THE PROBLEM OF CONSERVING RARE NATIVE PLANTS 



By M. L. Febnald, D. C. L., D. Sc. 



Fisher Professor of Natural History and Director of the Gruy Herbarium 



Harvard University 



[With 7 plates] 



In the autumn of 1765 John Bartram and his son William discovered 

 near the Altamaha River in Georgia a splendid low tree or tall shrub 

 which, raised in the Bartram Garden, proved to be a close relative 

 of the Asiatic Camellia. So handsome were the richly fragrant white 

 flowers, described as 5 inches across, that, in the words of Humphrey 

 Marshall, "William Bartram, who first introduced jt. * * * has 

 chosen to honour it with the name of that patron of sciences, the truly 

 great and distinguished character, Benjamin Franklin." Writing of 

 it in 1773 William Bartram said : 



I have traveled by land from Pensylvania to the banks of the Missisipi, over 

 almost all the Teritory in that distance between the Seashore «& the first moun- 

 tains, cross'd all the Rivers, and assended them from their capes a many miles, 

 & search'd their various branches Yet never saw This beautiful Tree growing 

 wild but in one spot on the Altamaha about 30 miles from the Sea coast neither 

 has any other person that I know of ever seen or heard of it.- 



Because of the great beauty and delicious fragrance of its flowers 

 Franklinia (pi. 1, fig. 1) was in great demand in horticulture. It is 

 recorded that from 1787 to 1789 London nurserymen were ordering 

 iiundreds of plants from Humphrey Marshall and his nephew and 

 partner, Moses Marshall. In 1790, the year of Franklin's death, Moses 

 Marshall visited the Altamaha, presumably to fill conunercial orders, 

 and it is generally conceded that he was the last person to see Frank- 

 linia in its native haunts. Whether the wild shrubs and trees were 

 greedily exterminated by Moses Marshall for commercial gain or 

 whether the genus was already so near its natural end as a living 

 tree that other factors closed its existence we shall never actually 



^ The original address upon which the present paper is based was given before the 

 Franklin Institute of I'hiladelphia, on Friday, May 20, 1938, under the title, "Must all 

 Rare Plants Suffer the Fate of 1-Yanklinia ?" The original paper, of which this is an 

 amplification and modification, was published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, 

 vol. 206, No. 3, September 1938. 



*From mss. at British Museum (Nat. Hist.) quoted by Harper and Leeds in Bartonia, 

 No. 19, p. 2, 1938. 



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