Donnelly Oceantics: RESEARCH AND CONCERT AT THE GARDEN

National Tropical Botanical Garden Research

In March Gil and I were invited to have lunch with Chipper Wichman, CEO of National Tropical Botanical Garden with Kathy Valier and her husband David Speer. Chipper has been in charge of NTBG for 38 years. And while we had visited the garden many times, we had never spent time in the research and administration building that includes the library.

Juliet Rice Wichman Botanical Research Center
NTBG Headquarters Complex
3530 Papalina Road
Call (808) 332-7324, ext. 227 for viewing information

NOTE: to tour the garden go to the entry in Poipu just across from Spouting Horn

Currently there is an exhibit of 30 prints of drawings done by Joseph Banks who was the naturalist/botanist on the first of Captain James Cook’s three voyages to the Pacific. The sketches he brought back to England in the 1770s were engraved on copper plates and forgotten. In 1974, 200 years later, a ten year process started to make 100 sets of prints from the original plates. NTBG has one of those sets as well as many other priceless collections.

Not only did we get to see the exhibit of 30 of them in the main library (open to the public), we got to go into the archival, climate controlled room that houses the rare book collections. It takes three people to get in: two people with separate keys turn locks on the door while another person punches in a key code some distance away.

Chipper showing us samples of his treasures

We actually handled this book written in the 1100s

Joseph Banks engravings in large green portfolios at far right

Chipper gave us a synopsis of the saga of a Dutch botanist and author named Rufious that Gil and I had read about some time ago. In the early 1700s he was not expected to live so he traveled far from home to die. His health improved and In the process he completed an exhaustive botanical work that was ultimately lost at sea. With benefit of a photographic memory he rewrote it and that second manuscript was burned up in a fire. He then became blind and Rufious' son rewrote it a final time as his father dictated. In hopes of his work getting published, they gave it to the Dutch government and he finally did die. The government however did not want to share the knowledge with their competition – the British and Portuguese marine traders, so they hid it from the world.

Somehow, hundreds of years later, NTBG acquired the book with the drawings and a text in both archaic Dutch and Latin; they needed a translator. The scholar who took on the job was a great fan of Rufious and moved to Kauai for the work. He was then diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live. Considering the story of Rufious, he refused his own death sentence and spent the next ten years translating it. Upon the news that Yale Press agreed to finally publish the book, he died. This was no small undertaking – the current version is six volumes!

The Ambonese Herbal Vol. 5

New on left, version on right is archaic Dutch in one column and Latin in the other

Following a few more stories, we toured the architectural marvel of the administration buildings. Then Mike DeMotta took over, head of the native plant division for NTBG, our outdoor tour starting with the mist house. (See post June 2013.) It was great to be here again.

A far cry from the humidity controlled room in the library, the mist house tries to recreate the ambient humidity that occurs in the island rain forests at higher elevations.

Mike DeMotta and Kathy Valier

Mike's mist house

Kathy does weeding and native planting at mountain tops where she is helicoptered in,

very familiar with many of these plants

These are individually known plants, who collected the seed and where, and approximately how many are left – anywhere in the world – sometimes a handful sometimes the only ones left are right here.

Mike was particularly excited about this one flowering for him. Flowers mean potential seeds, seeds mean potential new plants.

Flowering between leaves at top

Detail of the flowers

CONCERT IN THE GARDEN

So it was pretty cool to find ourselves at the 50th anniversary of National Tropical Botanical Garden's concert just a month later. Hawaiian slack key guitar should be heard outside, in the sun or under the trees - everyone free to wander around.