Beyond the Garden Fence: How John Macoun Transformed Canadian Botany
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
July 19, 1920
On this day, dear garden friend, John Macoun, one of Canada's leading botanists, departed this mortal realm at the ripe age of 90.
A man who could find more strawberries and birds' nests than any other boy has finally found his eternal rest, though his botanical legacy continues to bloom across our fair dominion.
Our dearest readers must indulge in this charming anecdote from Macoun's Irish childhood, revealing the earliest stirrings of his botanical obsession:
"We had a garden well fenced in.
She encouraged us to spend our idle time in it...
I seemed to prefer taking an old knife and going out to the fields and digging up flowers and bringing them in and making a flower garden of my own.
I only remember primroses and the wild hyacinth.
Another characteristic was the power of seeing.
I could find more strawberries and more birds' nests ... than any other boy."
One cannot help but admire the young Macoun's discerning eye and rebellious spirit—eschewing the confines of the family garden for the wild treasures of the fields beyond.
A natural-born plant hunter from the start!
Upon reaching Canadian shores, our botanical hero initially toiled as a humble farmer before wisely pivoting to the more intellectually stimulating profession of schoolteaching in 1856.
This career change served dual purposes: nurturing his nearly obsessive passion for plant identification while also securing that rarest of commodities—leisure time.
"I had never had more than one holiday in the year, and that was Christmas Day.
[My brother] Frederick and I might take a day's fishing in the summer, but an eight-mile walk and scrambling along the river was not very restful."
One can hardly imagine cultivating botanical genius on a single day of rest per annum!
The teaching profession evidently suited our protagonist, for within a mere five years, Macoun had established correspondence with botanical luminaries like Asa Gray and Sir William Hooker. Such rapid ascension in scientific circles suggests a mind of extraordinary capacity and determination.
Allow me to share with you, dear gardeners, Macoun's rather endearing methodology for self-education in the botanical arts:
"I would take a common species of roadside or garden plant of which I knew the name and then immediately endeavor to work out its correct name from the classification.
The Mullein was the species that I took first.
I found it more difficult than I had thought on account of its long and short stamens, but I soon came to understand the arrangement of the stamens and pistils so well that most plants could be classified by their form alone."
How marvelously practical! Rather than drowning in Latin nomenclature, Macoun wisely began with the familiar common mullein—though even this straightforward specimen presented unexpected complexities.
One wonders how many of us might improve our own botanical knowledge through such methodical reverse-engineering.
Perhaps most revealing is the exchange between Macoun and his future father-in-law, who questioned the practical value of botanical pursuits with quintessential Quaker pragmatism:
"Simon Terrill, who was a well-known Quaker in that district, ... found me with a plant in my hand and said :
"John, what dost thee ever expect to make out of the study of botany?"
I told him that I did not know but that it gave me a great deal of pleasure."
How perfectly this encapsulates the gardener's eternal dilemma!
Must our horticultural passions always yield practical fruit, or is the pleasure of intimate botanical knowledge reward enough?
Macoun clearly believed the latter, and his subsequent scientific contributions vindicated this position most thoroughly.
Perhaps there is a lesson here for all who find themselves defending their gardening obsessions to skeptical relations.
As we commence this new year without Canada's botanical luminary, let us honor Macoun's legacy by sharpening our own powers of observation in the garden.
Who among us might become the next great botanical chronicler simply by noticing what others overlook?
