Arnoldia

Recent books arriving in the Arnoldia office: TREELINE, by Ben Rawlence, about our longtime entanglements in the boreal forest, now in flight from climate change; poet Colin Cheney’s collection, HERE BE MONSTERS; the lovely TRUNKS OF THE GUNKS, with its portraits of the wild trees of the Shawangunk Mtns.; and ACCIDENTAL WILDERNESS, which details the fascinating emergence of Toronto’s great lakeside urban wild. And oh my, there’s your editor’s own TREE, too!

Today, on the first day of fall, we're dreaming about this incredible valley in Azerbaijan that is filled with Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica)—what a kaleidoscopic display! Read about a botanical expedition into the valley in a recent article by Phillip Douglas and Henrik Sjöman: https://bit.ly/2Zbam8r

Photo by Phillip Douglas.

Congratulations to Carter Wilkie, whose Arnoldia article on horticulturist Henry F. du Pont was awarded a gold prize for magazine writing by GardenComm.
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In his article, Wilkie narrates how du Pont created an enduring masterpiece at Winterthur Museum and Gardens, "acquiring plants with the zeal of an obsessive-compulsive collector on an unlimited budget."

Collector on a Grand Scale: The Horticultural Visions of Henry Francis du Pont - Arnold Arboretum In 1924, the Arnold Arboretum’s first director, Charles Sprague Sargent, named a new hybrid buckeye, Aesculus × dupontii, in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum and praised the tree’s namesake, the du Ponts, for making the vicinity of Wilmington, Delaware, “one of the chief centers of horticu...