NOM DE BLOOM: THE GARDENIA STORY

GARDENIAS GRACE MANY ALABAMA gardens, their waxy white blooms wafting a most delectable summer fragrance. But the formal naming of this shrub by the scientific community fomented an international debate fraught with intrigue, frustration, confusion, jealousy, and plenty of hurt feelings.

The story begins in Charleston, South Carolina, during the mid-1750s. There resided Alexander Garden, a talented young physician with a booming practice, recently married to the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Huguenot. Yet he was not happy. Garden felt isolated on the western edge of Western Civilization, thousands of miles removed from his native Scotland and the academic recognition he openly craved. So he sought solace through correspondence with European scientists, including John Ellis, a London merchant with a penchant for plants.

Ellis hungered for New World natural wonders, and Garden obliged by sending cases of cuttings and corms. A truc middleman, Ellis then transshipped samples of the unusual, unknown, or unfamiliar to Uppsala, Sweden, home of the acknowledged King of Botany, Carolus Linnaeus. (Linnaeus perfected and popularized the system by which scientific names were-and still are-created.) Because of Garden's strenuous efforts, Ellis beseeched Linnaeus to name something in his colleague's honor, but the King curtly refused: "I wish to guard against the ill-natured objections, often made against me, that I name plants after my friends."

Then in the summer of 1758, Ellis visited Richard Warner's garden outside London to view a particularly handsome shrub that a much-excited Philip Miller, editor of the Gardener s Dictionary, called a "Bay-Leaved Jasemin." The plant was discovered by a sea captain who, while relaxing in the South African countryside, "was most wonderfull surprised by a fine smell, and looking round, spied a large double white flower which it come from: the next day he went with two sailors and a box, took it up. . . and brought it to his friend, Mr. Warner." (It turns out that this "Cape Jasmine" was actually transplanted from China, but nobody knew it at the time.) Warner's exotic shrubbery caused near riots, at least among the gardening crowd.

Ellis jumped at the chance to name this veritable vegetable sensation, offering Linnaeus several suggestions, including Warneria (after its caretaker), Augusta (because of its elegance), and Porflandla (for the Duchess of Portland). But Warner-not wanting to upstage his patron, Miller-nixed the first, and Linnaeus ignored the other two. Finally, after much impatient waiting, Ellis sternly wrote Linnaeus in June 1760: "I desire you would please to call Mr. Warner's Jasmine Gardenia" And to force the Swede's hand: "I shall write Dr. Garden this day, that I have desired you to give the name of Gardenia to the Jasmine, which I am persuaded he will esteem as a favour."

Which annoyed Linnaeus to no end. Yes, he fully appreciated the good doctor's contributions to the most holy botanical cause, but wouldn't Garden please send something American, that he might more appropriately honor him? Finally, in October, he succumbed to Ellis' demands, replying tersely: "As you still persist in your decision, that the Jasmine so often mentioned between us should be called Gardenia, I will comply, though I cannot but foresee that this measure will be exposed to much censure." To protect himself, Linnaeus demanded that Ellis publish the new genus on his own, promising that he would adopt the name in a later edition of the King Linnaeus Bible, Species Plantarum. And so it was.

(Linnaeus likewise memorialized Ellis, describing Ellisia in that same tome. But Ellis protested that the choice of plant-a nondescript herb far unlike the glorious Gardenia-was downright insulting: "You will pardon me when I tell you that people here look on a little meanlooking plant as reflecting no honour on the person whose name is given to it!" But, perhaps out of meanness, Linnaeus stuck with the mean-looking plant.)

Now, to this point, Garden had yet to even see a gardenia! Ellis finally sent two of Garden's namesakes in late 1762-one died in transit, and the other soon after. (So Garden's garden grew no gardenias.) The physician considered their demise with much foreboding, writing sadly about the plants, "whose sudden death I take to be no good omen for the continuance and duration of my botanical name and character." (But with gardenias later re-introduced to the American South, his botanical name and character both continue and endure.)

Then things got, at least politically, quite testy. The American Revolution loomed, and Garden-forever frustrated by the lack of respect granted to colonial scientists-issued his own Botanical Declaration of Independence to Ellis:

I have often thought that you Botanical Gentlemen of Europe have used much freedom with us foreigners and Americans ... you certainly assume a dictatorial power over us & our performances; however y ou can '/ take from us the power of Grumbling & Complaining which we certainly possess in a high Degree whether you consider us as a people or as individuals. . . . This is the language of America at present & thus you see my friend that I have to adopt it in defense of our Botanical Liberty.

Despite these independent sentiments, Garden maintained a Tory's loyalty to the Crown. And following the Revolution, at the relatively ancient age of fiftytwo-with his properties seized and reputation destroyed-he returned to the mother country, "torn up by the roots & ... left to take root again-a thing never well attained by old trees." Which means he never cast eyes on his American granddaughter, Eliza Gardenia Garden, double-named like the double bloom.

Larry Davenport is a professor of biology at Samford University, Birmingham.

Copyright University of Alabama Press Spring 2005
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