Gardening with Galligan: Finding the elusive Regal Lily
The Regal Lily in bloom.
Carl Linnaeus, often thought of as the father of modern botany, was born in 1707 and grew up in a small Swedish village. He was the son of the local pastor and from the age of eight, he was obsessed with making lists.
Psychologists would think of this behavior as symptomatic but it was precisely these obsessions that made him famous. He organized everything. In his adult years, when different scientists were naming the plants they found according to their own visions, Linnaeus insisted that what was needed was a universally accepted classification system.
The system he devised is still the basis of all scientific classification; every plant description begins with the genus, followed by a species name. Now scientists could talk to one another, no matter where they lived or what language they spoke, without worrying about error. His motto was “God created, Linnaeus organized.”
Many of the plantsmen, setting out on their adventures, were inspired by him; he called them his “apostles.”
One of these was Ernest Henry “Chinese” Wilson, born in 1876 in Gloucestershire, England. By the age of 16, he was already an apprentice at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, studying in the evenings at the Birmingham Technical School, where he received a prize for botany. By 1897, he was working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and then went to work for the firm of James Veitch and Sons, a company that already employed a dozen plant hunters.
Although Veitch believed that most of China was known territory, Wilson had his heart set on finding the rare Regal Lily. After landing in America, he traveled across the country by train, sailed from San Francisco and reached Hong Kong in June 1899. For two years, he collected plant material in the Hubei Province, where his zeal made him legendary, always in quest of the lily he knew was there. He already had the seeds of 305 species, but even a glimpse of the lily continued to elude him.
Traveling in the desolate Min Valley, he came across a rock carving of giant Chinese characters. They warned of the danger of landslides, but it was in this area that he believed the lily would be found.
Determined, he crossed a large stream and high up on a mountainside, he found what he had been seeking — a huge field of regal lilies in full bloom. He gathered over 6,000 bulbs.
But the landslide warning had been a real one, and as the Chinese porters carried him in his sedan chair down the side of the mountain, a huge boulder crashed down upon him. It struck his chair and fractured his right leg in two places. He used one of the legs of his camera tripod as a splint and three days later, he was carried to the closest missionary station.
His leg was already gangrenous but he refused an operation; the infection fortunately did not spread but it did make his leg shrink in size, and for the rest of his life he walked with what he called his “lily limp.” He returned to England in April 1902 with seeds of 305 species, but it was his 6,000 bulbs that introduced Lily Regale to the plant world.
Why did these men do what they did? In part because it was work and well-rewarded work; and because they wanted fame and found it. There was always the lure of making history, thrilling in and of itself. But in reading their work, there seems to be one main reason – they loved it.
