Littleton Garden Club’s members and guests filled the new meeting room at First Presbyterian Church of Littleton as they started out their year with an illustrated lecture from internationally recognized plantsman Panayoti Kelaidis, senior curator and director of outreach for Denver Botanic Gardens. In addition to developing the Rock Alpine Garden at DBG, he has traveled the world identifying and collecting plants through a long and distinguished career.

We grow nursery plants developed from some of his finds in our Colorado gardens today, through the Plant Select varieties available at some nurseries — and listed and pictured online … Kelaidis started Plant Select, in cooperation with Colorado State University’s plant scientists.

“The art of gardening in Colorado is the art of having an awareness of what you’re doing — don’t drown, don’t scorch,” he reminded us. As he spoke, he’d pull back to talk about how to grow a particular historic plant in our home gardens. Perhaps it’s one that requires shade …

To take us to another place and time, he first showed a slide of the amazing Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde: “The greatest monument to pre-Columbian times,” he noted, adding that “we have neglected the native people.”

In his spin on Irving Stone’s famous history of Western explorers, he named his talk “Botanists to Match Our Mountains,” reminding us of how many peaks were named for botanists: James, Gray, Torrey, Parry, Engelmann.

His particular topic on Jan. 2 was plants discovered by Maj. Stephen Long’s Expedition in 1819/20, which started in Pittsburgh, crossed the plains and followed the South Platte River out of Nebraska and south to Pikes Peak and beyond to the Arkansas River’s starting place, passing near to Littleton.

(For perspective, the Lewis and Clark expedition was 1804-1806, soon after the Louisiana Purchase opened up endless curiosity about “what in the world did we buy to the west? — and does it have any value?”) Other explorations followed.

The Long expedition was ordered by John C. Calhoun, secretary of war. Assorted notes from the expedition were collected by Edwin James, botanist and geologist for the expedition. He compiled all the notes and drawings on terrain, plants, animals, native people, maps and more, publishing two volumes and an atlas in 1823 in Philadelphia: “Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and 1820” was the title and a reproduction is available. (Long was sufficiently impressed with this man to name James Peak after him.)

By naming the expanse of Great Plains “The Great American Desert,” scientists discouraged — for a time — the great numbers of settlers who eventually ventured west.

Kelaidis shared a photograph of great American botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) camped on La Veta Pass.

But he returned to further consider the very able James, who was a doctor, an environmentalist, an anthropologist, a linguist, an explorer, a farmer … “He started talking about what our relationship with our environment should be. He cared about the Indians early on and spoke against Andrew Jackson’s treatment of them …”

Kelaidis, in addition to bringing a scholar’s knowledge about the historical expedition, had a number of slides of the actual plants collected in 1820, labeled with plant names in proper Latin. They are housed at the over-a-century-old New York Botanic Gardens. Columbine Aquiligica caerula is our beautiful state flower: Rocky Mountain columbine. There are hundreds of specimens, some of which would seem to be related to Asian plants, according to botanist Hooker, mentioned above.

The speaker told of particular day when a group of botanists just focused on seeking new plants on Pikes Peak and scored a great many new ones on that day.

“Butterfly weed,” named by Torrey on this expedition, is found everywhere in the West. Torrey also named the common lupine. Pursch, a German botanist took samples of it back east with him.

Oenetera coraopfolia, the crown-leafed evening primrose, was found by Torrey and Gray near Littleton. Eregonum has 40 subspecies and grows from 4 inches to 4 feet tall. (“There is one in Plant Select,” Kelaidis noted happily.) Discoveries could go on…

Gardeners might want to refresh their acquaintance with the Plant Select collection — there is a book, there are brochures and a complete online listing, which will lead one to nurseries that stock them, in-house or online. (It’s the time of year when gardeners hungrily consume flower and plant catalogs! Tune in and enjoy!)

These hardy descendents of plants James and Torrey found tend to adapt happily to our suburban gardens today. Plantselect.org.