More Misses, Not From Minneapolis

Miss Martha Hiser  

Miss Ella Baines 

Miss Mary Martin 

This is from her earlier catalog and ads.

Miss Mary was from Floral Park, New York. That's on Long Island where Thorburn was,too.

Miss Martha was from Urbana, Ohio.     

Miss Ella was from Springfield, Ohio.  

Download catalogs:
Hiser (1900) (1900)
Baines (1897) (1915) (1917)
Martin (1901 plants but really jolly to look at) (1902 Nice!) (1903)

There are many PDF catalogs online.

It was a surprise to find both Martin and Hiser on one page in Home and Flowers!

Miss Martin gives her fans pictures of herself more often than the other women.  I wondered if women would rather have seen her planting something in more practical clothing.  Or, did seeing a successful business woman appeal as much, or more?  

Miss Ella may have been a churchwoman.  She is puffed in church magazines; another is in 1922. 

     

"I do not sell cheap seeds.  I do sell seeds cheap"

An Unfortunate Seed Ad

Unless kudzu turns out to be the biofuel of the future, this seed ad certainly goes in the "If We Only Knew Then..." hall of fame.

1912  GARDEN SPOT SEED&GIFT CATALOG, LANCASTER PA

The stuff is making its way north.  I can't believe it has recently been found in Marblehead, Massachusetts!!!! That is north of me.  Eek.

Following is an example of use of the vine in 1882ish.

First picture is BEFORE kudzu.

Here is the home after kudzu!

I like the last sentence in the 1891 description above.

For a fuller history of how it came to be here, go to Wikipedia. "The kudzu plant was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Kudzu was introduced to the Southeast in 1883 at the New Orleans Exposition."

"Known as “the vine that ate the South”, kudzu, an invasive, fast-growing vine, is pervasive in the southern US.  The vine is of particular concern because it smothers and kills nearby vegetation including trees. So far, frigid winter temperatures have prevented the widespread expansion of kudzu into northern latitudes.  But that could all change.
“Kudzu is not very tolerant of winter frosts,” says Bradley.  “What if it’s two degrees warmer?  Twenty to thirty years from now, if we get enough warm winters, what happens to the New England forest?”
Climate models based on current climate trends predict an increasing range of risk for kudzu (http://www.springerlink.com/content/dm78817510323m04/fulltext.pdf).  In one hundred years, according to the models, kudzu and other invasive plants may have a stranglehold on the beloved New England forests." Go to this U.S. Fish and Wildlife site to view a very nice animated graphic showing land area in jeopardy!

"The planting of kudzu in the 1930s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture demonstrates what mistakes can be made if we do not examine the consequences of quick solutions. Kudzu is found
throughout the eastern states and is moving northward. Like all plants, it has the ability to continue to adapt. It is now found in Northern Illinois. The key reason it is not being controlled in southern states is the prohibitive cost of controlling millions of infested acres. Our only hope is to contain it and stop it on sight!" The Minnesota Native Plant Society Newsletter

A paper by Kenneth W. Cote, Nursery Inspector, Indiana DNR, Division of Entomology and Plant Pathology in 2005 does a great job explaining the problem with photos and facts.

Mr. Olmsted's company:

The Joy of the Hunt

Some days it is so much more fun to chase things than synthesize and actually write about something!  Yesterday was one of them.  It was grey out, cold, windy and all round yucky.  I curled up in my chair and stayed warm.

(Except when the husband and I went out in a snow storm to Ikea to buy a kitchen storage unit.  Varde, 3 drawer, stainless front - should hold all the baking things in the top drawer alone!) 

However, below is what greeted me this morning when I flipped open my lap top.  

What joy! 

Each tab a possible goldmine of seed info.  I know exactly what the '49ers (not the football team!) felt as they climbed the steep pass to reach the gold fields.  

But no blog to post today...  

...so this is what you get!

Enjoy your day in whatever pursuit makes you grin.

The Art of Seed Selling: The Early Days

The first catalog I posted was an 1818 broadsheet of William Prince.  It was a simple list with no descriptions.  You had to know what you were looking at.  The Prince family were botanists and horticulturists that began to sell things, but their mindset was still of the naturalist rather than salesman.  The centuries long assumption that gentlemen (and ladies) interested in natural history could use Latin to correspond still held, plus the still new-ish (1753) system of plant taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus would have been more in keeping with Prince's more scientific training.  

This is such a nice scan from Wikipedia I have to include it!

I love old books with their owners' names, marginalia,

bookplates, dog ears, and snippets stored within the pages.

This Baltimore, Maryland catalog is from 1810.  William Booth, Nursery and Seedsman, issued this catalog which is much more buyer friendly, listing the plants and seeds by their common names and giving a little bit of advice on culture.  This certainly opens up you market to many more people who, while having money, do not have a classic education.

The Hampton Mansion records note this about Booth:

"The flower beds were laid out about the year 1810, and possibly earlier, by William Booth, a man of English birth, who, according to the historian Scharf, "stood high among the earlier botanists, florists and seedsmen" of the United States, and laid out some of the finest gardens attached to the old mansions around Baltimore. Scharf says: "His own grounds on West Baltimore Street, extending south to Pratt, were celebrated for the care and exquisite culture with which they were kept." (link)

Booth didn't seem to have started a family business like Prince. His wife Margaret continued the business after his death however.  Here is the New York Times obituary of his son in April 1872.  I don't know why, but it surprised me he spent 20 years in business in Lima, Peru! 

1892 - Chariot Drawn by Butterflies - W.W. Barnard & Co

The  over-the-top fantasy of this cover is delightfully whimsical.  In spite of the chariot featuring flowers, this catalog had about 2 dozen flower species for sale, with the bulk of the content dedicated to vegetables.

The interior of the catalog has my favorite style of vegetable illustrations, black and white engravings.  Download from the Internet Archive.

Pursuing the Great Ruta Baga of Botley

Here you will find:

• a impassioned put down of potatoes containing an icky reference to a prime                       minister's habits which illustrates why the Great Ruta Baga of Botley was a convicted libeller
  
• the connection between GRB of Botley and Thorburn of Astoria

Before exploring that, look at this glowing description of Mr. Thorburn.

Wondering how the Great Ruta Baga of Botley came in close enough contact with seedsman Grant Thorburn to spark a libel suit?

According to this account, the year 1837 was marked by a ruta baga seed shortage!  I assume something in the ruta baga seed brought the GRBB and Grant Thorburn together. If you want to skip down to the Thorburn reference I marked it with red arrows.  William Cobbett, the Great Ruta Baga of Botley, was a major proselytizer for the use of rutabagas as animal feed.

And when did ruta baga become rutabaga?

Below is one page written by the Great Ruta Baga of Botley, Wm. Cobbett.  He was not a diplomatic man.  He could certainly rub a lot of people the wrong way faster than most.

It is also just plain gross in one spot!!!!

 

This book... A year's residence in the united states of america By William Cobbett contains an interesting point of view on many topics.

Sowing on Snow...Who Knew?!

Snow here today, but only a school delay.  6º F but not windy so time to pack my peanut butter sandwich and head off.  It would be more fun to stay in my nice comfy warm chair and follow a lead about Philadelphia seed houses though!

I just looked up seeds and snow and came up with this.  I didn't know about this practice.