The Huntington Library Christmas 2013

Did You Know? - The Huntington Desert Garden is part of The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. The Desert Garden is one of the world's largest and oldest collections of cacti, succulents and other desert plants, collected from throughout the world.

It contains plants from extreme environments, many of which were acquired by Henry E. Huntington and William Hertrich (the first garden curator) in trips taken to several countries in North, Central and South America.

One of the Huntington's most botanically important gardens, the Desert Garden brought together a group of plants largely unknown and unappreciated in the beginning of the 1900s.

Containing a broad category of xerophytes (aridity-adapted plants), the Desert Garden grew to preeminence and remains today among the world's finest, with more than 5,000 species in the 10 acre (4 ha) garden.

Did You Know? - A group of mature Golden Barrels (Echinocactus grusonii) showing their distinctive clustering habit. The Golden Barrel collection at the Huntington may be the finest in the world.

Did You Know? - Australia's long (60 million years) isolation from other land masses has allowed development of a unique flora and fauna. Vascular plants are currently estimated at 18,000 to 20,000 taxa with an eventual 25,000 expected once the flora is completely surveyed and described. Ancient geology has resulted in a mosaic of soil types, allowing a large diversity of species to occur in small localized areas. The majority of plants are pollinated by vertebrates rather than insects.

Australian climate and vegetation ranges from desert to rainforest to alpine, though the millions of years of weathering have left a relatively flat topography, with the tallest mountain, Mt. Kosciusko, only 7316 feet tall. Southwestern Australia and the southwestern area of South Australia into western Victoria is one of the five Mediterranean climate regions of the world (the others being California, central Chile, the Cape Province of South Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin).

Did You Know? - Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt and Southern Sudan as far back as the fourth millennium BCE.

The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012-2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. These documents date from ca. 2560-2550 BCE (end of the reign of Khufu).

In the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins.

Sheets of parchment were folded to form quires from which book-form codices were fashioned. Early Christian writers soon adopted the codex form, and in the Gr?co-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices.

Codices were an improvement on the papyrus scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking and a long roll, or scroll, was required to create large-volume texts.

Papyrus had the advantage of being relatively cheap and easy to produce, but it was fragile and susceptible to both moisture and excessive dryness. Unless the papyrus was of perfect quality, the writing surface was irregular, and the range of media that could be used was also limited.

Did You Know? - Gossypium is the cotton genus. It belongs to the tribe Gossypieae, in the mallow family, Malvaceae, native to the tropical and subtropical regions from both the Old and New World.

The genus Gossypium comprises around 50 species, making it the largest in species number in the tribe Gossypioieae. New species continue to be discovered. The name of the genus is derived from the Arabic word goz, which refers to a soft substance.

Cotton is the primary natural fibre used by modern humans. Cultivated cotton is also a major oilseed crop, as well as a main protein source for animal feed. Cotton plants thus have an enormous weight in the world economy and are of great importance for the agriculture, industry and trade of many tropical and subtropical countries in Africa, South America and Asia. Consequently, the genus Gossypium has long attracted the attention of scientists.

The origin of the genus Gossypium is dated to around 5-10 million years ago. Gossypium species are distributed in arid to semiarid regions of the tropics and subtropics. Generally shrubs or shrub-like plants, the species of this genus are extraordinarily diverse in morphology and adaptation, ranging from fire-adapted, herbaceous perennials in Australia to trees in Mexico.

Did You Know? - Ginkgos are large trees, normally reaching a height of 20?35 m (66?115 feet), with some specimens in China being over 50 m (164 feet). The tree has an angular crown and long, somewhat erratic branches, and is usually deep rooted and resistant to wind and snow damage. Young trees are often tall and slender, and sparsely branched; the crown becomes broader as the tree ages.

During autumn, the leaves turn a bright yellow, then fall, sometimes within a short space of time (one to 15 days). A combination of resistance to disease, insect-resistant wood and the ability to form aerial roots and sprouts makes ginkgos long-lived, with some specimens claimed to be more than 2,500 years old.

Did You Know? - Pyracantha berries are mildly poisonous as they contain Cyanogenic glycosides and can cause mild gastro-intestinal problems; they are edible only when crushed and washed under running water. They have been made into jelly.

The berries of the Firethorn ? high in Vitamin C ?? are actually pommes, which is a fleshy fruit with seeds at the core, like apples. They are greatly favored by Black Birds and Cedar Waxwings, which have been know to strip a tree of all its berries. To the human pallet, the berries are soft and mealy ? like an apple that should have been eaten last week ? of mild flavor and many seeds. The seeds are shaped like tiny angular Brazil nuts. Some report the berries are bitter, but that has not been my experience.

Do You Remember? - "Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic witch living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children save their lives by outwitting her.

The fairy tale may have originated in the medieval period of the Great Famine (1315?1321), which caused people to do some desperate deeds like abandoning young children to fend for themselves, or even resorting to cannibalism.