Gentle care builds the UC Botanic Garden's Asia collection, the premier collection of the world's most expensive plants.
Then, in an instant, the giant sequoia fell, turning the delicate botanical gem into a danger zone.
In the race to salvage what remains, experts congregated in a hurricane-hit site in the foothills above the UC Berkeley campus to pull damaged and bruised plants from the rubble.
"I intend to dig up the rubble to find out where the plants are and what can be taken from them," said propagandist Susan Malish. Some plants accept recovery pruning. Others are rushing back to garden nurseries, where cuttings produce a new generation to replicate what they lost.
The historic park, as well as other arboretums in the Bay Area, were hit hard by violent storms this winter, culminating in a powerful storm on March 21 that brought strong winds and torrential rains to the formerly vegetated site. Redwoods that fell from UC's orchards severely damaged 57 crops, including Bohmeria japonica and Lucoto graiana , that were harvested on Japan's main island, Honshu. Lobelia nummularia , from the Philippines; Rhododendron arkipeplum , from northeastern India; and Pieris formosa from Bhutan.
"Our job is to ensure this collection is sustainable," Andrew Doran, director of the park's collections, told Above the Chain Noise. "This plant comes from nature. Very hard to find."
The Asian gardens with their winding paths, flower bushes and towering bamboo groves are not just a collection of unique plants. It is also a research project of rich scientific value and a place of serene beauty.
The Asia Collection is one of the oldest sections of the garden and contains a selection of plants from the early 20th century expeditions of Scottish explorer George Forrest and Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock to western China and Tibet. Information about every plant in the park is entered into a computer database with an "accession number", indicating when and where it was collected and by whom.
"That's what sets us apart from other botanical gardens," says Doran. "If you are a plant and you want to enter this garden, you'd better arrive in good shape."
Doran was at his desk one blustery March afternoon when he heard a sickening scream. "The radio came alive," he recalls, as excited workers traded reports. "We all know what a fallen tree looks like."
He took his hat and umbrella and walked into the waves. Gone was the big redwood that fronted the garden, planted when the property was nothing but dairy. When it fell, it hit a large buckeye. Both historical axes were broken in the Asian collection.
"They took a direct hit," he said. "It was a sea of branches and debris."
Apart from parts of Asia, one of the three largest pine species in Central America is damaged; The upper half of the park's only Paraná pine, an endangered Brazilian species; Blessed eucalyptus from the Queensland region of Australia; And from the South African conical leaf rubber bush. In the Redwood Room, a romantic setting for many weddings, jets of water carve a deep crater in the gravel driveway.
Other farms also reported leaks. At the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, one mature Himalayan spruce was snapped.
"He didn't just fall. "It broke," said Martin Quigley, UCSC garden director, which damaged the growth and structure of the plants as well as his fine collection.
The San Francisco Botanical Gardens at Stribing Arboretum lost Himalayan fir, African cypress and white-flowered camellia in the same storm on March 21. This winter storm killed 14 specimens, including Chilean soapbark and Tasmanian pepper.
A beautiful old oak tree has fallen at Filoli Meadows, a pristine Woodside estate owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And the oak is very bushy, because it is the "year of the tree" for a species that produces large amounts of acorns.
A UC Berkeley landscaper's first task to find a damaged flower bed is to remove the debris. This week, the scent of the garden contrasts with the smell of fuel ethanol as workers with chainsaws carefully cut through the branches. A line of volunteers removed the debris.
It is impossible to accurately determine the extent of the damage after the storm. Plants don't die like humans. For example, a standing tree may look good, but then it falls.
Or it may appear to die, then recover. For example, many ferns appear damaged but survive. The beautiful bamboo forest in the garden has been affected, but because bamboo is grass, it will regenerate.
Caring for Malash Propagation When cuttings arrive, they are first treated with a chemical to prevent microorganisms or fungi. They are then soaked in a hormone to encourage rooting, embedded in a special medium and placed in a "fertilizer bank", regularly dipped in a light fertilizer. Different plants require different methods.
So it's a waiting game. Study them for signs of promising new green growth from shoots or roots.
“Sometimes it takes a few weeks. Sometimes it takes months," he says. Conifers, pineapples, and conifers "can last for years. Sometimes things fall apart.
A struggling Nepalese orchid, toppled and broken into mounds, its leaves bruised and chipped, shriveled.
A beautiful rhododendron was destroyed, but Malish still found a part that had roots. It is covered with heat, the leaves are rustling. Now it shines and stretches to the sky.
"This might be our only chance for him so I took the best stuff I could get my hands on," he said. “It looks much better than when it arrived. It's broken."
Even if it was clean, more damage could be done, Doran was worried. He fears for the future of the splendid maple tree in China's Sichuan province, which survived the damage but is threatened as workers and heavy equipment, including cranes, cut down what remains of the towering redwoods.
He hopes to grind redwood waste and turn it into new Japanese-style benches, beams or tents.
In time, the park will return with expanded youth. Wounded elders will be healed. New species may be introduced, such as the camellia and the Japanese snowdrop.
"All is not lost," said Doran. This is an opportunity to think about the collection as a whole without the shadow of this big tree.
"But it just takes so long," he said. "Maybe not in our lifetime."
