May, 2008
Hokkaido University has a botanical garden near downtown Sapporo city. It is within a nice fifteen minutes walk from the campus. On a weekend of May, I visited the botanical garden.
In front of the gate there were lots of photos of flowers displayed. According to the personnel, there were many flowers near the green house. It is better to have information before you enter the garden, for it is too spacious. Or you would lose your bearings and waste your time.
'Rebun-Atsumori' (Cypripedium macranthum var. rebunense) was placed in front of the green house. This is a very rare orchid endangered to perish. "Let me apology that 'Rebun-Atsumori' is planted not on the ground but in a pot", the personnel had said. This orchid was completely cultivated from the seed. I did not mind at all. This was my first watch of 'Rebun-Atsumori'. The flowers were made of light creme petals looked like feeble tissues melting or evaporating into thin air.
Rebun-Atsumori.
In general, orchids have very small seeds, like flour, which travel everywhere following even breeze. Seeds have no nutrition. Only extremely lucky seeds meet hyphae of mushrooms and manage to survive. Orchids are mycotrophic, heavily or lightly. Some orchids such as 'Nezibana', Pearl Twist (Spiranthes sinensis var. amoena speira) can grow almost everywhere even in grass. But most orchids are rather hard to sprout out. We may cultivate orchids by their bulbs; it takes a long time and we have only genets (the same copies in genetics). To keep biological diversity, ramets (reproduction from seeds) are extremely important. It is, however, very difficult to cultivate heavily mycotrophic orchids. 'Rebun-Atsumori' is the case.
When I was a high school student, I belonged to the biology and horticulture club. We tried to cultivate 'Ebine' (Calanthe), another species of orchids, widely found in Japan. Sterilizing flasks and glass bottles, we poured liquid agar into them with great care not to stain the openings by a drop of agar. Agar turned into gel of width about one cent meter. We sowed the seeds of the orchid and closed the bottles by cotton lids. Our culture, however, had no success. No sprout was found. Instead the glasses became musty and fusty.
What a laborious work!
The botanical garden is huge. There were plenty of plants to be observed. The green house was full of tropical orchids and cactuses. Outside the green house, lots of blossoms of azaleas and rhododendrons were blooming. A small water stream and pond were bordered by 'Kurin-Sou', Japanese primrose (Primula japonica). Ordinary 'Atsumori-Sou', Large-flowered Cypripedium (Cypripedium macranthum var. speciosum), 'Kumagai-Sou'(Cypripedium japonicum) and 'Sarumen-Ebine'(Calanthe tricarinata) were planted. Many alpine plants such as edelweiss were also demonstrated. An avenue of lilacs was beginning to be covered by petals.
In the museum I saw a notebook neatly written by a student of Hokkaido University in old days. The lectures were given in English and students organized the notes from scratches in classes. I was ashamed of my poor handwriting. Even a personal diary was written in mixture of English and German. "Wasn't it too much?"
In the midst of the museum we found a stuffed black dog.
The fur was sleek and shining.
It was so real as if it was still alive,
affectionately breathing and beaming.
"Are these eyes real?"
"No. Everybody living cannot last forever. These are glass balls."
The label read 'Taro'.
"Is this the famous Taro*,
a Sakhalin dog who survived the winter in the Antarctica!"
The Botanical Garden of Hokkaido University, a square where you encounter lots of surprises.
*In 1956 Japanese expedition explored the Antarctica and stationed at Showa-Kichi for the whole year. In 1958 the next expedition tried to visit Showa-Kichi to change. Unfortunately continuous bad weather refused the ice-breaking boat to reach the station. The people had no choice but to escape the Antarctica leaving everything else behind, in which fifteen Sakhalin dogs were pitifully included. In the next year, Japanese expedition succeeded in landing and surprisingly received a warm welcome from two dogs, Taro and Jiro. This story was described in a popular film Antarctica in 1983.