pbs Digest, Vol 77, Issue 10

pbs Digest, Vol 77, Issue 10
paul--- via pbs (Thu, 20 Jul 2023 05:38:40 PDT)

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Paul Siskind
69 N. Main St.
Norwood, NY 13668
Home: (315) 353-2389
Cell: (315) 267-6102
http://www.paulsiskind.com/

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it
as he who helps to perpetrate it." - Martin Luther King
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On Jul 20, 2023, at 8:00 AM, pbs-request@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Carl Purdy info trove (Carl Frederick)
2. Re: pbs Digest, Vol 77, Issue 9 (Luminita vollmer)
3. Re: Carl Purdy info trove (Geri Cooper)
4. Re: Carl Purdy info trove (michaelcmace@gmail.com)

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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2023 06:09:20 -0700
From: Carl Frederick <carlfrederick@comcast.net>
To: pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Subject: Re: [pbs] Carl Purdy info trove
Message-ID: <0BF53ED5-CC72-47C8-BA28-32AE8E7F4F21@comcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Perhaps Purdy?s collecting was not as damaging as it might appear. But as to the survival of his sale plants around the world, I think we know how that went. The following are also from the article:
_________________________________________

Even while alive Purdy's harvesting practices were criticized by some as leading to the depletion of California's population of native bulbs and flowers. "Purdy disagreed, explaining that his technique (the same approach used by the Native Americans in their harvest of bulbs for food) of separating the smaller bulbs and replanting them, in fact, ensured greater growth and volume of future plants." [Mendocino County Museum "A Passion for Plants & Place, p.9] Rather, Purdy blamed livestock grazing, invasive grasses, and lack of brush clearing fire as described in his 1930 lecture at the New York Botanical Garden for the loss of California's wild flowers.

Purdy, unlike Burbank, didn't hybridize plants but instead gathered plants and bulbs, particularly native lilies, on his field trips throughout Northern California. Purdy would then propagate these bulbs and sell them by the thousands to Eastern and European nurseries.

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 07:14:11 -0700
From: Mary Sue Ittner <msittner@mcn.org>
To: pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Subject: Re: [pbs] Carl Purdy info trove
Message-ID: <63983de5-4058-8648-e346-1bf93d4833fd@mcn.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

It is unfortunate that someone who cared so much about California's
native bulbs was responsible for the loss of so many. For those of you
who did not read the whole article there is this:
"Carl sent the bulb to a plant dealer in New Jersey who promised to pay
him $1.50 for each 100 bulbs he could send. The dealer was Woolson &
Co., of Passaic, New Jersey; the firm's 1883 catalog includes a dozen
species of Calochortus bulbs collected by Purdy. The Woolson catalog has
been digitized by Mertz Library staff and may be accessed here.? Purdy
would go on to establish a major nursery company specializing in the
native plants and flowers of California especially its bulbs. His firm,
at its peak of production, harvested over half a million native bulbs
from the wild per year for export to dealers around the globe."

This reminds me of a story about Wayne Roderick who also loved native
bulbs and would take visitors from other countries to see them in the
wild, but would threaten to leave them without transportation back if
they dared to dig a bulb.

Mary Sue

On 7/17/2023 4:38 PM, Paige Woodward via pbs wrote:
Here is an online presentation from the NY Botanical Garden:

The Man from Ukiah:
Carl Purdy and the Bulbs and Wild Flowers of California

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2023 09:33:19 -0500
From: Luminita vollmer <luminita.vollmer@gmail.com>
To: pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Subject: Re: [pbs] pbs Digest, Vol 77, Issue 9
Message-ID:
<CAJso_==a8RYGL-qSc7zUBmRT9jvSXcyv1XPOoLUd6Cut71QcTg@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 08:42:44 -0700
From: Paige Woodward <paige@hillkeep.ca>
To: Pacific Bulb Society PBS <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>
Subject: Re: [pbs] Carl Purdy info trove

........

Mary Sue, thank you. If the story had not mentioned Purdy?s digging, I
would have done so. But perhaps some readers would have skipped around and
missed the passage, and its implications.

It is a classic tale of hurting the one you love.

No doubt such discussions are frivolous. I am far from imagining that one
could conserve a few charismatic taxa, such as lilies and the other bulbs
we celebrate on this list, while leaving the rest behind.

Paige Woodward

Well then - we should make fun and laugh at those that have the intent and
dedication to save a few species - especially the lily species, because it
is all for nothing, and no need to save a few when there are so many left
behind.

#savelilyspecies

Luminita

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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2023 18:13:42 +0000
From: Geri Cooper <geri@wcooper.net>
To: Bridgett Wosczyna Wosczyna via pbs
<pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>
Subject: Re: [pbs] Carl Purdy info trove
Message-ID: <647DB2DA-20DD-4CE7-812A-5BDA80FEC76B@wcooper.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

This was a very sad but interesting thread. It echoes what one of our hiking buddies here in Marin told us about the land of the now defunct San Geronimo Golf Course that it used to be filled with calochortus bulbs. And then just several years ago hundreds of dudleya plants were stolen by some an East Asian gangs to sell from the headlands. Geri

On Jul 18, 2023, at 7:14 AM, Mary Sue Ittner via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:

It is unfortunate that someone who cared so much about California's native bulbs was responsible for the loss of so many. For those of you who did not read the whole article there is this:
"Carl sent the bulb to a plant dealer in New Jersey who promised to pay him $1.50 for each 100 bulbs he could send. The dealer was Woolson & Co., of Passaic, New Jersey; the firm's 1883 catalog includes a dozen species of Calochortus bulbs collected by Purdy. The Woolson catalog has been digitized by Mertz Library staff and may be accessed here. Purdy would go on to establish a major nursery company specializing in the native plants and flowers of California especially its bulbs. His firm, at its peak of production, harvested over half a million native bulbs from the wild per year for export to dealers around the globe."

This reminds me of a story about Wayne Roderick who also loved native bulbs and would take visitors from other countries to see them in the wild, but would threaten to leave them without transportation back if they dared to dig a bulb.

Mary Sue

On 7/17/2023 4:38 PM, Paige Woodward via pbs wrote:

Here is an online presentation from the NY Botanical Garden:

The Man from Ukiah:
Carl Purdy and the Bulbs and Wild Flowers of California

https://libguides.nybg.org/c.php/…

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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2023 23:32:56 -0700
From: <michaelcmace@gmail.com>
To: <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>
Subject: Re: [pbs] Carl Purdy info trove
Message-ID: <065201d9bad4$05be4910$113adb30$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Paige wrote:

I've been asked whether Carl Purdy's property in Ukiah, The Terraces,

still exists. Does anyone know?

This is a fun topic, Paige! Thanks for bringing it up.

I did some digging online, and it doesn't look like the property was paved
over, but it's hard to tell exactly where the house was, or whether it still
exists. Here are some tidbits about it:

This link has a picture of the home, and says it was a couple of miles up
Mill Creek Canyon.
https://ukiahdailyjournal.com/2021/09/…
-ago-september-1921/

(By the way, these links are all one line of text. If your email system
breaks them into several lines, you will need to remove the carriage returns
and make them back into single lines.)

There is still a Mill Creek Canyon Road east of Ukiah, and based on what I
see on Google Maps it is mostly undeveloped.

Here is a delightful article about a visit to the Terraces, absolutely worth
reading (the transcript is on the left side of the page).
https://cdnc.ucr.edu//…
-------

There is a shorter article here:
https://newspapers.com/article/3796393/…

And here are Jepson's field notes (yes, that Jepson) about a visit to
Purdy's place. He says Purdy was growing lilies just over the border of Lake
County, in Lyons Valley, while the Calochortus terraces were at the head of
Mill Creek.
https://ucjepsarchives.berkeley.edu/archon/…
id=703

On Google Maps, there are a couple of homes in that area today but it is not
heavily developed at all. Whether there is anything left of the gardens, I
have no idea. Unfortunately, Street View does not reach up into the canyon.

Based on the articles, Carl Purdy was a lot more than a bulb harvester. He
grew native and exotic bulbs for sale, was a well-known landscape designer,
and was generally well respected in his day. I am not a fan of collecting
bulbs in the wild, but I don't think we can really judge him 100 years
later. Conditions are very different today. And I think it's fair to note
that he never caused the extinction of any bulb species in California. The
Calochortus species that we know we've lost were done in by
agriculture/grazing and the construction of Interstate 5. And C.
tiburonensis, which we almost lost, was threatened by a housing development.
I think it's fair to say that various forms of agriculture and development
have been a much bigger threat to the flora of California than collectors.
That doesn't make collecting from the wild OK, but we should keep it in
perspective.

I want to let Carl Purdy speak in his own defense about his collecting
practices. This is from one of the articles above:

"Does not this wholesale collecting tend to despoil the state of it's
lilies?" I asked.
"Oh, no, indeed," was his reply "The greatest enemies of our native bulbs
are the gophers and forest fires. My collectors are instructed. to leave the
bulbels and stalks, carefully covering them, and in a few years they produce
more than were dug out. Imagine, if you can, a spot where seven thousand
trillluums could be dug in one day, and yet they would hardly be missed from
the many thousands remaining. That is what I have done in the mountains
north of Willits."

I am not sure I believe that, but I'm also not sure it's untrue. We'd need
someone to run an experiment to be sure.

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Subject: Digest Footer

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End of pbs Digest, Vol 77, Issue 10
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