The Ever Elusive Franklinia - The Springhouse BLOG#2

I felt like I was following in the footsteps of John & William Bartram, famous father and son botanists and plant explorers, as I pushed my way through the underbrush, smacking mosquitoes and feeling my toes getting damp from the soggy ground.  I descended a wooded slope after finding some interesting native plants such as:

Solomon Seal (Polygonatum canaliculatum) with its pendulous blue fruit,

Frostweed (Verbesina virginica L.) beginning to bloom with its dusty white flat headed blossoms

and the Spotted Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) that always remind me of little orange cornucopias hanging down from the robust growing plants.

As I was heading towards a gurgling shaded stream, my eye caught a glimpse of pure white in an otherwise green landscape. What was it? As I got closer I could see one solitary flower on a sinuous stem rising up from a small clumpy tree.

. About the size of a silver dollar, the beautiful flower was fully open and revealed a cluster of golden stamens.

It was the first flower of the elusive Franklinia! On this the fourth day of August, was I in a swampy forest in Georgia? I could have been, but I was a lot closer to home.  I was in the Hillside Shade Garden behind my office at Springhouse Gardens, one of the benefits to working in a garden. I can go out and be in nature or a garden in just a moment, and see things that I would normally miss if they weren’t so close to my workplace. We planted the Franklinia several years ago at the foot of a slope close to where the water from the spring runs under the old farmhouse. If you could find a Franklinia in the wild (they are considered to be extinct) this is where they would like to be. Franklinia alatamaha was first discovered in 1765 by the Bartrams in Georgia along the banks of the Altamaha River, which when the Latin name was selected, the species name was mis-spelled as alatamaha, and was thus immortalized incorrectly. On a later trip, William Bartram found the trees again and collected some seeds which he took back to Philadelphia and had blooming within 4 years. He named the genus in honor of Benjamin Franklin, a good friend of his father, and inspired the common name – the Franklin Tree.

One bud ready, one flower open.

This unusual rounded bud is ready to burst into bloom.

Franklinia has not been seen in the wild since 1803 and all plants in existence today originate from the few plants collected. A census was undertaken in 1998 to try and determine how many trees existed in the world. Check out this link to see the count www.bartramsgarden.org/franklinia/census_results.html.  Hopefully our descendent of this enigmatic plant will survive (I’ve already tried and failed with this plant more times than I can count) and grace us with its subtle yet elegant beauty and remind us of how fleeting life really is.