American Rarity Of The Tree World

One great rarity in the seas is the Conus gloria-maris or "glory of the sea", a mollusk about four or five inches long that comes from the Philippine Islands, and is especially beautiful. The latest price said to have been paid for a specimen was around $600, and, according to Dr. Paul Bartsch, not one has been found in many, many years. Plants have a peculiar faculty for slipping away from the eager naturalists who seek them, and an uncanny gift at hiding in nooks and crannies of some wall, not a stone's throw from the active hunts conducted for their special and particular benefit. Nature lovers will perhaps recall the excitement several years ago, on the re-discovery of a species of pink turtlehead that had been missing since Colonial days.

Another species, taken by Michave in the mountains of South Carolina, in 1788, and long afterward named by Gray Shortia galacifolia, was not again found for nearly a hundred years, although it had been growing quietly in its mountain home all those years. This particular species presents an attractive problem to the scientists, for it really belongs to a family of plants next to that of the heaths, with a sub-arctic range in Labrador and New England. The theory is that this plant probably had a much wider distribution in past ages, for it has a close relative in Japan, but for some reason died out, and now grows in certain parts of the mountains in the South.

Certain insects have accompanied them, and a few northern animals have left their bones as occupation. Obviously all such studies make our geography as well as our history much more entertaining and bring to us a fuller and clearer conception of that remote past of which we hear so much and know so little. Our interest in the Franklinia tree, for instance, is somewhat greater when we realize that it was first presented to society at Bartram's Gardens, in Philadelphia, the year previous to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. About fifteen years previous to that, John Bartram, a noted nurseryman, had discovered it on the banks of the Alatamaha River, near Fort Barrington, in the state of Georgia.

It was at first named the Gordonia, but this later was changed in honor of the inventor and statesman, Benjamin Franklin. Today, plant-lovers fear that the tree is extinct in the wild forests from which it came. It does not seem to be a very long-lived species, and noted botanists have made any number of trips through the South, and combed over almost every foot of the forests from which the Franklinia is said to have been taken. Expeditions have also examined adjacent states, but evidently our cultivated specimens in gardens and nurseries are all that remain of this American rarity of the tree world.

Mystery. Romance. Exploration. These three words all go together, and hold us fast to the world of Nature.