Register by November 7!

In partnership with TreePhilly and the ROOTS Tree Crew, sign-ups are now available to receive free trees for residents of the 19143 and 19142 zip codes. Priority for neighbors between 49th Street and 65th Street.

Trees will be available for pick-up at Connell Park, 6401 Elmwood Ave, on Saturday, November 11. 

Click here to register for a tree in 19143 or 19142.

Other details:

• You may request up to two trees per planting address. To request a second tree, submit the form and re-fill it out again for the second tree.  Trees are available while supplies last. Seeking more trees for a special project? Email info@treephilly.org.
• Trees are available for Philadelphia residents only and must be planted in the ground (not in a pot) on private property in the city of Philadelphia. Residents are responsible for the care of the tree and may receive a maximum of 6 total trees per address. For more information on caring for your new tree, visit FAQ PAGE.
• For information on getting a free tree to plant in yards in other parts of the city, go to TreePhilly.org.
• To sign up for a free street tree planted between the sidewalk and the street, go HERE.

TreePhilly is a program of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation in partnership with the Fairmount Park Conservancy.

The post Free yard trees available for Southwest Philadelphia residents! appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

Winners:

Stephon Mumford caught the first fish of the day at 8:04 AM, and James Giles caught the last, in the final minute of the competition!

The prize for most fish caught went to Gary Thomas, who reeled in a whopping 18 fish! James Giles was the runner-up with 11 fish, followed closely by 4-year-old Nora who brought in 10!

Stephon Mumford won for biggest fish with a 24-inch catfish. Allegedly Ka-Ron Thomas caught an American eel that was “like 3 feet,” which was not measured or photographed, but earned Ka-Ron the prize for weirdest fish. Nafis Zollicoffer and Lucy Mercorella hauled in the next two largest catfish, and Lucy’s was her first ever catch!

The smallest fish, a 3.5-inch emerald shiner, was caught by the smallest angler, August.

It was a beautiful and exciting morning, and heartwarming to see experienced anglers helping first-timers to catch their first fish. We’re grateful to Coach Todd of Mid-Atlantic Youth and Outdoors Partners for coming out to help identify, measure, and release all those fish!

The post 2023 Southwest Fish-Off appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

This interview originally appeared in the September 2023 edition of the Southwest Globe Times newspaper.

Would you each introduce yourselves?

Leslie Gale (left), School Education Manager at Bartram’s Garden, and Beverly Ritter, first-grade English Language Arts teacher at John M. Patterson School.

Leslie Gale (LG): Everybody under the age of 15 who comes to Bartram’s Garden knows me as Mrs. Leslie, or occasionally “the lady with the strange seedpods” or “the lady who will show us where the snakes live in the winter.” I’ve been working here at Bartram’s Garden for 17 years. I’ve been an outdoor educator for 19 years, and before that I was a classroom teacher.

Beverly Ritter (BR): I am a first-grade ELA [English Language Arts] teacher at Patterson Elementary. Go Patterson Bears! My students know me as Ms. Ritter. I’ve been at Patterson for 12 years, teaching first grade, and this year I’m very excited because I will transition to becoming the full-time literacy teacher. My co-worker and I will co-teach: Mr. Console will teach math, I will teach literacy. We’re very excited to begin this new school year. And I just found out that Mrs. Leslie is “the dissecting woman”!

LG: That’s my superhero name! “Let’s open up this plant and find where those seeds began!” Also, I want kids to know that nature doesn’t just exist in a park like Bartram’s Garden—[you] can nurture and see and encourage nature on your block, in your school yard. I also never want them to think this is just a place they go for school: I want them to know it’s a park, they can bring their families, they can just come for fun!

Tell us about this new partnership between the Garden and schools like Patterson.

LG: Bartram’s Garden is working closely with Southwest public schools like Patterson Elementary: students come to the Garden 2–3 times per month, and Teacher Marion and I are going into the classrooms 2–3 times a month, so kids are seeing us a lot more. The curriculum parallels what the teachers are doing so that we’re supporting what they’re doing in the classrooms—so if Ms. Ritter’s class is learning habitats, we can look at different habitats: “Let’s look at the pond! What’s different about the pond?” and help develop that vocabulary around noticing, observing, and asking questions. The teachers set the curriculum and it’s beautiful, so we’re supplementing it so that kids are getting these authentic outdoors, in-nature experiences that are enriching what they’re learning, enriching their language development, enriching their physical development.

BR: We started [this partnership] last year, and . . . it’s great because in fourth grade at Patterson, the students have a collaboration with John Heinz [National Wildlife Refuge]. This is getting them used to and exposed to nature, learning the vocabulary, learning how to take care of the environment, what are the native wildlife that live here.

LG: The third grade did a unit on weather, so we did a whole day about clouds, and we talked about evaporation, precipitation, and even climate change. The kids and I started talking about “Where’s the snow?” We drew the different kinds of clouds in white crayon on black paper so that they could identify different kinds of clouds and notice, “That one’s a fair-weather cloud, but ooh, that one’s going to make rain.” I could talk about weather for hours!

BR: I want to do that lesson!

LG: Last year I started out [teaching] navigation across the board. [The first-graders could] do pop quizzes: Which direction is east? Where’s west?

BR: [We want] them to learn to navigate the grounds. We purchased compasses for them! In the classroom we started talking about directions, and we learned how to read the compass and navigate to different areas in the school building. The students navigated until they could find a treasure box with a classroom prize, like 10 minutes of extra recess. The students were working with partners and taking turns trying to read the compass.

So the students are also learning to work together.

BR: Coming [to Bartram’s Garden] helps the students learn to regulate themselves, have patience, be able to cooperate—all those things are helping them make connections in the brain!

LG: It’s also interpersonal! Being able to navigate walking through the grounds and understanding where your body ends and the next person begins [so you don’t bump into your friend]. How do we share information quietly? How do we move together? Beverly and I were talking a couple weeks ago, and I have realized I want to do more stories—both going into the classroom and reading stories, and doing shared writing. I trained as a reading recovery teacher and I see how important that reading, storytelling, and writing all is to developing somebody who is a thinker and an explorer.

And developing empathy!

LG: Yes, and not just with other people but with other organisms: the land, the animals, the plants.

BR: Mrs. Leslie does a wonderful job at bringing that out in the students when we’re reading and writing. She’s excellent at explaining what we’re doing, she’s very thorough. And the students get excited! They love to see her!

LG: In my ideal, I’m partners with the kids. When we were walking through the Garden, I noticed that the sound of the conversation changed as we were walking down a winding path: it affects them like magic. The attention is less about messing with a buddy and more about “What’s that bird I’m hearing? What’s in the ground?”

BR: [They’re] building curiosity.

LG: And the questions they come up with are so amazing and sophisticated! And that’s part of giving kids the vocabulary—they have the ideas, they have the questions. But [we’re] giving them the language so they . . . have the words to describe it.

BR: May I show you something? This is why it is so important to expose children to as much as possible when they’re in their early childhood years. This is a picture showing the neuron [connections] in a child’s brain. Those connections are made and become stronger every time new information is taken in. When children are around 7, the end of early childhood, those connections that are not strong start to fall off. . . . What’s left is the foundation for learning for the rest of their lives, so we want them to have as strong a foundation as possible.

Ms. Ritter shared this diagram showing how neuron connections, known as synapses, get stronger and more numerous during early childhood, but only the strongest connections are retained in adulthood. Source: JL Corel, The postnatal development of the human cerebral cortex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1975.

How can we help children build those connections for learning?

BR: Children learn through play. We may think that they’re just running around in circles, but they’re learning about balance, about the vestibular system, about their relationship to the planet and gravity: when children are playing, they are making new connections, and they [need to] use all their senses to do that. With traditional education, just sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture and looking at a book or a smartboard, that doesn’t make very strong connections [in the brain].

LG: [The navigation lesson] was about place. Where am I in this place? Understanding how big places are or how big the planet is––that’s hard to wrap your mind around when you’re 6! It’s hard to understand how far away things are, or how close they are. I always ask kids to draw a map of their own neighborhood—it’s about awareness, observation.

BR: For example, our class was learning about animal habitats in school and Leslie suggested, “Let’s do  [that lesson] at the Garden!” We started in the classroom reading stories about animal homes and we talked about which kinds of animals might live in burrows. Then here at the Garden, one of the students, Sam, actually found a burrow by a tree!

LG: And then we started using our observation skills and asking more questions. We were noticing the aerial burrows, like in a tree where the squirrels or woodpeckers live, and the kids were the ones asking, “What lives in here? What are they doing? Where do they get their food?” and continuing on. And making all these connections and having these varied experiences—it all goes back to language acquisition!

BR: And just building more connections in the brain. If you think of a fireworks show on the Fourth of July, at the beginning you have little fireworks, and that’s a student who might not have had many experiences in their life. But the finale, [with lots of different fireworks], that’s a student who has been read to, who has [visited different places], who has touched things, who smells things, who tastes things.

LG: It’s about brain development, it’s about language acquisition, and it’s simply about richness of life. The more we experience, the richer our lives are, especially when we’re learning with all of our senses. [And kids] learn so much through movement. That’s what they’re learning from running around in circles! Being alive in a physical world is very complicated—why shouldn’t we be exposing kids to how complicated and fabulous it is? It’s one of the reasons I love teaching decomposition—because there is a cycle: “These dead plants are breaking down—where are they going to go? Where are they going into the soil?”

BR: There’s nothing that a child cannot learn if we break it down for them.

What are you excited about this year for your classroom?

LG: For the past two years, I’ve been trying to think of ways to talk more explicitly about the climate crisis. And I did it this summer with one of my lessons, where we design our own version of the city [and] I will introduce new variables for kids to design their cities around. I’m very excited to design that lesson and test it with the Patterson children.

BR: I want to do that! For my classroom, not only will the students be visiting the Garden regularly, but we are also taking field trips throughout the city to different places to get them out of the classroom: the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin Institute, Lankenau [Hospital Education Center], the Swedish Museum, the aquarium—just trying to expose them to as much as possible to help reinforce what they’re learning inside of the classroom and taking it outside to apply it and make connections. Experiences and connections—those are my two words!

How did you two first get connected?

LG: Karen McKenzie and Tammy Cantagallo were the first two teachers I really got to know from Patterson, [then I met Beverly through field trips.] I love Beverly’s classroom style. Every once in a while I meet a teacher who makes me think, “Oh I should have stayed in the classroom”—she’s one of them. We started talking, and she said she wanted [to create] the outdoor education experience that her kids had.

BR: Yes, my boys went to the Philadelphia School, and they had a program where they went to the Schuylkill Center bi-weekly. I want to give props to the Philadelphia School because they gave my sons an excellent education, and I want my students to have those same experiences so that they can compete in the future.

Can I give props to a couple more people? Principal Hagan: she is a new principal to our school––last year was her first year––and she’s very supportive of this program. I want to say what an excellent job she’s doing: she has a heart for the students and for the community, and she’s extremely supportive of her teachers.

LG: And she loves this connection; she loves getting the kids outdoors. She is 100%.

BR: She’s incredible and she has so many ideas and new activities that she’s implemented at Patterson. We really are moving on and advancing with our school in a more positive direction. Also Mr. Steczak—he is our science teacher, and he is incredible. Whatever question anybody has about science, he will create an entire lesson. Once, we were learning about the Hoover Dam, the students said, “Oh, beavers build dams!” And I was talking to Mr. S about it, and he said, “Let’s make a dam!” So the students collected sticks, leaves, and small rocks, and Mr. S made a mud concoction and got paint trays, and the students worked with partners to build a dam across the width of the paint tray. Then we let it dry and put water on one side and we had to see which dams were able to hold water, or not. I’m learning to be like him!

What inspired you to become an educator?

BR: When I was about 11 or 12, I fell in love with this movie called Bustin’ Loose––it’s based in Philadelphia, starring Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson. I knew when I saw it that I wanted to work with children in an urban environment. I was a social worker for a short time and I was also a TSS, a therapeutic staff support worker, but I decided that early childhood education is really what I love. First grade is where I’m meant to be [because of] that literacy component—I love seeing the students come in knowing letters and letter sounds but leaving reading paragraphs. I love to see that transition—that’s what inspires me to stay in first grade.

LG: I did not want to be a teacher. I’m the second person in my family to go to college: the first person was my uncle, who became a teacher! There were not a lot of options, and I really resisted even though everyone said, “You should be a teacher.” I did all kinds of other stuff, and when I was 39, my father died, and I sort of felt like, “What am I doing with my life?” I wound up going to grad school and being a classroom teacher, and feeling very dissatisfied with it. And I guess because my father had died, I got very interested in the kind of experiences I’d had with him, which were all outside. That’s where he and I connected, and I connected to my grandmother that way, through gardening and animals, and I realized I wanted to communicate that to kids.

I say to all the kids, “The Schuylkill River is your birthright! Clean air should also be your birth right, [Bartram’s Garden] is your birthright.” I’m hoping that kids get a little bit inspired—if you live on a block like mine, where there’s very little nature, what can you do to increase it? Or if you do live on a block where there are trees, how can we encourage that and appreciate it?

BR: I was just realizing how similar your childhood was to my childhood. My parents were from Philadelphia and when they got married, they didn’t want to raise me and my brother in Philly, so we moved up to New England. I was born in Massachusetts, and we lived there ‘til I was 4, then we moved to Concord, New Hampshire, and lived there ‘til I was 8. I was always a daddy’s girl, and he would take us canoeing and fishing and camping, and we always had a garden, either in our yard or in a plot of land that we rented—always doing something, always exposing us to new and different things. I want my students to experience that as much as possible.

I remember in Concord, New Hampshire, my first-grade teacher lived on a dairy farm and she took us to visit her farm. We were not only able to milk the cows, but we made homemade butter and baked rolls. At school, I remember sometimes, after a rain, she would take trash bags, rip them open, put them on us [like ponchos], and take us for nature walks. At recess, our playground was full of pine trees, and we would take the pine needles and build forts. I also remember a field trip to a nature center: at the center there was a creek. While walking along the creek, we noticed a beaver lodge. Memories like that I will always cherish, and I just want that for my students.

What’s your favorite fall memory in the Garden?

BR: I love when Leslie does lessons outside in the Garden: she’ll pull the easel out and the kids will sit on the mats, it’s a nice cool day and we’re just out in nature and experiencing nature together. I really enjoy going for the Color Walk: Leslie will give the kids paint chips and the kids have to find things in nature that correspond to the colors. When students see that maybe there’s a leaf that’s dying and it’s one or two shades darker, they can start classifying that.

LG: It gives them a focus—instead of seeing just a sea of green, they can start seeing different shades and noticing differences. If we’re talking about biodiversity, this variety matters—it’s not just about richness of experience but it matters for the pollinators, for the birds; it matters to the whole system. I want kids to start being able to appreciate that.

I have two favorite memories! One is rolling down a hill with this lady and her first-graders—she started it, not her students. It’s one of the reasons why I love her. Rolling down that tiny slope, we were going really fast! The other is from my first year here, teaching a first- or second-grade class from a Southwest school. It was November and it was a hard fall, so we were standing in the garden, and we could look down to the river because the trees were bare. And this little girl said, “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” That wide-eyed appreciation for that beauty was all her and that has stuck with me.

John M. Patterson School is a Philadelphia public school educating children in grades Pre-K–4, located at 7000 Buist Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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One group at a time walked across the meadow to the Bike Hub where all of the youth were able to find a bike just their size and traverse the traffic garden set up along the main path.  Bike Hub Manager, Jack, created a course with chalk and cones with both a beginner path and a more experienced path with a lava zone where youth had to stay on a very small area to avoid the lava. The youth were excited to get on bikes and loop around the course, having fun and growing their bike handling skills.

We wrapped up in the Air Conditioned Barn with snacks and a quick debrief and invitation for all of the young people to tell their family and friends to come back to the Bartram’s Bike Hub anytime we are open on Friday’s 3-6pm and Saturdays 10-2 through the fall!

You, too, can experience the joy of biking at Bartram’s Garden.
Join us at the Bike Hub every Friday 3-6pm and Saturdays 10am-2pm.
The Bike Hub offers a rotating list of classes and rides including:

• Free Bike Rentals to use at the gardens
• Learn to Ride Classes for Kids and Adults
• Beginner Bike Rides of the Bartram Mile
• Bike Maps and Info about Bike Safety Materials in English, Spanish, Simple Chinese, Russian, Haitian Creole  & Vietnamese

More info about classes and rides as well as registration are available on the Bartram’s Garden online calendar.

#Shoutout to Rec Leaders, Ms. Lisa and Ms. Kecia for coordinating the day, and Bartram’s Garden staff for supporting the planning, coordinating and ensuring we had plenty of cold water!

This post originally appeared at https://bicyclecoalition.org/bartrams-garden-bike-hub-hosts-a-summer-camp/

The post Bike Hub hosts a summer camp! appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

As part of our efforts to offer free river activities like boating and fishing, Valerie, Ammarava, and the rest of the river program team carefully monitor the water quality in the Tidal Schuylkill River to ensure that river conditions are safe for recreation. Our data about bacterial and nutrient levels in the river, combined with records about recent rainfall, helps inform our safety practices for public recreation like boating. We also share our findings to advocate for improved protections of the river’s health and water quality.

And though the Schuylkill River’s health has improved dramatically in recent decades, unfortunately, our team still regularly cancels recreational programs owing to unsafe conditions caused by overflows of the city’s combined sewer system, which can introduce sewage and other pollutants into the river after significant rainfall or because of wastewater coming from suburban or industrial origins. Speaking alongside experts from PennEnvironment and regional elected officials, Valerie and Ammarava shared the impact these overflows can have on our free river recreation programs as well as how we use our water quality monitoring to keep visitors and staff safe. Read more in coverage from KYW News Radio and the Philadelphia Inquirer, or check out our data yourself to learn more about the health of the river.

Above: Ammarava sharing details of how the Garden’s water quality monitoring programs keep visitors and staff safe during river recreation on the Tidal Schuylkill River. Photo courtesy Alexandra Venth.

The post River Staff Featured by PennEnvironment appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

Click here to check out the plant catalog for a full list of seasonally available plants and to explore highlights selected by the growers at Bartram’s Garden and the Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden.

Need guidance from our gardeners? Join us for SpringFest on Saturday, April 15, to shop for plants with input from our expert staff and also enjoy a day of free outdoor fun for the whole family.

PLEASE NOTE: To make sure that your garden is as healthy as possible, plants will be available for sale only when seasonally appropriate. More plants will be offered as the season continues, and not all plants in this catalog will be available at the same time. If you have questions about when to purchase a particular plant, please let us know.

The post It’s time for spring planting! appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

February 22, 1957–March 21, 2023

Acclaimed historian Joel T. Fry, the long-time curator at Bartram’s Garden, died at Pennsylvania Hospital on March 21, 2023, shortly after a diagnosis of lung cancer. He is survived by his siblings, James (Hai-Ping Cheng) of Florida, David (Lisa) of Illinois, and Ann (Kara Shannon) of Massachusetts, as well as his brother David’s children, David, Jared, and Marrah, and grandchildren, Dylan, Jordan, and Cora.

Beyond his family, his memory is cherished by the dozens of gardeners, historians, archaeologists, scientists, and colleagues, both here in Philadelphia and worldwide, who relied on Joel as an inexhaustible source of scholarly expertise, dry wit, and constant inspiration.

Raised in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Joel was first introduced to archaeology, ecology, and historic research as a teenager, when he participated in an archaeological training course for high school students led by Jeff Kenyon, then the director of the education department at what is now known as the Penn Museum. The thrill of seeking and connecting with history, especially Philadelphia history, became a life-long vocation. Joel received degrees in Anthropology and American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania, spending his summers on field research, archival cataloguing, and conservation for the Penn Museum and the Fairmount Water Works.

One stint for the Penn Museum in the early 1980s saw Joel supervising students in archaeological technique at Bartram’s Garden, then an underutilized public park and historic site on the banks of the Tidal Schuylkill River in Southwest Philadelphia. The Garden’s varied layers and kinds of history appealed to Joel’s limitless curiosity: the country’s oldest surviving botanical garden, its 18^th-century house, outbuildings, and gardens had been designated a National Historic Landmark, but at the time the organization had limited capacity for historic research. Joel’s initial archaeological and archival research sparked his interest in the Garden, and after a short career as an archaeological and historical consultant for clients throughout Pennsylvania, he joined the staff of Bartram’s Garden in 1992 as curator and historian.

Through more than 30 years of scholarship, mentoring, and research, Joel was a beloved and revered resource for wide networks of historians, scientists, and garden enthusiasts. In his own work, he was especially known for his definitive writings and ongoing research on the botanical history and ecology of the Bartram’s Garden plant catalogue, particularly the Franklinia alatamaha, sometimes called the Franklin tree or just Franklinia, a large, summer-blooming shrub with showy, fragrant white flowers. Because the plant was apparently extinct in its native Georgia shortly after the Bartram family first collected its seeds in the 1770s, all current living Franklinia are descended from those once cultivated at Bartram’s Garden. Joel was particularly proud of a recent essay, “Bartram’s Tree: Franklinia alatamaha,” featured in The Attention of a Traveller (2022), examining the influence and legacy of William Bartram’s eighteenth-century account of his travels through what is now the southern U.S., including his first encounter with Franklinia. In addition to Joel’s Franklinia research, he extensively explored and documented the entirety of the historic Bartram plant collection, assembling a complete catalogue of the Garden’s plant holdings as of 1783.

Joel was also an in-demand lecturer, tour guide, panelist, and essayist on a wide range of topics connected to Philadelphia history, botany and garden history, archaeology and geology, and colonial history. In 2018, Joel was honored with the role of formally opening the Peter Collinson Heritage Garden at Mill Hill School in London. Other recent appearances and partnerships include conference presentations at the Bartram Trail Conference (2022 and 2019) and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2014) as well as partnership with The Center for Art in Wood for the Bartram’s Boxes Remix exhibit (2014). As an outgrowth of his care for the John Bowman Bartram Special Collections Library at Bartram’s Garden, he also maintained sustained and detailed correspondence with noted scholars, writers, and historians, advising on such best sellers as Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things and Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners as well as on specialist works in many fields, including the history and ecology of daffodils, one of his favorite subjects.

Between these many marquee engagements were countless interactions when Joel tirelessly and meticulously shared his vast knowledge. He regularly led guided tours and offered lectures at Bartram’s Garden and nearby historic sites like Eden Cemetery and the Woodlands for everyone from local garden clubs to international tourists to curious neighbors, and he provided generous mentorship and guidance for undergraduate and graduate students focused on history, botany, and archival research. As the Garden’s public programming and capacity for historic interpretation expanded beginning in the 2010s, Joel was also a deft and thoughtful advisor on new research into the area’s Black history, led by historian Sharece Blakney, and initial forays into incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge, guided by Indigenous practices, into the site’s ecosystems management practices.

Perhaps most significant was Joel’s impact on the many colleagues and friends of Bartram’s Garden who relied upon him during his three-decade tenure. When Joel was first hospitalized in March 2023, notes, visits, and memories poured in from colleagues around the world and throughout the mid-Atlantic, representing such venerable institutions as the Yale Center for British Art, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Painshill Park Trust in the United Kingdom, the international Society for the History of Natural History, and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia at Drexel University. Nearly to a person, Joel’s networks recount extraordinary, wide-ranging conversations with their thoughtful colleague, often leap-frogging between topics for hours with seemingly no limit to Joel’s insight, learning, or interests.

In his final days, Joel continued to share his vital curiosity and keen wisdom with loved ones, offering book recommendations, urging on long-term plans, and providing pragmatic advice. In conversation with a cherished long-time horticulturist colleague, Joel described his vision for an ideal memorial garden, planted with conifers and lilies. True to form, his learning and sly humor entered the exchange, and he offered some final guidance familiar to all garden lovers: “Plant two of everything, because one will die.”

A remembrance of Joel T. Fry will be planned at Bartram’s Garden at a later date. Many of his writings and publications can be accessed here.

The post Remembering Joel T. Fry (1957–2023) appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

Ailanthus altissima is native to Taiwan and central China but was introduced to Europe by way of a Jesuit Priest named Pierre Nicolas d’Incarville, who sent seeds to Paris from Beijing in 1743. A few years later Peter Collinson, the English botanist and close correspondent of John Bartram, acquired some seeds from France that he grew in his garden in London. Although it is difficult to imagine given its noxious qualities today, eighteenth century botanists held Ailanthus in high regard, admiring its foliage, its perceived exoticism, and its toleration of urban environments. By the 1780s, it was a favorite in gardens across Europe and was widely planted in London and Paris, and it remained heavily used in urban landscaping through the nineteenth century.[2]

Foliage of Ailanthus altissima, the Tree-of-Heaven. Credit: Wikimedia commons.

Most sources credit Ailanthus’s introduction to America to William Hamilton, who maintained a botanical garden just about a mile up the Schuylkill of the Bartrams, at The Woodlands. Hamilton reportedly had Ailanthus seeds sent to his garden around 1784. But twenty years earlier, in 1764, John Bartram writes a letter to Peter Collinson where he describes the growth of a certain sumac species in his greenhouse:

“last summer there came up in my greenhouse from east India seed formerly sowed there an odd kind of Sumach (as I take it to be)   it growed in A few months near 4 foot high & continued green & growing all winter & this spring I planted it out to take its chance   it shoots vigorously & allmost as red as crimson”[3]

Most signs point to this plant being Ailanthus. The tree’s fast growth, hardiness in the winter, and red shoots are all characteristic of Ailanthus. The species is still sometimes referred to today as a sumac, although taxonomically it is no longer a member of the sumac genus. At the time the sumac genus, Rhus, included many different trees and shrubs with alternate compound leaves, like Ailanthus does. John Bartram would have been aware of all of the American sumac species, so if he is correct in recalling that he planted this from seeds brought from Asia (East India), then this very well could be the earliest recorded instance of Ailanthus in the Americas.

Peter Collinson, who was one of the first in Britain to receive Ailanthus via France, certainly thought that John Bartram had one in his greenhouse. He replied, describing his own plant:

“I have from China a Tree of surprising growth that much resembles a Sumach which is the Admiration of all that see it  Phaps thine may be the same—It Endours all our Winters   Thou Sayes thine came from the East but mentions not what Country: We call ours the Varnish Tree”[4]

The name “Varnish tree” refers to at least four different species of tree from Asia, and the 1750s saw intense taxonomical debate within the pages of the Royal Society of London’s Philosophical Transactions attempting to distinguish the different plants referred to by that name. English botanists were fixated on the so-called varnish tree because some species, like the Chinese Lacquer Tree or Japanese Wax Tree, had sap that could be turned into lacquer, a highly valuable substance that could be used for coating wooden furniture or artwork.[5]

Ailanthus is similar to these species and became caught up in the craze over Varnish trees, and d’Incarville may have originally sent seeds of it back to Europe because he mistook it for one of those species. Upon receiving the seeds, English botanists quickly realized that they had several different species. John Ellis published a paper in Philosophical Transactions that distinguished a “Varnish tree” specimen found growing at two botanical gardens in London from other Rhus species, including a diagram that is the earliest botanical sketch of the plant.[6] To the dismay of botanists, this species did not have useful sap, although it was well-regarded aesthetically. Phillip Miller gives it the name “altissimum” in his Gardener’s Dictionary in 1768, and the tree was finally defined in its own genus, Ailanthus, by the French botanist René Louiche Desfontaine in 1788.[7]

The English botanist John Ellis used this drawing to argue that the “Chinese Varnish Tree” (figure 5) should be its own species. That plant later became Ailanthus altissima. Credit: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

But at the time John Bartram and Peter Collinson were looking at this curious tree from China, botanists still would have thought of Ailanthus as a type of Varnish Tree belonging to the sumac (Rhus) genus. Collinson described his Varnish tree as a “stately tree sent over raised from seed sent over from Nankin in China, in 1751, sent over by Father d’Incarville, my correspondent in China.”[8] This account lines up perfectly with John Ellis’s description of his new Rhus species, which modern botanists consider to be a description of Ailanthus.

Identifying plants from the historical record is never a straightforward task, and we cannot say for sure that Bartram’s tree was an Ailanthus without having a more detailed description or drawing of it. We can only speculate. Genetic research has suggested, however, that Ailanthus was indeed first introduced to North America through the Philadelphia area at the end of the eighteenth century, making either Hamilton or Bartram possible candidates for its introduction.[9] Bartram does not mention this plant again, so perhaps it died at some point and has no relation to the Ailanthus trees that are now widespread across the area. But given the tree’s propensity to spread and take root in even extreme conditions, it is not out of the question that it escaped Bartram’s greenhouse and later became naturalized in the region.

We have a few more references to Ailanthus from the years that Robert Carr was proprietor of the garden. Ailanthus appears in Robert Carr’s catalogue from 1828 as an exotic tree, priced at $1 compared to the 25¢ or 50¢ that most trees sold for.[10] In 1844, one of Robert Carr’s correspondents recalls an Ailanthus tree that was apparently given to Ann Bartram Carr as a wedding present in 1809. That tree was supposedly procured from Hamilton’s garden at The Woodlands and was still preserved at Bartram’s in 1844.[11] Both references point to Ailanthus not being widespread in Philadelphia in the early 19^th century, but they do not rule out an earlier introduction during John Bartram’s lifetime.

Perhaps John Bartram, not William Hamilton, deserves the dubious designation of being the first to introduce Ailanthus to the Americas. We can only imagine what John Bartram would think if he saw what the little plant he found in his greenhouse in 1764 was up to today.

Notes

Cover image: Sketch of Ailanthus leaves by John Ellis, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1758.

[1] Patricia J. Wynne, “Ailanthus altissima”, Columbia Introduced Species Project, December 9, 2002.

[2] Shiu Ying Hu, “Ailanthus”, Arnoldia, 1979, 39(2): 29-50.

[3] John Bartram, Letter to Peter Collinson, May 1^st, 1764; in The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734-1777, ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (University of Florida Press, 1992).

[4] Peter Collinson, Letter to John Bartram, June 1^st, 1764; in The Correspondence, ed. Berkeley & Berkeley.

[5] The Chinese Lacquer Tree is now Toxicodendron vernicifluum while the Japanese Wax Tree is now Toxicodendron succedaneum. Each of these species were considered part of the Rhus (sumac) genus at the time.

[6] John Ellis, “CXII. A letter from Mr. John Ellis, F. R. S. to Philip Carteret Webb, Esq; F. R. S. attempting to ascertain the tree that yields the common varnish used in China and Japan; to promote Its propagation in our American Colonies; and to set right some mistakes botanists appear to have entertained concerning It,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 49, (1755), pp. 866-876.

[7] Walter T. Swingle, “The early European history and the botanical name of the Tree of Heaven, Ailanthus altissima,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 14 (1916), pp. 490-498

[8] Peter Collinson, published in Hortus Collinsonianus: An account of the plants cultivated by the late Peter Collinson, compiled by Lewis Weston Dillwyn in 1843. Not published, printed in Swansea by W. C. Murray and D. Rees. Dillwyn believed that what Collinson thought was the Chinese Varnish Tree was actually Ellis’s new species, and cites his article in the Philosophical Transactions to support this.

[9] Preston R. Aldrich, Joseph S. Briguglio, Shyam N. Kapadia, Minesh U. Morker, Ankit Rawal, Preeti Kalra, Cynthia D. Huebner, and Gary K. Greer, “Genetic Structure of the Invasive Tree Ailanthus altissima in Eastern United States Cities,” Journal of Botany, vol. 2010.

[10] Robert Carr, Periodical Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, Green House Plants, &c. Cultivated and for Sale at Bartram’s Botanic Garden, Kingsessing, Near Gray’s Ferry—Four miles from Philadelphia. Russell and Martien, Philadelphia, 1828, p. 21

[11] Dr. Steph. Browne to Col. Robert Carr, September 19, 1844, Society Misc. Coll, Box 7-B, Of644, 1842K, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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and more!

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The Seven Years’ War (1756–63) was an international conflict fought between long-standing rivals, Great Britain and France, for global superiority. The French and Indian War (1754–63) was the North American theater of the conflict and was named after the significant role Native Americans played on both sides. The two European powers had developed into major economic and political players on the continent, and the war gave Native Americans the chance to fight for the side they felt held their best interests. Although the British had Native allies, France’s better indigenous diplomacy and less manipulative past made them the more attractive ally for many nations.^[1]

This Francophile tendency was especially evident in Pennsylvania among indigenous nations, where the British had consistently exploited and distanced the region’s Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, and other nations. These groups fought alongside the French in battles and raided the Pennsylvania frontier, stealing supplies and killing the region’s poorly defended white settlers. The Natives eventually agreed to a separate peace, under the Treaty of Easton in 1758, on the condition that the British would not expand further west into the indigenous lands of western Pennsylvania and Ohio. When the British quickly disregarded this requirement, indigenous raids of the Pennsylvanian frontier began again under Pontiac’s War (1763–64).^[2]

“The Indians delivering up the English captives to Colonel Bouquet… in Novr. 1764,” engraving by Pierre Charles Canot, 1766 (Library of Congress). This exchange occurred near the end of the Pontiac’s War and was a coerced requirement for peace (see the bayonets behind the colonists). While many captives were happy to be returned, others had been adopted as members of Native communities and had lived there happily for a long time. Both sets of individuals were returned in Sir William Johnson’s attempt to restore peace and reduce the region’s Native population.

Bartram’s response was like that of many Pennsylvania colonists. In February 1756, he wrote to Collinson in London with anger and fervent racism, expressing that “O: Pensilvania thou that was the most flourishing & peaceable province in North America is now scourged by the most barbarous creatures in the universe…. The barbarous inhuman ungrateful natives [are] weekly murdering our back inhabitants…. If our captains pursue them if in the level woods thay skip from tree to tree like monkies….” In the early years of the Seven Years’ War, Collinson seemed to agree with Bartram, responding how, “Wee here are greatly Effected at the Ravages and cruelties Exercised by your ungrateful perfidious Indians.” The raids were undeniably brutal, but both Bartram and Collinson failed to consider the Natives’ motives. They viewed the raiders as deceitful and “barbarous,” focusing solely on their actions rather than recognizing that they were fighting the British colonial system’s own treacheries and incursions onto their land, which threatened their very way of life.^[3]

By the time of Pontiac’s War, the decades-long friends and business partners had become polarized over these very viewpoints. Bartram continued to see his raiders in a similar light, expressing that the “only method to establish a lasting peace with the barbarous Indians is to bang them stoutly,” and that, “the Indians must be subdued or drove above 1000 miles back.” Collinson, on the other hand, began to consider the indigenous perspective more critically. He responded to John’s callous letters with criticism, stating:

“My dear John, thou does not consider the law of right, and doing to others as would be done unto. We, every manner of way, trick, cheat, and abuse these Indians…. Lett a person of Power come & take 5 or 10 Acres of my Friend Johns Land from Him… How Easy & resigned he would be… but if an Indian resents it, in his way… nothing but Fire and Fagot will do with my Friend John…” ^[4]

We may never know what led to Collinson’s change in perspective, but the backgrounds of both individuals provide potential avenues to understand why their views differed. Collinson was a Quaker, and as such, he likely believed in the core Quaker principle of the “inner light.” The inner light held that God resided universally within all humans, making their bodies, and not the church, his temple. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, preached that this light could be realized and lit within anyone, and he embodied this teaching by acting towards the equality of all – including women and Native Americans. The open-minded nature of this tenet made many Quakers pacifists and generally friendly towards Native Americans. It also formed the foundation behind Pennsylvania’s “Holy Experiment.” Although Bartram was also a Quaker, many of his beliefs strayed from Quaker orthodoxy, resulting in his disownment in 1758. Bartram’s exact views on the inner light are unknown, but his predilection towards war and his prejudice towards Native Americans suggest that he did not view innate equality as highly as other Quakers.^[5]

It is also important to consider how Bartram and Collinson lived in entirely different settings. Collinson lived in London, where he could look at the colonial raids from far outside of the situation, while Bartram lived in Pennsylvania and was affected by indigenous raids throughout his entire life. When he was still a child, John Bartram’s father was killed, and his stepmother and step siblings temporarily kidnapped, during the raids of the larger Tuscarora War (1711–1715) in North Carolina. As an adult, Bartram’s annual botanic expeditions across the colonies were sporadically halted by Native raids that made the frontiers unsafe, which limited his business. When raids erupted in Pennsylvania throughout the 1750s and 60s, it is possible that he knew some of the people who were affected, and it is likely that his opinions were also further influenced by the reactions of white settlers around him. While these developments do not excuse his prejudice and ignorance of the Natives’ true motives, it shows how Bartram was affected by the larger events around him, and how his views may have been shaped differently from Collinson’s over time.^[6]

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes

^[1] Gregory Evans Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004): 22-89.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] John Bartram to Peter Collinson, February 21, 1756, in The Correspondence of John Bartram: 1734-1777, edited by Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992): 400-401; Peter Collinson to John Bartram, June 8, 1756, in Ibid, 405.

^[4] John Bartram to Peter Collinson, September 30, 1763, in Ibid, 609; John Bartram to Peter Collinson, October 23, 1763, in Ibid, 612; Peter Collinson to John Bartram, December 6, 1763, in Ibid, 615-616.

^[5] George Fox. “Boyhood: A Seeker,” “First Years of Ministry,” and “Two Years in America,” in An Autobiography. Originally written 1694. (Whitefish: Literary Licensing LLC, 2014). Street Corner Society. https://web.archive.org/web/20070612033233/http://www.strecorsoc.org/gfox/title.html; Henry Joel Cadbury, “The Disownment of John Bartram,” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Association Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 1928): 16-22.

^[6] Joel T. Fry, “Historic American Landscapes Survey, John Bartram House and Garden (Bartram’s Garden), HALS No. PA-1, History Report,” MS report, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, HABS/HAER/HALS/CRGIS Division, Washington, DC, 18.

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