May, 1920 
t3l)<2 Slower (Brower 
71 
A Plant Hunter. 
By ALFRED C. HOTTES. 
( Written rxfrrtily ftr The FUwtr Gr$wer. ] 
A lad perhaps ten years of age, strolled 
toward the gardens of the University 
of Amsterdam. There he saw a man 
painstakingly planting minute slips of 
some plants. Patiently, he watched the 
gardener unwrap one after another of 
these little cuttings. 
" What are they?” questioned the lad 
when he could control his curiosity no 
longer. 
" Little slips,” said the gardener. 
"Are they beautiful plants?” 
" I hope so. They came from a for- 
eign country.” 
"Are they from a country faraway ?” 
" Yes, my boy, these plants came from 
Turkestan.” 
"Is that from Turkey?” 
" No, T urkey is in Europe, but T urkes- 
tan is in Asia - in China.” 
" Is it really ? Then I should like to 
go there. I'd like to travel a million 
miles. Pd like to go to Russia. Pd like 
to see the mountains. Pd like to — I wish 
I might plant those slips.” 
" Pm satisfied to stay here,” said the 
gardener and he fulfilled his wish. 
The lad went home but he was in 
deep thought. " I am going to travel 
all over some day,” said he to himself. 
The next day he came again to the 
garden. 
" Have you any more plants from 
Turkey-stan ?” he questioned. 
" No ” said the gardener and went on 
smoking his pipe, " We just got that one 
box yesterday.” 
" Will you get any more ? ” 
" No, I never expect any more.” 
" Never? ” said the boy. " You never 
expect any more? That is too bad.” 
" What is your name?” 
" Franz, Franz Meyer,” for it is no less 
a person than Frank N. Meyer about 
whom this imaginary conversation is 
written. 
Gardens, flowers and foreign countries 
filled the boy’s thoughts from day to 
day. Sometime after, he received a 
job in these gardens and finally became 
an assistant to the great Hugo DeVries, 
the man who has so clearly pointed out 
to us that some of the plants we see 
about us are changing suddenly into 
new species, and that, perhaps this is 
one of the ways by which we have so 
many diverse plants over the surface 
of the earth. 
Every opportunity Frank Meyer had, 
he travelled, exploring the plants. In 
this way he crossed the Alps on foot, 
went down into Italy. Later came to 
America, tramped through the United 
States, than dipped down into Mexico — 
ever collecting, always preferring to go 
afoot. 
About 1905 an offer from the United 
States Department of Agriculture came 
to him to go to China in search of plants 
for introducing to this country. And 
so he spent three years in Northern 
China, Manchuria and Northern Korea, 
then he returned to Washington and a 
* The writer is indebted to Dr. David Fairchild's ex- 
cellent article in The National Geographic Magazine, 
July, 1919, for the facts in this story. 
year later left again for the Caucasus, 
Siberia, Russian Turkestan, and Chinese 
Turkestan. Two other expeditions he 
made, but no more. 
Read part of one of his letters from 
Turkestan. 
"Alone in Samarkand ! My assistant 
yesterday got tidings from home that 
his presence was urgently needed, as 
the man in charge of his farm was 
severely injured by a horse, and he left 
me. The interpreter had left the day 
before, as his eyesight and general 
health had become rather poor these 
last days on account of the great heat, 
so it has come to pass that I am left 
alone in this far-away land.” 
Days he spent collecting seeds, cut- 
tings and roots of trees, flowers, vege- 
tables and fruits which might be 
adapted to American culture. He 
was usually watched closely, for the 
natives could see no reason why he 
was collecting so many plants. They 
felt that there was an ulterior motive 
in his activities. 
Nights he spent in the open, or at inns, 
noisy with drinking and gambling, and, 
as he himself expressed it, with " odors 
hanging about to make angels, even, 
procure their handkerchiefs.” Foreign 
tongues ever babbling of things he 
never knew. 
"But when the roses bloom in New 
England.” writes Dr. Fairchild*, " his 
Rosa Xanthina, the hardiest of the yel- 
low bush-roses, will be a mass of gold. 
When the ground thaws on the bleak 
plains of the Dakotas, thousands of his 
Chinese elms will put out their leaves 
and take their place in the wind-breaks 
of that treeless region. All the way up 
from Florida and Georgia and over the 
Canadian border this elm is now grow- 
ing— a remarkably adaptable tree. 
"His ash from Kashgar will spread its 
branches over the alkali soils of Nevada. 
When cherries are ripe in California his 
Tangsi cherry will be the earliest to 
ripen by a week or ten days. 
"As autumn peaches ripen, the trees of 
the Fei peach will attract unusual at- 
tention, for it is the pound peach of the 
Shantung Province and bids fair to 
take a special place among the canning 
peaches of this country.” 
On his last expedition, thirty miles 
north of Nanking, he drowned in the 
Yangtze River and he shall not have 
lived to enjoy seeing in America the 
fruits of his labors. His boyhood wish 
was fulfilled; his life was a useful voy- 
age. 
The National Geographic Magazine 
writes this tribute— a worthy inscrip- 
tion it would be for a tablet in his mem- 
ory: 
"Among explorers no individual receives 
less recognition for signal service to civiliza- 
tion than the hunter of plants. His name is 
not written upon new-found lands nor upon 
hitherto uncharted seas. But through his vis- 
ion, his daring, and his fortitude he enriches 
the waste places of his home land and helps 
to feed thousands of to-day and millions of 
the future. The plant-hunter is an unsung 
Columbus of horticulture.” 
Most of our most prized possessions 
of the garden are the gathered treas- 
ures of men who have braved insect- 
ridden swamps, precipitous mountain 
peaks and burning desert wastes; these 
men have defied disease, danger, trying 
climates, starvation, thirst and every 
physical discomfort, coupled with the 
added loneliness of the hermit and 
ascetic, cut off from companionships. 
These flowers and fruits we inherit 
without a thought of gratitude. 
The Joys of a Garden Pool. 
There is no need to plead the merits and 
joys of a garden pool. They are every- 
where acknowledged, and every one has a 
pool who can afford the cost or the water. 
Growing aquatic plants is but one of the 
pleasures. Would that our flower-beds could 
be so beautiful in their surface and ap- 
paling in movement, so satisfying, in short, 
whether the flowers grow or not ! 
The structural design of a pool is not a dif 
ficult matter. As a piece of engineering, it is 
simple so long as the pool is full of water. 
If it be emptied, then the walls of the pool 
become a retaining- wall and must be designed 
to resist earth-pressure, and, if it be in low 
ground, possibly hydrostatic pressure. 
The pool, however, presents a difficulty in 
that it must be water-tight, so that a move- 
ment of the walls which would pass un- 
noticed in a terrace wall will produce cracks 
which are sure to leak. This is most likely 
to happen if the pool be empty in winter, 
when the pressure of the frozen ground will 
inevitably crack the walls by moving them 
slightly inward. Leaving the pool full of 
water through the winter usually prevents 
this damage, since the ice-pressure is equalized 
by the ground pressure outside and the ice 
buckles or slips on the side of the pool until 
the outside and inside pressure are practically 
the same. 
It has been our invariable experience that 
damage happens only when pools are emp- 
tied in the winter, and that pools with water 
in them never come to harm so long as the 
water-level in winter and the ground level 
are the same . — Landscape Architecture. 
1 Massachusetts Gladiolus I 
[ Society. 
A representative number of the 
Gladiolus Growers of the state of Mas- 
sachusetts met on April 3rd in Horti- 
cultural Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, 
to organize a society of local Gladiolus 
growers. 
Massachusetts is considerable of a 
Gladiolus growing section and a local 
or state organization of Gladiolus grow- 
ers may prove of distinct advantage. 
S. E. Spencer acted as temporary 
secretary. Plans for the future were 
discussed and the need of better co- 
operation among growers. Officers 
were elected as follows : 
President -C. F. Fairbanks, Lexing- 
ton, Mass. 
1st V. Pres. — S. E. Spencer, Woburn, 
Mass. 
2nd V. Pres.— John Zeestraten, Mans- 
field, Mass. 
Treas. C. W. Brown, Ashland, Mass. 
Secretary -Robert R. Walker, Mans- 
field, Mass. 
Executive Committee — E. M. Fisher, 
T. M. Proctor, L. M. Gage. 
Auditor, F. H. Goodwin. 
