Dan Hinkley on Nova: The First Flower

Word was getting passed around the horticultural community. "Dan Hinkley is going to be on Nova on Tuesday." Excited viewers checked their listings for the time and channel and were disappointed to learn that it wasn't Hinkley afterall, but a show about the fossil-hunting race to find the first flower. If you passed on the show YOU MISSED IT! It WAS Hinkley, and flowers, and fossils...and fantastic.

You are all forgiven, of course, for thinking that if Dan was on Nova, the show MUST be about HIM. Hinkley is an institution in modern-day horticulture, and although very modest about it, has made contributions to our gardens and plant knowledge that will far outlive him. He is a man who has truly made (and continues to make) his mark.

The First Flower, a wonderful effort by PBS's Nova, is the fascinating story behind the evolution of flowers, and the search for the first flowering plant. That search led to China and the controversial discovery of Archaefructus a fossil uncovered by a Chinese scientist and championed as that first flowering plant by him and an American colleague who has spent his entire 35 year career looking for such a specimen.

Such claims do not go unchallenged and a good part of the show was dedicated to competing theories by Swedish and other scientists who ultimately prove (with microscopic analysis of fossilized pollen grains), that Archaefructus could NOT be the first flowering plant--although it retains its prominence as the most complete and oldest plant fossil.

The back and forth of this tussle was a fascinating look at the inner workings of science and brought to mind the fossil wars between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh in the second half of the 19th century in North America, chronicled by Mark Jaffe in: "the Gilded Dinosaur."

But we were talking about Hinkley...

While the scientists were splitting rocks to uncover plant and pollen fossils, Dan was running around the mountains of Hengduan with Chinese botanist Yin Kaipu. Weaving in and out of the fossil discussion, Hinkley was the color commentary for the play-by-play of the search for the first flower.

What gardener who as grown so much as a marigold could fail to feel the excitement of Hinkley as he nearly fell into a pile of yak dung while rhapsodizing ecstatically over the roadside sighting of a stunning Cypripedium tibeticum.

Hinkley was as excited as a little kid ripping open presents under a Christmas tree. He communicated that excitement repeatedly in his segments and it was contagious. The area he was exploring has justly been called the "Mother of Gardens" and as inspiring as the close-ups of his finds were, the shots that really got to me were the wide looks at the flower-PACKED meadows. The diversity was astonishing, with many plants familiar to our gardens shown in the wild.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to hear David E. Boufford, Assistant Director for Collections at the Harvard University Herbarium speak at a Torrey Botanical Society Meeting at The New York Botanical Garden. His topic was plant diversity in the Hengduan Mountains. It was my first exposure to this area and the immediate result of it, and Hinkley's appearance on Nova, was the strong urge to visit.

Hinkley's own book, "The Explorer's Garden" and Peter Valder's "The Garden Plants of China" should eliminate any lingering reservations. Book your trip now--or at least support the efforts currently under way to preserve this botanical (and horticultural) paradise.

If you missed the show last night...find it and watch it. Pester PBS to figure out when "NOVA: The First Flower" will be replayed. Buy the DVD from WGBH Boston. Anyone interested in plants and gardening needs to see it. Host a party, invite your friends...then get back in the garden.

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Copyright  2006- 2007 by Carlo A. Balistrieri.
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