Sunday, January 27, 2013

South Carolina 7: Rice’s Tale Variants


When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

Maham is not given credit for his discovery. This posting looks at the interpretations of the origin tale as evidence of South Carolina’s evolving attitudes towards its botanical innovators. It includes an interpretation of Maham’s own comments.


Weather: Warm temperatures during the week soaked up the snow protected by shadows; yesterday’s misting rain washed more away; last rain 1/26/13; 10:18 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca. Moss is emerging in shadows where snow stayed long enough to melt into the ground.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot, sandbar willow branches. Some pink leaves are a deeper maroon. Western stickseed leaves turned purple-gray.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.


Weekly update: Alexander Salley, who became state archivist for South Carolina, reprinted eight versions of Fayrer Hall’s origin tale. Each has been retold by others. Still others have tried to combine them into a single tale, emphasizing different elements. The history of the history has moved from some attempts to explain a confusing situation, the varieties of rice found in South Carolina, to syntheses that compounded the confusion.

The first person Salley mentioned was James Glen, governor between 1743 and 1756, who reprinted Hall’s version in 1761. He emphasized chance and the irrelevance of the proprietors when he added (motif 3, see notes) “it was not done with any previous Prospect of Gain, but owing to a lucky accident, and a private experiment.” The (4) gift motif was expanded when he added it was done “for the benefit of Mankind.”

In 1766, when conflicts between the crown and the colony were escalating after the Sugar Act of 1764, Gentleman’s Magazine of London published an account by Peter Collinson, a friend of Charles Dubois, which contained many of the same motifs as Hall.


The (1) individual responsible for introducing the rice was the treasurer of the East India company, and the recipient was (5) Thomas Marsh, a Carolina merchant, after they (3) happened to meet in a coffee house. Dubois (4) gave Marsh (6) a “money bag” of (2) East India rice.

Since the quantity was so small, (9) more rice was brought by a Portuguese slave trader who (4) gave, but actually bartered, some of the ship’s provisions for fresh produce. The (3) unexpected rice (8) made men more sure rice could be a viable commodity.

However, (9) the planters still didn’t have enough, and, in 1713, the colony paid bounties to captains who brought rice. One shipment came (2) “from the Streights, probably Egypt” or Milan. Another bounty was paid for rice that came with a slave ship from (2) Madagascar.

Salley found no record of the bounties, and believed the London writer was thinking of the gratuity paid to John Thurber. What Salley didn’t mention was that the Portuguese and Madagascar ships were probably smugglers who provided cheap goods to Charles Town the way the pirates had. He did mention rice itself was smuggled to Portugal in 1708, and sold for fish that then was sent to London.

Collinson and Du Bois were both avid gardeners, active in exploring the natural resources of the colonies. Collinson imported plants collected by John Bertram, while Du Bois helped sponsor Mark Catesby trip to Charles Town in 1722. He also grew plants sent to him by his family from India.


In 1772, as rebellion against royal authority was brewing in France, a contributor to Guillaume Thomas Raynal’s history of European trade with the two Indies emphasized that the introduction was (3) “purely fortuitous,” the result of a ship returning from the (2) East Indies that (3) “happened to be cast away” and (6) “some bags” were (4) “taken from the ship.” Even so, “a trial was made of sowing them, which (8) succeeded beyond expectations”

During the war, in 1779, a Tory minister living in exile in London, Alexander Hewatt replaced the adventurer, Henry Woodward, with an idealized royal governor, Thomas Smith, who arrived in the colony in his mid-30's in 1684. When his wife died, he married Sabina de Vignon, the widow of Seigneur D’Arssens who had connections to William and Mary and the proprietors. When Sabina died in 1689, Smith petitioned the proprietors for rights to Van Arssens’ estates.

At the time the proprietors were having problems asserting their authority over the colony, and in 1693 transferred Van Arssen’s land to Smith and appointed him governor. Before he died in 1694, he tried to suppress the pirates who competed with the East India Company. I found nothing on-line about his life between the time he was born in Devon in 1648 and he appeared in the colony.


According to Hewatt, soon after Smith became governor, (3) a “fortunate accident happened” when (1) a brigantine from (2) Madagascar (3) touched on Sullivan Island outside the Charles Town harbor. Smith met with the captain who (4) “made him a present of a (6) bag of seed rice.” Smith (7) divided the rice between “Stephen Bull, Joseph Woodward, and some other friends.”

Hewatt then mentioned (9) DuBois to explain (11) “the distinction of red and white rice.”

The location of the accident and the identity of the planters have been elaborated. Sullivan’s Island was the location of the fort William Moultrie built that repulsed the first British attack on Charleston in 1776, while Hewatt was close to the last royal governor of the colony, William Bull, and probably heard family stories from descendants of Smith. Stephen Bull was William’s son, and his son, William’s grandson, also Stephen Bull, married Elizabeth Woodward. Salley couldn’t identify Joseph, who was not descended from Henry.


In 1798, after years of battle and intrigue to secure the French revolution, Raynal reissued his history and the current contributor said “opinions differ” on the introduction of rice, and he no longer thought it mattered if it came with a shipwreck, was sent by England, or brought by slaves, because what mattered was South Carolina was ideally suited to grow rice.

In 1802, another governor, John Drayton, published his version, which now gave “good government” a role. He said the first shipment of 1699 was an unprofitable variety, and it was only in 1696 that a larger, whiter variety was introduced The last is a trait associated with the rice of Hezekiah Maham, and Drayton may have been contrasting the rice that existed after the revolution, with that from before.

Drayton’s second introduction came when the (1) captain of a brigantine from (2) Madagascar (4) “presented” a (6) bag to the (5) governor (7) “who divided it between several gentlemen.” He adds, Mr. DuBois (9) “sent another parcel” which explains “the distinction which now prevails, between white and gold rice.”


In 1809, Henry Laurens’ son-in-law, David Ramsey deliberately introduced new elements. He suggested Thomas Smith “had been at Madagascar before he settled in Carolina” and that he was “an old acquaintance” of the captain of a (1) vessel from (2) Madagascar which (3) “being in distress, came to anchor near Sullivan’s Island.” The (1) ship’s cook (4) “presented” Smith with (6) “a small bag of rice.”

This time it’s Smith himself who (8) proved that rice could grow “luxuriantly.” He (7) distributed his “little crop” “among his planter friends” Salley said Ramsey went so far as to alter Edward Crisp’s 1704 map of Charles Town to mark the spot in Smith’s garden where the rice first grew, apparently unaware that the area could not have supported rice because it only had access to salt water.

Ramsey had been an active patriot during the war, jailed in Saint Augustine by the British. His more colorful version may have been influenced by Parson Weems’ attempts to create a dramatic past for the young republic with his books on George Washington and Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. The later was published in 1805, based on notes by Peter Horry, but had been repudiated by Horry.


Salley’s last reference was to a genealogist, Guy Mannering Fessenden, who discovered John Thurber was buried in Warren, Rhode Island, and noted he had brought the rice (2) from India between 1694 and 1607.

David Shields of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation has since found another variant provided by John Legare in 1823. He told the South Carolina Agricultural Society (2) “the late Col. Henry Laurens “ (3) “imported” a (6) “small quantity of what is called the Gold-seed Rice, soon after the revolutionary war” which was (8) found to be so far superior to the white-hulled Rice before cultivated.”

Shields noted there was no evidence Laurens grew rice at Mepkin between the time he returned to Carolina after the war in 1784 and he died in 1892. Legare probably thought him as a better godfather than Maham, the way Hewatt thought the titled Thomas Smith was a more appropriate agent for change than the adventuring Henry Woodward.


Many recent writers have read some, or all of the accounts mentioned by Salley, and created their own syntheses, usually within a contemporary framework. For instance, Richard Schulze, who is growing heirloom Carolina Gold rice at his Turnbridge Plantation, has elaborated the accident:

“A Liverpool-bound brigantine sailing from (2) Madagascar was (3) badly damaged by a storm and blown off course; it set into the port of Charles Towne for repairs.”

and the nature of the gift

“Dr. Henry Woodward apparently (4) befriended the captain”

From there, the modern skeptic questions the traditional facts, noting “the ship, which was of American origin, was probably not trading legally as the British law at that time forbade trade outside of the colonies and the British Isles.”

He repeats Ramsay’s idea filtered through Salley that “Woodward proceeded to grow this in his garden in the city” before suggesting it was more likely he planted the seed at “the more suitable property on the Abbapoola Creek.”

He then notes not enough time passed between the summer of 1685 when the ship entered port and Woodward’s trip to the frontier where he died for him to (8) “produce a very good crop, which he then (9) distributed to his friends.” He concludes “he probably never had the opportunity to fully appreciate (10) the new industry that he was so instrumental in spawning.”


As for Joshua John Ward’s belief that Maham’s rice came from Madagascar, it may have. There were some relations with the island where André Michaux, who had left Charleston in 1796, died collecting plants in 1802. However, it’s more likely, Maham was simply saying his rice came from the black market and the origin is deliberately unknown.

Notes:
Motifs found in origin tales that explain the introduction of rice to South Carolina

1. Someone, usually unnamed
2. From Madagascar
3. Through some accident, usually a shipwreck
4. Gave, usually as a sign of gratitude
5. To Woodward, or some other prominent person
6. A peck or some other small amount of rice
7. Which was distributed free to the other planters
8. Who proved rice could grow in the colony
9. A second introduction
10. Is responsible for the spread of the crop
11. And the visible variations in the rice

Salley, A. S. Jr “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina,” Historical Commission of South Carolina Bulletin 6, 1919.

Schulze, Richard. Carolina Gold Rice: the Ebb and Flow History of a Lowcountry Cash Crop, 2005.

Shields, David S. “Who first planted Carolina Gold?,” The Rice Paper April 2008.


Photographs: More grasses, known, unknown, and guessed.
1. I think it’s blue grama grass, because it looks like a grama, doesn’t look like the grama growing wild in the yard, and that’s the name of the seed I planted in the area where it’s growing.

2. I think it’s buffalo grass, because I mixed buffalo grass with blue grama along the one walk, and it doesn’t look like anything in the yard. It never blooms, and reproduced by sending out runners.

3. But what is this? Is it the same as the “buffalo grass” at a different stage? Or, is it Bermuda grass? Or, is it something else. It also doesn’t seem to bloom, although there is sometimes a coxcomb growth associated with it.

4. They say Bermuda grass is hard to tell from crab grass, but I think this is crab grass. The seed stalk is attached to a clump of bunch grass.

5. When I wander on the prairie, I see grasses that resemble ones in my yard whose identity is only half guessed. What do you call a guess based on an associate with a guess? This grows like the grama grasses, with narrow, similarly shaped seed heads. Only, up close, they look more ragged.

6. This grows like a ring-muhly, only the dead grasses are at least six inches high. The new growth branches out from the side, and looks reddish.

7. Another of the monsoon grasses that emerges along the edge of the drive.

8. Another of the grasses that I think just appeared after the fire. It also seems to be a monsoon grass.

9. Another monsoon grass that looks so familiar, and yet I can’t identify it.

10. An annual monsoon grass that I call “barnyard grass.” The stalks are fuzzy, the seed heads shaped like sparklers.

11. And then, there are the grasses I know too well. Cheat grass is an annual that appears in the spring, then dies into mulch.

12. A brome grass plant showed up last summer. I don’t know if it’s going a be a pest or not. It’s in the same genus as cheat grass.


13. The biggest nuisance of all. An annual spring grass I call “three awn.” One friend of mine calls it squirrel tail. Another just says, ‘Oh That!” The segments fall apart when I touch them, and each causes an itching reaction if I pick them up to keep them from reseeding.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Grasses in Winter


Weather: Last snow 1/15/13; 10:04 hours of daylight today.

Early Tuesday morning, the moisture that had been sucked from the Jémez, fell as a thin layer of snow. By afternoon, it had returned to the atmosphere, along with more of my existing snow cover.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca.

Black locust stems that held the leaf clusters are dropping on the snow. Few are left on the tree.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot, sandbar willow branches.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.


Weekly update: Rice is a wetland grass whose natural variations have been exploited by humans to produce the many types found in grocery stores today. The short grain is preferred in China for its cohesiveness. The long grain is chosen by those like me who detest gummy rice.

Our dryland grasses are as varied in their environmental preferences. And like rice, some repay the attentions paid by humans, some attack those who care for them, and others prefer the wild.

The most common here is needle grass, which tolerates the variable rain that seeps into the prairie. Some years the stems are several feet tall in late spring. In other years, the stalks remain short. The seed heads are designed to disburse. By this time, the bunches of straight, thin blades are indistinct from rice grass. The Stipta comata culms have either broken away, or hold only the remains of the sockets that once aimed the harpoon-pointed seeds at passing creatures.


Rice grass only grows in the barest soils with no competition. Oryzopsis hymenoides thrives down the road, where the owner brutally clears everything that grows several times a summer. It despises my yard, where I leave it be. Each year, it abandons the previous year’s growth along the edge of the drive. New bunches rise from the roots in late spring, that produce the always recognizable seed heads. Then, in late summer, I have to remove the dead plants as a fire hazard.


Black grama grass (at top) has established a few colonies in my yard, but haven’t created satellites. Over time they simply have expanded into irregular circles, much like the neighboring ring muhly. Both plants come with the monsoons. Bouteloua eriopoda may have been valued by the first settlers for cattle feed, but the second is more valuable after they denuded the land. Muhlenbergia torreyi's hollow circles capture monsoon water. The low tufts hold snow that create oases where other seeds can sprout. This time of year, the crosshatchings of fine, waving branches still create purple hazes.


In spring, the invaders brought by humans gravitate to the wetter areas: the cheat grass, the three awn, the June grass. The first are annuals that die away, leaving a layer of winter mulch. Koeleria cristata is a perennial that naively sprouts wherever conditions are promising in spring, then dies in early summer, leaving large, dark gray humps that don’t go away. The stiff stalks grow several feet. When the seed heads are opening, they resemble corn. This time of year, the remains of the flowers are herringboned along the tops of the culms.


My knowledge of the grasses ends when the monsoon begins. Many appear, but none look exactly like the pictures in the Range Plant Handbook. Either they are aliens brought by humans, or so variable they are unidentifiable.

When I moved here, I borrowed a copy of a guidebook to grasslands that said, in the preface, that it was covering grasses everywhere in the country, except in the southwest. The reason? There were too many. So, every year, I watch them, hoping to accumulate enough knowledge to finally identify them.

Since it started to snow in December, I’ve been out taking pictures of seed heads. The light and white backdrop reveal details that are hard to see, and harder to remember. But so far, I’m no closer with identifying any of them. If anyone knows any, I would love to hear.

In the meantime, I give some provisional labels that create a sense of familiarity. One I call black flag must be an alien. It appears after the monsoons along the shoulders of the roads. This year, a few came up for the first time in my yard, next to the newly laid gravel. The seed heads look like feather dusters or shuttlecocks. They’re black when they hold seeds. This time of year, the remains tend to be the color of bleached sand.


Another I call red silk. The clumps resembles needle grass, only the blades are shorter and much finer and take on a reddish hue. In my yard, they show up near the drive or in a path, somewhere there’s water and no company. My neighbor has gathered some, and transplanted them along the drive. Her’s look like they may have bloomed. Buried in the leaves are whirlwinds of fine threads that catch the late afternoon light.


Other grasses haven’t risen to patronymics yet. They simply exist.

One appeared as seedlings last summer, and created a colony down hill from the house after this year’s monsoons. The blades are curly. The culm is stiff. Like the one pictured above, the seed head has the same compact shape as June grass, but disintegrates. I rather suspect it may have been used somewhere last summer when they were reseeding land after the fire. That means, this may be a grass that grows about 7000 feet.

Another monsoon grass grows in a gully down the road, where vehicles have to slow. The leaves are the largest. The stalks rise nearly three feet. The flowers appear late, and alternate along the stiff stalks, then dry in fall. This time of year the survivors are gray. Someone has cut most of them to about a foot from the ground, but left the pigweed. Or, the pigweed took advantage of the added space and grew after the helpful human left.


The last grass of summer grows in gravelly patches in the arroyo bottom. The leaves and stalks are darker red. The culms tend to curve where the seeds were held. I don’t know if the seeds were heavy, or if that’s a useful dispersal mechanism. This time of year, all that’s left are puffs of lint.


Photographs:
1. Black grama grass in a clump that’s been there at least ten years. 1 January 2013.

2. Unknown grass, growing downhill from the house. 17 January 2013.

3. Needle grass growing south of the house. The snow melts around the clumps, but remains in pillows between to provide insulation. 17 January 2013.

4. Rice grass growing along my drive. 5 January 2013.

5. Ring muhly grass growing in the barren land uphill from the house. 15 January 2013.

6. June grass growing in the western shadow of the house. It and the small winterfat shrubs have melted islands around themselves. 15 January 2013.

7. Unknown grass with dark seed head. The finer seeds may either be ring muhly or the grass shown at the bottom. The blades belong to something else. 14 December 2012.

8. Unknown silky grass growing along my neighbor’s drive. 17 January 2013.

9. Unknown tall grass, growing down the road. Pigweed abounds. 17 January 2013.

10. Unknown tall grass, growing in the far arroyo. 17 January 2013.


11. Unknown monsoon grass that grows along the edge of the drive and shoulders of the road. 1 January 2013.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

South Carolina 6: Rice’s Origin Tale


When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

Maham is not given credit for his discovery. This posting gives the conventional history of the introduction of rice. I treat it as a legend.


Weather: Last snow 12/31/12; 10:03 hours of daylight today.

Afternoon temperatures have not risen much above freezing, but the sun has been bright and the snow has disappeared from open areas. Whatever moisture has remained in the air no longer has not been enough to provide cloud cover at night. Morning temperatures are getting lower and lower.

Clouds appear in late afternoon, but there are none showing on the weather maps. The moisture is not coming from an ocean. It’s been sucked out of the unprotected soil.

I begin to understand, the brutal winter climate is a much a reason only grasses grow here, as the lack of rain in summer. What else has adapted to zero air temperatures and a desiccating sun?

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot branches. Sandbar willow gotten redder.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.


Weekly update: Rice was introduced at least three times into South Carolina: first in the early years of the colony, again after the revolution when planters needed to replace their lost seed grain, and then again when Joshua John Ward made his improved selection available.

The first occurred before there were many written records and has become the subject of folk history; the second is remembered in family tradition, and the third, a commercial transaction, was recorded for all to know by the participants.

Alexander Salley found the only public record of what became the folk tradition was a 1715 entry in the journal of the House of Commons noting the body had agreed to pay a gratuity of one hundred pounds to John Thurber for “bringing the first Madagascar Rice into this province.”


He found the first narrative explanation appeared sixteen years later in a pamphlet he attributed to Fayrer Hall, who had served in expeditions against pirates in 1718. Hall wrote the introduction of rice

“was owing to the following Accident. A Brigantine from the Island Madagascar happened to put in there; they had a little Seed Rice left, not exceeding a Peck or Quarter of a bushel, which the Captain offered and gave to a Gentlemen of the Name of Woodward. From Part of this he had a very good Crop, but was ignorant for some Years how to clean it. It was soon dispensed over the Province; and by frequent Experiments and Observations they found out Ways of producing and manufacturing it to so great Perfection, that it is thought it exceeds any other in Value. The Writer of this hath seen the Captain in Carolina, where he received a handsome gratuity from the Gentlemen of that Country.”


The basic motifs of the folk narrative, told in several variants, are that:

1. Someone, usually unnamed
2. From Madagascar
3. Through some accident, usually a shipwreck
4. Gave, usually as a sign of gratitude
5. To Woodward, or some other prominent person
6. A peck or some other small amount of rice
7. Which was distributed free to the other planters
8. Who proved rice could grow in the colony


In the first retelling, the identity of Thurber was reduced to a sea captain, who was now the one from Madagascar.

Between the time Charles II granted the land to eight proprietors in 1663 and Thurber’s petition, Madagascar was not controlled by any western power. Attempts by the British had ended in 1649, while the French were massacred in 1673.

The only westerners who visited the island after that were pirates, who exploited the slave trade after they’d been driven from the Caribbean. The British finally removed them from the island about the time Thurber made his petition. By then, the Sakalava had consolidated power, and the French had established their base on the nearby island of Bourbon, now La Réunion.

Hall used the word “accident” to suggest the introduction was a chance, not deliberate act. From the first the proprietors wanted to develop a colony and listed rice as one of the crops that was both suitable to the climate and congruent with the throne’s desire to establish a completely self-sufficient mercantile economy. In 1672, William Jeffereys sent a barrel of rice “for the prop. acct of the Lords Proprs of Carolina” which was received by the governor.


Many of the early settlers never accepted the legitimacy of the proprietors and had thrown off their power in 1720. The use of the word “accident,” like the hidden reference to pirates, may have been an attempt to suggest the proprietors had nothing to do with the introduction of rice as a crop and, by extension, the success of the colony.

The double reference to rice as a gift may have been another attempt to contrast proper behavior with that of the proprietors. The third governor of the colony, John Yeamans, shipped his surplus food to Barbados where he could make a profit rather than sell it to the settlers he’d brought with him who didn’t have enough to eat.


Woodward is assumed to have been Henry Woodward, who died sometime between 1685 and 1690. He had come to the area on the exploratory voyage of 1666 and stayed with the Cusabo on Port Royale sound. He was captured by the Spanish the next year. He escaped when Robert Searle raided Saint Augustine in 1668, and stayed with the pirates until shipwrecked on Nevis in 1669.

He returned to the area with the expedition that founded Charles Town in 1670, and explored the interior. His friendly relations with the Westbo opened trade with the Indians in 1674, an arrangement rejected by later settlers who precipitated a war that exterminated the tribe and replaced them with the Shawnee.

Disgraced, he went to London in 1682 to seek rehabilitation and returned as the official Indian agent for the proprietors with rights to a 20% commission on trade. He was in trouble again in 1685 for supporting the Yamasee and Scots settlers at Stuart Town against the proprietors.

His ambiguous loyalties to pirates, proprietors, rebellious settlers and native Americans made him a figure suspect to all. He’s the element in Hall’s narrative that became the least stable.


The quantity of rice usually struck the narrator as too small to explain the spread or variations in the crop, and so a second introduction was often mentioned, much like the story of Seth resolves problems of ancestry introduced by the fight between Cain and Abel. Hall suggested that

“Mr. Du Bois, Treasurer of the East-India Company, did send to that Country a small Bag of Seed-Rice some short Time after, from whence it is reasonable enough to suppose might come these two Sorts of that Commodity, one called Red Rice in Contradistinction to the White.”

This addendum introduces the remaining motifs in the origin tale:

9. A second introduction
10. Is responsible for the spread of the crop
11. And the visible variations in the rice


Notes:
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History, 1998, on Yeamans.

Hall, Fayrer. The Importance of the British Plantations in America to this Kingdom, 1731, quoted by Salley.

Salley, A. S. Jr “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina,” Bulletin of the Historical Commission of South Carolina, no 6, 1919.

Photographs: The light on New Year’s Day was extraordinary. The sun was hidden behind clouds. Most came from reflections from the snow, which also provided a backdrop that made photographs unusually clear. All taken 1 January 2013.

1. Leather-leaf globemallow, empty flower holders; composite family.

2. Tomatillo seeds rattle in the unopened cases; nightshade family.

3. Black-eyed Susan cone, with no seeds remaining; composite family.

4. Áñil del muerto head, with a few seeds remaining; composite family.

5. Golden spur columbine, empty flower holders; buttercup family.

6. Alfalfa seeds; legume family.

7. Illinois bundle flower, empty flower holders; legume family.

8. Perennial four o’clock seed capsules, with black tongues exposed; four o’clock family.

9. Large-leaf soapwort, with black tongues exposed; pink family.

10. Yellow evening primrose, empty seed holders; evening primrose family.


11. Winterfat seed heads, some still full, some empty; composite family.

Sunday, January 06, 2013

South Carolina 5: Rice and Roses


When South Carolina congressmen became more vociferous about the supposedly false theories of modern science, I began to wonder how Charleston had ever produced the important innovations in botany that underlay its lifestyle: the selection of new types of rice and roses. Periodically, I’ll be publishing the result of my inquiries into the lives of two innovative growers, Hezekiah Maham (rice) and John Champneys (roses). Previous entries can be found under “South Carolina” in the index at the right.

Maham and Champneys were not part of the social elite who are remembered in family histories. The previous entries covered what little is known about their lives. This one provides what is known about their major achievements.


Weather: Snow from New Year’s Eve has been protecting the land since morning temperatures fell to their post-solstice lows; last snow 12/31/12; 9:54 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Few rose stems; juniper, pine, and other evergreens; yucca, garlic. Snow covered most beds.

Most seeds have been dispersed, but some are still being released. Many heads survive as ghosts of themselves, some still surprised that death came so quickly. The older ones, of course, knew and had prepared their shrouds. The skeletons reveal family likenesses.

What’s red: Cholla; apple, apricot and sandbar willow branches.

What’s grey or blue: Snow-in-summer, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow: Globe willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia, petunias.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds.


Weekly update: Hezekiah Maham and John Champneys are an unlikely pair to be the ones responsible for Charleston’s antebellum wealth and beauty. It’s even odder, given South Carolina’s current reputation for fundamentalism, that the actions of the two contributed to the growing body of experience that led people to accept Charles Darwin’s 1859 suggestion that natural selection was the operative cause of evolution.

After the war, Maham needed seed rice for his Pineville area plantation. He died four years later. In the years since he had been so deeply in debt, he must have had some success, because the next year, his younger daughter, Mary’s husband, George Haig died and left the slaves he’d acquired from Maham to his wife for her life.

In 1800, Joshua John Ward was born at Brook Green plantation to Maham’s niece, Elizabeth Cook, and John Ward. Thirty-seven years later, his overseer, James C. Thompson, noticed part of a rice head that was larger than any other Ward had seen.


Ward saved the seed, and planted it the next year on the margins of an old field where it was nearly destroyed by standing water and rats. The following year, he and Thompson planted the seed they’d been able to salvage in a large tub in Thompson’s yard, only to have a slave leave the gate open and a hog eat most of the crop. They transplanted the survivors, and most of the rice was sterile.

In 1840, they took what had survived the hog and rot, and planted half an acre. The next year, Ward planted 21 acres at Brook Green, which his factor sold above the market price. In 1842, Ward tried 400 acres, and the following year planted nothing but the new large grain.

In 1844, Ward made Carolina Gold available commercially. From then until the civil war, the Brook Green rice “commanded the highest price of any rice on the world market in Paris and London.”

Ward claimed his 1838 seed was descended from that planted by his great-uncle in 1785.


Sometime in the early 1800's, either 1802 or 1810 or 1811, John Champneys found a new rose growing on his plantation, which appeared to be a cross between a white musk, cultivated in Europe since the Crusades, and Parson’s Pink, which had been introduced to England from China in 1759.

Philippe Noisette, a son of the head gardener to the future Louis XVIII, had moved to Charleston in 1795 with his Haitian wife after the revolution there. He experimented with the rose, now called Champneys’ Pink Cluster, and in 1814 sent either seeds or plants to his brother who had a nursery in Paris. Either Philippe or Louis Claude crossed the plant with another rose. The hybrid was introduced in Europe as Blush Noisette in 1819.

Meantime, plant stock of some kind was sent to William Price, Jr., who had the best known American nursery on Long Island, and traded plants with his English suppliers. Two years before Champneys died, the Loddiges Nursery outside London offered a new rose, Champigny, in 1818.

Noisettes were the first roses to introduce the recessive gene for reblooming isolated by the Chinese into a fragrant European species. A number of new varieties appeared in France in the 1820's and 1830's. By the 1840's, they were crossed with tea roses, which led in 1867 to La France, the first hybrid tea released by Jean-Baptiste André Guillot the younger.


At the time, Louis Claude Noisette and other French growers were becoming aware of the mechanics of plant reproduction. When Rudolph Jacob Camerarius had argued in 1694 that plants had sexual organs, and pollen was the male agent of fertilization, most ignored him.

In 1729 a 22-year-old Carl Linnaeus expanded his ideas to suggest a method of classifying plants in Introduction to the Floral Nuptials. He continued his work to make reproduction the basis for his description of the natural world and external characteristics, the morphology, the criteria naturalists would use to distinguish species.

The most important work for breeders appeared in 1793, when Christian Konrad Sprengel described his practical experiments with pollination. Still, more than a generation passed before the first controlled rose hybrid was introduced by Beauregard in Angiers in 1839. Safrano, a grandparent of La France, combined a yellow China with a Bourbon, itself a spontaneous hybrid of Parson’s Pink and a damask found on La Réunion in 1823 by Edouard Perichon.


At the time Maham acquired his gold husked seed and Champneys bought his pink shrub rose, observation and selection were the only methods available to farmers to improve their crops. In 1843, Ward’s relative through his mother’s sister, Robert Allston complained that poor rice came from the “commingling of the grain” which happened when different varieties were planted in adjacent fields, and planters were “careless” in selecting their seed stock.

The year before Ward introduced Carolina Gold, Allston described the types of rice then growing in the state. His classification criteria were morphological: seed husk color, size, shape, and awns, also called beards.

The most important variety, which he attributed to Maham, had a gold shell. This coexisted with white rice, which had a creamy hull; guinea rice, which he said looked like guinea corn, a form of African sorghum or millet, and proud rice, a red grain with a white husk and awn like gold seed.

Allston contrasted these with attempts to improve the quality of the crop, either through introducing new seed or careful selection. His example of the first was a bearded variety brought from the East Indies the year before. As an illustration of “improvement” through “a long-continued, careful selection of the seed,” he mentioned the long grain rice about to be introduced by Ward.

At the time Carolina Gold and Safrano were introduced in 1844 and 1839, Darwin was back in England from his five year voyage on the Beagle and working out an explanation for the endemic species he’d seen in the Galapagos islands.

It’s his name we associate with the revolution in plant breeding, even though he drew on the work of men like Sprengel. Similarly, while J. J. Ward and Louis Claude Noisette received the credit and profits for developing new plant varieties, they needed the experience of Hezekiah Maham and John Champneys, and the support of men like Robert Allston and Philipe Nosette.

Innovation can only come from a combination of shared interests and special individuals.


Notes: Mary Charlotte Cook, Ward’s maternal aunt, married Benjamin Allston Sr. Allston’s uncle was William Allston, the father of Robert Francis Withers Allston.

Allston, Robert. A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina, 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.

Camerarius, Rudolph Jacob. Epistolae de Sexa Plantarum, 1694.

Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. “Searching the Origins of Carolina Gold,” The Rice Paper, November 2009; the “highest price” quotation.

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species, 1859.

Hurst, C. C. “Notes on the Origin and Evolution of Our Garden Roses,” 1941, reprinted in Graham Stuart Thomas, The Old Shrub Roses, 1955.

Linnaeus, Carl. Praeludia sponsaliorum plantarum, 1730.

_____. Systema Naturae, first edition 1735.

Spengle, Christian Konrad. Das entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen, 1793.

Ward, Joshua John. Letter to Robert Allston, 16 November 1843, incorporated in later editions by Allston and reprinted by the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, The Rice Paper, November 2009.


Photographs:
1. Tahoka daisy, empty seed heads, 1 January 2013, composite family.

2. Zinnia, flower head, 1 January 2013, composite family.

3. Coral bells, flower stalk, 1 January 2013, saxifrage family.

4. Heavenly Blue morning glory, seed capsule, 1 January 2013, convolvus family.

5. Datura, seed head, 1 January 2013, convolvus family.

6. Oriental poppy, seed head, 1 January 2013, poppy family.

7. Sensation cosmos, flower head with some seeds visible, 1 January 2013, composite family.

8. Garlic chives, some seeds have dropped, but not all; 1 January 2013, allium family.

9. Creeping baby’s breath, seed capsules, 1 January 2013, pink family.


10. Mexican hat, seed had disintegrating, 1 January 2013, composite family.