Garden in the Desert

Whenever Arizona feels inclined to count over her blessings, she has quite an assortment of superlatives to consider. Some, like the biggest canyon in the world, or the only accurately dated prehistoric volcanic eruption (Sunset Crater), were inherited taxfree from Mother Nature. Others, like Hoover (Boulder) Dam, at least half of which she can claim as the tallest dam in the world, had to be developed by her overseers. Another, which she must contemplate with justifiable pride, is the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, near Superior. It is the only privately endowed institution for the collection, growth and study of plants of arid and semi-arid lands on the globe. The amazing thing about the Arboretum is not that it should be in Arizona, the almost geographical center of this country's drier lands, but that it should be the only oneanywhere.

Back around 1000 B.C., a foresighted gentleman named Nekht was starting a precedent of plant culture in the temple grounds of Karnak, the royal garden of Thotmes the Third of Egypt. A few hundred years later, Chuan-tze in China embroidered the idea by sending men to bring new and exciting plants from distant places to found the first real botanical gardens. Today there are numerous famous herbariums and arboretums in various countries, but almost without exception they are situated in the temperate climates, representing one-eighth of the land area on the globe. It remained for an adopted son of Arizona, William Boyce Thompson, to institute and endow an Arboretum for the underprivileged children of the deserts that spread over the other seven-eighths. Although a miner by profession and training, his very nickname, “Boyce Facts Thompson,” suggests that he was vividly alive to other possibilities-such as those of the vegetable kingdom-as well. Eleven million dollars of a fortune amassed in the copper industry of the state, which owes him a great deal, was ear-marked for two great institutions for the study of plants. The first at Yonkers, N.Y., and the second in Arizona are founded upon his belief that as mineral resources are exhausted people must look to plants for their future.

You needn't expect, however, to see the Arboretum or any of its hardworking inhabitants, whether man or plants, get into the headlines. The vegetable kingdom seems to be

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“IN A DESERT GARDEN” by Josef Muench. The magic touch of spring brings brilliant color to a pathway in the Arboretum at Superior. Particularly attractive are the yuccas, bold and bristling. The photograph was taken with a 4x5 Graphic View Camera, 54-inch Zeiss Tessar lens, on Ektachrome daylight film. Because of the clarity of the spring air when the picture was taken, the exposure of the color studies following herein were almost constant, most of them being exposed one-half second at F.32. The Arboretum, near Superior, is a delight in springtime. Above, Gourlica Chilensis, from Chile, puts on spring dress. Myriads of flowering plants add to the color of this unusual garden, devoted to the study of plants suited to desert life.

When the Palo Verde blooms at the Arboretum, this gracious desert plant takes the center of the stage from other plants. The yellow of desert marigolds among the prickly pears gives a joyous quality to a desert garden. Speared plant is the Agave.

"EUCALYPTUS LANE" by Josef Muench. Tall trees from Australia provide shade in the canyon section of the Boyce Thompson Arboretum at Superior. Plants from all over the world are studied at this experimental laboratory to determine their use in the arid conditions of the Arizona desert.

(Continued from page twenty-eight) able to continue carrying on good works without fanfare. Only when crops get entangled in the stock market or are led into delinquency as drugs, do we give them much publicity.

Some exciting stories might be written, however. One of them could center around a rather hush-hush probe of the "lilies of the field." More far-reaching and lasting in effect than current Senate investigations are scientific studies of this plant family for medicinal purposes.

The aim of the probe is not any possible "un-American activities" but to find the secret of producing new synthetic drugs. When botanists, physicists and doctors are through studying thousands of members of the family, they may well revolutionize the whole field of medicine. Germany, you may recall, in the last war, is said to have used a plant hormone to increase the fighting proclivities of its soldiers, and the Chinese may, or may not, have sent whole armies into battle in Korea, doped with the product of the opium poppy. But the present searchlight is turned on the lowly Agave toumeyana, native to Arizona, which gives promise of yielding a substance that can be made into cortisone. Now produced only from animal bile, at great expense and in infuriatingly small amounts, it gives relief to the sufferer from arthritis.

But the trail is a long one from the modest, unconcerned plants to the doctor's office and the drug store counter. Meanwhile, the Arboretum supplies raw material for experimentation, without publicity. More than 1000 acres of the gardens, spread through the foothills of the rugged Pinal Mountains, seem entirely satisfied to hide any worldshaking potentialities behind a smoke screen of ornamental beauty, catering to about 20,000 annual visitors to its sunny acres and shaded paths.

Without needing foreign visas or inoculations, anyone may travel almost around the globe. No transportation problems are involved getting from the quiet of a nook carpeted by brilliant red Flanders poppies to a lane bordered by trees from Chile, startling in their golden cloud of blossoms. One had only to lift his eyes to tall eucalyptus trees from Australia, saunter a few more steps to see pomegranates from the African Coast, the true crucifixion plant from Palestine, or mesembryanthemum from South America. You may find these plants in other parts of our country, but not growing in such friendly company with the weird Boojum tree of Baja California, succulents from Central America, ornamentals from the Mediterranean, the Tree of Heaven from China or giant panicum grasses of South Africa. At least 3,000 varieties make up the list, many native to our own prolific Southwest, and the rest from "faraway places with strange-sounding names."

Arizona has a climate similar to such places as the Big and Little Karroo deserts, Arabia, Somaliland, Persia, the Sahara, Nubia, and others of the earth's more arid lands. Labels with common and scientific names along the "selfguided tours" are signposts in this plant journey where distance is erased. The cactus garden with its alcoves is crowded with all the forms an ingenious nature has invented.

You will see other people exclaiming in delight over the different colors of the plants themselves, decorated in the proper season with flowers of striking colors and exciting textures.

Perhaps other people before him had seen the earth shorn of its political borders and in terms only of its vegetative covering. But William Boyce Thompson took some very definite steps to bring about a new kind of unified world, where each region could benefit by the experience evolution has been gaining since time began.

"To bring together, grow and study the plants of semiarid climates with a view to determining their adaptation characteristics and economic uses," the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum was incorporated in October 1927.

To legitimatize this brain-child, the Arizona State Legislature passed a bill, approving non-profit organizations for scientific research. The infant prodigy was already several years old before the grand christening and official presentation to the world on April 6, 1929. Hundreds of well-wishers attended the ceremony in the natural amphitheater while numerous "god-fathers" pointed out to what far-flung points ripples would soon reach from its center to some 26 million square miles of desert savanna and shrubs stretching around our busy planet.

Of the some thousand acres now fenced near Superior, a small section of 30 acres is under irrigation to widen the influence of experimental work.

The streams of Queen and Arnett creeks have been put to work by means of a 45-foot well, connected by tunnel, blasted from solid rock. Water is pumped to a reservoir holding 3,680,000 gallons. It is now a lake with a backdrop of rock cliffs. Not only trees and other vegetation flourish around it but here crimson sunrises "grow" from sky to water and sunsets put their seal upon the finished day.From its very founding, building construction kept pace at the Arboretum with the steadily increasing roll of plant introductions. The administration building of native rocks covers 6500 square feet, with space for offices, laboratories, a fine scientific library, herbarium, seed room, photographic darkroom, fireproof vault for records, and supply rooms.

Spreading on either side of the lobby with its lichencovered rocks are two greenhouses. In one a collection of cactus plants, needing shelter and warmth in winter, looks like a disciplined jungle. Night-blooming cereus twines over pipes and the flowers fill the room with almost overpowering odor when the "Queen of the Night" opens for its one-night stand in spring. From every point in the Americas, to which this large family limits itself, have come relatives, astounding in their variety and habits of growth.

Visitors to the Arboretum are always interested in the Boojum trees, wonderfully strange in foliage and shape. These trees were brought to Superior from Lower California.

If possible, the succulents in the greenhouse on the other side of the lobby are even more incredible. Stapelia, with great hairy blossoms, cotyledons with felty elephantine leaves, well-camouflaged "living stones," mesembryanthemums in rainbow shades, each demonstrate an individual manner of meeting the hazards of life in the desert.

The shipping room is festooned with bunches of grasses, labelled and drying, while baskets and boxes of freshly gathered seeds wait for a rainy day when they will be threshed and sorted, eventually finding the way into the inner sanctum of the seed room.

One wonders, as he looks up at the rows of boxes where the tiny germs of life are filed in small coin envelopes, what would happen if they should ever get loose. If Fred Gibson, president and director of the Arboretum, ever has nightmares, they must center in this chamber of mysteries. Suppose every seed should decide to start growing! Giant grasses from Russia, Australia, or South Africa would sprout from the shelves. There would be huge trees, and vines twisting around the trunks of saguaros and great barrel cactus, suddenly defying the rules of nature. Flower stalks of yucca and agave would push against the ceiling and Old Man Salt Bush might season wild rhubarb. Before morning the walls of the building would begin to give way as a full half-world of plants pushed out toward the sun. But Mr. Gibson, and his assistant, Bernard Benson, probably know too much about how well behaved seeds are to ever indulge in such wild dreams.

Each of those envelopes is, nevertheless, a Pandora box with a possible surprise in it. The contents of dozens of them had to be tried before the Love grasses from South Africa proved their mettle and graduated to helpers in the Soil Conservation Service. Another prize winner was Anti dotale, the giant panicum grass from Australia and South Africa. Grown without irrigation on the Papago Indian Reservation in southern Arizona, it is a valuable new cattle range food.

Another Australian native, the Old Man Salt Bush has taken a liking to the Southwest and is naturalizing in some areas. With a most commendable preference for alkaline soil, it provides a natural salt for cattle.

Plants don't have to come from far away to develop into new usefulness, either, at the Arboretum. Several, long familiar to early pioneers and the Indians before them, are getting recognition. Take the Jojoba or goatnut. Seeds from this member of the box family (it makes a handsome ornamental hedge with leathery leaves) have traveled to California, Texas, Mexico, Cuba, the Bahamas, Chile, South Africa, and to Australia. It produces an acorn-like nut with a flavor reminiscent of a filbert, containing wax second only to Carnuba, the hardest in the world. Possible uses for the liquid are legion-all the way from an ingredient for readyto-bake cookies and cakes to printers' ink. Quite modestly, the sturdy plant is content with submarginal lands where most other crops can't manage.

There seems to be no limit to the number of plants still to be tried out, or to the properties they may exhibit. A crew of five men, working with the director and his assistant, are the wizards who must bring forth wonders from each seed, giving it a chance to show what it can do. Mr. Gibson answers the many queries, coming from everywhere, asking for seeds or for information. The Union Oil Company wanted to know what trees and plants were suitable or possible for landscaping projects in Arabia. A professor in Mexico City needed seeds to try out the Canaigre (commonly known as wild rhubarb) in hopes of starting commercial production of tannin for hides. Neither seeds nor plants are on sale, but they are given away for legitimate experimentation and use anywhere.

On the other side of the ledger, packets find their way into Mr. Gibson's office from remote places. Engineers in the nearby mines of Superior and Miami move on to work in other lands and they send seeds from wherever they happen to be. Mail carriers in the interior of Australia gather seeds on lonely routes and mail them to Arizona. Not manyyears ago, a lively interchange of packages was carried on by the Arboretum and Russia.

Seeds have to be tested and experiments carried on for determining how long they remain viable, what percentage will germinate out of any gathering, or under varying conditions. Fascinating studies of the effect of ground temperatures and humidity enliven the plant rooms.

This past year the director and his assistant travelled some 5,000 miles collecting new specimens to set out. With a goal of acquiring a plant of every species which grows in arid and semi-arid lands, there is no foreseeable end to the work at the Arboretum.

Nor is there any limit to its possibilities. Seed pellets dropped from airplanes over vast areas of the eroded Indian Reservation; seeds that will develop roots to hold soil from washing away; new and better feed for cattle; synthetic or natural drugs for the doctor; nuts and fruits from Nature's inexhaustible basket-may all be on their way. In the meantime, the garden continues to grow.

Spring lingers there, after the first flower display of annual and native perennials, to burst into renewed color with later flowering species. After the prickly pears come the yuccas, the agaves, and then the barrels. The night is fragrant with many nocturnal flowers and the canyons gay with fruit trees in blossom. Roses and climbers celebrate around the administration building and animals enjoy safety within this wild-life sanctuary. There are hundreds of different kinds of birds in this League of Nations Garden, lured from distant lands perhaps by its very variety. In remote canyons a few mountain sheep, desert mule deer, and even mountain lions, keep to themselves, but rabbits, bobcats, coyote, skunks, badgers, and porcupine consider it all their own playground.

The endless variety of plants in the garden assures some bloom all year around, although visitors might have to stay there continuously to see every family put on its particular show. For those of us who find this impractical (even though a delightful idea), it is well to know something about the flower calendar.

A prelude of flowers begins in February with the ever-green pear, ragwort and various cactus, as well as the desert lily and Joshua tree.

In March the great bulk of annuals begin a two months' orgy of blossoms. Prickly pears will continue through July, the tamarisk into October, along with the desert marigolds.

April brings out the yellow of Gourliea chilensis, the red of ocotillo and banners of yuccas, leading toward the end of the month into the peak of blossom in the gardens, to hold sway almost to the end of May.

May is the real symphony of color. The palo verde leads the parade, many of the cactus family are ringed with color, Flanders poppies and bottlebrushes flamboyant in bright tints.

By June there will be mesquite, beargrass, pencil cholla cactus, more yuccas, the sotol, Bird of Paradise flowers, pin-cushion cactus and the fragrant night-blooming cereus. July and August are safe to count on for barrel cactus and agaves in blossom.

Fall provides a new range of colors in the leaves of such trees as the Pistachios and the fruit of soapberry, pyrocantha, and cotoneaster. There are other plants with less regard for a set schedule. Oleanders take all spring and summer to expend their blossoms, the Jojoba persists from December to July and the prickly poppy is almost ever-blooming.

The setting of the Gardens is most spectacular, sprawling on Picket Post Mountain where the rock formations are landmarks visible for long distances, as though the spot had been marked out for distinction even before Boyce Thompson chose it for an Arboretum.

This is all just as the founder envisioned it: slow but productive growth, useful to men, and a place of beauty, reaching fingers out to the far ends of the world, and drawing them into a unity of living filled with promise.