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Gardens Illustrated, "Hunting and Gathering" - December 2003/ January 2004.
For more than a decade, Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones have travelled the workd collecting seed. Tim Longville asks them about their 2001 Korean expedition.
Over the last 20 years Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones have turned Crûg Farm near Caernarfon from a beef farm into one of the most respected plant nurseries in the world. At the same time, they've turned themselves into plant hunters so dedicated and successful that they rival any of the heroic names from the past. Every autumn since 1991 they've mounted expeditions to at least one country and sometimes to as many as four. The result has been an accessions list that now runs to an astonishing 12,500 items, "while the roll call of places from which they've collected includes Jordan, Taiwan, Japan, Nepal, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, West Bengal, Laos, Vietnam, Guatemala and Korea.
Asked about the motives behind their plant-hunting passion, Sue smilingly emphasises the pleasures that accompany it. "We've always
enjoyed travelling, seeing different landscapes, meeting different people, sampling different cultures - and of course their foods! Plant hunting gives that enjoyment a serious purpose." Bleddyn, though, emphasises the purpose itself. "There are so many plants in danger of extinction. My aim is to get as much of that stuff into cultivation as I can. As far as I'm concerned, even the nursery is a by-product of our real purpose, which I see as the attempt to conserve plants by getting them growing in as many different places as possible. Of course, we have to make a living so I do look for interesting forms of plants that are already in cultivation. But if it conies to a choice between collecting something that is hortculturally interesting and something that is botanically interesting because it hasn't previously been collected or even described, thenthe botanically interesting takes priority, every time - though of course in reality I'd collect both." And, as he points out, it is very easy for plants to be missed. New species continue to be discovered even in countries plant hunters frequently visit. Bleddyn and Sue visited South Korea for the third time in the autumn of 2001 and added around 500 new items to their accessions list.
Over the course of their visits to Korea, Bleddyn and Sue have made many friends. They pay particular tribute to the late Ferris Miller, who died just after their 2001 visit. He was an American who served in the Korean War and never really went home. Instead, he founded an arboretum and self-sufficient community at Ch'ollip'o, on a peninsula below Seoul. It was while looking for Ch'ollip'o Arboretum on their first visit in 1993 that they ran across Dan Hinkley of Heronswood Nursery in America, with whom they've since been on many expeditions. 'Ran across' almost literally: "We were driving down a track and there was this road-weary hobo coming towards us. We stopped to ask the way, bonded on the spot, and next day set off down the road with him. It's just gone on from there."
From their point of view, South Korea is a perfect plant-hunting location. It has the ideal combin¬tion of a current 'first world' economy, mainly concentrated around the vast city of Seoul, and a still-surviving traditional rural way of life in the thinly populated
hinterland. The infrastructure of roads and small hotels (yoghuans) produced by the country's recent prosperity means that travelling is quick, easy and cheap: a relief after expeditions to some other countries, where plant hunting still takes the traditional form of slow and expensive squads of porters carrying food and bedding along precipitous tracks - with the added hazards of terrorists or drug smugglers.
The great advantage of Korea, says Bleddyn, is that "just about everything from there is bone hardy in the UK, even if it comes from right on the shoreline. That's because their winters are so cold. Indeed, we occasionally have trouble germinating the seed because it needs such low-temperature stratification first". So how many good plants for British gardens have they found? "More than you could write about," he laughs. For example, there's a Ligularia species, with big solid leaves and a broad, short, solid-flowering spike, to which he's given the name 'Cheju Charmer'. Why? "Because it's a bloody good plant and if I just put it out as 'sp ex Korea' no one would buy it!" Equally imposing are the huge-leaved herbaceous Aralia species, such as A. cordata, which grows two metres or more in a season. "That's what I call instant gardening." Another was an aconitum, A. jalu-ense, which they found on the islands off the south coast of Korea. "Masses of it were covering the forest understorey the way bluebells do in British woods," said Bleddyn. "It has the largest flowers we've found on any aconitum and they're a wonderful deep cobalt blue."
After a long day spent hunting for plants, they spend their evenings cleaning seed and writing up notes on the day's collections. Bleddyn also carries a Palmtop so he can email the necessary details back to both DEFRA and nursery staff. They usually send seed back airmail to the UK before they depart. "We don't need huge quantities of seed so we just pack it up into little wage packets," he says. Once back at the nursery, the seed must go into quarantine for a minimum of 18 weeks. "That means until the following spring, by which time plants have long since germinated and are gasping for natural conditions."
And then, of course, there's the problem of finding out exactly what the seedlings are. "We make a lot of use of local Floras and the knowledge of local experts," says Bleddyn. But there's no English version of the Korean Flora, which makes life difficult, so visitors to the nursery with specialist knowledge are always being asked to help establish names. Dan Hinkley has helped with acers, for example, and James Compton with thalictrums and actaeas.
An exchange we had about one discovery on that 2001 trip summed up many of the pleasures and pains of the plant-hunter's life, in which 15 hour days in the field are followed by equally long days either cossetting young plants in the nursery or trying to identify them. One strikingly attractive, metre-tall plant had aromatic foliage, bronzy
new growth, and fluffy blue flowers. My question was simply, "What is it?" "Well," said Bleddyn, "I thought it was Agastache rugosa. Then a Korean Flora had it as Rabdosia serra. But the RHS Plant Finder has it as Isodon serra!' Whatever its formal ID, though, it's always had the same 'nursery' name: 'Korean Zest'. Nothing could be more apt, either for the plant, the place, or the people who found it.
FACT FILE
Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones highlight some of the plants now in cultivation from their 2001 trip.
These are plants that have only just become available at the nursery or will be available during 2004, as it usually takes between two and three years to produce stock of saleable size in worthwhile quantities.
1. Viburnum awabuki isn't tough and
needs a sheltered site. But it earns it. It
is evergreen, with large, glossy leaves,
and looks fabulous when it's covered
in its red fruit. Eventually, it reaches
an imposing five metres in height.
We're still engaged in discussions
with the RHS about its identity, but
V. awabuki is what it's called - at
least for the moment.
2. Echinops setifer (BSWJ 841 6) is a
particularly good, tall, blue-flowered
species, which we found near the
west coast of Korea, in light woodland
with sandy, well-drained soil. Given
these conditions it should flourish
in British gardens.
3. Clematis urticifolia is a fine herba
ceous or sub-shrubby clematis, which
grows to a height of about two metres.
The species has blue flowers and the
advantage of being late-flowering -
often into October. It seems to dislike
being in pots so be sure to get it in
the ground as quickly as possible.
However, there's no need for deep
planting since this species is not one that suffers from clematis wilt.
4. Sedum vivicarum is a border
sedum that grows up to half a metre
tall. It has broad cymes of greeny-
grey flowers and the stems, perhaps
its best feature, are either deep red
or purple in colour. It needs sun and
good drainage - and is great for self-
seeding in gravelly places.
5. Two fine filipendulas for cool, moist
shade are F. palmata var. rufinervis, with palmate leaves and
broad corymbs of white fluffy flowers,
and F.formosana with pink flowers.
6. Acer takesimense, which grows only
at the highest levels on a single Korean
island, is in effect a superior form of
A. pseudosieboldianum. It is very slow
growing, but eventually it will make
a large shrub or small tree. Its virtues
are its wonderfully lobed leaves and
brilliant autumn colour.
7. One of our new Korean thalictrums is
particularly pretty, with pink pompom
flowers and attractive, large, lobed
leaflets. It grows up to 1.5 metres
tall. We thought it was Thalictrum
actaeifolium var. brevistylum but we've
given some plants to botanist James
Compton to assess and he thinks it may
in fact be a completely new species.
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