Ironically, the sheer beauty of the campus sometimes obscures the academic work happening behind the attractive facade. MHC's campus is "one of the top things prospective students say they like about the school," according to grounds superintendent Jon Cowan. And first-year students flock to the greenhouse in September to receive the small plants given to newcomers. Greenhouse supervisor Russ Billings says other students are lured by weekly giveaways of plant cuttings and cullings. "Lots of them come back all year long. But sometimes a senior confides at the spring flower show, 'This is the first time I've ever come to the greenhouse.'" Tom Clark, assistant to the director, says, "For many students, the gardens are just nice open spaces in which to spread out a blanket and read." But for many others, beauty is just the beginning.
Every three months, researchers measure each mangrove plant to chart plants' growth in varying levels of water. Among the leaves are (left to right) Francesca Meier '96, Shannon LaDeau '97, and biologists Aaron Ellison and Leszek Bledzki.	The Talcott Greenhouse includes plenty to pique anyone's interest: two production houses to start seeds and propagate plants; the show house (a year-round riot of color); the succulent house's desert plants; the cycad house, with tropical and subtropical plants; the orchid house, which also features a pond and the jungle-like conservatory. Outside are an alpine rock garden, a woodland garden, and several smaller flower gardens scattered around campus; a total of about 200 cultivated acres and 600 more of land left in its natural state. Planting the Seeds of Knowledge After more than a century of careful tending, MHC deserves its place in Thomas Gaines's The Campus as a Work of Art, a survey of America's most beautiful college campuses. But the visual pleasure provided by the campus's botanic resources is not an end in itself. Mary Lyon conceived the campus as an outdoor teaching laboratory, which it remains today. Francesca Meier '96 was in associate professor in environmental studies Aaron Ellison's Local Flora course, and says he took them on field trips all around campus to identify plants. "The campus provides students with easy access to a wide diversity of habitats," Ellison says, including glacial deposits, wetlands, streams and lakes, and Northern deciduous woodlands.
Students in a 1906 plant culture class practice their grafting skills in a botany course.	According to archivist Patricia Albright, botany has been part of Mount Holyoke's curriculum since 1837, when young women studied plant specimens collected by Mary Lyon herself. The school's first greenhouse burned with the seminary building in 1896, and construction of the current greenhouse complex began the following year. In 1878, the school was officially designated a botanic garden. The tradition of using plants to teach women science continues unbroken from those early days. Biological sciences--one of our strongest and most popular majors--makes primary and continuous use of the facilities for its courses. "Ellen Shukis and Russ Billings have been extraordinary colleagues who practically pull magic tricks to help me, my research program, and my students," says professor of biological sciences Diana Stein. For an advanced course tracing plant evolution, greenhouse staff bring to her classroom examples of each week's stage of development: mosses one day, liverworts the next. "No pictures in texts can compete with actual plants," Stein says, "and I'm constantly amazed at the size and number of examples they find and the lushness of the materials they provide."
Horticulturist Ellen Shukis and greenhouse supervisor Russ Billings monitor the health of plants in the "show house."	"Their help makes it possible to teach plant biology by doing plant projects," says Stein, who co-teaches introductory biology with associate professor of biological sciences Stan Rachootin. Using pots, soil, fertilizer, and plants from the greenhouse, students raise two genetic stocks of fast-growing Brassica. "Students use these plants to become observers of nature, to study the results of a genetic cross, to study a gene for flower petals and how strongly it is expressed in individual plants," explains Stein. For her course in plant development, "what seems like a million pea plants arrive in the lab at just the right stage of development," thanks to the greenhouse staff. They've also delivered on more exotic requests, such as providing many primitive flowering plants so a student could test whether they contained a specific chloroplast gene.

"The greenhouse is a living library, and I often use it to show examples of the organisms we are discussing in class," Rachootin says. For a unit on diversity in tropical rainforests, he gets samples of epiphytes, plants that live on other plants. "Ellen Shukis has a keen eye for plants with unusual adaptations, such as hollow 'ant plants' that turn themselves into ant nests and thereby profit from their ferocious tenants," he explains. In an intermediate level course, Rachootin borrows greenhouse plants that show how different developmental pathways lead to equivalent structures. As he puts it, "A rose is a rose is a rose, but a spine is not a thorn is not a prickle."

All this requires close coordination between professors and greenhouse staff. Stein says, "At the beginning of every semester, I give them a list of what plants we need on which days and how old they must be." But even simple requests can take a lot of work. For one course alone, Billings planted over 2,000 seedlings. And Shukis says she once went through hundreds of seed catalogues looking for various bromeliads for a class. "The collection is a wonderful resource for us," agrees Ellison. "They cultivate plants for us, bring them to the classroom ... whatever we need."

But as useful as taking plants to the students is, Ellison says taking students to the plants is even better. "I like to bring students to the greenhouse, because while they're here, they see things other than just what they're thinking about for class that day. That gets their minds going in new directions. The greenhouse facility is essential for the kind of teaching I do."

Why is direct access to plants important for students? "You can read that a mimosa closes its leaves when touched, but no slide or book can show that process. A movie comes close, but it's much better to see the process in person," Stein says, "And the exotic plants provide glimpses of flora from regions students have never seen." Ellison agrees. "There's no substitute for getting your hands dirty. There's a big difference between real life and virtual life; you can't touch the World Wide Web."

A Place for Research

Ellison does hands-on research in the greenhouse's newest wing. For the last three years, "ecology house" has contained dozens of mangrove plants in fiberglass tubs. Working with students and with his wife, Harvard biologist Elizabeth Farnsworth, Ellison studies the effects of rising sea levels on mangrove plants. (Seas are rising worldwide as global warming melts polar icecaps.) Tides are simulated in the greenhouse by flooding the marine plants with salt water, and higher water levels do limit plant growth. "Since mangroves protect tropical coastlines from erosion and provide a habitat for about half the world's commercial fish," Ellison says, "this is very bad news." Final results may make a case for reforesting coastlines with mangroves, and for increasing the plants' "protected" status.

Students, too, use the greenhouse for research. Uma Pinninti '97 is spending the summer experimenting with carnivorous pitcher plants. Funded by a Weed-Ford-Mellon grant, she's seeing if insect larvae trapped inside the plants turn cannibalistic when no other food is available. She studies plants in the Hawley Bog and in Clapp Laboratory, while greenhouse staff simulate bog conditions inside the greenhouse for her control group. Sybil Gotsch '97 did two independent botany projects in the greenhouse this year, charting the effects of hormones and different concentrations of salt on plant growth. "The staff is very receptive to students and they really know their stuff," Gotsch says. She plans to compare experiments she's doing this summer in Hawley Bog on pitcher plant flowers with similar ones she'll conduct this fall in the greenhouse. "I'm a visual learner, and I retain much more information when I'm working directly with plants," Gotsch says. "Real-life experience helps me understand more than just hearing about a topic."

Time has taken its toll on the jewel-like conservatory (at rear), and funds are being raised to restore its Victorian splendor.

The Value of Botanical Beauty

Although most plants are chosen primarily for their educational value, aesthetic enjoyment is also encouraged. The College's orchids show how they can mingle. The more than 400 varieties are a scholarly resource, but they're beautiful crowd-pleasers too. Some--such as an all-green variety--surprise the eyes, while another type treats the nose with its coconut scent. Also competing for visitors' attention are unusual plants such as a black-and-white Jack-in-the-pulpit from China, a rare Franklinia tree, and a creamy white Mary Lyon rose.

A few hundred types of plants thrive in Talcott Greenhouse, and Shukis can locate nearly every one on a mental map, as if an invisible Dewey decimal label marked each pot. An ongoing project to document the entire collection in a computer database will eventually help others locate plants and extract information on, for example, "all plants from a particular country, genus, or family," Shukis says. And many trees around campus are already labeled with Latin and common names for easy botanical identification.

But you needn't know a gongora from a geranium to enjoy the gardens' charms. Trees Mary Lyon strolled under still draw those seeking shade, and crowds flock to the annual spring flower show, for which thousands of bulbs bloom simultaneously. Whatever visitors' aims, the botanic gardens staff hope they get the same message. "Even if you're not a gardener or plant lover, plants are important to life as a whole," says Tom Clark. "It's true that an individual peony has little significance beyond the aesthetic, but enjoying it can extend your appreciation for all plants and for all living things." How many museums of any kind can make that claim? -- Emily Harrison Weir