Reviewed by Caroline McCullagh, for Let's Talk Plants! Originally published in October 2010, republished November 2024.
(Gertrude Ellen) Lester Rowntree was an original. She was born in England but came to America in 1889 when she was ten years old. Reportedly, she had an urge to wander almost from birth. She came into her own when she and her husband divorced in 1931. She spent the rest of her long productive life wandering California eight months of the year, from Death Valley to the top of the Sierras, photographing and collecting native plants and seeds. You probably have many of those plants in your garden because of her efforts. Her book was originally published in 1936, but it went out of print because the publisher sacrificed the bookplates to the war effort. Now the University of California has reprinted it with several additions. I don’t like to fill up a review with long quotes, but there’s a paragraph in the biographical addition to this book that, I think, really gives you a sense of Rowntree.
“The plant stalking business is not all beer and skittles. Fatigue brings moments when you are drenched in gloom. Intense heat, severe cold, attacks of loneliness, the limited diet, thunder and lightning swooping above you as you cling to the crest of some bald mountain, all carry with them times of profound misery. Dust and ants get in your food, burrs and stickers in your clothes, snakes in your sleeping bag, insects sting, water runs low, definitely marked trails dwindle into deer tracks, and bears raid the food supply. None of these discomforts are so great that the spirit of enthusiasm cannot surmount them.”
Rountree published close to 1,000 articles and six books between 1928 and 1959, including children’s books, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that her writing is so good. The main body of the book describes one of her annual trips through the biogeographical areas of California, sleeping in her car when it rained or snowed and, on the ground, otherwise. She lived on beans and bread much of the time. She often had to use a donkey to carry her heavy photographic equipment. She’d set up and then wait for the wind to let up and the light to be right. She carried a set of “lady clothes” for when she ran short of money. She’d stop for a while, give one or more talks, and head back for the life she loved in the wilderness.
Even more interesting to me than her descriptions of the plants were her descriptions of the places she went. It led me to think, with longing, about the way California used to be before it became so densely populated and paved.
Hardy Californians (ISBN-13: 978-0-520-25051-2) is published by the University of California Press. It’s paperbound, 391 pages, and includes the original text of the book and 64 of Rowntree’s photos plus a biographical essay, an essay on her contributions to horticulture, an index, and an updated list of plant names. Used copies can be found for sale and in some libraries. Hardy Californians by Lester Rowntree | Open Library
More about Lester Rowntree from the April 2008 newsletter. . .
The Real Dirt On… Lester Rowntree
By Christy Powell, a plant propagator at the San Diego Zoo.
Lester Rowntree was best known for her diligent study of California native plants and her passion to protect this natural beauty. She built a house on a hillside south of Carmel, California, overlooking Pt Lobos and the Pacific Ocean. However, in her 18 years of fieldwork she lived there only a few months of the year; the rest of the year she spent trekking up and down the state of California. She spent months living on beans and rice collecting seeds, herbarium specimens, and photographs of the vast number of species native to the deserts, mountains, and forests.
“I inhabit my hillside only from November to February, while the winter storms are blowing and the winter rains pouring. In March and April I have long shining days on the desert, in May happy weeks in the foothills, where a chorus of robins wakes me and my morning bath is in a rushing stream of just-melted snow. In June I am in the northern counties scented with new-mown hay and wild strawberries. In July in the higher mountains, and in August and September up in the alpine zone with mule or burro.” (Lone Hunter, The Atlantic Monthly, June 1939)
Rowntree was born on February 13, 1879, in England. Her given name was Gertrude Ellen Lester. She came to prefer her last name, and after she married Bernard Rowntree in 1908, she went by the name Gertrude Lester Rowntree. When she and Bernard divorced in 1931, she took on the name Lester Rowntree, the name that she is known by in her writings and fieldwork. Her name change also aided in masking her gender since most botanists and fieldworkers at the time were males.
Lester’s father was a gardener and botanist and moved the family to Kansas when Lester was 10. She and her family moved to different parts of the country, including Missouri, California, and Pennsylvania, where she attended Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school. In 1908 she married Bernard Rowntree, an engineer working in Manhattan. Lester enjoyed creating a beautiful garden in her yard in New Jersey. Her neighbors were shocked to see her gardening in pants! She and Bernard had one son and when Lester was 52, she and Bernard divorced. She then moved to California and spent the next 48 years fulfilling her yearning to discover and intimately research the native flora here.
“Intelligent collecting is a conservation measure; indeed, the work is legitimate only when done with knowledge and forethought, and when the motive is the preservation of the plants themselves.” (Hardy Californians. 1936. Macmillan)
In her lifetime, Lester Rowntree wrote two reference books, Hardy Californians (1936) and Flowering Shrubs of California (1939), several children’s books, and over 700 articles. She concentrated her writings on her extensive fieldwork, the history of native flora, and how these native plants could be used in backyard gardens.
One example of her influence in the nursery trade is Arctostaphylos ‘Lester Rowntree’. This manzanita is a hybrid of A. pajaroensis grown at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden from seed supplied by Lester. Arctostaphylos Lester Rowntree - Linda Vista Native Plants Photo from Linda Vista Native Plants lindavistanatives.com
Other accomplishments in her life include an appointment of honorary president of the California Native Plant Society in 1965 and a like award given by the California Horticultural Society in 1974. Lester Rowntree died in Carmel, California in 1979, three days after her 100th birthday.
More to read from Pacific Horticulture | Lester Rowntree — A Hardy Californian
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