Wednesday, September 10, 2003

By Doug Oster, Post-Gazette Garden Columnist

Patricia Leiphart, of Ambridge, carefully positions a dried plant onto what looks like stiff construction paper. When it is in place, she gently pushes down on the stem and then the flowers, assuring that the glue applied during the preceding step would hold.

She was taking part in a recent workshop at Old Economy Village, led by James Reveal, co-author of "Lewis and Clark's Green World, the Expedition and Its Plants."

Leiphart and others were mounting plants in the same manner that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark might have during their journey 200 years ago.

Reveal explains that discovering new plants was one of the driving forces behind the pair's expedition, which began in 1803.

"[President Thomas] Jefferson's instructions to Lewis were very simple. He was to report on all the plants they saw, when they flowered, when they formed fruit. He was specifically to look for plants that were of agricultural use, medicinal use, possible forage plants and plants that possibly were of value in the flowering garden."

From 1804 until 1806, more than 200 specimens were sent back to Philadelphia. Many were new to science, and a wide variety still grows in our gardens today.

Reveal, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland, first fell under Lewis and Clark's spell as a graduate student in 1964. He was able to examine the actual specimens the explorers sent back at the Academy of Natural Sciences herbarium in Philadelphia where the dried plants still reside.

The experience had a profound effect on him.

"You can imagine looking at a plant and touching a specimen that someone like Meriwether Lewis gathered over 200 years ago, and just the feeling of awe. Knowing that specimen was carried by horse, by man, on water, by stagecoach [and] by barge."...

Some of the plants sent back east were successful immediately. Most of those were agricultural in nature. Lewis was interested in currents and gooseberries, and those went instantly into cultivation.

"For example, ... the creeping Oregon grape, which you can see growing in Pittsburgh today in numerous gardens, was introduced and widespread in Europe by the late 1820s," Reveal said.

Ornamental plants eventually made their way into the landscape. He mentions three in particular, mock orange and two named for the two explorers.

The first, Lewisia, is the state flower of Montana. The plant, also called bitterroot, fills the floor of the prairie in the spring with radiant flowers of white and pink.

"Indians tried to get him to eat it. He said it was terrible to taste but his American Indian compatriots readily ate it. Intriguingly, when he got back to Philadelphia the plant was still alive, and thus the flowers were saved."

Clarkia, or pinkfairies, is named for William Clark. It has very large, colorful bracts and tiny flowers. The combination makes it a beautiful garden plant. It's a long-blooming annual that enjoys a hot, sunny location.

Leiphart volunteers at the village and is fascinated by the history of the plants. She was especially interested in the local connection the expedition holds and explains what we can still learn from it today.

"The Lewis and Clark expedition got started here in Pittsburgh; today we seem to be so separated from where our source of food supply is.

"I think it's important to teach visitors [that] the things that are growing in the natural world around them are things that were available for people to eat and to use and to heal themselves, and these types of plants are still growing ... to teach people to recognize them and to understand what benefit they have for us as human beings."

Reveal wants people to come away from his workshops with a true understanding of the journey.

"Contrary to the advertised vernacular, Lewis and Clark's expedition was not a 'corps of discovery.' People tend to forget that Lewis was always with people, Americans Indians.

Lewis never said he followed an unexplored route; he always said he followed a trail and even a road. It was not a corps of discovery, it was a corps of observers looking at a culture that had existed for almost 10,000 years and making new observations for the Western world; in that sense it was discovery. But the plants were already known; they already had American Indians names. The Americans Indians were the real discovers -- they were the corps of discovery. Lewis and Clark were observers."

In 1998, the academy asked him to review the plants again to be sure the nomenclature was up to date. Next summer he begins his own journey of discovery.

He'll traverse the country collecting the same plants Lewis and Clark did.

Funded by the National Geographic Society, the project will compare the plants of today with those brought back by the duo using today's genetic testing.

"We're going to be able to create a display which we hope will be available 200 years from now so that future researchers can use technologies we can't even imagine to compare our plants collected this year vs. those collected by Lewis and Clark 200 years before to us. So we're looking ahead like Lewis and Clark did."

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden, Squirrell Hill, is presenting "The Adventures of Lewis and Clark." The exhibit runs through Oct. 12.

The show highlights some of the different environments that Lewis and Clark encountered and how they relied on plants for survival. It also showcases more than 50 of the plants that the two identified and sent back from the journey.

The conservatory is open 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday (closed on Mondays) and is open until 9 p.m. on Fridays.

James Reveal's photographs of the plants discovered by Lewis and Clark can be viewed online at www.life.umd.edu/emeritus/reveal/pbio/LnC/l&cimages.html.

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