The Golden Mountains… to the East!

Colorado’s own mining towns have stories of boom and bust, gold rushes, fortunes made and lost. But tomorrow night I’m looking East, not West.  Mike Bone is preparing to tell the stories of his travel to the Golden Mountains of Central Asia as a plant explorer.  And it will be a fascinating travelogue of places most of us will not see, but also, a glimpse into a tradition overlooked by most botanists and gardeners.

There is a book on my shelf, here above my head next to Tulipomania and The Orchid Thief, called In Pursuit of Plants by Philip Short that details the lives of plant collectors and explorers.  These people, usually men, not necessarily botanists, scoured the world bringing specimens, alive or preserved, back to wealthy sponsors, or to scientists, or for their own obsessive collections.  What struck me most about the eighteenth-century plant explorers was how many of them died before they saw or felt much success. Also, it seems many were often suffering in poverty, from strange diseases or in abject misery born of some privation.  Have I mentioned how glad I am that Mike Bone and the other travelers made it back?
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