Mystery Tree

Do you have a Franklinia growing in your backyard? Consider the history of this mysterious tree as recounted in JSTOR Daily:

Along the Altamaha River near Georgia’s Fort Barrington, the Franklinia alatamaha was witnessed for the first and last times. The tree was initially recorded by botanists John and William Bartram, a father-son team from Philadelphia, in October 1765. The Bartrams were out exploring because earlier that year, King George III appointed John his Royal Botanist for North America. William would return several times, collecting the tree’s seeds in the 1770s and bringing them back to Philadelphia. It wasn’t until 1781, years after his father’s death, that a cultivated tree finally bloomed its snowy camellia-like flowers. William decided to name the tree in honor of one of his late father’s friend, a fellow botany aficionado who through John had introduced rhubarb to North America: Benjamin Franklin.

An elegant watercolor of Franklinia, attributed to William Bartram, is now at the Natural History Museum in London. One white flower faces the viewer, its five petals surrounded by a burst of deep green leaves. In the fall, those leaves turn a radiant red, sometimes while the flowers with their orange-like fragrance are still in bloom. That contrast and its dainty form—growing to about 25 feet tall—made this member of the tea tree family ready for popular gardening, and, as botanist Peter Del Tredici wrote in Arnoldia, nurseries in Philadelphia started cultivating Franklinia in the nineteenth century. One early propagator was Thomas Meehan, a British immigrant who had worked at Bartram’s Garden, and would later partner with Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, to protect Bartram’s house and garden as part of the Philadelphia park system. He also donated a Franklinia to the Arboretum, which now has the two largest specimens in the world.

If so, you might want to contact Bartram’s Garden or Gayther L. Plummer.