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The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

SPRING/SUMMER 2007

Naming the Chinese Garden

PURSUING PUYAS

EUCALYPTUS FEVER

W ITH THIS ISSUE, THE HUNTINGTON announcesthe name for its Chinese Garden. In the coverarticle, curator June Li explains how she and hercolleagues drew on art, history, literature,

and botany in selecting a Chinese name for the new 12-acre site (page 13).

One feature of Chinese gardens isthe borrowed view.While composed pathstake advantage of the beauty of theimmediate surroundings — a lake, atree, a plant — they also take in the distant landscape. For example,the San Gabriel Mountains are well outside the boundaries of TheHuntington but nonetheless part of the scenery.

Much of what takes place at The Huntington is theresult of one kind of borrowing or another. By lendingRogier van der Weyden’s Madonna and Child to a traveling art exhibition,The Huntington hashelped provide a different context forviewing the 15th-century painting (page 2). But borrowing is notlimited to the loans of paintings.The intellectual exchange between Huntington staff and local educator AveryClayton helped kick off a new African American cultural series while support-ing efforts to establish the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum in LosAngeles (page 5).

The back and forth among staff and visitors is seldom a zero-sum game.Botanist Rachel Schmidt Jabaily drew inspiration from her first glimpse of a puya plant at The Huntington and proceeded to travel throughout SouthAmerica studying the family tree of the species (page 8). She returned to TheHuntington recently on a fellowship to clarify identifications of all the puyaplants in the Huntington Desert Garden.

History is full of stories of borrowed ideas or things. Civil engineer andhistorian Henry Petroski explains how a 19th-century toothpick manufacturertook a page out of the shoe industry’s manual (page 22).And environmentalhistorian Jared Farmer contemplates the history of California’s eucalyptus trees,which began with the first imports from Australia in the 1850s (page 18). Just asborrowed views are part of a Chinese garden, eucalyptus trees are a permanentfixture of the state’s landscape.

MATT STEVENS

The Huntington Library,Art Collections,and Botanical Gardens

SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON

STEVEN S. KOBLIK

President

GEORGE ABDO

Vice President for Advancement

JAMES P. FOLSOM

Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens

KATHY HACKER

Executive Assistant to the President

SUSAN LAFFERTY

Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education

SUZY MOSER

Assistant Vice President for Advancement

JOHN MURDOCH

Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections

ROBERT C. RITCHIE

W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research

LAURIE SOWD

Associate Vice President for Operations

ALISON D. SOWDEN

Vice President for Financial Affairs

SUSAN TURNER-LOWE

Vice President for Communications

DAVID S. ZEIDBERG

Avery Director of the Library

MAGAZINE STAFF

Editor

MATT STEVENS

Contributing Writers

LISA BLACKBURN

TRAUDE GOMEZ-RHINE

Designer

LORI ANN VANDER PLUYM

Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by the Office of Communications. It strives to connectreaders more firmly with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington, capturing in news and features thework of researchers, educators, curators, and othersacross a range of disciplines.

This magazine is supported in part by theAnnenberg Foundation.

INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS:Matt Stevens, EditorHuntington Frontiers1151 Oxford RoadSan Marino, CA [email protected]

Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography providedby the Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services.

Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc. City of Industry, Calif.

© 2007 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, andBotanical Gardens.All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of the contents, in whole or in part, withoutpermission of the publisher is prohibited.

Above: Eucalyptus globulus. Drawing by Patty Lawson Christ. Opposite page, upper left: Porgy and Bessprogram, 1941. Courtesy of Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum. Right: Business logo, ca. 1910.Jack London papers, Huntington Library. Lower left: Rachel Schmidt Jabaily holding a specimen of Puya oli-vacea near Vallegrande, Bolivia, March 2006. Photo by Roberto Vásquez.

FROM THE EDITOR

SOMETHING BORROWED

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 1

[ VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 ]

A REAL CLIFFHANGER 8

Pursuing puya plants in the Andesby Rachel Schmidt Jabaily

BREATHING LIFE INTO THE CHINESE

GARDEN 13

Selecting a nameby T. June Li

GONE NATIVE 18

California’s long affair with eucalyptus treesby Jared Farmer

SS PP RR II NN GG // SS UU MM MM EE RR 22 00 00 77

DEPARTMENTS

DISCOVERY: The full pictureby Joyce Lovelace 2

WORK IN PROGRESS: The art of collaborationby Traude Gomez-Rhine 5

LESSONS LEARNED: Perfecting the toothpickby Henry Petroski 22

BOOKS IN PRINT: Recommended reading 24

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Contents

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55

2 Spring/Summer 2007

[ DISCOVERY ]

Rogier van der Weyden’s Madonna and Child, ca. 1460. Huntington Art Collections.


The Full PictureUNFOLDING THE RICH HISTORY OF A PAINTING

by Joyce Lovelace

[ DISCOVERY ]

A ROUND 1460, THE FLEMISH MASTER

Rogier van der Weyden painted a tenderlymaternal Mary holding the infant Jesus, whoplayfully grasps a clasp of a finely bound vol-

ume, probably a Book of Hours. In its present-day homeat The Huntington, this exquisite Madonna and Child is ajewel among jewels, and though perhaps not well knownto most visitors, it is a highlight of the holdings, on parwith such iconic works as Pinkie or Blue Boy.

It has also seemed something of a glorious anomalyhere: a masterpiece of 15th-century Netherlandish art ina collection noted for strength in secular British and Frenchart of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Underscoring itscontextual isolation, the painting has up to now hungwith the rest of the Arabella D. Huntington MemorialCollection in the west wing of the Library, where thedisplay focused on its successful cleaning and conservationby the Getty Museum.

Lately out on loan, however, this significant work hasbeen presented in a richly revealing new light — or moreaccurately, an old one.

Madonna and Child (or Virgin and Child, as it is alter-nately known) originated as the left half of a diptych — a two-panel painting hinged to open and close like a book.The complete object could stand open on a table or altarin a private chapel, or even in the private chamber of itsowner. In the last years of his life, Rogier (1399/1400–1464)developed a type of “devotional” diptych that combinedan image of the Virgin Mother and Child with a facingportrait of the patron who had commissioned the painting.Considered among his finest works, they were intendedto aid intense prayer.

The Huntington’s picture is an example of this importantgenre, paired with a likeness of a young Belgian noblemannamed Philippe de Croÿ, identifiable by his family armspainted on the reverse of his portrait.As with many multi-panel paintings over the centuries, the two halves becameseparated, probably in the course of trade, and the de Croÿportrait is today in the Koninklijk Museum voor SchoneKunsten (Royal Fine Arts Museum) in Antwerp, which

acquired it in 1841. Arabella Huntington purchasedMadonna and Child in 1907, and two years after her deathin 1924 it became part of the memorial collection that herhusband Henry established in her name.

Shown together once during the 20th century, in a 1927exhibition of Flemish and Belgian art at Burlington House,London, the two paintings were recently reunited in “Prayersand Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych,” whichopened in November 2006 at the National Gallery of Artin Washington, D.C., and recently concluded at the Royal

Fine Arts Museum.The first exhibition devoted to thesubject, it presented 36 diptychs from the 1400s and 1500sby leading artists such as Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, andMichel Sittow.

“Rogier is one of the great painters of the 15th century,and also one of the most influential,” says John Oliver Hand,curator of northern Renaissance paintings at the NationalGallery and an organizer of the show. “He is a supremelyrational artist, very careful, intricate, wonderfully precise.He’s also a master of composition. He knows what he wantsto do, and he does things for a reason.There’s a kind ofabstract elegance to the design of his paintings; they’re verylinear.”The combination of Madonna and Child and Philippede Croÿ is, he says, a superb example of the master’s painterlyskill. Displayed in a gallery along with other magnificentworks,“it’s the star of that room, and one of the stars of theshow,” Hand commented during the exhibit’s Washingtonrun.“You walk in, and it grabs you.”

Madonna and Child originated

as the left half of a diptych —

a two-panel painting hinged

to open and close like a book.

When the renovated Huntington Gallery reopens nextyear, Madonna and Child will be displayed in a new installa-tion of the Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Collection,hung with other Netherlandish altarpieces and close toItalian altarpieces. In this context viewers will be able toengage with this powerfully realistic work in the way theartist intended,“through empathy with the humanity ofGod made man — with Mary as a real mother — so thatfaith becomes part of real life, not something remote andotherworldly,” says John Murdoch, Hannah and Russel

Kully Director of Art Collections at The Huntington.“Aswith all religious art, it’s important to remember that thisis an object of personal devotion, maybe even veneration.We shall have it with other similar objects, so that you willsee it in a much more meaningful, human, and social con-text — one which I hope will enable people to relate toit as a document of human spirituality as well as of thehighest aesthetic interest.” m

Joyce Lovelace is a freelance writer on art and design.

“Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych” was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,and the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, in association with the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge.

The Huntington’s Madonna and Child can be viewed when the Huntington Gallery reopens to the public in May 2008. It alsowill be part of a forthcoming exhibition of Rogier van der Weyden monographs in the artist’s hometown of Tournai, Belgium, in2010. This second exhibition will look at Rogier’s development as an artist and his place in the crosscurrents of influence betweennorthern and southern Europe during the Renaissance.

The Huntington’s Madonna and Child reunited with Philippe de Croÿ. Huntington Art Collections and the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.



The Stuff of DreamsA BURGEONING NEW LIBRARY PUTS THE FINE ART OF COLLABORATION INTO PRACTICE

by Traude Gomez-Rhine

[ WORK IN PROGRESS ]

M AYME CLAYTON HAD A DREAM. Whenshe died last October, she placed its fatefirmly in her son Avery’s hands. Entrustedwith his mother’s vast archive of black

Americana, Clayton has set out to create the Mayme A.Clayton Library and Museum in Los Angeles.

But how does one individual accomplish such a mon-umental task? Where would Clayton build his library? Howwould he move the entire collection from his mother’sproperty in the West Adams district and make it availableto researchers and the public alike? The contents in thehouse and garage alone took up 680 boxes, and two off-sitestorage units were filled to capacity.

Clayton was trained as an artist, not an archivist. He’dspent his career teaching elementary and high school stu-dents, not building libraries or museum spaces.Aware of hislimitations and realizing that success hinged on his ability toacquire expertise, he began soliciting advice from curatorsand other experts at a number of area institutions, includingThe Huntington.“I knew that I didn’t know,” he says.“Andin the beginning I wasn’t sure if I could do the right thingby the collection, and by my mother.”

Thus, over the past few years Clayton has developedrelationships with The Huntington, the Skirball CulturalCenter, UCLA, and USC (which is digitizing films fromthe collection).The Library of Congress even flew curatorsout to Los Angeles in January to help survey the collection.

Sara S.“Sue” Hodson, curator of literary manuscriptsfor The Huntington, was somewhat skeptical when she firsttalked with Clayton about his plan. Because of the colossalnature of such an undertaking, it’s unusual for individualsto set out to establish their own research library or museum— and succeed.“But after a half hour of conversation, Ibelieved otherwise from his passion and commitment,” shesays.“Avery’s been able to get important people on boardat critical moments.”

As Clayton began working on the project, severalinstitutions tried to persuade him to donate or sell hiscollection — if not in its entirety then in choice lots thatcould be separated by any number of stand-alone categories:

Huntington Literary Manuscripts Curator Sara S. “Sue” Hodson and AveryClayton review materials for a 2009 exhibition on the Harlem Renaissance inLos Angeles. Photo by Don Milici.

30,000 rare and first-edition books (many of which aresigned), representing nearly every writer from the HarlemRenaissance; 16-mm films made by black filmmakers,including rare silent reels; 75,000 photographs; and tensof thousands of documents and correspondence, journals,cartoons, magazines, and playbills.

Josh Sides, a professor of history at California StateUniversity, Northridge, did scholarly research at TheHuntington while working on his 2004 book, L.A. CityLimits:African American Los Angeles from the Great Depressionto the Present. Sides says the addition of the Clayton Library

to Southern California will prove invaluable to scholarswho usually have had to travel outside the state to find acomparable collection.“Having such a concentration ofAfrican American artifacts right here is very exciting,” hesays.“I plan to send my students to the archive in droves.”

The Clayton collection dovetails nicely with TheHuntington’s significant Western collections, which arerich in the history of the trans-Mississippi West and thedevelopment of Southern California. Clayton highlightsinclude black western films, Flash magazines from the1920s and ‘30s, and many items showing the impact ofthe Harlem Renaissance on Southern California earlyin the 20th century.

Hodson says it wouldn’t be inappropriate for a collectionsuch as Clayton’s to come to The Huntington, but she agreesthat it should be housed in its own facility.“Within ourprofession, the higher ethic is to ensure that a collection isin its right home, no matter how much we may lust aftersuch a staggering archive,” she says.“In this case it will havea greater symbolic impact to have it all together in a facil-ity that focuses entirely on African American culture.Thelibrary will honor Clayton’s mother and her enormouseffort; it will serve as a magnet for other collections.”

A selection of Clayton items related to the Harlem Renaissance: Left: Portraitof activist and writer W.E.B. DuBois, ca. 1925 (signed). Opposite: Programof George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, 1941. Below: The marquee ofthe Bill Robinson Theater on Central Avenue, Los Angeles, ca. 1933. Thetheater was owned by entertainer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and was a show-case for the works of black filmmakers. Courtesy of Mayme A. ClaytonLibrary and Museum.


[ WORK IN PROGRESS ]

Huntington staff and curators have embraced Clayton’svision and are collaborating in ways that will highlight bothcollections.To this end, Clayton has worked closely withHodson and Huntington educator Jennifer Phillips to createThe Huntington’s “Dreams Fulfilled” series, which for thepast two years has examined the artistic and cultural con-tributions of black Americans. Clayton was on the planningcommittee for the inaugural program in 2006 and exhibitedsome of his mother’s items throughout the series, a project

that proved an invaluable learning experience.“I was amazedby the level of care Huntington curators brought to thematerials,” he says.“I learned so much about mounting aliterary exhibition, such as preparing the documentationfor the audience and identifying teaching opportunities.”That first series included a panel discussion on the Claytoncollection, with Mayme Clayton in one of her last publicappearances.

“Dreams Fulfilled,” in fact, brought together the talentsand resources of a number of community members whohadn’t previously worked with The Huntington. Pasadenaorganizer and volunteer Lena Kennedy, for instance, madesignificant contributions to the inaugural series by securingfunding for the project.“Having great diversity within thecollections is important, but equally important is havingdiversity on the Huntington campus with patrons andvisitors,” Kennedy says.“With ‘Dreams Fulfilled,’TheHuntington brings in a new audience that otherwisemay not be exposed to everything the institution offers.”

Clayton is preparing for the audience that will somedayuse his materials.“I’m using The Huntington as my modelfor a research library,” he says. Hodson toured the buildingthat Clayton secured for the collection — a former court-house in Culver City — and ticked off a checklist oflogistical concerns. “Sue made me much more aware ofsecurity issues,” admitted Clayton.“We have many rareand out-of-print books and many documents that predateemancipation. Sue impressed upon me the importance ofhaving a top-notch security system in place, about makingsure the collection is accessible but safe.”

The collaboration continues. In 2009, Hodson andClayton will jointly curate an exhibition at The Huntingtonon the Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles.Among itemslikely to be showcased from the Clayton collection are let-ters of Josephine Baker and Pearl Bailey, rare movie postersfrom black films, and a 1905 copy of the African Americannewspaper The Pasadena Banner.The Huntington will showitems from the papers of writer Langston Hughes, composerHarold Bruce Forsythe, and the First Negro Classic Ballet.Hodson looks forward to this and other opportunities towork together.“Archivists operate in networks, and thoughwe are often competitive for collections, we are also enthu-siastic about helping one another,” she says. m

Traude Gomez-Rhine is a staff writer at The Huntington.

Huntington staff and curators have

embraced Clayton’s vision and

are collaborating in ways that

will highlight both collections.

IN SOME OF THE HIGHEST REACHES OF THE ANDES, the air is so thin thathummingbirds cease to hover and instead cling to the fuzzy columns of puyaplants while feeding on the abundant nectar produced by otherworldly coloredflowers. I, too, have found myself breathing the thin air of the Andes and cling-

ing to the remarkable plants as I tracked down specimens in South America whiledoing research for my doctoral thesis.

My quest actually began two years ago, when I came to The Huntington to getmy first glimpse of puyas. I was wrapping up my first year of graduate work at theUniversity of Wisconsin, having immersed myself in the field of systematic botany,or the organization and evolution of plant diversity. My colleagues and I constructthe relationships between species, genera, or other taxonomic units, and then interpretthis phylogeny — a “family tree” of sorts — to tell stories about evolution.We tryto figure out how plants adapted or diversified in the past, all the while wonderinghow current environmental changes might trigger future adaptation. I was alreadyenamored of bromeliads — a large neotropical family of plants that include puyas

A REAL CLIFFHANGERMy year pursuing puyas in the Andes

By Rachel Schmidt Jabaily


who could help me navigate the star-tlingly complex — or alternatively non-existent — environmental bureaucracyof various countries.

My goal was to collect in the wildas many species of Puya as possible.More specifically, I would press anddry leaves and flowers, putting small

sections of leaf in silica gel for laterDNA extraction.After sequencing theirDNA,I could tell stories about the evo-lution of the group. How is this grouprelated to other bromeliads and howare the various species — with differ-ent body shapes and floral displays —related to each other? Can knowledgeof evolutionary history explain or pre-dict certain physical attributes of theplants? Where and when did this grouporiginate and under what geologicaland ecological conditions did it evolve?

Of course there are drawbacks tocollecting this group. Because of their

large size and spiny leaves, puyas areextremely hard to press and mounton the standard-sized papers used inherbaria, or plant libraries. The morethan 200 recognized species are rela-tively poorly studied and undercollect-ed in almost their entire ranges, and formany species little is known beyond

the description of the plant and a fewlocalities. Perhaps most difficult forme, puyas live across an immense spanof land, from the bogs of Costa Ricathrough the Gran Sabana of Venezuela,throughout much of the Andes up to14,500 feet in elevation and down tothe coast of central Chile. Each of thecountries has its own plant collectingrules, transportation infrastructure, anda variety of quirks that makes field-work both delightful and frustrating.By the time I set my itinerary for mytravels, I knew I had my work cut outfor me.

as well as pineapples, Spanish moss, andmany houseplants, but I wanted tofocus on a genus that would be man-ageable as a graduate-level project.When I caught The Huntington’sspectacular puya bloom following theparticularly wet winter of 2005, Iknew I had settled on my group.

Puyas are the most ubiquitous andcharismatic group of bromeliads in thehigh Andean regions called the páramoand puna, grass-dominated ecosystems.(The páramo is farther north and iswetter than the puna.) The plants arespectacular when flowering.When theirflowers are spent, the petals twist intoa tight spiral, perhaps to protect thedeveloping seeds. Most of the plantsare quite large (three to six feet tall ormore when in bloom) and can easilybe seen from the road, a plus whenpaying a taxi driver by the hour totake you collecting.The plants are alsoentirely terrestrial, hence no need toclimb trees, though they do tend to lovehanging off particularly precarious roadcuts or cliffs.

The Huntington Desert Gardenhas been around for 100 years and hasan excellent collection of mature puyaspecimens, primarily from Chile,Argentina, and Bolivia. These plants

were collected in an era free of restric-tions that now govern the movementof plants from one country to another.In today’s world, I first had to fill outinnumerable forms and befriend anynumber of people via the Internet

Most of the plants arequite large and can easilybe seen from the road, aplus when paying a taxidriver by the hour to takeyou collecting.

Opposite: Puya atra on a hillside above Comarapa, Bolivia. Photo by Rachel Schmidt Jabaily. Above:Jabaily proudly holds a specimen of Puya asplundii outside the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological Reserve inEcuador in October 2006. In April she took a break from her travels to catch The Huntington’s 21species of Puya in bloom. Her experience in South America helped her clarify the identifications of sever-al specimens in the Desert Garden. During her fellowship she also conducted experiments on the growthand variation of the plants. Photo by Edwin Narvaez.


BOLIVIA, MARCH 2006Roberto Vásquez, an expert on orchidsand bromeliad flora, picked me up atthe airport in Santa Cruz. I didn’t real-ize at the time how lucky I was to bewith a local expert who could drivehis own vehicle. He has worked inmany areas of Bolivian business andcurrently owns a large and successfuldairy farm outside Santa Cruz, whichleaves him with lots of time to pursuehis real passion.Many times in my trav-els throughout South America I mettalented botanists who have careers inother areas,presumably because it is verydifficult to make a living as a biologist.

We drove throughout the Depart-ment of Santa Cruz alongside the lush

vegetation that marks the transitionfrom lowland forests to the higherAndean puna. Bolivia has a muchlower population density than othercountries I would visit, and the roadswere mostly empty save for occasionallivestock as we traveled up lushmountainsides and down into dryvalleys full of giant cactus.

I was surprised to learn that severalof the Puya species in Santa Cruz wereexpanding their range as a result ofdeforestation.Puya plants can be com-pletely shaded out by dense forests;they grow best in open grasslands.Since much of the original forests havebeen cleared for grazing land, Puyaatra and P. nana have begun to spring

up in pastures well beyond the cliffsand high elevations of their earlierrecorded habitats. Other species ofPuya are threatened by human activi-ties, but that would be seen moreobviously in Ecuador.

My first trip to Bolivia was short butgave me the confidence I needed forsubsequent trips to other countries,where I would have to assume a greaterrole in planning the trips. I had col-lected 10 different species in just a fewdays. I knew I had to make plans toreturn to find the other 50 or so inthe higher and drier puna region.

ECUADOR, OCTOBER 2006 Fall kicked off with my preliminaryexams, freeing me for the rest of thesemester to pursue my research inearnest. I had spent a lot of time withthe Bolivian specimens, interspersingmy study of Puya characteristics witha quick trip to The Huntington in thespring. I was beginning to get a senseof the “species concept” in Puya, orthe breakdown of individual plantswith varied morphological character-istics into distinct species that inter-breed and behave as biological units. Itested this knowledge in the field inEcuador as I collected several speciesthat could be considered distinct orsimilar to other species, depending onhow I looked at them.

After spending a week in Quitoacclimating to the 9,100-foot elevation,

The Huntington DesertGarden has been aroundfor 100 years and has anexcellent collection ofmature puya specimens,primarily from Chile,Argentina, and Bolivia.

Puya chilensis at The Huntington grows as tall as 15 feet. Photo by Lisa Blackburn.

I joined my counterpart Edwin Narvaezof the Quito Botanical Garden on a bustrip north to the cool,wet páramo of ElAngel on the Colombian border.Themost prominent plants in this high grassyland were the frailejones, or Espeletiaplants — tall, fuzzy members of thesunflower family. Interspersed amongthem were giant, spiny rosettes of Puyahamata, the largest species in Ecuador.

This species is monocarpic, mean-ing it dies after flowering and does notproduce vegetative offshoots like mostother Puya species and many othergarden plants. So to get a sample of it,we essentially had to kill this majesticplant, which had been growing for atleast 30 years, judging from its size.

To keep things in perspective, cut-ting one plant down does far less dam-age than the local practice of burningthe páramo. Hundreds of acres of thisrare landscape are burned every year,in part to maximize grazing opportu-nities but also because the local peoplebelieve fire brings rain. While someplants survive and even thrive follow-ing a burning, others, including thistype of large puya,do not.Even thoughthis particular region is protected, ashortage of government workers hereand elsewhere makes it difficult to en-force the law among the burgeoninghighland population.

I am still hopeful. My host familiesappreciated the beauty of the puyasamples that I hauled back in sacksafter a long day in the field. Afterhacking away at the giant plants with amachete — preserving the least amountof plant material in my press to capturethe key characteristics of the species— I had mounds of flowers and plantsleft over. I gave whole plants to thewomen to transplant in their gardens,and I gave the flowers to the children,telling them in my childlike Spanishabout the colibri (hummingbird) thatdrinks from the flowers and the oso deanteojos (spectacled bear) who loves to

tear apart the plants to eat the sugaryleaf sheaths.

The Ecuadorian trip was a com-plete success. We collected almost allof the 35 species known in the coun-try and caught more than half of themin flower. I now had a good samplingof plants from the wetter páramoecosystem, and I was eager to comparethem to puyas from drier ecosystemsfarther south.

ARGENTINA, NOVEMBER 2006I reunited with my new husband of fourmonths for a quick but much neededThanksgiving holiday in the UnitedStates.We then flew to Córdoba,Argen-tina,with Diego Gutierrez,an Argentinebotanist studying small highland sun-flowers. Diego did not drive, so myhusband got behind the wheel of ourrental car in Córdoba’s midday traffic.

Traveling was a joy once we wereout of the city, barreling past the stun-ning mountains, vineyards, and cactus-filled quebradas (dry valleys) of northwestArgentina. Collecting, though, was adifferent story. In Ecuador, I had a puyabook complete with GPS locationscompiled by rose exporter and majorbromeliad aficionado José Manzanares.In Argentina, however, some specieshad only been collected by hardybotanists on mule train in the 1930s.It soon became apparent why: thereare very few roads in the mountainsof western Argentina, since themajority of the population lives in thelowlands. Sometimes the best I had togo on was the name of a nearby townor mountain range. I despaired inrealizing that there were no roads totake us the additional 5,000 feet ofelevation to the plants’ habitat.

Puya venusta in Zapallar, Chile. Photo by Rachel Schmidt Jabaily.


On another collecting day, on asearch for the one known populationof hairy yellow-flowered Puya yakespala,we couldn’t get low enough.We werein the high, dry puna grassland justsouth of the Bolivian border, feelingthe effects of the altitude and dodgingthe occasional sheep or llama herdcrossing the road.We started on a roadthat quickly deteriorated to one lanehanging off the side of improbablecliffs. I’d been on similar roads inEcuador but had managed to napthrough it all since it was the taxi dri-ver’s job to worry about such things.But when it is your husband drivingyour rental car, sleep is not an option.We crept along for more than 20 milesbefore we saw the monstrous plant(without flowers, though).At day’s endwe were tired but triumphant, withDNA and pressed leaves in the car.The sheep-spine stew we had for ourvictory dinner was a tasty reward.

Even so, I found only eight speciesin Argentina, several of which are livingat The Huntington. I finally came tothe realization that collecting all thespecies of Puya for my thesis was notgoing to be possible. I also realized thatif I scaled back my ambitious project, Icould still get a basic sense of evolutionwithin the group. Future botanists canhelp fill in the rest.

CHILE, DECEMBER 2006From Córdoba, we flew over Acon-cagua, the highest mountain in theNew World (22,841 feet), to Santiago,Chile, rented another car, and headednorth up the spectacular coastline.Central Chile has a climate and vege-tation very similar to that of coastalCalifornia. The six Puya species inChile are unique in that they grow atvery low elevations and generally areabundant and easy to find. They alsoare very well represented at TheHuntington. While it might be

tempting to extract DNA from spec-imens in a botanical garden, fieldworkassures the genetic purity of sampleswhile giving me the opportunity to takenotes on habitat and morphologicalvariation. As I wrapped up my 2006travels I looked forward to collectingsamples from the remaining countriesI hoped to visit: Peru, Colombia,Venezuela, along with a return trip toBolivia.

The most perfect day of collectingwas in the swanky beach town ofZapallar, north of Viña del Mar.Belowthe mansions and sprawling gardens,past the little shack selling fresh sea-food, and next to the nesting area offlocks of cormorants and pelicans, wasa peninsula covered in shiny purple-flowered Puya venusta.

The plants were in full bloom, sur-rounded by colorful songbirds, smalliridescent wasps, and the largest speciesof hummingbird on earth, Patagoniagigas. This rather dull-colored bird isabout the size of a house finch but hasvery long wings.The birds seemed to

appreciate the break from hoveringoffered by the perches of long tips ofPuya chilensis growing nearby. It hadbeen my dream to see these birds pol-linating puyas, and now they were ourcompanions as we drew in closer tothe magnificent Chilean specimens. m

Rachel Schmidt Jabaily is a doctoral candidatein botany at the University of Wisconsin,Madison.As a Mayers Fellow, she helpedidentify puyas in The Huntington’s DesertGarden in April 2007. She is the firstbotanist to receive a fellowship from TheHuntington’s Research Division.

A specimen of Puya venusta from The Huntington. The Desert Garden has five out of the six puya plantsnative to Chile. Photo by Lisa Blackburn.

Breathing Life into the

ChineseGarden

Breathing Life into the

Chinese Garden

A thoughtful process reveals an elegant name

by T. June Li


IN CHINESE TRADITION, thenaming of a garden representsthe critical touch that brings itto life. It is like the practice of

inking pupils onto the eyes of a painteddragon, sparking instant movement. Onthe eve of completing the first phase ofthe Chinese Garden,The Huntingtonhas selected a name that signifies thegarden’s physical as well as poeticdimensions: Liu Fang Yuan ( ),or Garden of Flowing Fragrance.

As befits the measured, scholarlyapproach of the institution, staff andmembersof The Huntington’s govern-ing Board of Overseers met with theChinese Garden’s advisory committee.Together they engaged in more than ayear of research, as well as discussionsboth serious and jovial, before choosingthe name.The three members of thecommittee are Wan-go H.C. Weng,collector, scholar,poet, author, and film-maker; Richard Strassberg, professor ofChinese at the University of California,Los Angeles; and Yang Ye, professor ofcomparative literature at the Universityof California, Riverside. They spentcountless hours looking into poeticnames for the garden and discussingtheir relevance to The Huntington.

That deliberate process underscoresThe Huntington’s consistent approachto this immense project: to follow asclosely as possible the authentic tradi-tion of Chinese garden culture. Notonly were materials such as gardenrocks and stone-carved designs shippedover from China, but stone craftsmenalso came to create the lake and bridgesfor the garden, and others are herethrough November to assemble thepavilions.

Choosing poetic names for a gardenand its individual scenic sites is part ofthat tradition. The practice is reflectedin an amusing chapter from a popular18th-century novel,Cao Xueqin’s TheStory of the Stone, also known as TheDream of the Red Chamber.

The Huntington’s

name for its Chinese

Garden describes the

wonderful offerings

of the plants within.

Left: Sketch of camellias by Pei-fang Liang Wang. It is one of six patterns carved into the wood doors ofthe tea shop. Below, left to right: Yang Ye, Richard Strassberg, and June Li in discussion in the ChineseGarden. Opposite: Wan-go H.C. Weng’s calligraphy served as the model for the relief stone carving ofthe Chinese name, Liu Fang Yuan. The characters are read right to left, as they will appear above theentrance to the garden. Previous page: Chinese magnolias in bloom. Photos by Lisa Blackburn.

Jia Zheng, the wealthy owner of alarge estate, had just completed thebuilding of a new garden for a visit byhis daughter, an imperial concubine.Allthat was lacking were poetic verses andnames to enhance various scenic spots.

Jia says, “All those prospects andpavilions — even the rocks and treesand flowers — will seem somehowincomplete without that touch ofpoetry which only the written wordcan lend a scene.”

Thereupon Jia ventures forth intothe garden with a group of residentscholars and his precocious young sonto create poetic names for differentscenic sites.Their witty banter aboutmerits and drawbacks, as well as therelevance of literary references for eachnotable spot, provides valuable insightinto the intimate relationship betweenliterature and gardens.

A similarly close bond exists betweenliterature and painting. In fact, gardenswere always seen as three-dimensionalpaintings. Painters designed many cel-ebrated gardens of the 16th and 17thcenturies, the golden age of gardens inChina. Ji Cheng, author of the earliest-known manual on garden-building,The Craft of Gardens (published between1631 and 1634), was a painter. Hewrote that the most desirable gardendesign combined natural scenic beautyand expressive poetic descriptions fromthe heart. Thus he was treating thegarden as a painting on which poeticinscriptions provide deeper meaningand emotional expression to enhancethe painted composition.

Just as titles were given to paint-ings, each important garden estate wasgiven a name by its owner to high-light the special characteristics of thegarden.The name could reveal to thevisitor not only what wonders lay with-in, but also reflect the owner’s taste orhis outlook on life.

What’s in a Name?In offering his advice for naming the Chinese Garden, Yang Ye could-n’t help thinking about the cultural differences between the Chineseand Western traditions. Regarding the Western tradition, the professorof comparative literature at UC Riverside is always reminded ofShakespeare. “What’s in a name?” asks Juliet. “That which we call arose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

But according to Confucius, explains Ye, “If a name is not correct,speech will not flow smoothly. It will even imperil the harmony of allunder heaven.”

Ye was one of three scholars invited by Chinese Garden CuratorJune Li to help select a name for the Chinese Garden. He suggested thatthe correctness of a name might be measured in the difference betweentwo Chinese terms: ya and su. Ya has many different meanings andconnotations and could be rendered as refined, civilized, cultivated,elegant, graceful, or educated. Su, on the other hand, could be renderedas unrefined, obvious, vulgar, or inelegant.

One of the best examples of the contrast between the two termscomes in a scene from The Story of the Stone, the classic 18th-centurynovel by Cao Xueqin.

As Jia Zheng, the patriarch, leads a number of resident scholarsthrough his garden, he hears rather common, or su, suggestions fornames. For a steep, miniature mountain at the entrance, for example,they offer such names as “Emerald Heights,” “Embroidery Hill,” or“Little Censer” (after the Censer Peak in Jiangxi). Dissatisfied with thesenames, Jia turns to his son, Baoyu, who follows the principle that “torecall old things is better than to invent new ones; and to recut anancient text is better than to engrave a modern.” He suggests “Pathwayto Mysteries” after the line in Tang poet Chang Jian’s famous poem ona mountain temple (“A path winds upwards to mysterious places”). Theya wins out.

Underlying the narrative is a reminder that the process of namingis as important as the name itself. Ye and his fellow advisers hope theyhave followed in Baoyu’s footsteps.

—Matt Stevens


For example, the name of a gardenin Suzhou is Liu Yuan, or Garden forLingering, and evokes a pleasurableplace that offers a setting for leisure,enjoyment, and contemplation.Anotherfamous Suzhou garden, the ZhuoZheng Yuan, or Garden of the ArtlessAdministrator,bears a name that impliesa retreat for one who was proudly atodds with the ways of the world andscorned the artifices used by politiciansand diplomats.The Huntington’s namefor its Chinese Garden,Liu Fang Yuan,describes the wonderful offerings of theplants within.

The term liu fang, “flowing fra-grance,” has an ancient beginning. Itwas first used by Cao Zhi (192-232)in his famous Rhapsody on the Luo RiverGoddess. Describing the goddess, Caosays:“She treads in the strong pungencyof pepper-plant paths/Walks throughclumps of scented flora, allowing theirfragrance to flow.” This exhilarating useof the term to describe the scatteringof floral scents perfectly characterizesthe sensory delight of botanical aromasthat permeate the Chinese Garden.

At The Huntington, the fragranceof pine trees, plums, lotus, among manyplants, commingle and drift subtly overthe waters of the lake, spreadingthroughout the garden. Fang, definedin early Chinese dictionaries as “fra-grance from all plants,” is sometimesused interchangeably to describe blos-soms. Since native Chinese plants werethe initial inspiration for building thegarden, this multipurpose reference isperfectly fitting.

However, the Chinese fondness forlayered meanings,wordplay, and literaryreferences makes this name even moredesirable. The word liu ( ), or “flow-ing,” has the same sound as another liu( ), meaning “lingering.” This allowsfor playing on the meaning of liu. SoLiu Fang Yuan can also mean Gardenof Lingering Fragrance. Fang, or “fra-grance,” is also often used to connote

Poetic inscriptions enhance the composition of paintings and gardens. In this hanging scroll, the artist wrote:“In the study of surrounding green sits an eccentric man happily retired from society / Stringed instruments,paintings, history books, and ink stone are next to him. To know how this place exudes both tranquilityand joyousness / Try looking at the fresh growth of bamboo and trees before the window.” PavilionAmong Trees by Wen Nan (1596–1667), China, Qing dynasty. From the Wan-go H.C. Weng collection.

virtue, something that The Huntington,with its research and educational mis-sion, hopes to hold and impart.

In addition, liu fang, or “flowing fra-grance,” is the name of a famous Mingpainter,Li Liufang (1575-1629),knownfor his lyrical landscapes and refinedstyle.The name of the garden pays hom-age to this admired artist and sublim-inally links the Chinese Garden to himand the elegant taste he represented.

Master craftsmen in Suzhou havecarved the characters for Liu FangYuanin stone for placement above the mainentrance gate to the Chinese Garden,close to the tea house complex. It is anauspicious honor that Wan-go H.C.Weng, the most senior advisory com-

mittee member, agreed to write thesecharacters for the garden. A practi-tioner of calligraphy since his youth,he is a modern version of a Chineseman of letters, or wenren: a highly cul-tivated person well-versed in poetry,painting, and calligraphy. He comesfrom an illustrious family of scholarofficials — his great-great-grandfatherbeing the imperial tutor and statesmanWeng Tonghe (1830-1904). Weng,whoimmigrated to the United States morethan 50 years ago, is completely accus-tomed to living in both China andAmerica, and understands both cul-tures thoroughly.

So,in many ways,the name Liu FangYuan connects the Chinese Garden at

The Huntington to the scholarly tra-ditions of China. It also transforms itfrom a project to a destination.Whenvisitors come to Liu Fang Yuan, theywill be stepping into a painting com-plete with poetic inscriptions. m

T.June Li is curator of the Chinese Garden.

Choosing a NameThe Huntington will also be selecting names for the variousstructures and scenic sites within the garden, whetherthey be the composed views of bridges or “borrowedscenery” such as the San Gabriel Mountains peekingthrough the branches of a tree. Noted calligraphers willbe invited to write these names, which craftsmen willthen carve onto bamboo plaques or stone. RichardStrassberg, a professor of Chinese at UCLA and adviserto June Li on the naming process, noted four principalcharacteristics of the naming process:

THEMATIC COHERENCEThe individual “scenes” in a garden should coalescearound a particular theme. If it is a private garden, thenthe names often reflect the personality of the owner. If itis an imperial garden, those gardens are a microcosmof the universe and are representations in miniature ofthe empire. And if it is an institution such as a Buddhistor Daoist temple, very often the names relate to the religioussystem of that institution. The Huntington, long steepedin the botanical sciences, has chosen the theme of plants.

ARCHITECTURAL FUNCTION OF BUILDINGS Gardens are often accompanied by a number of buildingsor pavilions. Are the buildings social spaces? Private spaces?Or perhaps one building is intended for contemplation

or meditation. Other buildings might be intended asviewing spots or transitional spaces. The names of eachstructure should reflect the function of the building.

GUIDING PERCEPTION Oftentimes the builder of a garden attempts to guide thesenses of the visitor, whether it be sight, sound, or scent.Liu Fang Yuan, or Garden of Flowing Fragrance, reflectsthe intention to provide the visitor with a meaningfulsensory experience.

SEQUENTIAL MARKERSGardens provide a kind of narrative sequence. If the visitoris at the entrance, the name might suggest a welcomeor greeting. In a middle section, one might encounter awhole host of choreographed experiences — openness,confinement, surprise, or quiescence — that can beencapsulated in a corresponding line of verse. Together,the names along the paths of a garden create a kind ofstory or travelogue.

– M.S.

A PRIL 1970.The Beatles announce their breakup. U.S. forces gather forthe invasion of Cambodia.By most measures, the world had seen better days.Using a slogan modified from John and Yoko — “Give Earth a Chance”— students at some 1,500 American schools prepare for a nationwideEnvironmental Teach-In, better known as the first Earth Day.

In Ventura County, 50 tree-huggers from Moorpark College lie in front of bulldozers onLos Angeles Avenue near Simi Valley. Even here, far away from Berkeley, “ecology-mindedstudents” (to use the words of the Los Angeles Times) could be found protesting the wideningof a tree-lined road.The police arrest 10. On April 22, the defendants are arraigned in juvenilecourt. By the end of the week, the trees are gone.

What had been lost? Ancient redwoods? Historic oaks? Not quite. The trees in questionwere Australian eucalyptus.

Since the 1850s, Californians had assisted a continuous introduction of eucalypts punc-tuated by two frenzied periods — one in the 1870s, the other from 1907 to 1913. Plantersbelieved variously that eucalypts would provide fuel, improve the weather, boost farm pro-ductivity, defeat malaria, preserve watersheds, and thwart a looming timber famine. First andforemost, however, Californians planted the trees to domesticate and beautify the landscape,to make it more green.

By the mid-20th century, the distinctive blue-green foliage of eucalyptus trees could beseen all over the state.The Australian genus was far more prevalent than the redwood, theofficial state tree, and scarcely less iconic.The immigrant plant had been naturalized in the

California’s love-hate relationship with eucalyptus trees

by Jared Farmer

Lisa

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refers to the shape of the blue gum’sflower cap (see drawing before page 1).Piles of detached caps can be foundbeneath any E. globulus, along withcopious leaf litter. The thin, sickle-shaped mature leaves have distinctivecoloring — somewhat green, almostblue, slightly gray.Their menthol smellis equally memorable.This evergreen— or ever-blue-green — species canalso be identified by its bark, which inthe summer and fall sheds in long rib-bons. The magnificent blue gum is

quite possibly the messiest tree on earth.More significantly, it is — with thepossible exception of redwoods — thefastest sprouting tree on earth.

In the 19th century, E. globulus hadanother perceived virtue. The fast-growing tree was also a “fever-reducer.”According to medical assumptions ofthe time, malaria and other maladiesresulted from so-called bad air — aninfecting vapor that transpired fromovergrown bottomlands. In multipleways, eucalypts acted as a prophylaxis.By soaking up water, they reduced thesize of miasmatic breeding grounds.More importantly, their pungent leavesand litter disinfected the soil and pre-vented unhealthful decomposition.Asthey “inhaled,” these trees absorbedthe bad air and exchanged it with“balsamic exhalations.”

In California, enthusiasm for the“fever-tree” peaked in the early 1870swith backing from health experts andrailroad managers.The sight of so manyhealthy-looking trees inevitably inspireddreams of profit. Soon the demand for

eucalyptus seeds had outpaced supply.Farmers in the interior valleys triedplanting on their “wastelands” — thedry or hilly or alkaline spots wheregrain and vegetables would not grow.Any profit from telegraph poles, rail-road ties, and firewood would be abonus. By the late 1870s, the overlap-ping medical and commercial fads inblue gums had transformed the lookof lowland California. In the words ofone grower, eucalyptus had becomethe “tree of trees — its banners arewaving around our state and over allour homes.”

E. globulus was not immune fromcriticism, however. In 1877, a SanFrancisco newspaper printed a satiri-cal editorial:

In Australia,where this thing growswild, the country is so healthy thatpeople have to go to New Zealandto commit suicide….This absurdvegetable is now growing all overthis State. One cannot get out ofits sight. It asserts itself in longtwin ranks, between which thetraveler must run a sort of moralgauntlet, and crops up everywherein independent ugliness. It defacesevery landscape with blotches ofblue, and embitters every breezewith suggestions of an old woman’smedicine chest. Let us have nomore of it.

Disenchantment only grew throughthe mid-1880s. As eucalypts reachedmaturity, planters reevaluated the ben-efits and costs of these huge, messy,water-loving plants that could suckwells dry and strangle nearby stone-fruit trees with their aggressive roots.To make matters worse, the wood didnot prove to be as enduring as adver-tised.Railroad ties cracked; poles rottedin the ground.

Yet even as farmers turned againstthe blue gum, urbanites — especially

cultural sense: Californians adopted thegenus as an honorary native. In certainareas of the state,meanwhile, the intro-duced plant became naturalized in thebiological sense: the eucalyptus treesbecame self-reproducing forests.In time,these two versions of naturalizationwould come into conflict.

This arboreal story begins in SanFrancisco after the Gold Rush. Theinstant city — constructed with wood,fenced with wood, heated with wood— was located on a peninsular sanddune.Local supplies of the magnificentCoast Live Oak and even its scrawnycousin, the Coastal Scrub Oak, rapidlydiminished. As early as 1860, a localcommentator lamented the loss of treesfrom the coastal hills and mountains.The oak lands of Oakland had been“thinned and mutilated,” leaving thefirewood supply “almost exhausted.”

Californians wanted more thanreplacement trees. From the begin-ning, the importation of non-nativeflora was driven as much by aestheticdesires as economic needs. Post–GoldRush Californians were not satisfiedwith the existing landscape. It lookedunfinished. A land blessed with somuch sunshine, warmth, and fertilitydemanded more greenery, flowers,and shade.Where nature erred, settlerscould repair.

Of the many trees tested by GoldenState arborists, Eucalyptus became aclear favorite. In the lowland regionsof California, the Australian genus ben-efited from ecological similarities anddissimilarities — a familiar two-season,fire-prone Mediterranean climate with-out all of the insects, birds, mammals,and diseases that fed on eucalypts DownUnder.As a result, the trees grew unusu-ally fast.

In the 19th century, Californiansoverwhelmingly grew just one of theroughly 800 Eucalyptus species, Tas-manian Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus).“Globulus” means “little button” and

From the beginning,the importation ofnon-native flora wasdriven as much byaesthetic desires aseconomic needs.


those in the Bay Area — embraced itmore. San Francisco, which dreamedof becoming the Pacific equivalent ofNew York City, planted fast-growingseedlings (eucalypts as well as acacia,tamarisk, and Monterey Pine) to trans-form an expansive tract of shifting sandinto Golden Gate Park.

In the sunny Southland, too, thecultural elite favored trees, especiallyAustralian trees. Its colonies and ranchosoffered country living for city people.The exemplar was Pasadena, wherepeople created gardens with eucalyptsrather than forests of eucalypts. Just threeyears after moving to Pasadena in 1877,Jeanne Carr had a collection of 120

tree species at her arboretum (now thesite of the Norton Simon Museum).Carr favored E. ficifolia, an undersizedtree with oversized red flowers.

A new phase in the history ofCalifornia eucalypts began abruptlyin 1907, when the U.S. Forest Serviceraised an alarm about an impending“hardwood famine.” Unless scientificforesters intervened, the nation pos-sessed only “about a 15 years’ supply.”Oddly, this one statement in a seeming-ly obscure circular about the hardwoodsupply of the Appalachian Mountainshad a singular and phenomenal influ-ence on the California landscape. Inthe words of historian Stephen Pyne,

“The resulting bubble was perhapsrivaled only by the tulip mania thatswept 17th-century Holland.”

The “boom” of 1907–13 was qual-itatively different from the “craze” ofthe 1870s. Back then, horticulturistshoped to complement their small,diversified farms with beautifying andclimate-changing windbreaks. Bluegums provided a nice side profit asfuel wood, but their reason for exis-tence was essentially noncommercial.By contrast, the new blue gum prophetsdid not care about health or beauty orshade or essential oil or even firewood.Their sole concern was saleable lumber.Speculators, not farmers, led the way.

The promotional literature from theperiod makes for amusing reading today.Start-up companies lured investors withpromises such as “Forests Grown WhileYou Wait.” Investing in eucalypts waspurportedly as solid as the Rock ofGibraltar.The Miracle Tree (or Wonder-Tree or Tree of Hope or Tree of Ful-fillment) offered more potential wealthto California than the Gold Rush.

The end of the cult of the blue gumcan be dated to 1913. In the fall, theindustrial trade magazine The HardwoodRecord published a devastating reportwritten by H.D.Tiemann of the U.S.Department of Agriculture’s ForestProducts Laboratory. Tiemann saidflatly that the eucalyptus industry inCalifornia was based on fictions, delu-sions, and fallacies. Most Californiaeucalypts “cannot be regarded as lum-ber in any true sense,” he wrote. Hecalled it “near-lumber.”For commercialutilization, every kind of California-grown eucalypt was more or less bad,Tiemann said, but the worst of all wasthe species used most, E. globulus.

And so most of the millions ofeucalypts planted in the state between1907 and 1913 were never even cut.The tree farms were largely abandoned.Surprisingly, though, the end of theboom did not end large-scale euca-

Eucalyptus deanii from The Huntington’s Australian Garden. Photo by Lisa Blackburn.

lyptus planting in California. Citrusranchers put in windbreaks to shieldtheir perishable crops from Santa Anawinds.During the heyday of the Sunkistorange, thousands of linear miles ofeucalyptus windbreaks could be seenin Southern California.

Gum trees also dominated the land-scaping of the region’s first two promi-nent urban parks: Balboa Park in SanDiego and Elysian Park in Los Angeles.The region’s two largest arboretumslater added to the consensus about theappropriateness of the introduced trees.In the 1950s, the L.A. County Arbor-etum added a world-class Australiansection to its collections. Nearby,TheHuntington formally opened itsAustralian Garden in 1964.

By the mid-20th century,California’seucalyptic landscape stretched fromRedding in the north to Yuma,Ariz.,in the south. Sunset magazine publi-cized three sections of highways — twofrom the 101, one from the 99 —where an automobilist could drive anentire day without ever losing sight ofa blue-green tree.

Throughout the state, the stands ofgums that lined the entrances to townsbecame landmarks of home. Unfor-tunately, landmark trees often stood inthe way of modern roads, which re-quired extra width for shoulders,medians, and passing lanes.Thousandsof tall eucalypts fell during the longprocess of turning the San Jose–LosAngeles section of El Camino Realinto the four-lane US 101. Hoping topostpone this outcome, supervisors inVentura County declared a section ofblue gums along the 101 a “culturallandmark” in 1968.

In certain locations, notably the SanFernando Valley, suburban homeownersrallied to the defense of endangeredgums. In the postwar period, the num-ber of eucalypts in Los Angeles Countyand neighboring Orange County felldramatically as subdivisions replaced

citrus orchards. The blue gum wind-breaks could not — like individualorange trees — be incorporated intotiny house lots.They had to be bull-dozed. Homeowners in Canoga Parkstaged a summer-long campaign in1971 to save 142 old gums that addedbeauty and shade to a local park.

In the 1970s,however,people’s ideasabout eucalypts began to change.Thesame ecological thinking that inspiredEarth Day activists later caused envi-ronmentalists to reevaluate the placeof non-native species. Native-plantenthusiasts enlarged their conceptionof “weed” to include shrubs and trees.By the 1990s, eucalypts had becomeecological pariahs in the Bay Area.Here the former tree farms had natu-ralized in the biological sense — they

had become wild forests.Because theseforests grew in and around denselypopulated areas, they presented a firehazard.The hazard became all too realduring the deadly Oakland–BerkeleyHills firestorm of 1991.

Almost simultaneously, a series ofinsect infestations caused massive die-offs of old eucalypts throughout thestate. Ecologists and land managersseized the moment to advocate selec-tive habitat restoration.They wanted tobring back pieces of the pre-settlementCalifornia landscape, a place marked bygrasses more than trees,by browns morethan greens — and absolutely not byblue-greens.

People who dare to defend Cali-fornia eucalypts with ecological sup-port have one charismatic ally: theMonarch butterfly. While Monarchsare not endangered, the genetic poolof long-distance migrators faces anuncertain future because of habitat loss.Migrating Monarchs overwinter in justtwo areas: the eucalyptus belt of coastalCalifornia and the forested volcanichighlands of central Mexico. Themountain destination is highly con-centrated, whereas the coastal habitat

An automobilistcould drive an entireday without ever los-ing sight of a blue-green tree.

Highway near El Toro, Orange County, California, ca. 1930. Photo by Hogg. Automobile Club ofSouthern California collection, Huntington Library.


Foot in MouthTHE TOOTHPICK’S SURPRISING DEBT TO THE SHOE

by Henry Petroski

consists of hundreds of scattered sitesfrom Mendocino to Ensenada.

From the Monarch’s point of view,the introduction of eucalypts was awonderful boon. Unlike native pines,cypresses, and redwoods, eucalypts areflowering plants; better yet, they flowerin the winter, when the travel-wearybutterflies need nectar. Unlike theCalifornia Sycamore — the only nativetree south of Big Sur that might havehosted colonies — gum trees keeptheir leaves year-round, providing bet-ter sites for attachment and protection.

In retrospect, introducing gums tothe Golden State was a beautiful mis-take. In certain nature preserves and incertain fire-prone neighborhoods it isworth the effort to remove them or tothin their numbers. But in other places— especially highways, parks, and cam-puses — the non-native trees havebecome vital elements of the Californiascene.This is the only place outside ofAustralia where eucalypts — like themor not — remind people of home.Their loss would be our loss. m

Jared Farmer is the Mellon PostdoctoralFellow with the Huntington-USC Instituteon California and the West for 2005–07.This article is drawn from his book-in-progress, If Trees Could Speak: Peoplesand Plants in California.

T HE TOOTHPICK IS A SINGLE OBJECT made of a singlematerial with, presumably, a single purpose.Anthropologiststell us they have found fossilized teeth with grooves thatare inexplicable — unless we assume that people a couple

million years ago used something like a toothpick.There have beenexamples of this found in Africa,Australia, North America, and justabout every continent in the world. So tooth picking, according tothe anthropologists, must be among the oldest habits known to man.

Tooth picking was also common in the ancient world. People inAsia, Greece, and Rome carried toothpicks that we would associatetoday with jewelry items — made of metal and worn around theneck on a chain so they could always be well at hand.

One of the most common natural materials used for toothpickshas been the goose quill.The feathers of geese and other birds hadbeen more important for making writing quills, but with the adventof the steel pen, the quill was almost totally displaced by the 1860s.So people who raised lots of geese — especially in countries likeFrance — had to look for possible new uses for their feathers.

Quill toothpick production became partially mechanized in thelatter part of the 19th century. But how could you be sure you weregetting a toothpick that was clean enough to put in your mouth? Toensure this, a lot of “hygienic” quill toothpicks came to be individu-ally wrapped, as are many wooden toothpicks today. But even whenwrapped, quill toothpicks didn’t age well.They became brittle, ren-dering them virtually useless.

Then along came the wooden toothpick, sending the quill intocertain obsolescence. Some of the oldest wooden toothpicks comefrom Portugal, principally from the Mondego Valley, where there is stilla cottage industry of making them by hand from orangewood.Thetoothpick extended naturally to Brazil — once a Portuguese colony —especially to the state of Pernambuco, which had rich forest resources.It was here that the story of an American toothpick empire began.

Charles Forster (1826–1901) was born into a prominent familyfrom the Boston area.As a young man he began working for anuncle who owned an import-export business dealing in trade betweenNew England and Brazil.The younger Forster noticed that Brazilianscarved toothpicks by hand, but he thought the product could be mademore economically and efficiently by machine. His plan was to offerup a little competition: he would manufacture wooden toothpicksin New England and export them to Brazil. But Forster was not an


[ LESSONS LEARNED ]

inventor and was not prepared to make a toothpickmachine himself.

Coincidentally, there was a gentleman working inBoston at the time who was a genius at mechanicalthings. Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant (1833–1890) wasborn into a very poor family. Just about the only thingthat his parents gave him was a name that suggested thathe might be inventive.

Early on he went to work as an apprentice to shoe-makers. It was his job to drive wooden pegs into holes inthe soles of the shoes to fasten them to the uppers.Thepegging looked like stitching superficially, but the holes hadactually been made individually with an awl before thewooden pegs were driven into them. It was hard work, andSturtevant kept thinking that there had to be a better way.

In 1857, Sturtevant patented his first machine to auto-mate the process to a certain extent, but he ran into someproblems.The inconsistent grain of the wood sometimescreated misshaped pegs, which would then jam the machineor damage the shoe.

His solution was to concentrate on making better pegs,a process that he would patent. He placed a log on a lathe,and as the log rotated, a knife cut off a thin strip of veneer— a continuous strip that did not crack or break. Heended up with a big spiral — which he called a ribbon— sometimes as much as 100 feet long, depending on the

diameter of the log, but only the width of a shoe peg thickand the length of one wide. If he beveled both sides of oneedge of this ribbon, he could use it as a blank from whichto cut shoe pegs with a pointed tip. Pegging machines couldthen reliably cut and drive neatly formed pegs through theholes in the sole.

A few years later Sturtevant patented the idea ofbeveling both edges of a ribbon of veneer, from whichtoothpicks could then be made. Because of his limitedresources, Sturtevant sold the rights to this patent toCharlotte Bowman (1835–1902), who was to marryCharles Forster when he returned to Boston from Brazilto start a toothpick business.Although it’s not clear howForster and his fiancée learned about Sturtevant, what isclear is that his 1863 patent was critical to the develop-ment of the toothpick industry in the United States.

It took years for Sturtevant and Forster — working withCharles Freeman, one of Sturtevant’s young mechanics —to eliminate the bugs in their process. But by 1870, it waspretty much perfected.With Sturtevant’s help, Forster iden-tified the best wood to be white birch from Maine, wherehe set up mills west of the Kennebec River in towns closeto the supply.After relocating his factories several times, hefinally established permanent ones in Dixfield and Strong.

In the meantime, other inventors wanted to get in onthe action. J.C. Brown developed an improvement forcutting splints, which were any small pieces of wood thatwere thin and long, including things like matchsticks andtoothpicks. However, neither Brown nor fellow inventorsSilas Noble and James Cooley — with their “Improvement

in Tooth-Pick Machines” — could exploit their inventionsto make toothpicks because Forster and his wife retainedpatent protection into 1880.When that ran out, Forster andFreeman, who had become Forster’s principal mechanic,looked for new patent protection.At this time, virtually alltoothpicks were flat, with relatively square points. Forster andFreeman wanted to make round toothpicks with true points.

They eventually accomplished this by means of amachine for polishing and compressing toothpicks, makingthem round and double-pointed. However, the Patent Officedidn’t accept the argument that the new product itself waspatentable because it believed someone could also make a

A toothpick produced by the

Freeman method is a piece of

sculpture to behold.

Sturtevant’s 1863 patent for the manufacture of toothpicks. It relies on a spiral of wood, a feature adopted from his earlier patent for shoe pegs.


[ LESSONS LEARNED ]

round toothpick simply by whittling away the end ofa flat one.

So an attorney representing Freeman and Forsterwrote to the Patent Office explaining how sharpenedtoothpicks can splinter at the tip, whereas a compressedtoothpick did not fray or splinter.After a long debate,the Patent Office finally relented and granted a patentfor the compressed toothpick in 1891.A toothpickproduced by the Freeman method is a piece of sculp-ture to behold.The shape of the body tapers gracefullyinto points. It’s organic. (Unfortunately, round tooth-picks today are made by a process that produces a muchless elegant shape.)

But as good as something might look, it will alwayshave functional limits. Inventors focus on those limi-tations and seek to remove them. In the case of thewooden toothpick, it is not well suited to reachinginside crevices between back teeth. In 1923, RussellLunday attacked this shortcoming and patented whatmight be called a prosthetic toothpick — a pointedpiece of rubber that fitted like a cap onto the tip ofthe tongue so the user could get to those crevices atthe back of the teeth. Other inventors have focusedon combining toothpicks with other things.Thus, in1979 George Adolfson patented a small plastic spoonwhose handle could be snapped off at an angle toprovide a toothpick after eating.

The toothpick story is more than just a story abouttoothpicks. It is about the ideas that occupy inventors,designers, and engineers.They may appear to focus onwhat might be considered minutiae when they lookfor faults in a product or system and try to improve onit, but this is what invention, design, and developmentare all about.Whether it is seeking a better toothpickor devising a new computer system, identifying andunderstanding the problems and shortcomings of theold are what drive the creation and improvement ofthe new. Seeing how that process has worked in thepast for a simple thing helps us to understand how itwill work for complex things in the future. m

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S.Vesic Professor of CivilEngineering and a professor of history at Duke University.This article is adapted from his 2007 Trent R. DamesLecture at The Huntington, where his papers are housed. Hisbook on the technical and cultural history of the toothpickwill be published by Knopf this fall.

Books in PrintA SAMPLING OF BOOKS BASED ON RESEARCH IN THE COLLECTIONS

PURITAN CONQUISTADORS: IBERIANIZING THE

ATLANTIC, 1550–1700

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

Stanford University Press, 2006

The author explores the common character-istics of Spanish and Puritan colonization in the earlyAtlantic world, breaking away from the traditional view-point focusing on the differences between Puritan andCatholic colonization. Both groups, he argues, shared adesire to exorcise demons from the New World, and thePuritan colonization of New England was as much of acrusade against the Devil as was the Spanish conquest.

THEATER OF A CITY: THE PLACES OF LONDON

COMEDY, 1598–1642

Jean Howard

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007

Howard argues that London’s public stagein the early 17th century depended on the

unprecedented demographic growth and commercialvibrancy of the city to fuel its own development. Ratherthan describing London, the stage participated in inter-preting it and giving it social meaning. Howard focuseson particular places within the city — the Royal Exchange,brothels, and ballrooms — and examines the theater’s rolein creating distinctive narratives about each.

BOHEMIAN LOS ANGELES AND THE MAKING OF

MODERN POLITICS

Daniel Hurewitz

University of California Press, 2007

Bohemian Los Angeles brings to life a vibrantand all-but-forgotten milieu of artists, left-

ists, and gay men and women whose stories played out overthe first half of the 20th century and continue to shapethe entire American landscape. Hurewitz explores whyand how their communities, inspiring both one anotherand the city as a whole, transformed American notions ofpolitical identity with their ideas about self-expression,political engagement, and race relations.

AN ARTIST’S PORTFOLIO: THE CALIFORNIA SKETCHES OF

HENRY B. BROWN, 1851–52

Thomas C. Blackburn

Malki-Ballena Press, 2006

Scholars spend countless hours sifting through journals, letters,and historical documents to reconstruct the past. But in someinstances, words are not enough to tell the whole story.

Such was the case for Thomas C. Blackburn, professor emeritusof anthropology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona,who has gathered together in a new book 37 pencil drawings bylittle-known artist Henry B. Brown (1816–?). Fourteen of thesesketches are housed at The Huntington, while the remainingworks in An Artist’s Portfolio can be found in libraries at UCBerkeley, Harvard, and Brown University.

“If not for Brown, there would be no visual record from thatera of the Indians of California’s Central Valley,” says Blackburn.While numerous missionaries and explorers documentedCalifornia’s coastal Indians, the Indians of the state’s Central Valley

(the Patwin, Nisenan, Konkow, and Wintun) are lessknown to historians and anthropologists.

In 1851 John Russell Bartlett, commissioner of theU.S. and Mexican Boundary Commission, hired Brownto document inhabitants and scenery of the SacramentoValley and Sierra foothills. This was in the wake of theGold Rush, and in a few short years disease and faminewould overtake the indigenous population.

In a sketch of the interior of an Indian house (left),Brown shows a woman pounding acorns in a domes-tic setting that includes raised beds, basketry, and fish-ing nets. While Brown supplemented his drawings withan animated correspondence with Bartlett — excerptedby Blackburn — it is evident that the details of artifactsand daily life would be lost to history if not for the survivalof the illustrations.

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THE LIFE OF KINGSLEY AMIS

Zachary Leader

Pantheon Books, 2007

Kingsley Amis first achieved prominencewith the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954

and went on to become a dominant figure in postwarBritish writing as novelist, poet, critic, and polemicist.Leader draws on unpublished works and correspondencefrom The Huntington archive. He also conducted interviewswith a wide range of Amis’ friends, relatives, fellow writers,students, and colleagues.

IRON HORSE IMPERIALISM: THE SOUTHERN

PACIFIC OF MEXICO, 1880–1951

Daniel Lewis

University of Arizona Press, 2007

The Southern Pacific of Mexico was anAmerican-owned railroad that operated

between 1898 and 1951, running from the Sonoran townof Nogales to Guadalajara. Lewis contends that SP execu-tives, urged on by the news media, operated with a reflexiveimperialism that kept the company committed to the rail-road long after it ceased to make business sense.

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On the CoverThis spring The Huntington makes official the name of the ChineseGarden: Liu Fang Yuan, or Garden of Flowing Fragrance. ScholarWan-go H.C. Weng’s calligraphy of the name (left) served asthe model for stone relief carvings that will appear at theentrance (see page 15). In this issue, curator June Li explainshow the naming process borrows from three disciplines familiarto any Huntington visitor: literature, art, and botany.

The garden remains closed to the public until construction iscomplete next spring.

Cover photo by Lisa Blackburn

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