Columns - Botanical Stories
by Marta Galli
by Marta Galli
Magnolias, rhododendrons, Japanese anemones, and many other familiar presences in our gardens arrived from the edges of the known world between the 18th and 19th centuries, thanks to the adventurous spirit of the first “plant hunters.” Their expeditions were often far from incident-free. Botanist David Douglas disappeared in Hawaii, falling—or perhaps being pushed—into a pit dug to trap animals. George Forrest was captured and tortured in Yunnan, China; he eventually escaped, but the group accompanying him was massacred. The most infamous case is probably that of the Bounty, the Royal Navy ship tasked with transporting breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the British colonies in the West Indies. The voyage ended in mutiny: the seedlings were thrown overboard, and Captain William Bligh, chief gardener David Nelson, and sixteen others were abandoned in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific.
The travels of the only woman to make it into the historical record, Marianne North—who produced a vast and invaluable collection of botanical illustrations—were not marked by such hardships. Yet they remain extraordinary, especially for a “respectable” Victorian lady. North defied the conventions of her time, which expected women to marry, avoid solo travel, and remain excluded from the world of science. She lived with her father, a member of the British Parliament, until the age of forty, while her sisters married. After his death, she set out to paint the vegetation of distant lands, first traveling to the United States and Canada. But it was upon arriving in Jamaica that her journey truly began to flourish. She settled in a house within the former Botanical Gardens, rising at dawn to paint feverishly outdoors, surrounded by banana trees, palms, and orchids. Rainy afternoons were spent working indoors, only to head back out and return home at sunset.
She lived for a time in a hut in the Brazilian rainforest, and explored Tenerife, Japan, Borneo, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Java, and India. On Charles Darwin’s suggestion, she visited Australia and New Zealand. Then the Seychelles, South Africa, and Chile. She loved being alone in the wilderness, had little patience for social obligations, and, though raised amid the comforts of high society, preferred to travel without luxuries and stay in modest shelters. Today, her paintings can be seen at Kew Gardens, about ten kilometers southwest of London, inside a gallery that Marianne North had built at her own expense. Crowded edge to edge until every centimeter of wall space is covered, they are arranged by geographical area exactly as they were at the time of the gallery’s inauguration, in 1882. In an era when color photography did not exist, these paintings provided precious scientific documentation. North did not isolate single specimens against neutral backgrounds, as tradition dictated: she painted entire ecosystems, capturing the atmosphere of natural habitats. She was documenting a world already vanishing. Many of the species she depicted are now extinct. Among the survivors is Kniphofia northiae—one of the plants that bears her name: with its showy torch-like inflorescence and exceptional drought resistance, it is currently experiencing an unprecedented surge in popularity.