In the 1988 reprint of U. P. Hedrick's A History of Horticulture in America to 1860, Elisabeth Woodburn states that “Hedrick's History of Horticulture in America is the only account of the development and growth of horticulture in North America.… Updating this work would be formidable and would require a work of several volumes.” Philip Pauly's work, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America, is intellectually formidable—and it's a single volume. He examines 250 years of plant growing in America and, like the horti-culturalists he documents, looks for the strong patterns that define the form as he prunes off the “witches' brooms” of detail that fill Hedrick's work. Moreover, rather than simply recanting a history of the development of American horticulture, Pauly articulates how the evolution of American horticulture influenced the development of the country.
Unlike Hedrick, who was an eminent horticulturalist comprehensively enumerating the people and events associated with the development of horticulture in this country, Pauly is a professor at Rutgers University whose expertise is the history of science. Consequently, he looks at the evolution of American horticulture from a broader perspective and is able to identify a handful of stages through which the discipline has progressed. He convincingly argues that the activities of horti-culturalists not only had a profound impact on native vegetation in the United States but also profoundly influenced economics, social developments, common experience, and international relations from the colonial period through the present. “In the 1800s… horticulture was the equivalent to what is now called plant biotechnology.”
American horticulture, argues Pauly, is characterized by four major themes. The first, introduction, extends from the colonial period into the 20th century. The second, naturalization, which corresponds roughly to the founding of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in the late 1820s, played a dominant role for the next 100 years. The third, native potential, had its roots in maize and tobacco in the colonial period and continues to be important today. Finally, excluding undesirables can be traced to the postrevolutionary “Hessian fly” invasion and extends to contemporary alien and invasive species.
Thomas Jefferson is an exemplar of the first theme and the focus of the first chapter,“Culture and Degeneracy: Failures in Jefferson's Garden.” It is no surprise that colonists brought with them plants from the “old country” to establish in their new home. Hedrick offers extensive examples of recorded seed lists and cultural varieties individuals brought to each of the colonies. Although one might plausibly think that all of these introductions would be successful in the fertile new soil of the New World, Pauly makes it clear that the normal response of most of these European transplants was failure, and he explains why. In doing so he introduces several conceptual themes that extend throughout the book—culture, native versus naturalized versus alien species, and evolution.
The first of these concepts, culture, has social connotations that imply a differentiation between developed high culture and crude low culture. This dichotomy was even more stark 200 years ago, as the“culture”of horticulture was being developed, than it is today. The wealthy landowners and merchants of Europe, the men of high culture, could afford to develop the practices necessary to improve, propagate, and grow the cultured varieties. It is obvious, then, why these cultured varieties could not survive in the New World: Americans lacked the high culture necessary to grow the plants. This fact contributed to a “degeneration hypothesis,” according to which the colonists, like their plants, were doomed to revert to a less cultured, less civilized state. Jefferson, a man of culture, was determined to be a successful horticulturalist and thereby to discredit this hypothesis.
“The United States' First Invasive Species: The Hessian Fly as a National and International Issue”is a poster-child chapter on the ecological consequences and evolutionary implications of native versus alien species. And, as the title suggests, this Hessian fly outbreak amply illustrates the impact of plants (and plant pests) on international relations. Native and naturalized species are easily confounded, with sometimes high-stakes consequences; Pauly addresses this problem frequently throughout the remainder of the book and highlights it in the last section, along with current efforts to manage introduced noxious weeds.
If his lectures are anything like his writing, Pauly must receive excellent student evaluations. Like a good lecturer, he begins each chapter with an introductory section to orient the reader to the main themes and concepts of that chapter. Then he tells the story or stories that illustrate these ideas. For instance, what happens when a conflict arises between efforts to introduce new species and efforts to exclude undesirable species? There's no better story than the attempt by David Fairchild (head of the USDA section on systematic plant introduction) to plant ornamental Japanese cherry trees around the tidal basin in 1909, only a year after Charles Marlatt (head of the USDA Bureau of Entomology) had taken charge of the USDA campaign to control plant imports by inspecting nursery stock at US ports of entry. We all know there are cherry trees around the tidal basin, but these trees were planted in 1912, after Fairchild's original cherry trees on the grounds of the Washington Monument had gone up in bonfires ordered by Marlatt in 1910, instigating a “string of horrors for U.S. hopes in Asia” (p. 150).
In addition to being highly readable, Fruits and Plains is well documented with copious endnotes for each chapter. Every plant biologist should have a copy of this book, and it should be well worn from thorough reading. Those who teach will find interesting examples for the classroom. Researchers will appreciate the historical perspective as a context for their own work.
