Franklinia Tree Lunch & Learn

Join Jim Costa and Cynthia Woodsong for this special lunchtime program celebrating the unique Franklinia alatamaha.
About this Event

Franklinia Tree Lunch & Learn

with Jim Costa

Friday, September 4 | 12 – 1pm

BRN – Elective

In 1765 the father-son botanists John and William Bartram, of Philadelphia, first came upon a large stand of a remarkable mystery plant in the Tea family growing along the banks of the Altamaha River in Georgia. William later dubbed this “rare and elegant flowering shrub” Franklinia alatamaha, for their family friend Benjamin Franklin and the site of their discovery. Mysteriously, Franklinia soon disappeared, going extinct in nature by the century’s end. It now exists solely in cultivation, and all specimens today descend from seeds and cuttings taken by the Bartrams and a few other late 18th century collectors.

Join Jim Costa and Cynthia Woodsong for this special lunchtime program celebrating the unique Franklinia alatamaha. Jim’s talk will explore the history of the Bartrams’ discovery and the biology and cultivation of Franklinia. An added feature of the program is the opportunity to observe the Arboretum’s magnificent specimen, guided by Jim and Cynthia. Franklinia is an early fall bloomer, one happy result of which is a gorgeous juxtaposition of its large, showy white flowers with the shrub’s reddening fall foliage. If you are interested in checking out the shrub in person before the talk starts, meet at 11:30am in the parking lot near the cones where Jim and Cynthia will guide participants through an observation checklist highlighting attributes of the shrub. The group will then walk up the hill to the Education Center and the talk will take place in the classroom. Lunch is not provided but students are welcome and encouraged to purchase food from the Arbor Eatery or bring their own lunch.

This is a special Franklinia celebration not to be missed!

This program takes place in the classroom with an optional portion outdoors. Please come prepared to walk on gentle, yet uneven terrain, and dress appropriately for the weather if you join for the tree viewing before the talk.

Cynthia Woodsong is a North Carolina Master Naturalist with a certificate in Botanical Art and Illustration from the North Carolina Botanical Garden, UNC Chapel Hill. Her work focuses primarily on making realistic paper replicas of flowering plants native to the southeastern United States and conducting workshops to teach the craft to others. These paper plants are then placed in clay pots or other containers. Cynthia also incorporates paper botanicals in her “3-D botanical plates,” rendered in watercolor or colored pencil. Her work can be seen at woodsongbotanicals.org, and at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, NC.

James (Jim) Costa is Professor of Biology and Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station of Western Carolina University where he teaches biogeography, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and a comparative ecology field course in the southern Appalachians and Andes. An evolutionary biologist and Darwin and Wallace scholar, Jim’s most recent books include Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin and the Art of Botany: Observations on the Curious World of Plants (with Bobbi Angell), and The Descent of Man: An Annotated Edition of Darwin’s Classic Work (with Elizabeth Yale). Jim’s honors include the Alfred Russel Wallace Medal and the Stephen Jay Gould Prize of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and research fellowships at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the NY Botanical Garden, the University of Toulouse, and the DFG-Centre for Advanced Study at the University of Hamburg.

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