Brent Martin of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail Conservancy and co-owner of Alarka Expeditions
Sunday, May 19th | 2pm start | Sliding Scale Pricing ($5 to $25)
Brent Martin, executive director of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail Conservancy and co-owner of Alarka Expeditions, will present on the history of Franklinia alatamaha, or Franklin tree, so named after Benjamin Franklin.
William Bartram, botanist and artist, collected Franklinia in the 1770s after finding it with his botanist father John in the 1760’sand propagated it at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. The rare species was extinct in the wild by the early 1800s due to cotton farming and the subsequent introduction of the waterborne disease, phytophthora.
The species will no longer grow in its natural habitat but does very well here in southern Appalachia. Bartram was also the first to describe Mountain Camellia while travelling into Cherokee country near the Chattooga river in 1775. His descriptions of the Little Tennessee River valley are all that exist of the area from that period and are important baseline reminders of what has been altered, lost, and which is now being restored in many important locations.
Martin will talk about his own success in propagating Franklinia, and there will be specimens available for purchase at the nursery. He will also discuss the joys and pains of growing Stewartia ovata and Stewartia malacodendron in our southern mountains.
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