Matthaei Botanical Gardens
Martin Vloet, U-M Photo Services, except for agave plant by Sam Hollenshead
The variegated agave plant
Spread over more than 700 acres in several locations in and around Ann Arbor, Matthaei Botanical Gardens is a living museum of formal gardens, prized botanical collections, diverse ecosystems, greenhouses, and research facilities. “Unlike a typical museum, we don’t have the freedom to rearrange a gallery,” says Associate Curator David Michener. “Each area is an object, one that contains ephemeral items that can change from day to day, sometimes in ways we can’t control. But the Desert House is the most consistently dramatic space in the Gardens.” The Desert House features several cacti and other specimens collected in the early 20th century by Professor Elzada Clover (M.A. ’32, Ph.D. ’35), the first woman to have earned a doctorate in botany from LSA and to survive a boat trip through the Grand Canyon. “Many of the plants are from her expeditions to the then unknown American Southwest,” says Michener. In 1934, another explorer, Alfred Whiting (M.A. ’34), collected wild seed in Mexico that produced one of the Desert House’s most popular plants, the variegated agave. The huge plant features striped leaves and takes a form some have likened to an octopus. “It’s taller than I am, if you straighten the leaves,” says Michener. Variegation patterns in leaves are not just dramatic. “At times, they are used to illustrate growth patterns in plants, since the variegations are also cell lineages within tissue,” he says.
fall 2009 LSA n 23