As a child, I enjoyed spending time in the small garden behind my grandparents’ white one-and-a-half story home in a tiny Midwest farming town that modernity was rapidly leaving behind. My grandmother was an extraordinary gardener, growing a wide variety of flowers that she dried and used in arrangements—straw flowers, statice, yarrow, and globe amaranth. I was particularly fond of the globe amaranth’s colorful, round blossoms like so many pink, magenta, and purple gumballs. When dried, they were just as colorful, and the papery blossoms were fun to touch.
Globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) is not native to North America. Rather, it was one of the myriad plant species imported into Europe from Central America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Key to its introduction into English gardens was Mary Somerset (1630 – 1715), the first Duchess of Beaufort.
Twice married and the mother of nine children, the duchess cultivated renowned gardens at her estate, Badminton, and London home, Beaufort House. She carried on a correspondence with her London neighbor, Sir Hans Sloane (founder of the British Museum), as well as other leading natural historians and botanists, comparing notes on the plants that they grew from seeds sent from the Americas and across the globe. Far from being an amateur, the duchess experimented with her plants, taking meticulous notes and even adding corrections to the published botany books in her library. She compiled a 12-volume herbarium, consisting of pressed plant specimens and notations; these were passed to Sir Hans Sloane and became part of his expansive natural history collection.
This year the state of North Carolina kicked off its campaign to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote. The theme for the campaign is, “She Changed the World.” Change is sometimes invisible, forgotten, seemingly small or insignificant. Mary Somerset was never invited to join the Royal Society (the first female fellow was not admitted until 1945), even though she corresponded with prominent members. Her herbarium was never published or widely circulated. Her gardens at Badminton and Beaufort are no more. And yet her legacy lives on, in the brightly colored gumball blossom of the globe amaranth, growing in my grandmother’s garden.
For more on Mary Somerset’s contribution to botany, see “Her ‘Diversion’: The Gardening and Botanical Pursuits of Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort, Biodiversity Heritage Library. https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2019/03/mary-somerset-duchess-of-beaufort.html
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