Thanks, everybody! And that plain yellow Calochortus

michaelcmace@gmail.com michaelcmace@gmail.com
Sat, 20 Jul 2019 11:03:27 PDT
Mary Sue and Travis and Kipp and David and Nhu and everyone else who worked
on this, thanks so much for all the hard work you put into it. I saw how
difficult the work was, including all the sleuthing required to track down
the people who had rights to those journals and getting the legal right to
reproduce them. The folks who had to give permission are getting quite old
now, so you acted just in time.

It's very much like a bulb rescue, except that what you rescued is
information, and all of us get to share it.

The Calochortus Society was a really enjoyable little outfit. Back when
there were no online resources, it collected information and stories that
you literally could find nowhere else. And it was a labor of love for the
people who ran it. It's very nice to read through the stories and letters,
some of them from expert growers who are no longer with us.

Hugh McDonald was (and probably still is) an advocate of conservation
through cultivation. He did some amazingly meticulous experiments with seed
germination and potting mix and cold stratification, all of which are now
preserved in those journals. He also tried to organize a volunteer effort in
which each society member would grow one species and share the seeds, to
keep them all in cultivation. That didn't work out (there just wasn't enough
time and it was hard to coordinate through the mail), but I think the PBS BX
and SX are its spiritual descendants.

Now if we could only do the same thing with Herbertia, the journal of the
defunct International Bulb Society. But at least it's perserved in a few
libraries, so at some point when the copyrights expire it'll end up online.


Makiko wrote:

>A plain yellow Calochortus bloomed at sunny hillside. So beautiful.

It's probably Calochortus luteus. If you're ever trying to identify a flower
you saw in the wild, the iNaturalist website is a great resource. You can
look to see which flower photos have been posted in a particular spot.

Mike
San Jose, CA


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