Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn A Healing and Meditative Landscape | Page 11

Maple trees that had stood there for generations. This am-
bitious undertaking, which involved lifting the trees (each
weighing five tons) over the six-story library walls, was
captured by local television crews and was facilitated by a
major fundraising campaign led by the Friends of Mount
Auburn. The introduction of these four large trees into
Asa Gray Garden can be seen as the catalyst for the current
effort to revitalize the garden, though the final planning
for the renovation, led by the award-winning Halvorson
Design Partnership, took many years to complete.
Appropriately enough, those four Japanese Maples will
anchor a planting scheme that celebrates the introduction
of Asian plants into the United States and also illustrates
what Asa Gray called “disjunct plant species.”
Gray was the first person to notice the similarities
between the floras of Eastern North America and East Asia
and to come up with a plausible explanation for them.
Although the climates of these two regions are similar,
they are separated by many thousands of miles and the
plants that they seem to have in common are often found
nowhere else on earth. His idea was that the plant species
descended from common ancestors that once ranged across
the entire North Pacific region and the continental United
States, but were then separated by the advance of glaciers
during the Pleistocene Ice Ages. The species developed
subtle differences during their long separation, while
retaining a family resemblance. The significance of this idea
cannot be overstated, as it became a cornerstone of the
scientific understanding of how species arise. Gray’s work
supported the highly controversial proposals of Charles
Darwin, and his theory of species evolution. Together,
the two men had a profound influence on the science of
botany and our understanding of plants throughout history.
The planting phase of the garden restoration, which will
begin in the Spring of 2018, will feature some of the East
Asian and Eastern North American counterpart species that
Professor Gray studied, so that we can see for ourselves the
similarities and subtle differences they exhibit. Examples
Shortia galacifolia (left) and Shortia soldanelloides (right)
Lindera benzoin (above) and Lindera obtusiloba (below)
include the small graceful trees of the genus Stewartia, with
their attractive camellia-like flowers and colorful peeling
bark. There are already a pair of beautiful 70-year old speci-
mens of Korean Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia), growing
on the southwest slope above Asa Gray Garden. The plans
call for adding some Mountain Camellia (Stewartia ovata), a
native of the Southeastern United States, and Orangebark
Stewartia (Stewartia monodelpha), from the mountains in
central Japan.
Other examples include small trees (often called “snow-
bells”) in the genus Styrax and the large-growing shrubs of
Lindera. The genus Styrax is a fairly large one with most
of its species occurring in Southeast Asia. The garden will
feature the American Snowbell (Styrax americanus) and
the Japanese Snowbell (Styrax japonicus), both with showy
bell-shaped flowers that are mildly fragrant. Similarly,
Lindera is a large genus with most of its species in Asia, and
three in Eastern North America. Known as spicebushes for
their aromatic leaves, they tend to flower in early spring
and are perhaps best known for their stunning fall foliage
colors. The local native Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) will
be represented along with the Japanese Spicebush (Lindera
obtusiloba).
The example about which Asa Gray himself might have
been most enthusiastic would be species from the genus
Shortia. These rare herbaceous groundcover plants are found
near mountain streams: four species in Asia and one in
North America. The native, known as Oconee Bells (Shortia
galacifolia), was an obsession with Gray. He hunted for what
he called “perhaps the most interesting plant in North
America” for 40 years before finally discovering it in North
Carolina in 1879.
2018 Volume 1 | 9