Mark Twain’s Literary Garden: Where Wit Bloomed in an Octagonal Shed

Mark Twain portrait

This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. November 30, 1835 On this day, dear readers and fellow gardeners, a most extraordinary seed was planted in the fertile soil of American literature. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, destined to bloom into the incomparable…

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Box Huckleberry: The Ancient 12,000-Year-Old Survivor of Pennsylvania

Box Huckleberry

The Blueberry Twin   February 3, 1941 On this day, The Daily Republican out of Monongahela, Pennsylvania, published a tiny snippet about the Box Huckleberry (Gaylussacia brachycera). “In Tuscarora Forest, Perry county, there is a large box huckleberry bush considered the largest on earth.  In 1846, Dr. Asa Gray, the famous Harvard botanist, wrote the…

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