In the autumn of 1996, while approaching Tianchi Lake, at relatively high elevations of the Zhongdien Plateau in NW Yunnan Province, I collected the hips from a tall, commonly occurring species of rose. The stems, rising to nearly 3m in height, were heavily armed in broad thorns to 2.5cm that had bleached on old wood to ivorine.
What caught my eye and prompted the seed collection, however, were the crops of hips that varied in color significantly from one specimen to another. My collection under the number DJHC 410, came from an individual with large white fruit blushed with pink. It has settled down into our garden at Windcliff and continues to impress each year during its height of blossom, from May through most of June. I did not capture the white hip genetics in the seedling that I ultimately planted although its fruit are paler than most would associate with the genus at large. Its identity has been recently confirmed as Rosa sweginzowii var. macrocarpa.
Ok, breathe. Write. Seeds to sow, cuttings to pot, an immense garden to hack and saw and haul. Its sunny and warm, its black as night and spitting sleet, its Puget squalls and double rainbows, its March and madness.
In September of 1996, I visited the Yulong Shan in NE Yunnan Province in China. It was my debut in botanizing within that remarkable country, accompanied by a talented contingent of like-minded plantspeople, and there is hardly a better place to sample its fantastic flora than in the dramatic mountains northwest of Lichiang. It was there that I collected the seed of Picea likiangensis var purpurea, the Lichiang Spruce, after having previously read titillating tributes to its ornamental appeal.
Today, as I was carting loads of firewood from the woodshed to the house through the yellow-stained gum of half-melted snow, I was reminded how good and profoundly circular life can be.
Once again, I recognize my timidity through the discovery of an unexpected survivor within the expanse of safe and boring plants growing in my garden at Windcliff, pondering why I do not more often engage in attempted murder for the sake of luminosity. It is generally through these premeditated crimes and misdemeanors that I have been rewarded by the most amazing new plants. This year, I attempted a serial murder of a genus of terrestrial bromeliads called Dyckia and found myself mesmerized instead.