Davidsonia

Editor's list of recent books of interest on botanical topics. Included in this issue is a review of The Jade Garden authored by UBC Botanical Garden staff Peter Wharton, Brent Hine and Douglas Justice.

Davidsonia - A Journal of Botanical Garden Science

Editor, Iain Taylor writes about the role of botanic gardens in public education, citing successes and failures at UBCBG and other gardens.

The development of BC landscapes was influenced by the tastes of immigrants from Great Britain and the casual practical style of garden design that came from California. Plants favoured by gardeners in those regions did not always perform in British Columbia. The combined influences from other areas and the needs of gardeners in the region came together in a unique style of landscape fitted to the local environment.

This article introduces several archival concepts and principles, and relates them to botanical records, specifically those of the late Professor Vladimir J. Krajina. It is important to create more public awareness of British Columbia’s Ecological Reserves and the learning potential that is inherent in these sites, as well as in Krajina’s records. The records are a source of potential learning, through a web exhibit or public exhibit, which will remind the public of the value of protecting environmental space for learning opportunities and for the protection of species.

Glissading on alpine meadow snow patches in summer can be good fun; kids have a lark. Climbers returning from mountain peaks take seven league strides finding relief from jolting steps on hard rock and scree. Bears too, I believe, enjoy cavorting in summer on snow patches. Vivid in my memory, on a Vancouver Natural History Society geology field trip in 1926 to the headwaters of Lynn creek, was watching five bears playing up and down on a large snow patch north of Goat Mountain. Perhaps others have seen bears having fun?

Glissading is fun but it is not the only interest naturalists and photographers might find in the snow patches of summer on alpine meadows. Snow patches have a distinctive natural history of their own and they are part of landscapes in motion.

The Editors of Davidsonia highlight some of the most interesting and important titles from the thousands of recently published papers in the plant sciences.

Davidsonia - A Journal of Botanical Garden Science

Editor, Iain Taylor writes about the introduction of plants to British Columbia. Many new plants that are brought into the region, come from China and southeast Asia. A new book from the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant research, The Jade Garden (released June, 2005) highlights new exciting plant discoveries from Asia that are suitable for North American gardens.

Taylor also notes the retirement of Judy Newton, Education Coordinator at UBCBG and author of the monthly Walk in the Garden. This issue contains the last article in the series.

Emigration of Scottish botanists, horticulturists, gardeners and plant collectors, first to England and later to Western Canada and British Columbia, began in the 17th Century and was well established by the mid 18th Century. Forbes Robertson (2000) noted in his book Early Scottish Gardeners that “before long there were so many Scots Gardeners in England that, in the popular mind, a Head Gardener was assumed to be a Scotsman." Hence George Elliot’s comment that "A gardener is Scottish as a French teacher is Parisian.” The distinguished Dutch entomologist and pupil of Linnaeus, John Christian Frabricuis, who was a regular visitor to England from 1767-1791, observed that James Lee, the leading nurseryman, of the time “is a Scot like almost all the seedsmen and gardeners in London. The Scots have established a near monopoly in this occupation to the virtual exclusion of the English and businesses are handed from one Scot to another.”