Meet us in St. Louis, Louis!

We did it!  We visited the famous Western frontier town, the historical city of St. Louis.  You’ve all heard the song, “Meet me in St. Louis, Louis…”

Here’s a shot that Gerry took of the Arch of St. Louis, ‘gateway to the west’, photographed from his perch on the largest mound of the prehistoric (at least, pre-American history…) settlement of Cahokia.  Gerry visited the Cahokia Mounds, while I practiced Taiji back at the hotel.

  He journeyed to the settlement with our new St. Louis friends, JoAnn Rivinus and Marc Vorih.  We are so grateful to them for showing us such warm hospitality, and for helping us in many ways during our stay.  We dined with them at different times over the weekend, and became good friends in the process.  We also thank our ‘old’ friends in Costa Rica, Bill and Cyndy Vorih, for introducing us, after I asked Bill, “So Bill, where are you from?”  He said, “St. Louis”, and the rest is history.  On our Saturday night there, JoAnn and Marc gave us a mini-tour of downtown Saint Louis as we joined them to hear the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler’s 3^rd Symphony.  Yes, that’s the one with six movements, and it was stirring and moving – an outstanding auditory story of how nature evolved, moving from plants to animals to man.  The rousing, final movement has the whole orchestra playing with tremendous crescendos, as Mahler describes God as everlasting, flowing through nature, plants, animals and mankind.  Even Gerry roused himself from his stupor (slumber?) to listen to that movement.

We are now back in New Orleans and looking forward to the upcoming opera, Gioachino Rossini’s, ‘The Barber of Seville’.  There are only two performances: November 16 at 8pm; and November 18 at 2:30pm but you can still get tickets by going to www.NewOrleansOpera.org

We’re really excited about it because our good friend, the mezzo-soprano Deborah Domanski, is singing the title role of Rosina.  She recently performed the same role, with Thomas Hammons as Bartelo, in Detroit.  And now they are together again, with the incredible musicians of New Orleans, director Matthew Lata and conductor Robert Lyall.  Deb told me that singing Rosina is like champagne!  She is a very warm, kind, striking beauty, who sings like an angel.  You can learn more about Deborah at www.DeborahDomanski.com.  Please, join us, if you can!

But I have digressed from our delightful romp around St. Louis!

JoAnn Rivinis Vorih, a Project Manager at Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), our new friend, and Barry Hammel, MBG Botanist with an office at InBio in Costa Rica, helped arrange our tour of the world-renowned Missouri Botanical Gardens; a place I know well as a botany student, because I have used www.tropicos.org frequently over the years to research the vast plant database found at Missouri Botanical Gardens.  I’ve also consulted www.missouribotanicalgarden.org many times over the years, and have looked forward to meeting some of the people behind the scenes of the oldest botanical garden in continuous operation in the USA.  The garden, library and herbarium were founded in 1859 by Henry Shaw, who, inspired by a visit to Chatsworth in 1851, decided to give the people of St. Louis a garden to rival the great gardens of England.  

Andrew Wyatt and Gerry Kirk at Mobot

So, we are exceedingly grateful to Andrew Wyatt for guiding us around the Gardens (including ‘behind the scenes’) and for explaining the marvelous projects to reintroduce endangered plants back into their native habitat all over the world, as well as to Doug Holland for giving us a fascinating tour of the Peter H. Raven Library, known as one of the world’s finest botanical libraries.  Doug also introduced us to the Herbarium, one of the world’s leading research resources for specimens of, and information on, bryophytes and vascular plants.  As of Jan 1, 2011, the collection contained 6,231,759 specimens - and specimens arrive daily!  We were actually there to see it!

Andrew and I at Mobot

What astonished me most about MBG was the breathtaking beauty and design of the extensive gardens.  Gerry and I have visited gardens all over the world, especially in England, but I have not seen anything to surpass Missouri in terms of beauty and diversity.  You can spend many, many hours wandering the curved paths observing the massive collection of native, exotic and rare plants, all beautifully combined in a manner that is visually pleasing.  The plant groupings drift and blend together in a most charming and natural manner.  Many ‘example gardens’ provide guidance on how to do this at home.  We wandered through vegetable gardens and orchards, perennials, bulbs, grasses, hothouses with tropical plants, cacti, shrubberies and ornamental gardens, which just flowed from one to the next, all beautifully maintained by an army of employees and volunteers.  The Japanese garden was the largest and most breathtaking I have ever seen, and the woodland garden also amazed us.  We were very fortunate to visit the gardens with MBG VP of Horticulture, Andrew Wyatt.  Originally from England, Andrew braved the cold, rainy weather to show us the gardens and explain the research and educational programs they carry out.  All plants in the gardens are identified with name-plates, so you don’t have to flip through field guides to identify a plant, and there is also a ‘plant help-desk’, manned by volunteers, to help people diagnose their own plant problems and to answer questions.  And if you just want to ‘do your own thing’, you can head over to the MBG bookstore where there is an amazing collection of books for sale on pretty much everything in the plant world, including a large section on cultivation and practical gardening.

 Over at the Herbarium, we chatted with a jovial botanist, who has discovered more than sixty new species, as well as one new genus!  Samples of plant species from all over the world land on his desk to be sorted and classified, and he revealed to me that some botanists even send in specimens labeled with the wrong Family!  I gasped in shock!  But I also understand that tropical plant classification is hellishly difficult.  Even well-known botanists sometimes get the Family wrong; I sure do – to my shame.  Barry Hammel told me that on-going investigations at some institutions are looking for ways to help identify plants using DNA.  Here at the MBG herbarium, it’s the job of the botanists in the Herbarium to sort through the massive mess of specimens, excluding repetitions, making corrections, and finally giving the specimen a name.   Once again, we are grateful to Doug Holland, historian, botanist and librarian, for guiding us through the extensive collection of the Library, which includes amazing ancient and rare volumes.  What an incredible world in which to do research!

Missouri Botanical Gardens is not a garden to miss if you are a nature lover.  It ranks along with Kew and New York Botanical as a center for research and collection and, in terms of sheer beauty of nature, Missouri is second-to-none.

And, on top of all that, the founding of the Missouri Botanical Gardens is also an interesting example of the historical connection between St. Louis and New Orleans.

The Mississippi connects the two cities, and there has always been a shared destiny among people living along that great river.  Merchants, vagabonds, contraband and cargo, legal or otherwise, has flowed between St. Louis and New Orleans continuously over the centuries.  The two cities suffered the great flood of 1917 together, as told brilliantly by John M. Barry in ‘Rising Tide’.  The rise and fall, and ebb and flow, of industry, commerce, politics and nature’s fury have often connected the two cities.  During our visit to St. Louis, we heard a fascinating story connecting New Orleans and St. Louis.  Apparently, Henry Shaw opened a business in St. Louis in 1819, selling hardware and cutlery he shipped down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Shaw prospered from this great distribution connection, and retired in 1840 at the age of 39, so that he could engage his time on his great passion – gardening. His dream was to open a large botanical garden to the public and to bequeath a trust to ensure that it would continue to carry out botanical research, science education, and remain an oasis in the city of St. Louis, after his death. He corresponded with many botanists to help with his endeavor, especially Asa Gray, George Engelmann and Sir William Hooker of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew; in fact, he patterned much of his Botanical Garden after Kew.  He worked closely with Engelmann, who suggested that the garden be more than a public park, that it become involved with scientific work like the great botanical institutes of Europe; and he went to Europe and brought back specimens and books for Henry Shaw’s herbarium and library.  When he died, Shaw bequeathed the country house, his city house (which was moved to the Gardens!) and all seventy-five acres of gardens to a trust.  And now, over two hundred years later, the Missouri Botanical Gardens has a dedicated staff, including numerous volunteers, which would make Shaw very proud.  He would definitely nod in approval at how his gardens have been improved and enlarged over the years, and he would really appreciate the massive Herbarium and Library - much beloved by us plant lovers in the tropical world.  And he would unquestionably smile with pleasure to see the Rare Books Room, containing the precious botanical books collected by him, still intact and lovingly cared for.