Interview with the head of the Průhonice dendrological garden: We are like Noah’s Ark

I thought that paperwork would prevent you from relaxing, and you’re dealing with weeds. That would be because you started out in the botanical garden as a gardener, right?

Yes, to Troja, i.e. to the Botanic Garden hl. city ​​of Prague, I actually started working as a gardener after school. Both grandmothers gardened, so I must have inherited some genes. But for example, I was never interested in gardening, which I verified thanks to the fact that we also had a half-hectare orchard at home. I have always preferred plants, both wild and cultivated.

Then I studied plant physiology, which is a very good basis for growing because you learn to recognize what the plant is missing. I flirted with research for a while and wanted to do carnivores, but it didn’t work out. But I probably still gravitate towards open space and living plants rather than working in a laboratory.

Let’s say that I don’t know Průhonice at all. What would you tempt me to do?

Průhonice is home to two research institutes and de facto three gardens. The Landscape Research Institute manages the Dendrological Garden, focused mainly on woody plants. Then there is the park as a top work of landscape architecture and our botanical garden, both of which belong to the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
The botanical garden specializes purely in collections. Of course, we try to make it look nice, but the heart of our work is to maintain and expand the collections – to show people the richness of species and the historical development from ancient varieties to the hottest novelties.

Our biggest attraction is the iris collection, one of the three largest collections in the world. We also have the largest collection of roses in the Czech Republic, although here we alternate with Olomouc, and we also own a large collection of peonies and daylilies.

Does everyone now know what botanical gardens are for?

They know that the mission is to preserve the plants and maintain them for the future. However, many people still imagine a botanical garden as a greenhouse area with tropical plants, cacti, orchids and carnivores. Just more ‘garden show’.

And then among the collectors there are people who live by modern breeding, and they wonder why we have old varieties. We explain to them that we preserve them as a historical heritage, associated with the art and knowledge at the time of their creation. And very often also in connection with important people, because varieties at the end of Austria-Hungary and during the First Republic were very often named after personalities, i.e. for roses we have Štefánik, Masaryk or Stalin. Today, roses are named after important actors or singers, so Bohdalová or Šafránková bloom here.

Are the old varieties no longer used for breeding?

They can be used because they carry some properties that modern ones may not have – for example, old roses smell completely different, much more intensely. At the same time, however, they are not so durable, which is a quality that is being addressed a lot now, probably also because we already have all possible colors and types of flowers for roses.

On the other hand, there are modern breeders who strive to make modern varieties look like the old ones. For example, with irises, they don’t like the varieties with large shriveled flowers and want to return to the smaller, slightly firmer ones. And our collections also serve as genetic and reference material, so you can compare whether what they bred is really new.

You said somewhere that botanical gardens are not open-air museums, but more like emergency rooms.

The botanical garden is just like the zoo Noah’s ark. We collect and maintain many species of plants, trying to avoid interbreeding, keeping them in a certain cleanliness to minimize diseases and pests, while ensuring that all this is done in close to natural conditions. Because if plants were to return to nature to strengthen the population of critically endangered, dying species, they cannot be pampered by garden conditions for their own survival.

Are they really returning to nature?

It starts with that – and for some species, it’s a necessity because populations are rapidly disappearing. I can give an example of an open conicle, where before the whole hills turned purple when it flowered, and now you will hardly see three or four individuals in one place. Newly planted plants have a number stuck on them so that you can see how the flowers are doing and it is possible to check them.

And people pluck them and take them home to the garden.

Surprisingly, neither, so it’s more like a joy than a vanity. All the more so because in the Czech Republic there used to be a very strict view in this direction. While everywhere
in the West, reintroductions were already successfully carried out, here they were still perceived as threatening to the original populations. With the rapid decline of the rarest plants and the risk that they will disappear completely from our territory, that outlook has fortunately changed.

Territorial protection, in the sense that you declare a location a protected area and then actually do nothing on it, is not enough. And it can be economically important, because if we completely destroy a plant, we will not be able to research or use it in the future. A number of endangered species contain biologically active substances and were previously used as medicinals.

Among other things, sundews, warblers, beekeepers or stoneflies. This also applies to cursed invasive species – an example would be tokozelka, which can filter heavy metals from water, so it would make sense to grow it near the outlets of industrial enterprises.

You are the curator of a collection of peonies, which, at least for me, are the queens of flowers. Do you also think they are the most beautiful?

As the head of the botanical garden, I cannot have a favorite flower, but I agree with you that there are few plants in nature with such attractive and large flowers as peonies.

How long is their history?

The crossing of peonies has been going on for three thousand years, and the descriptions of the oldest varieties that come from China are from the turn of our era – and they were already hybrids at that time, so they must have undergone some breeding at that time.

Is it a lot or a little compared to roses, for example?

Probably the same. Roses in full bloom were already grown in ancient Rome, irises are already known from ancient Egypt, where they were preserved depicted in the pyramids and also served as part of a tribute – a fee or a mandatory gift when conquering territory. And the first records of daylilies, which come like peonies from China, are from the turn of the millennium.

Are all the more famous types of flowers this old?

Many of the flowers cultivated today, such as asters, come from America, and their history goes back to the 16th century. But I will return to roses, peonies and irises, which are all associated with a certain cult, both in ancient times and later with Christianity. Today we perceive them primarily as beautiful flowers, but traditionally they were also important as medicinal plants.

And an iris?

In iris, the fermented root serves as a medicine. When partially decomposed (but not spoiled) ripened under specific conditions, it released a delicate violet scent. It was because of this that it was called violet root. Dried orris root used to be given to children to chew when their teeth were growing, because it slightly numbed the gums, it was also used as a flavoring agent in children’s medicines, and it also worked as a cough suppressant. And by the way, orris root is also used as an aromatic ingredient in the production of quality gins.

Rose oil is produced from roses, used mainly in aromatherapy, and rosehips are also dried for tea. And daylilies spread from Asia to Europe because they are edible. Buds and dried flowers are mainly consumed – they are added to soups, for example. As medicinal plants, they are used to calm, cleanse the body and support digestion.

Are you saying that even peonies are medicinal?

And what! They played and still play an important role in traditional Chinese medicine. The roots of woody peonies are still used today as a medicine to purify the blood, relieve inflammation and release internal tension. However, their effect is very strong and it is necessary to handle them very carefully. Recently, the Chinese have started using oil from the seeds of a type of peony, which is said to have a very high quality composition of fatty acids. In China, after all, you can see entire fields, square kilometers of peonies grown primarily for medicinal purposes.

In Europe, on the other hand, the peony is most often grown – a dark red, full-flowering, early-flowering variety. Already in the 16th century, the Italian doctor and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli wrote about it in his herbarium as the ‘rose of the poor’, because it grew practically in every country garden.

This peony contains alkaloids that relax smooth muscles, for example in the uterus or in the digestive tract. Dried peony crown slices were mainly used in women’s herbal mixtures – for mild astringent effects, for example, in case of minor digestive problems. Even today, they are still included in some traditional recipes. However, caution is required with higher doses, as it is a powerful herb.

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How similar are individual types of peonies?

You can always tell at first sight that it is a peony, but the differences are big. Some have a flower size of barely one and a half centimeters. And then there are, for example, American peonies, which unfortunately you won’t see here because they are very difficult to grow, and they have very striking brown-green flowers.

And it’s interesting how much the preferences differ – for example, the Japanese and the Chinese, where the former like large, open flowers with stamens, while the latter love rich and heavy ‘balls’, where all the stamens have been converted into petals. We are closer to the Japanese in terms of taste.

During my visit to China, where I had the opportunity to visit two important centers where peonies have been crossed and bred since ancient times, it was interesting to see how the Chinese work in a completely different way. When we create a garden, we want it to be varied, like a flower, a different kind. Whereas they simply plant the hillside with half a million identical flowers. They love everything uniform, preferably red – now I don’t mean that politically, they just like the color red. I liked how they were able to prolong the flowering of the peonies for up to several months thanks to the shading and the use of greenhouse heat. Nobody does that in Europe.

Will this be expensive fun?

Yes, but they obviously have the money. The large botanical gardens there have incredible attendance. When they bloom in that Peking peonies, a hundred thousand people come to see them a day. That’s approximately our traffic per year.

So China is a flower powerhouse?

China is one of the major biodiversity hotspots – in some areas it is the richest temperate region in the world in terms of plants. But even Korea, which I also had the opportunity to visit, is much richer than we can imagine. When you go to our forest, you will see two types of anemones and two types of puffins. In Korea, you will come across ten species of anemones and some five species of anemones in one place. The first two days there I was so enthralled that I barely walked a few hundred meters in an hour, there was so much to explore.

I’m just wondering what it must be like to go on a trip with you. Still standing somewhere…
On the contrary, there are people who go on a trip with me and are afraid that I will run them over. Especially the younger ones. (laughs) I like to go as soon as the sun comes up and come back when it sets.

Can you smell the flowers?
I don’t do that, I have allergies and with a perpetually stuffy nose I can’t smell anything.

Don’t say that you, as a botanist, have a pollen allergy.
More than half of botanists have it, it’s an occupational disease.

And do you have your own garden?
No, I don’t. Also, what if I have all of Průhonice…

Text: Martina Coufalová

You could find this article in the magazine Recipe No. 10/25.