In August 2001 a letter from Italy arrived at CHP headquarters. The correspondent, a 1998 fellow at Monticello's International Center for Jefferson Studies, wrote to thank us for the gift of a Goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata), which he had planted in his European garden. Obviously writing as the summer-flowering tree blossomed, the former ICJS fellow reported that "it has grown by now to about 6 feet and gives me continuous pleasure: I call it my Jefferson Tree.."

    I was immediately struck by the similarity in sentiment of this 21st-century letter compared to one Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madame de Tessé March 27th, 1811:

"Since I had last the pleasure of writing to you, I have to acknoledge the receipt of . the seeds of the . Koelreuteria, one of which has germinated, and is now growing. I cherish it with particular attentions, as it daily reminds me of the friendship with which you have honored me ."

    This "cherished" tree is native to China, where it was once planted at the graves of high governmental ministers. The first seeds to arrive in Europe were sent during the mid eighteenth century by Pierre Nicholas le Chévron d'Incarville, a French Jesuit Father stationed at a Peking missionary. According to Stephen A. Spongberg in A Reunion of Trees (Harvard University Press, 1990), a Russian caravan likely transported these seeds across Mongolia and Siberia to London's Kew Gardens and the Jardin du Roi in Paris. Goldenrain trees were growing in European botanical gardens by 1763 and were probably already popular flowering novelties by the time the Comtesse sent her gift. What she could not have known was that the seedling Jefferson nurtured is believed to be the first goldenrain tree ever cultivated in North America. Because the tree is short-lived, there are no original goldenrain trees surviving from Jefferson's time, but trees from succeeding generations continue to thrive at Monticello, and it is a descendant tree that now grows in the Italian garden of our former research fellow.

     Because Chaville was a Crown property, many of Jefferson's specimens shipped during the 1790s were likely eventually "nationalized" soon after the proclamation of the French Republic, when trees and shrubs were salvaged from émigré estates to enrich the Jardin du Roi in Paris. André Thoüin, gardener-in-chief, was commissioned to select rare exotics from the Crown properties that might prove useful to the nation. He chose 148 species from Chaville in the presence of the estate's gardener Cyrus Bowie, including many from North America.

   Coincidentally, André Thoüin also exchanged plants with Jefferson throughout the ensuing years. Jefferson often shared Thouin's shipments with like-minded American plantsmen, such as Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon and David Hosack of the New York Botanical Garden. Evidently, Jefferson planted many seeds at Monticello as well. When a package of 700 species arrived in 1808, he told his granddaughter Anne "that they will contain all the fine flowers of France, and fill all the space we have for them."  

    Jefferson's Garden Book contains few specific references as to the many varieties from Thoüin, but diary entries indicate a wide diversity of plants, from Spanish broom to sprout kale to "Ximenesia Encelioides," most likely Verbesina encilioides (Golden Crownbeard) an annual aster from the American southwest and Mexico. Perhaps a clue to the identity of some may come from a c.1786 listing of plants that Jefferson himself sent from Paris to Francis Eppes, a friend and father of Jefferson's future son-in-law, John W. Eppes. This list includes "roses of various kinds," carnations, pinks, an assortment of fine bulbs, and a number of annual flowers such as "Velvet Amaranth," (possibly the velvety crested Cockscomb, Celosia cristata). It also contains Jefferson's only mention of the "delicious" flowering Heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) and the "three-coloured Amaranth" or Joseph's coat (Amaranthus tricolor), so popular in the Monticello gardens today.

    Jefferson persevered in shipping botanical specimens to his friends even when met with frustrations and disappointments. In 1807 and 1808, President Jefferson complained to the Marquis de Lafayette that, "The state of the ocean . continues to be, so desperate that it is vain to attempt anything.." The blockades placed on the Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812 further complicated plant exchange, and valuable shipments both to and from Thoüin and Madame de Tessé were "captured on the high seas" and left to rot in British warehouses.

    In later years Jefferson's gardening interests turned more toward the culture of flowers, vegetables, and plants that repaid the labors of the year within the year, so that ".death, which will be at my door, shall find me unembarrassed in long lived undertakings." In this regard, he found the Comtesse's tenacity to plant long-lived trees all the more admirable, acknowledging, ". There is more of the disinterested & magnanimous in your purpose."

     On December 8, 1813, in his final letter to the Comtesse and just a year before her death, Jefferson discussed the botanical specimens collected by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Hedescribed some as curious, some ornamental, some useful, and some that "may by culture be made acceptable on our tables." Jefferson had at Monticello one little shrub from the Expedition - a snowberry bush (Symphorocarpus albus) - that was destined for her, but it is not known if it ever successfully made the transatlantic passage.

     Jefferson's relationship with André Thoüin continued another ten years. In April 1826, while planning for a school of Botany and an arboretum at the University of Virginia, Jefferson wrote to Dr. John Emmet that he had a special resource for seeds and plants in his "good old friend Thoüin." Unaware of Thoüin's death in 1824, Jefferson had continued anticipating his annual shipment, even though "during the past two years this envoi has been intermitted, I know not why." After learning that Thoüin had died, Jefferson continued on the trail of the annual box of seeds, which apparently had been sent by Thoüin's successor at the Jardin. Jefferson heard that the box had arrived in New York and, anxious to have this precious cargo for their purposes at the University, had written for its reshipment to Charlottesville, adding "and the sooner the better as the Season is fast advancing." Jefferson died just two months later, July 4, 1826. Even to the end of his own life, we find the ever-resolute Jefferson relaying his passion for the botanical world, along with his French connections, to a new generation.

Peggy Cornett, Director
Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants
January 2002