Discovering George Washington Carver, garden history, and a white passionflower in Southern Missouri
George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri
Every time the opportunity came to buy Scholastic books, I was allowed to choose one or two. I loved biographies, and George Washington Carver’s was one of my childhood favorites. He was a plant guy who grew up in Southern Missouri, about an hour north of my home.
He grew up much faster than I did. Born into slavery during the Civil War, George lost his father before he was born. While he was still an infant, he and his mother were kidnapped by slave raiders. George was recovered, but his mother was never found. At about age 12, he left the Carver farm and walked eight miles to Neosho to attend the nearest school open to Black children. There he found lodging with Andrew and Mariah Watkins, a childless Black couple. Age 12 – when I was begging Mom for more Scholastic books.
I finally visited
George Washington Carver National Monument yesterday, expecting a quick stop and perhaps time for a sketch. I stayed for more than three hours and barely sketched.
Along with three levels of exhibits and the 1881 Carver house, there is a mile of asphalt and gravel paths winding through 240 acres of tallgrass prairie and woodlands. Since I live in an area that is rapidly developing, driving past trees and pastures to a museum surrounded by acreage celebrating native plants and terrain immediately calmed me. The exhibits inspired me, and the native plants comforted me.
After weeks of hot, dry July weather, there were flowers, although not an abundance. Near the end of my walk, I came across a surprising white passionflower, followed by the more familiar purple.
There are more than 500 species in the genus Passiflora. The purple passionflower native to our region is Passiflora incarnata, also called maypop. I have one in my garden, and I love it. It seems slow to emerge each spring but handles full sun well. It also spreads enthusiastically. My mower controls it in the lawn, but I certainly would not invite it to share a planting bed with other plants.
I browsed my bookshelves while researching this Love Note from the Garden and found myself drawn to books about native medicinal plants and herbs. That made sense.
Moses and Susan Carver, who had enslaved George’s mother, Mary, raised George and his brother Jim after slavery ended. As a child, George spent hours studying and drawing the plants and animals in the woodlands surrounding the farm. Mariah Watkins, the woman with whom he later lived in Neosho, was a midwife and healer who may have shared her knowledge of medicinal plants with the curious boy. He almost certainly encountered passionflower vines.
So, what medicinal qualities have been attributed to this native vine? Quite a few. Indigenous peoples used purple passionflower for food, drink and medicine, including preparations applied to boils, cuts and inflammation. It has also traditionally been used as a relaxing herb and for sleeplessness, anxiety and muscle spasms.
That is more than enough reason for me to admire it. Still, I rarely venture beyond mint tea for homegrown medicine and cannot recommend any to others.
Despite its name, passionflower has nothing to do with romantic passion. Early Christian missionaries saw symbols of the Passion of Christ in the elaborate bloom.
George Washington Carver was a scientist, soil conservationist, activist, speaker, educator, humanitarian and artist. Before yesterday, I thought of Carver primarily as a man of the 1800s. Yet he continued teaching, experimenting and helping people until his death in 1943.
One of his most impressive contributions, at least to me, was his outreach to rural farmers. In 1904 Carver developed the 2-week Short Course in Agriculture for farmers and their wives with free admission. In 1906 Carver designed the Jesup Agricultural Wagon, also known as the Tuskegee Movable School, and its first educational program. The Jesup Wagon carried farming lessons, improved equipment and tool displays, seeds, and information about soil conservation and crop rotation to thousands of rural people.
Thomas Monroe Campbell, a recent Tuskegee graduate and Carver protégé, served as the wagon’s manager and principal instructor. He brought information to impoverished farmers, many of whom could not read or leave their farms to attend classes. Campbell was hired jointly by Tuskegee Institute and the USDA in 1906 and is recognized as the nation’s first Black agricultural Extension agent.
The
USDA has described the Jesup Wagon as a forerunner of the Cooperative Extension System and its mission of taking university knowledge directly to the people.
Congress formally established the Cooperative Extension Service through the Smith–Lever Act of 1914, creating a nationwide system to bring research-based education directly to the public. By then, Campbell had helped expand agricultural outreach for Black farmers across much of the South.
I went to see a monument to a scientist I had admired as a child, expecting not much more than a statue and an informative sign. I left envisioning a boy exploring the woodlands, a wagon carrying knowledge down rural roads, and passionflowers—perhaps descendants of vines that had grown on that land for centuries—blooming beside my path.
Note: This post was originally written as a Love Note from the Garden. Sign up for these free, weekly emails at the bottom of this page.
