The Boyce Thompson Arboretum (www.btarboretum.org) has been fostering conservation efforts for over 100 years, which they proudly display with the sculpture at their entrance.
I had the blessing of exploring the arboretum, with my two grandsons (T and R) shown below, on a visit to Arizona in February.
Along with their parents (K and D), we traveled the approximately 50 miles from their home in Mesa, to the arboretum location, near Superior, Arizona.
One of the first plants I photographed upon entering, was the Ice Plant, because it brought back fun memories of time spent with the grandfather of T and R, on the coast in California. We stopped to photograph a hillside over the Pacific, that was ablaze with brightly colored flowers. Neither of us was familiar with the ice plant, but I was later to learn it has some similarities to a plant we are familiar with in the South---kudzu. I found this out because I was invited to participate in an ice plant removal project on the Channel Islands (see blog titled Santa Cruz Expedition, dated September 10, 2016, for my photos of the cliffs of the Channel Islands). Both the ice plant and kudzu were introduced into the USA for erosion control. However, since the introduction of ice plant in the early 1900's, ice plant has spread aggressively (as has kudzu), forming dense mats that displace native plants and alter the soil. One theory says that although ice plant was initially intended for erosion control, ice plant's shallow roots and heavy leaves can actually destabilize coastal soils, increasing the risk of landslides and erosion.
When one pays the $25/person entry fee, they will give you a map of the almost 400 acres there, but thankfully, there are also placards throughout the property that show the "YOU ARE HERE", to help one navigate through the expansive gardens.
Most of the walkways are dirt, but there are a few walkways that are paved, such as shown below:
Another area we saw also brought back motorcycle travel memories with the boys' grandfather, which was the sign that showed the plant called Mormon Tea. Years ago, we motorcycled extensively in Utah, and read about a doctrine followed by some of the Mormon faith that called for avoiding coffee and tea, presumably because of their caffeine content, a known stimulant. Then we read on a display in a national park in Utah about the plant called Mormon Tea (it had that name because early Mormon settlers in the southwestern United States used the plant, Ephedra nevadensis, to make a tea as a substitute for coffee.) Now we know that ephedra is a known stimulant, and highly regulated in the USA pharmaceutical market. So what the early settlers were actually doing was substituting one stimulant-containing plant (coffee) for another, more potent stimulant-containing plant (Ephedra)!
There was an entire section of the arboretum devoted to Ephedra!
Mormon Tea had additional uses besides just a beverage, as it was also used for medicinal purposes. In fact, one of the placards in the arboretum went into detail (giving living plant examples) of plants used for medicinal purposes. I found this interesting because the first "Science Project" I did in Junior High School, was to go into an Ozark Forest with my mom, and her great Uncle Olney, so he could show us the herbs that his family had used for generations as medicinal remedies for various ailments. In fact such folklore medicine is one reason the arboretum was originally started---to study folk medicine, isolate chemically active compounds, and study them to make medicines that can be mass marketed. You have to look no further than aspirin, isolated from willow plants, to see an example of this theory. The placard at the Curandero Trail photo below, explains that
Curandero is a word, in the Mexican culture, for a healer. Therefore, along the trail, visitors can see plants that served as herbal remedies for various ailments. In the broadest definition, R and T's grandfather, who was a medical doctor, would fall under the classification of a
Curandero.
One area of the arboretum had plants linked to the stories we read in the Holy Bible. For example, the plant Frankincense was a gift brought by the Wise Men from the East, when they came looking for the child Jesus.
A crown of thorns was put on Jesus at the time of his crucifixion, so it was interesting to see the plant shown in photo below, commonly called Crucifixion thorn.
This part of Arizona is known to have wild horses, so it was appropriate that a full-size horse sculpture has been incorporated into the landscape. It is so life-like, one might think it was the real thing! The first I heard of the wild horses was when my husband and I went on a guided trail-ride through the desert in this area, on a sunny January day, after a medical meeting at the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale. Our guide asked where we were from, and when we indicated the Ozarks, he told us Branson, Missouri, was where he took his horses in the summer, to offer trail rides to the tourists there. So, of course, we looked him up the next July, and he was busy as could be, taking young and old, on paths through the hills and hollers surrounding that famous destination!
As the mother of a grown son, I know how much I appreciate seeing a photo of my son and I together, so I tried to get such a photo for K, with each of her sons, with this one being K and T.
This one is K and R:
I didn't want to press my luck by asking the grandsons to pose for several more photos, so the next few photos are taken surreptitiously:
R with arms up
Rattlesnake warning!
R is a professional in the film industry in Los Angeles, so I was curious what he found of interest to photograph in the greenhouse at the arboretum:
He was photographing the plant called "dinosaur back cactus", or more precisely
Myrtillocactus geometrizans. I found it to be a divinely-inspired piece of sculpture! The name references its unique crested growth pattern, which makes some people think of flowing water, or a candelabra.
The arboretum was started by businessman and philanthropist Colonel Boyce Thompson, who made his fortune in the mining business, and built a house high on a mountain, overlooking the present-day arboretum, through Queen Creek Valley, which was named after the Silver Queen Mine. Colonel Thompson called his residence the Picket Post House.
There is a hiking trail that goes up the mountain, which the boys decided to take so they could get a closer look at the house, while K and I stayed in the lower area. This photo shows a hiker starting up the mountain trail:
This photo shows me pretending to be a hiker on the trail:
I was glad to get a photo of R, showing he had a water bottle with him, to keep hydrated on the mountain
Getting to the higher elevations of the arboretum, requires crossing Queen Creek, and the property includes several bridges across the stream. This photo shows K and I on the swinging bridge that lets one feel the undulating movement of the structure, as they walk across it:
Another bridge photo below
This photo shows Queen Creek, and one of the bluffs that overlooks it:
Four days earlier, my son and his friend had been sport climbing in the Superior, Arizona area, in a section maintained by the Queen Creek Climbing Coalition. My son sent me the photo below of the crag they ascended, with their technical climbing gear: (Google "Queen Creek Arizona rock climbing photos" to see the limitless possibilities of routes to the summit of these crags)
This saguaro (pronounced "sah-wah-roh") cactus reminds me of a person waving. A saguaro cactus takes ten years to get just one inch tall! A saguaro cactus that is 6.5 feet tall is probably about 70 years old. The tallest ever recorded was 78 feet in height. Some of them have "arms" and some do not. Since the cactus can be heavy when it is full of water it has stored, one theory is that an arm forms a counter balance of the plant.
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When I read that the saguaro cactus has the scientific name, Carnegiea gigantea, I learned that it was named after philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, because his Carnegie Institution for Science established the Desert Botanical Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, in 1903. That made me curious if any plants had been named after Colonel Boyce Thompson, who also financed early research into desert plants. As it turns out, in 1926, a botanist named the newly discovered hedgehog cactus, Echinocereus boyce thompsonii, after the Arboretum where the botanist first identified and collected it in.
The creosote plant is common in this area, and research into its chemical makeup, enabled the development of a product that can prevent rot in wooden railroad ties. Colonel Boyce Thompson also founded the Institute for Plant Research in New York to improve agricultural practices. The idea of plant research reminded me that I got to participate in a six-week long plant research project, at a science institute I attended at the University of Arkansas, between my junior and senior year in high school, to study fusarium fungus in tomatoes. Our work did not produce any commercial applications that I am aware of, but it did serve as a delightful orientation of sorts, to what it would be like to be a student at the University of Arkansas and living in a dormitory. My roommate for those six weeks at Futrall Hall on the U of A campus was Miss Jeffrey Lynn Taylor, and we ended up also being roommates our freshman year at the University of Arkansas. The U of A Science Institute was actually not my first choice that summer. Since I was very interested in underwater studies at the time, I applied for a Summer Science Institute at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, but was not accepted. Forty years later, I learned that during that time, they already had one person with the name "Keeling" in their research department, and another Keeling would have been confusing (or, so I told my self in consolation). That Keeling person went on to a prestigious career at Scripps, and his data was the basis of the famous "Keeling Curve". The Keeling Curve is the world's longest unbroken record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, providing valuable insights into long-term trends in carbon dioxide levels. It was not at a family reunion where I learned of my Keeling connection, rather at a commemorative plaque I saw decades later, when I was touring the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego.
The structure built into the rock bluff shown in photo below is called the Clevenger House, and was built by an early pioneer that lived on this acreage. (There is a remote resort near where I live, that also has all its rental cabins built into, around, and over giant boulders and bluffs. You can see photos of the unique cabins, in my blog archives, entitled Longbow Resort Expedition, dated April 20, 2015).
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A big section of the arboretum is devoted to Eucalyptus trees, and the largest of those trees is called "Mr. Big". It stands 117 feet tall, with a circumference of 22 feet, and is about one hundred years old. Notice how tiny K looks, standing beside the trunk of Mr. Big. A pleasant memory I have of eucalyptus trees is when my husband and I were driving a two lane highway between Sacramento and Yosemite National park. The highway was lined with these trees, and at the time, I had no idea what they were, but I was intrigued by their beauty and unusual bark. Years later, when visiting my cousin whose back yard abuts the original Highway 66, He said he had cut down the eucalyptus tree in his back yard because of that very same bark. Saying its constant shedding made his otherwise pristine yard look very messy, which he did not like. If you read the history of Route 66, it will tell you that eucalyptus trees were planted along sections of Route 66 in Southern California, for ornamental reasons. However, when Highway 66 was decommissioned, these trees ended up being on private property, instead of public right of way, and were not always appreciated.
As I was writing this blog, it surprised me that so many of my memories are linked to plants! And the Bible comments on what we can learn from plants, talking about how the seed has to die and be buried, so that it can rise again to life---a life that can give abundant fruits and new seeds. Even "Mr. Big" was once a tiny seed, and could be thought of in the parable Jesus told in Matthew 13:31-32 that says, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took, and sowed in his field, which indeed is smaller than all seeds. But when it is grown, it is greater that the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches."
Learning about the plants I saw at this arboretum, and getting to have this experience with loved ones, gave me "Miles of Smiles"! Tricia
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