Follow the Great Lakes Garden's progress on Tumblr

Native Plant Volunteers planting Mitella diphyllum (bishop's cap) in the Upland Wet Woodland

Re-planting native iris in the Wet Woodland 

Eastern Massasauga finding a new home in the Prairie-to-be (photo credit: Steven Parrish)

Follow the Great Lakes Garden on a new side site: http://mbgnagreatlakesgarden.tumblr.com/
This blog will be a database and log that details the phenology, plantings, and overall progress of the new Great Lakes Garden, a one-of-a-kind collection of native, endemic, and endangered plants from around the Great Lakes.
[Photos above from the May 17th Native Plant Volunteer day]

Bonsai & Penjing Garden Opens May 19 to Enthusiastic Crowds

The sounds of Japanese koto music drifted across the garden spaces at Matthaei as dozens of bonsai enthusiasts, visitors, and members congregated outside the gates to the new Bonsai & Penjing Garden in the minutes leading up to the official ribbon-cutting.

Left to right: Jerry and Rhona Meislik, Matthaei-Nichols Director Bob Grese, and local bonsai artist Jack Wikle officially open the bonsai garden.

As soon as Matthaei-Nichols director Bob Grese, donors Jerry and Rhona Meislik, and bonsai artist Jack Wikle cut the ribbon, hundreds of people poured into the bonsai garden to get a closer look at the garden's hand-crafted benches, pavilion, and display stands, along with the dozens of trees on display.

Hundreds of visitors poured into the bonsai garden last Sunday, May 19.

Jerry Meislik, who together with his wife Rhona donated funds to begin the endowment for the garden, spoke at a private event in the bonsai garden space before the public opening. Many of us seek a connection to the natural world, whether through gardening or other pursuits. Bonsai, Meislik said, is "my most direct link to nature." Life can deal us good news and bad news, and "we have our ups and downs," Meislik observed, "but we keep in contact with nature."

A plaque lists the names of the garden's founding donors.

Matthaei-Nichols director Bob Grese spoke about the way the new bonsai garden connects us to the University community and its efforts to reach out to the world through teaching, education, and art, and about how the contemporary scope of bonsai makes it a truly international art form.

Left to right: The Consul General of Japan, in Detroit, Mr. Kuninori Matsuda; president of the Japan News Club  Noriko Masada; Matthaei-Nichols Director Bob Grese; donor Jerry Meislik.

Arb and Gardens horticulturist Connie Crancer, who has long worked with the bonsai collection here and with the Ann Arbor Bonsai Society, touched on the changing nature of all things when she said that bonsai "is a very fluid art form, constantly under development." There's never a moment when a particular bonsai tree as a living thing is "done," and visitors to the garden 20 years from now will appreciate how the trees have changed over two decades.

A crowd of visitors estimated at upwards of 400 turned out for the opening of the Bonsai & Penjing Garden at Matthaei under perfect, sunny mid-May skies. If you missed the event, the bonsai garden is open through Labor Day 2013 from 10 am-8 pm daily. Admission is free. Visit the Matthaei-Nichols website to learn more about the Bonsai & Penjing Garden and other programming and events scheduled for this summer and the rest of the year.

A view of several trees on display in the garden on May 19, 2013.

What's in Bloom and on the Wing at Matthaei Botanical Gardens

There's a lot going on in the Great Lakes Gardens and the Helen V. Smith Woodland Wildflower Garden right now. Come out to Matthaei and treat yourself to an explosion of spring! Click on the plant names below for more information and pictures. And thanks to the University of Michigan Herbarium for the great images and information.

All over Matthaei, Baltimore orioles abound.

Baltimore oriole

In bloom in the Great Lakes Gardens:

service berry
cowslip in great profusion
common trillium
may-apple (in bud)
wood anemone
Jack-in-the-pulpit
two-leaved toothwort
common blue violet

Common blue violet

Virginia bluebells

In bloom in the Helen V.Smith Woodland Wildflower Garden:

service berry
red bud
flower dogwood (bud)
common trillium
may-apple (in bud)
wood anemone
Jack-in-the-pulpit
common blue violet
spring beauty
false rue anemone
wood poppy
rue anemone
swamp buttercup
shooting-star (bud)
Virginia blue bells in profusion
yellow violet
hybrid violet

Conservatory Chronicles: The Sago Palm – Not a Palm, and a Slow Grower, Too

One of the Japanese sago palms (Cycas revoluta) in the conservatory is displaying some new growth right now. The sago palm is a cycad and not a true palm. The moniker “palm” is a common name for this plant, leading to some of the confusion we often have when talking about plant names and identification. The photos show the female plant as it looks now and after it developed a cone and seeds in late 2010.

April 2013: the sago palm
showing new growth

Matthaei-Nichols horticulture manager Mike Palmer became curious about the sago palm’s age and growth rate when he recalled that the plant doesn’t make new growth every year, and especially not in the year in which it makes a cone. Our plant records indicate we acquired the sago on August 8, 1916. We don't know the plant’s height in 1916, according to Palmer (the trunk can be subterranean when young) but today it’s 40 inches tall. If you do the math, that adds up to an average annual growth rate in height of .41 inches!

Take a close look at the photo showing new growth: the new foliage emerging is deceiving. The leaves first emerge and grow straight up, then fall flat (like opening an umbrella) to an orientation of 90 degrees from the trunk. Not much height is added to the overall plant.

The sago palm in early 2011 showing
the cone and nearly mature seeds 

Visit the conservatory today and check out the Japanese sago palm for a lesson in patient growing!

Peony Award Mystery - can you help?

There's nothing like a good local mystery. Your help is needed with these two black-and-white photographs from the Ann Arbor Flower Show held in the mid 20th Century. These (re)surfaced recently while sorting materials in our records room. Update details are underlined and acknowledged at the bottom.

The Mystery: basic questions of where, when, who, what and why...
Where is easy. Its clearly the University of Michigan building we now know as Yost Ice Arena. [I know because I go to at least one home ice hockey game a year with friends.]

But When (1939 or 1940)? Whose Peonies? What was the Award recognizing? No doubt other questions occur to you.

Clues
1. For both.
The undated photographer's stamp is on the reverse of each. "Ann Arbor News  Photographer  ECK STANGER"
There is a place for the date, but it is blank.

2. For the overview-with-fountain picture.
What a period shot - just look at how those ladies are attired! For folks who know the Arena and its history of modifications, notice the end windows are glass, not filled in as we know them today. Given the vehicle access door, this must be the South wall. Its before the bleachers were extended all the way around the Arena (and my preferred seating zone - great view of the goal.)

3. For the trophy picture.
The background includes the Yost bleachers and superstructure. This award clearly "goes" with this show. The trophy is engraved, but its hard to read in the picture. I can see "THE ANN ARBOR NEWS" for the first line, and then seven (7) additional lines in a smaller font.

I'd like to know what the trophy is recognizing, who entered the peonies (are they from The Arb??), which cultivar they are (if recorded), the date, and it would be quite something if we could find the trophy itself. We know it was in Ann Arbor in the 1990s. You never know - I have two wonderfully dinged-up-by-time trophies my great-grandfather won after World War One into the 1920s at Men's Flower Club shows in Wichita, Kansas. One was proudly sponsored by a local hardware store. Great for holding pens and pencils in my home office. Maybe this peony trophy is serving similar roles? One can hope.

Feel free to contact me at mbgna.curator@umich.edu

Curiously yours, David

PS: If it would help, I'm certain we can make a high-resolution scan of the trophy. The original photo is a full sheet - about 8" x 10" so there is a lot of detail.

UPDATES
1.From Adrienne O'Brien we have the fact she won this very-same Ann Arbor News Trophy at the 1990 Flower Show. She returned it, since it was to be awarded each year.

2. From Mark O'Brien we have a link that dates this to 1939 or 1940: http://aaobserver.aadl.org/aaobserver/17504

Season 2: University of Michigan Campus Farm

A big hit in its 2012 inaugural year, the University of Michigan Campus Farm at Matthaei Botanical Gardens continues to grow, with use of greenhouse space during the winter months. Student Allyson Green anticipates the farm’s produce being used in the U-M foodservice one day, and she says that the dining halls have expressed an interest in herbs grown in the garden. The farm plot will be greatly expanded for 2013 to over a quarter acre.

Students working on the seedlings for the Campus Farm in Greenhouse 5 at Matthaei. From left: Jerry Tyrrell, Emily Gleichert, Madeline Dunn, and Vineet Raichur.

For the winter 2013 semester, students from Professor Stan Jones’s landscape architecture design studio created plans for how the farm space could be developed. Additionally, the Campus Farm program has received two seed grants, one from the University’s Planet Blue Sustainability Initiative Fund and a "Quick Wins" grant from Transforming Learning for a Third Century (TLTC). Quick Wins grants are a part of the president and provost’s office Third Century Initiative to develop innovative approaches to teaching and scholarship at U-M Ann Arbor. The $25,000 grant makes possible summer farm interns, including a program coordinator and materials for the farm.

This spring, students are planning a “Spring Fest” for Friday, May 10 to celebrate the start of the Campus Farm’s second growing season. For details, visit the U-M Sustainable Food Program website.

Conservatory Chronicles: A Flower that Smells Like Rotting Flesh?

Of course! It's called a voodoo lily and it’s about to bloom in the temperate house of the conservatory at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. The voodoo lily (Amorphophallus konjac) is a perennial plant that grows from a bulb-like structure called a corm.

A mature plant produces one large leaf stalk that makes food for the corm. The leaf stalk then dies away and goes dormant. After dormancy the corm sends up one large flower stalk that, when it opens, smells like rotting flesh. (No exaggeration.) According to a volunteer at Matthaei who is also a chemist, some of the chemicals the flower gives off are called putrescine and cadaverine. The strong rotting-flesh smell attracts pollinators such as flies that visit carrion.

An Amorphophallus konjac blooming several years ago
in the conservatory at Matthaei Botanical Gardens.
Another voodoo lily is about to bloom at Matthaei any day now
 (March 23-25 or so).

The voodoo lily at Matthaei should open its flower sometime around Saturday to Monday, March 23-25, depending on temperature and light, although, as with all plants, it’s impossible to predict exactly when it will bloom. As of this writing (March 22) the plant is in a pot located under the carob tree in the temperate house.

Interestingly, the corm is used to make flour and a kind of jelly and as a vegetarian substitute for gelatin in many Asian countries.

Don't miss this amazing plant!

Read more.