Portland, Oregon, has been a plantsman’s stronghold since the early days of northwest exploration.
In its immediate surroundings are many botanist landmarks, such as the old Hudson Bay trading post at Fort Vancouver, Washington (just over the river from Portland).
David Douglas and other collectors after him used it as a base for their plant-hunting expeditions.
Sleepy Hollow is another such landmark a mile or so outside the city. It is the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Leach, a house and garden rich in gardeners’ treasures.
Since their early married years, John and Lilla Leach have shared a partnership of interests, making their garden and exploring the comparatively unknown regions of Oregon together.
Leach’s Discoveries
Lilla Leach, raised on a stock farm in western Oregon, rode horses from childhood and majored in botany at the University of Oregon, subsequently establishing the Botany Department in the high school at Eugene.
John Leach, the pharmacist, is not a botanist but a countryman. He was also raised on a stock farm in eastern Oregon—and at an early age, he learned to throw the diamond hitch and became mountains.
Many botanists have found new species in recent years, but few have found a new genus.
Lilla Leach has to her credit not only the discovery of 15 species and varieties formerly unknown to science but two new genera: Bensonia Oregon and the now-famous Kentiopsis Icachiana, which is named for her.
Iris Innominata “Golden Iris”
Among the new species she collected, gardeners will probably name the golden iris (Iris innominata) as her choicest find—the “unknown iris,” as it is commonly called, because it is the first new iris to be found on the Pacific coast, since David Douglas’s days.
Sleepy Hollow contains Mrs. Leach’s collection of 6000 specimens, the harvest of many joint expeditions.
In the live-acre woodland garden they created together, the water from the foothills of Mt. Hood flows down between steep banks along Johnson Creek to join the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.
Rare Native Plants and Unusual Ornamentals
Where the beaver still has his dam, they have planted about 3,000 plant varieties, which include rare native plants and other unusual ornamentals.
Year after year, in the long spring and summer vacations, they searched for plants.
During those first rears, they collected in places within auto-reach —territories that yielded few new plants since their predecessors had worked them too well.
They decided to change their course and penetrated into the interior of Curry, Josephine, and Douglas counties along trails where only a few trappers, forest rangers, and prospectors had made their way.
John and Lilla Leach collected in this almost unknown region for nine summers of plant-hunting holidays, accompanied now by two faithful companions, Pansy and Violet, their Mexican burros.
From Sleepy Hollow, their first base, they would set out, with one donkey in the trailer, to join the other burrow waiting for them at their second base.
Pansy carried the botany presses, Violet the ax, the food, cooking utensils, and the sleeping kit. Then all together, they would explore.
Wandering is how they describe their travels across the lonely, unnamed, and unmapped territory of southwest Oregon, with Curry County as their chosen ground.
Bensonia Oregona
“We never planned a trip when searching for new species beyond choosing a spot that had not already been overridden.”
For the record, the rare saxifrage, the new genus Bensonia oregona, was discovered on June 6, 1928, at Bear Camp, a lonely spot some 35 miles west of Grants Pass, Oregon.
However, Bensonia oregona, although of botanical interest has no special horticultural value.
Kalmiopsis Leachiana
Kalmiopsis leachiana is undoubtedly Lilla Leach’s greatest contribution. On a hot day in the middle of June 1930, fatigued towards the end of a long plant-hunting day, they came out of the forest onto an arid and seemingly flowerless ridge.
“And there,” she recounts, “before us, beside the trail, lay a patch of low bush lets, evergreen, profusely covered with deep rose flowers, vivid beyond description in the sunshine.
Were we thrilled? We forgot how tired we had been. It looked a good deal like Kaintia polifolia, but it wasn’t. I thought it might be a new kahnia.”
There was a time in the Chetco River area when Lila lost the sole of one of her favorite boots that had carried her well over a thousand walking miles. They were then 40 miles from any possible repair.
There was nothing for it but to tick cloth and willow bark on the bottom until all their handkerchiefs, dish cloths, and towels were worn out, and they had to open a can of beans and cut the tin to lit, tying it on with a fishline.
This did not prevent her from collecting and pressing plants until they could regain their base and spare shoes.
Discomfort is small compared to an element of very real risk and sometimes danger.
Also, John and Lilla Leach always felt responsible for taking the burros from safe pastures, especially they remarked with a wry smile, as they could not share in the excitement of plant discovery.
Common Enemies in Oregon
Ticks and rattlesnakes were common enemies, and sometimes a mountain lion, or cougar, as they are commonly called in Oregon, would lie in wait to attack the donkeys if they thought them unprotected.
Once Lille shot a waiting cougar, they were surprised as it bounded up a Douglas fir. The crossing of creeks and rivers was often hazardous.
Burros, being desert animals, are unused to water. Even a few inches will scare them, and when forced into deep water, they will spasm and drown.
Pansy and Violet were different, and although they always needed a pushing-puffing persuasion—and sometimes argument—they always tried, terrified as they were, to swim.
Deft negotiation was needed to cross the larger rivers, with John paddling an Indian canoe and Lilla holding their heads out of the water with a tow rope. When no canoe was available, they used the air mattresses to buoy the burros up.
In the Olympics, ‘Washington, Pansy slipped on a boulder and went down the swift stream, rolling over and over until John lassoed her and pulled her to the shore.
Drying her soaked load was but a small matter compared with what might have been a total loss of both beast and burden.
Outstanding Achievement Award
Many rewards by way of recognition come to successful botanists. Among these, Lilla Leach was the first person to receive the Eloise Payne Luquer medal for distinguished achievement in botany from The Garden Club of America.
She herself, no doubt, counts her discovery of an iris and a kalmia as the greatest of all rewards: Iris innominata, the unknown; Kalntiopsis leachiana, Leach’s kahniathe one scattering its typical golden blooms, the other making low single masses of brilliant carmine deep in the fastness of southwest Oregon’s wild mountainous forest country.
The Problem of Classifying
It needs an expert, among even expert botanists, to classify correctly. KaImiopsis, though neither a rhododendron nor a kalmia, (yet resembling both), was first considered a member of the rhododendron genus.
Dr. Alfred Rehder, writing in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, gave the shrub its formal botanical christening, naming it Kahniopsis leach tuna, with the following explanation:
“The discovery in Oregon by Mr. and Mrs. Leach of a new ericaceous shrub, subsequently described by L. F. Henderson as Rhododendron leachianum is highly interesting, particularly as this shrub turns out to be a new genus related to Loisekuria and Kalinia and also to Kahula pollfolia Wangenh.”
Dr. Behder also suggested that steps be taken to reserve the forest section, the only place in the world where the rare plant lives.
Kalmiopsis In Cultivation
Today, there is a Kalmiopsis Wild Area that no road will ever cross: 320 acres of private land and 78,530 acres of national forest land, which the U.S. Forest Service has set aside to preserve the shrub in its native wilderness.
This is especially fortunate since kalmiopsis is not easy to propagate. Even Mrs. Leach, with her green thumb, had difficulty in finding the shrub’s exact requirements in her garden – slight shade and perfect drainage.
Curiously enough, it first flowered in cultivation at Kew in England, winning the Award of Merit of the Royal Horticultural Society a year or more before Mrs. Leach successfully flowered it in her garden at Sleepy Hollow.
The price of such a find cannot be estimated by those who have never traveled to the primitive areas of the continent. Discomfort is an inescapable ingredient of all such adventuring.
Sometimes they ran short of food, and once Pansy and Violet. for mischief and not from hunger, since they could always find some grazing when the oats ran out, and ate up their underclothes while they were swimming in a river.
44659 by Joan Parry