Post by castanea on Jun 9, 2016 23:46:23 GMT -5
Not sure where best to put his, so here goes....
This is a fascinating article about a cool woman who brought jacaranda trees to Los Angeles, and if you've never driven around LA when they're in bloom, it's a beautiful show.
Some excerpts:
"By 1916, naturalist Charles Francis Sanders would write that driving Foothill Boulevard (the precursor of the 210 freeway) was “nothing short of entrancing” when “the jacaranda trees are a cloud of blue,” and by 1920, the L.A. Times would call the trees, now “not uncommon,” the “finest foliage of any used for street planting.”
And for their profusion, we have but one person to thank, a pioneering woman who was arguably the Johnny Appleseed of not just jacarandas, but a host of other iconic Southern California flora.
Her name was Kate Sessions and she spent more than 50 years importing seeds and plants into Southern California. She is credited with introducing and popularizing more than 143 species in Southern California, including our beloved bougainvillea, birds of paradise, yellow oleander, star jasmine, and, of course, jacaranda trees."
"“Her mind,” as San Diego historian Clair Crane once said, “was blank to everything except horticulture.” Sessions discovered that here in California, under the great western sun, things could grow that would never survive back east. She sought out plants that needed little water, and began to introduce many of the tropical species that had first caught her eye when she travelled to Hawaii at 18, along with exotic plants and trees from Latin America and others parts of the world that would be suitable for the Southern California climate and landscape.
Sessions opened her first nursery San Diego nursery in 1885. Then 28, she would soon become the leading plant dealer in the area, her rise coinciding with a time of explosive growth in the region. Through her nurseries (she would own a succession of them, in Coronado, City Park, Mission Hills and Pacific Beach), Sessions wielded enormous influence over the physical character of the rapidly developing residential areas of San Diego and its environs."
The full article is here:
laist.com/2016/06/09/jacarandas.php
This is a fascinating article about a cool woman who brought jacaranda trees to Los Angeles, and if you've never driven around LA when they're in bloom, it's a beautiful show.
Some excerpts:
"By 1916, naturalist Charles Francis Sanders would write that driving Foothill Boulevard (the precursor of the 210 freeway) was “nothing short of entrancing” when “the jacaranda trees are a cloud of blue,” and by 1920, the L.A. Times would call the trees, now “not uncommon,” the “finest foliage of any used for street planting.”
And for their profusion, we have but one person to thank, a pioneering woman who was arguably the Johnny Appleseed of not just jacarandas, but a host of other iconic Southern California flora.
Her name was Kate Sessions and she spent more than 50 years importing seeds and plants into Southern California. She is credited with introducing and popularizing more than 143 species in Southern California, including our beloved bougainvillea, birds of paradise, yellow oleander, star jasmine, and, of course, jacaranda trees."
"“Her mind,” as San Diego historian Clair Crane once said, “was blank to everything except horticulture.” Sessions discovered that here in California, under the great western sun, things could grow that would never survive back east. She sought out plants that needed little water, and began to introduce many of the tropical species that had first caught her eye when she travelled to Hawaii at 18, along with exotic plants and trees from Latin America and others parts of the world that would be suitable for the Southern California climate and landscape.
Sessions opened her first nursery San Diego nursery in 1885. Then 28, she would soon become the leading plant dealer in the area, her rise coinciding with a time of explosive growth in the region. Through her nurseries (she would own a succession of them, in Coronado, City Park, Mission Hills and Pacific Beach), Sessions wielded enormous influence over the physical character of the rapidly developing residential areas of San Diego and its environs."
The full article is here:
laist.com/2016/06/09/jacarandas.php
