main hallway of the house, but at Prestwould the garden is sited along the east side of the house, visible from the entrance drive, as if to make a statement that gardening was a separate and special activity at the plantation. The north-south central walk in the garden is fifteen feet wide, to accommodate a pony cart, and extends the length of the lot, 630 feet. Three crosswalks, also fifteen feet wide, traverse the 230-foot width, dividing the garden into six beds. The central crosswalk continues through an orchard to the walled graveyard. Customarily, a summerhouse was placed at the end of one of the garden walks, but Lady Skipwith's summerhouse, complete with a cellar for the storage of roots and plants, was situated to one side of the main walk. Here she spent many hours, reading and keeping the plantation books and her garden journal.

History Blooms at Monticello - The Lewis & Clark Legacy

Gaillardia aristata. Peggy Cornett at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello tells us that

At the west end of Monticello’s Winding Flower Walk several showy species associated with the Lewis and Clark Expedition are on display: Blanket Flower, Snow-on-the-Mountain, and Narrow-leaved Coneflower. As the Corps of Discovery crossed the Continental Divide Meriwether Lewis first collected Gaillardia aristata in the dry hills of the Rocky Mountains.

Photo by Peggy Cornett who writes in the Twinleaf Journal of January 2003

The Horticultural Potential of Lewis & Clark Plants

Their three-year journey led Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, & the Corps of Discovery through the central prairies, high plains, the arid Rockies, windswept deserts, & seasonally moist, temperate West Coast regions of North America. The diverse climatic & geographic environments they encountered obviously had immensely disparate growing conditions from the woodlands, swamps, fields, & savannahs of the East. Recognizing this, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon in 1807, at the conclusion of the mission, "Capt. Lewis has brought a considerable number of seeds of plants peculiar to the countries he has visited." At the time, it was difficult to recognize or sort out the plants that might prove easily amenable to gardens from those requiring very specific & difficult to reproduce environmental conditions. Although Jefferson, McMahon, William Hamilton & many others were enormously interested in cultivating these rare new introductions, determining which would thrive in cultivation required years of experimentation & trial & error.

Some plants with ornamental potential were distributed & entered the nursery trade early on, such as Lewis's prairie flax (Linum perenne lewisii), which McMahon was offering by 1815. Other showy flowers like the annual & perennial blanket flowers (Gaillardia sp.) were familiar asters that soon emerged as garden favorites. But, widespread production & marketing of the Lewis & Clark plants occurred gradually over time &, in some cases, it required that the plants be "rediscovered" by other intrepid explorers with more influential connections.

One such naturalist was a journeyman printer from Liverpool, England, Thomas Nuttall, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1808 at the age of 22. His interest in books & plants soon led him to Professor Benjamin Smith Barton of the University of Pennsylvania, who became his friend, tutor, & patron. Barton also saw in Nuttall someone capable of re-collecting many of the Lewis & Clark specimens no longer in his possession. In 1811 Nuttall joined the Astorian Expedition, which was planned to follow the Lewis & Clark Expedition's path to the Pacific. Nuttall headquartered at Fort Mandan & made numerous excursions up the Missouri River, where he encountered many of the original Lewis & Clark species. He was able to send a large shipment to Barton & returned to England just before the outbreak of the War of 1812. The plants & seeds he took with him were distributed to the Liverpool Botanic Garden & marketed through a dealer in American plants. Nuttall's shipment included the camas (Camassia quamash), or quamash as it was known to the Nez Perces, which was first collected by Lewis & Clark June 11, 1806 in Idaho as the explorers followed the Lolo Trail. Like the Native Americans, the men of the Expedition relied on the root for sustenance & Frederick Pursh would later note that the plant was "an agreeable food to Governor Lewis's party." An illustration of this attractive lily, first published in Curtis's Botanical Magazine, 1813, as Scilla esculenta, was made from Nuttall's specimens that were being sold through John Fraser's Nursery in Sloane Square, London. Eventually, many plants collected by Nuttall also were offered for sale at the Linnaean Botanic Garden in Flushing, Long Island, New York.

The Scottish gardener David Douglas was another significant plant explorer who followed a similar track westward. He had served on the staff of the Glasgow Botanic Garden before becoming the foremost plant hunter of the Royal Botanical Society. Unlike the strict pioneer botanists, Douglas was more skilled as a horticulturist. He first went to Oregon Country in 1825 & explored the upper reaches of the Columbia River & parts of the Canadian wilderness. His western travels crossed & crisscrossed the route that Lewis & Clark had taken 20 years before. In 1827 he returned to London with seeds of dozens of distinct species previously known only to botanists, making available to everyone many now-familiar garden plants including California poppy, elegant Clarkia, musk or monkey flower, & blue-pod lupines. Douglas found Gaillardia aristata, first collected by Lewis in the dry hills of the Rocky Mountains, in similar regions from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean. Intermixed with the typical species, Douglas saw many with a dwarf habit no more than 10 to 12 inches in height. Seeds of this form were collected in abundance & liberally distributed through the Horticultural Society at Kew. Douglas also brought choice North American woody shrubs to gardeners around the world, such as the evergreen Oregon grape-holly (Mahonia aquifolium, honoring Bernard McMahon) & the flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum). Before his untimely death in Hawaii in 1834, when he fell into a pit trap & was gored by a similarly ensnared bull, Douglas had sent some 500 species to William Hooker at Kew Gardens.

Often, these western North American species fared better in England that they did in the eastern United States. The elegant clarkia or "elkhorn flower," named for Captain William Clark by the German botanist Frederick Pursh, became widely popular in 19th-century British gardens. Accounts of London exhibitions in which clarkias received first-class certificates appeared in American magazines of the 1860s. After traveling to Britain, James Vick of Rochester, New York wrote enviously of "immense fields ablaze with bright colors, acres each of pink, red, white, purple, lilac," which he encountered in a country village of Essex. Although, like most seeds men, he offered a broad selection of both single & double cultivars, he readily admitted, "The Clarkia is the most effective annual in the hands of the English florist. It suffers with us in hot dry weather." In hot, humid climates, clarkia has been found to perform best when sown in the fall so that it blooms as the season cools.

Snow-on-the-mountain, Euphorbia marginata, which was new to science when collected by Lewis & Clark in 1806, soon became a common annual in 19th-century seed catalogues. Although its natural distribution is along the west side of the Missouri River in North Dakota, it proved adaptable to a wide range of soil types & growing conditions & likely escaped from cultivation into farmlands from Minnesota to Texas & New Mexico. Still other adaptable western species like the Western Jacob's ladder (Polemonium pulcherrimum) & even Lewis's prairie flax, the North American subspecies of the common European blue flax, never managed to captivate American nurserymen, even though they grow with equal vigor & beauty. Catalogues generally offered only the traditional garden-variety counterparts, probably because it was easier to acquire these perennials from seed sources abroad.

Present-day ecological concerns must temper our rush to obtain certain species, especially those threatened by over-zealous collectors. The prairie coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia), for example, has a long history of medicinal use by Native Indians but now our modern-day infatuation with herbal remedies has led to its near devastation by widespread digging of wild plants.

The concepts of endangered species, diminution of resources, environmental degradation, even extinction were not part of the mindset of that moment in our history two hundred years ago. It was still a time to document & collect, to observe & understand. As Jefferson predicted in 1804, on the eve of the venture, "We shall delineate with correctness the great arteries of this great country: those who come after us will fill up the canvas we begin."

Now, we can reflect upon the pristine landscape stretching out beyond the horizon that was viewed with awe & wonder by the men of the Corps of Discovery. While we know they endured near starvation & exhaustion, sickness, scorching heat, arduous winters, monumental hardships, & profound uncertainty about the road ahead, we can still envy their experiences & take pleasure in their discoveries just as certainly as did Jefferson, who never traveled beyond the mountains of Virginia. Jefferson's destiny was to remain behind & wait with excited anticipation for the seeds, plants & roots the corps would return. In the ensuing years he would pursue the study of this new & sometimes peculiar flora from western lands, content in the belief that "Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight."

Thomas Jefferson & the great Pea competition

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817)

Thomas Jefferson was known to have a passion for peas.  For several years, he would organize a competition among his Virginia neighbors to see who could produce the 1st peas of the year. The winner would invite all the other competitors to his home for dinner, to eat peas, of course.

1782 William Redmore Bigg (1755-1828)  A Girl Shelling Peas

Thomas Jefferson was particularly fond of the English or Garden pea.  He mentions planting it frequently at Monticello devoting a relatively large amount of kitchen garden space (3 entire "squares") to his precious peas.  According to family accounts, every spring Jefferson competed with local gentleman gardeners to bring the first pea to the table.  The winner then hosting a community dinner that included a feast on the winning dish of peas. Among the 19 pea varieties Jefferson documented sowing were Early Frame, which was planted annually from 1809 until 1824; Hotspur, named for its quick, frantic growth; Marrowfat, a starchier, later variety; and Blue Prussian, which Jefferson obtained from Philadelphia seedsman Bernard McMahon.  Jefferson's pea consumption seemed to slump during his presidency, however.  Jefferson's butler, Lemaire recorded purchasing peas for the President's House only 6 times in 1806 for the elaborate state dinners Jefferson hosted.

Jefferson's eldest grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph recalled this competition in a letter to Mr. Randall, "A wealthy neighbor [Mr. George Divers], without children, and fond of horticulture, generally triumphed. Mr. Jefferson, on one occasion had them first, and when his family reminded him that it was his right to invite the company, he replied, "No, say nothing about it, it will be more agreeable to our friend to think that he never fails."

This is apparently the case in an April, 1815 letter from Mr. Divers to Jefferson: "We returned home yesterday from a visit of several days and I did not examine into the state of our peas till late in the evening, when I found them quite ready…We should be glad you will come up and partake of our first dish today & that Mr. Maddison would come with you."

1795 Fresh Gathered Peas Young Hastings after Giovanni Vendramini (1769-1839)

Collecting America's Native Plants - Meriwether Lewis "No Regular Botanist"

"Like most people of his day, Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) was knowledgeable about plants. His mother was an herbalist, & as an agriculturist he was interested in plants of economic importance. Thus, when Jefferson assigned Lewis the task of naturalist it was natural that Lewis would focus, as Jefferson instructed him, on medicinal plants, plants of economic value such as corn, wheat, grasses, fodder, & plants that would have been of horticulture interest, as Jefferson had a large garden & was very much interested in horticulture plants.

"For Jefferson, the decision not to send a true naturalist, but rather one that was semi-trained was both fortunate & unfortunate. For the botanical community the fact that Jefferson did not send a naturalist meant that only a few select specimens were collected. Nonetheless, the more than two hundred specimens that reached Philadelphia, from the activities of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, signified the richness of the flora of the Pacific Northwest & particularly the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho & Western Montana.

"Lewis’s collection activities were limited to opportunities when he had a chance to collect. As captain he had many other duties besides looking for new plants. Thus it was, we know from his journals, that not only did he collect, but so did some of the other men. There are even indications that Sacagawea or Saka Kawea collected plants as well.

"Lewis's collecting activities were not described by him, but looking at contemporaries, it is clear that Lewis used a small hand press. This allowed him to collect small samples that he would then dry over a period of days. Because he had no other means of drying these plants other than sunshine he was very careful what he collected. For example; he avoided cactus & all kinds of succulent plants except for two—both sedums, or rock plants. He collected lots of grasses, because they were economically important as food. He collected crop plants that were grown by the native people. And he collected a bountiful number of wildflowers, particularly in 1806 as he crossed the Rocky Mountains.

"Some of the plants that Lewis collected were found along the Lolo Trail in late June of 1806, & then across Lewis & Clark Pass in early July of 1806. Many of those species are represented in his herbarium & may be seen even today along the Lewis & Clark Trail.

"Lewis's tendency was to collect specimens that he could, in a small sample, show all of the detail that he needed to show. Thus, he tended to collected plants in good flower & occasionally, if he felt it was important as a medicinal plant, in fruit, so he could then grow seeds from the plant once he returned the material to Philadelphia.

"Seeds were commonly collected in 1805 particularly along the Columbia River. Very few seeds were collected in 1806 on the return trip. Numerous specimens & seeds were collected as they ascended the Missouri River in 1804.

"Lewis's interest in the wildflowers of what we now call the Rocky Mountains was much as any individual's today. They are abundant & beautiful & easy to collect. The success of his collection resulted in the discovery of three new genera, one named for him, one named for Clark, & another named for the character of the plant. Several new species were collected. And, most that you see surrounding us here today were collected by Lewis & were named from his specimens.

"Lewis's plant press was probably in the form of a book. A very large book, probably twelve by eighteen inches. It may or may not have been bound on the one side. This is a traditional plant press that you find in China. It is made out of bamboo & consists of a flat strong surface that specimens can be placed in. Lewis used paper much like you used as a youngster in kindergarten. A kind of construction paper. It was folded in half & the specimen placed in between. Now, Lewis's paper was twelve by eighteen when folded, this is half that. You'll notice that the paper is absorbent. This way the specimen's moisture would go into the paper, be absorbed by the paper, & then the specimen could be slowly dried. But in drying, everyday Lewis had to open his press, remove the old pages that were damp, lay them in the sunshine, allow them to dry, & move his plants into new paper so they would continue to dry.

"Modern botany is quite different from Lewis's day. We use very large presses & in a good operation you'll run three to five presses, filling each during the course of a day. Each press consists of about room for one hundred different specimens. We are able to dry these very rapidly using what is known as a Holmgren drying frame, by putting a heat source underneath, a coleman stove or electric light bulbs. The heat rises through the corrugates, the holes in the corrugates, & will dry plants overnight, if not during the course of twenty-four hours.

"Today we are in Packer Meadow on the Clearwater National Forest. This was a lunch stop for the Lewis & Clark Expedition in late June of 1806. Very likely, because Lewis had collected so many plants coming up the Lolo Trail, he took time out during that lunch break to work his plant specimens. Lewis would open his press & open up, in his case, each individual page of his press. Coming on to his first specimen he would then take a look at it, make sure that the leaves were flat & that all the diagnostic characters of the flowers were shown so they could be studied. He would repeat this for each specimen &, if necessary, would replace the paper with new paper.

"This is the common camas that Lewis & his men experienced in 1805. Tradition says that Lewis & Clark & his men became ill from eating the bulbs. That's probably not true. More likely the culprit was salmonella poisoning associated with the dried—poorly dried—salmon.

"It's interesting that Lewis collected the Canadian Dogwood or Cornus candadensis. This is a plant he knew well from Virginia. It's interesting to speculate whether he collected it because he knew it, collected it because he wanted to show that something from Virginia also grew in the Rocky Mountains, or what. Maybe he was homesick. The other specimen that I have here is the new genus of mariposa lily collected by Lewis & Clark along the Lolo Trail in Idaho & Montana in late June & early July. This is Calicortis pulcella, or "beautiful mariposa lily".

"Two specimens that Lewis would have handled during the stop in Packer Meadow is a skyrocket, this little high elevation blue flower which occurs near the summit, & also near the summit is this species of menzesia, named for the surgeon naturalist Archibald Menzies who preceded Lewis & Clark in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1790's. Menzies collected only along the coast, & this is one of those species that goes from the coast to the high mountains in the Rockies. Lewis was very judicious in what he collected. He made only small specimens. Even though this is a large shrub he would have collected only a little bit of it. The reason is simple, someone had to carry it to Philadelphia.

"A specimen has three dimensions: odor, good color & a feel of surroundings, not seen on a flattened dried specimen. And yet, all the technical details necessary for identification, the number of petals, sepals, stamens, the condition of the ovary & fruit, the leaves, even the habitat of the plant can be nicely preserved in any specimen. Occasionally if you have a tree or a shrub it is necessary to make notes indicating the size of the tree or the shrub. This Lewis did on occasions, & we now have his original notes to go by.

"This plant has bulbs. They are thick & fleshy. Drying one of those would be very difficult. Thus, Lewis rarely collected any succulent plant & certainly none of the bulbs that would require days, if not years, to dry. In fact, the reason Lewisia rediviva is called Lewisia rediviva is the genus name honors Lewis but the species name, or epithet, rediviva means revived. That's because the specimen that Lewis made at Travelers' Rest July 1, 1806, was still alive when it reached Philadelphia in September of that year. The specimen that Lewis returned to Philadelphia with, that would later be called Lewisia rediviva, was removed from his collection paper & grown in Philadelphia. It was observed for almost a full year before it suddenly died. Very likely, as everyone knows, over watering plants can be dangerous & deadly, & certainly that's the case with Lewisia.

"Meriwether Lewis described his plants in his journals. He had his training from Barton in Philadelphia, but he also had with him two volumes of John Miller's book on Linnaeus's system of botany. One was an illustration of the terminology of the Linnaean system & the other was on the system itself. So what Lewis could do is, he could use these two books & write his descriptions in a very technical way, so botanists who read the journals would be able to have that information.

"As a naturalist, Lewis has been fairly highly regarded by the modern community. He worked under trying & difficult situations. While it is clear that he was only able to devote a portion of his time to the effort, what he did is widely respected. It should be noted however, that in 1811, Thomas Nuttall of England, went up the Missouri River & collected several hundred more specimens than Lewis & Clark did in 1804. In 1834 & 1835 Thomas Nuttall came to the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Oregon & Washington & collected hundreds of specimens. Many of the plants that Lewis & Clark found, that were not named in Lewis' time were subsequently named by Thomas Nuttall from his own collections."

By James L. Reveal, Professor Emeritus, Botany University of Maryland, Supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Governor's Lewis & Clark Trail Committee

Thomas Jefferson, a florist...

“When I return to live at Monticello ... I believe I shall become a florist.” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madame de Tesse, Jan 30, 1809.  Peggy Cornett tells us that “florist” had a different meaning in Jefferson’s day. The florist in the 18th century was a serious gardener who wanted to cultivate flowers to high degree of perfection. In the foreground is 17th century variety Lac Van Rijn tulip. Closer to the house are two historic tulip varieties: Keizerskroon (1750) & Duc van Thol Max Cramoisi (17th century)