Boyd Catey Kline, Jr., 96, passed away on Saturday, June 14, 2014. He was a co-founder of Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery.
Curt Kline
Das Was born in Williston, North Dakota, and, at the age of 3, he and his parents, Boyd Kline, Sr., and Hallie, moved west. Five years later they ended up living in Oregon, near Grants Pass. As time passed, they ended up living in Medford, with his dad working in sawmills and pear orchards and building their first house.
After high school, Boyd worked at various jobs, many connected with the pear orchards and, in 1937, at the age of 20, he went to work at the Medford post office. Thirty-five years later Dad retired from the post office as an assistant postmaster in Central Point.
In 1937, Dad met Lila Lay and, in 1938, they were married. In 1944, Dad joined the Sea Bees and ended up in Hawaii, working at the Navy post office. Along the way, Dad’s love of plants got the best of him and he, along with fellow postal worker Lawrence Crocker, started the Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery. In 1964 they issued their first mail- order catalog and thus was born one of the most well-known rare plant nurseries in the world. Under the tutelage of Marcel Le Piniec, a French horticulturist transplanted to southern Oregon, the founders were inspired to begin propagating and shipping out rare native plants of the Siskiyou Mountains. The first catalog listed 125 formerly unavailable species. The first year their customers bought everything they had grown.
Reaching the age of retirement, in 1978, the two men sold the nursery. It has since changed hands again but is still in business in Talent. Dad was preceded in death by Mom, who died in 2000, and his brother Lawrence, who died in 1931, and also two sons-in-law, Burle Welburn and David Saxbury and a grandson, Andy Welburn. He is survived by his sister Mary Prentice, Wyoming; daughters, Sandra Welburn (Burle), Medford and Kathy Maxwell (Shelby) of Central Point and son, Curtis (Susan), Medford; six grandchildren, and six great- grandchildren.
Dad was laid to rest at the Siskiyou Memorial cemetery. In honor of his wishes, no services were held.
A Great Man, A Good Friend
Phyllis Gustafson
Many Wonderful people have been members of the Siskiyou Chapter of NARGS. We have recently lost one of the greatest – a 1970 founding member – Boyd Kline. He was the “go to” man for advice about field trips and where in the wild to find whatever plants you wanted to see. This was not just for the members here, but anyone from North America and plantspeople from anywhere in the world that wanted to visit the Siskiyou Mountains of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. His eyes would light up if a trip to see some special plant was even mentioned. He continued to enjoy these trips, the last few years with his son Curtis, until just this year. Boyd always enjoyed the chance to find new plants on new roads, in new places. With a little more time after selling the nursery, he also enjoyed showing his garden, greenhouse, and seed pots to anyone who was interested.
The Kline place was easy to find on Franquette Street, the yellow house dwarfed by the biggest redwood tree in Medford. Boyd planted this tree by the new house he had built when Curt was born.
In the early spring along the front fence you could see a whole group of local erythroniums. They dropped their seed and with time this has become a large, mixed group of hybrids. Cyclamen coum, in all its variation, bloomed through the lawn and the south side gardens with the first rhododendrons.
By the west side fence in mottled sunshine were rows of lilies-- lilies from around the world, lilies from seed, or received from friends, sometimes even lilies found on the bench at a local discount store. He was an active member of the Lily Society and wrote articles for its publications. With the lilies were many peonies, some big hybrids but also many species grown from seed. In this area were hybrid seedlings from a large Japanese maple tree. He potted these finely cut-leaf, miniature trees, and then gave most away. In other raised beds, not far away, were a variety of Fritillaria and Calochortus that he also collected with passion.
Embothrium coccineum, at the entrance by the garage to the back garden, was prized both for its flaming red color and the fact that he grew it from seed. It was bedfellows with Cyclamen repandum, usually not hardy in our climate but both happy in his chosen locale. Plants and seeds ordered from nurseries in the eastern United States and Europe filled his garden. Daphne jasminea, both the larger and smaller forms, were surrounded by rooted shoots in later years. These favorites were not grown in our area until he supplied plants to our members.
In front of the greenhouse were native trilliums with odd characteristics. He and Lawrence Crocker found hybrids of Trillium rivale and T. ovatum, which seldom occur since they usually grow at different elevations. Boyd started making his own crosses with his ever-ready little paintbrush. These have never made it to market but were fun just to see that it could be done. Seed was also collected from a single T. rivale originally found in the wild that they named ‘Purple Heart’. With strong growth habits and the white flower dotted deep red in the center it has never been surpassed. Another he introduced was pink ‘Del Norte’, now in many NARGS gardens.
Other unusual but now well-known plants introduced by Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery included Asarum hartwegii ‘Silver Heart’, large silver stripes in the center of leaf; Kalmiopsis leachiana, the easier to grow Umpqua form (now K. fragrans) grown from seed and cuttings and now available worldwide. Phlox adsurgens was one of Boyd’s favorite plants. ‘Wagon Wheel’, is easiest to grow and ‘Red Butte’ with the deepest red color was also offered.
Silene hookeri is beautiful but not easy to grow. This has fine-haired leaves in a ground-hugging cluster, five-petaled flowers, each petal divided into four lobes. In the Smith River drainage, Boyd found a deep-red-flowered plant but realized there were differences. First mentioned in 1907 it had never been described as a new and distinct species. Some of us in 2004 thought it should be named for Boyd but in the same year it was published as Silene serpentinicola by T. W. and J. P. Nelson from Eureka, California. They had worked on it for years. Boyd just continued looking for extensions of the existing known sites. A small amount of seed has been distributed to NARGS members.
Each year Boyd and Lawrence Crocker traveled through a section of the West starting with California and
working north. They mapped and dated finds of interesting plants and tried to get back at the right time to gather some seed. They got advice from friends and customers about possible future travels. Boyd made it to the Rocky Mountains at least twice. He fell in love with the high places. He also went to Mexico twice with Frank Callahan to see and collect seed of some of the interesting oaks and calochortus.
Boyd’s trip of a lifetime occurred in 1978 to Kashmir with Barry Starling from England and Reuben Hatch of Vancouver, Washington. He came back with an intense interest and desire to grow many of the fantastic plants they saw. His stories and pictures have beguiled us ever since.
I made a life-long friend after going on a field trip to Mount Eddy with Boyd leading the way. About a dozen members showed up and
as we started to climb the others became slower but Boyd just kept up
a fast pace. I was young and able, barely, to stay with him wanting to learn the plants. He carried a large cloth sack over his shoulder and
as we moved along he said, “I want to share something with you.” I thought he meant a special plant. The steepness near the top did not slow him down. When we reached the top he opened the bag. Out came a small cantaloupe. A while later, a few others arrived but meanwhile we had eaten the whole cantaloupe, and “planted” the seed. A secret we laughed about ever since. My life-long friend is gone; I miss him, as do the other members of Siskiyou Chapter.
With Fond Memories
Baldassare Mineo
Boyd Kline Was my dear friend and brilliant mentor. Indeed it is the end of an era with his passing, certainly here in the West, and also to all his friends and contacts worldwide. If you met him, you would probably agree that Boyd should be remembered as the friendliest nurseryman, always generous with plants and information. Boyd loved horticulture with rare intensity, and his enthusiasm to acquire and attempt to grow all kinds of plants was contagious.
Boyd and Lawrence Crocker started Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery fifty years ago this year in 1964. Their nursery was a success from the moment they started. In 1978, Boyd’s wisdom and enthusiasm combined to convince my partner Jerry Cobb Colley, and me to buy Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery, relocate from our home in California to Medford, Oregon, and move and rebuild the nursery on acreage just outside of town. People always laugh when I tell them about the day Jerry and I knocked on Boyd Kline’s door and asked if we could buy a few plants. Before our visit was over, instead of buying a few plants, we bought all of them!
It was early in 1978, and Jerry and I were told by our gardening friends in Morro Bay, California, that since we were traveling north to Oregon, we must stop in Medford and visit Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery. Boyd answered his door with his customary big smile and a sparkle in his eye. Before he even knew anything about us, he welcomed us and enthusiastically began giving us the nursery/garden tour. I had never seen such a lush, intensely planted landscape. Every plant was unfamiliar, and Boyd began showing us some of his favorite plants in bloom. Besides the garden full of flowering rhododendrons and dogwoods, there were trilliums, hepaticas, lewisias, erythroniums, and hundreds of other rare plants. Focusing on the flora of the surrounding Siskiyou Mountains, Boyd educated us that this region was famous as a botanist’s paradise. It was a geologically ancient area where more rare alpine flowers and lowland rock plants are found than anywhere else in the world. Wow! What a first visit this was, incredibly mind-expanding and inspiring.
Within thirty minutes of our arrival Boyd was beaming with delight. We didn’t know it yet, but he had already decided that he had found the two guys who should buy the nursery. He explained that the other half of the nursery was across town at Lawrence Crocker’s home. The two of them had started this nursery fifteen years earlier in their retirement from the local post office, where they both had worked. Plant collectors worldwide made them an immediate success. The nursery grew much too fast for their liking and energy level, and was too much work for them; but they were loyal to their mail-order customers and they vowed to keep working hard until they could find the right buyer. They had considered several different folks who were interested, but somehow Boyd was quickly convinced we were the right two guys. "After all," he said, that "two old guys have been running this business; you two younger guys should buy it, move it to at least three acres of land, and you could make a good living." He was right, of course. Boyd even had a scale drawing of how the new location should be laid out!
Boyd sent us to meet Lawrence Crocker, whose garden was a sprawling oak-shaded landscape, where he was responsible mostly for growing ferns, saxifrages, bulbs, and woodland plants. Soon Lawrence was on the phone with Boyd, agreeing that we were the "right guys." After spending a week with our new “professors,” Jerry and I were ready to accept the generous invitation to change our lives, and to become the next custodians of Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery!
Many hours of learning and experiencing every aspect of the “job” under the patient and fatherly tutelage of Boyd and Lawrence would follow, intensely for the first several years and continuing until Lawrence passed on in 2002. Through the years, I continued to appreciate Boyd's help in the nursery as well as in the packing room until the newest owner, Dale Sullivan, took over in 2005.
Most mind-blowing and remarkable were the hundreds of miles we traveled together through the mountains of the West hunting for seeds and cuttings of the rarities our knowledgeable mentors knew so well. The devotion, patience, and personal generosity that Boyd and Lawrence gave their nursery – “their baby” – and their customers were also abundantly given to Jerry and me. Our “professors” were always available to help us, guide us, and advise us. Such genuine, caring, kind men are rare and they warmly instilled in us their gratitude to be working with and sharing an endless world of botanical treasures. Though both are gone now, Lawrence and Boyd will always be two of the most important men I have ever known.
A Mentor with a Gentle Heart
Panayoti Kelaidis
I have had more than my share of mentors, beginning with my brothers-in-law (and of course my parents), and Paul Maslin. Although over the course of years I probably only spent a sum total of a few weeks with Boyd Kline, his influence on me is surely equal to any others that I've had. I was in my late teens when I first requested a catalog from Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery. I don't know how Boyd and Lawrence divvied up the new prospects, but I ended up with Boyd. I wanted Lawrence (who did the ferns and woodlanders and bulbs). Of course, Boyd did bulbs too (I didn't know that back then) and was much the more assertive of the two: if he decided he liked you, you got his full attention. and that made quite a difference in my life.
I have often said I am a graduate of the Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery correspondence school of horticulture. I ordered from the nursery spring and fall for many, many years. I memorized their catalog – researching every new plant that showed up every year. I think I ordered almost everything they offered at one point of another – all of which seemed to grow and a surprising number have become rock garden classics. So much of what Boyd and Lawrence did was unprecedented at the time, and just plain "dandy" (a term Boyd liked to use). Every order I would get, there would be a long and chatty note from Boyd, in his gorgeous script, asking after this or that (I guess I sent similar chatty notes when I ordered). And there would be an ungodly number of "Bonus" plants.
I would like to convey something of the man: his folksy, cheerful way. His omnipresent smile, his boundless energy and positive vibe. His phenomenal grasp of plants, nature, people. His gentle heart.
In late June of 1977 Boyd drove out to Colorado and he, Paul, and I spent a raucous week or so careening through the Rockies. At camps here and there Boyd would regale us with stories about Marcel Le Piniec and the other great Siskiyou plantsmen, of his life in the Postal Service, and his real life at the Nursery. He took tons of slides, which he put into a program that he gave at an American Rock Garden Society (not yet NARGS) study weekend – spreading word that there were plants and horticulture in Colorado.
Our correspondence flew more rapidly and the bonus plants proliferated, and my knowledge of alpines and steppe plants ballooned through this mail-order bromance: it is hard to express the magic that I would feel when I'd see the hefty box on the porch, and unpack the fragrant plants, one by one – lovingly grown, lovingly packaged and delivered with such promise. And then would come months of study, observation and delectation...plants traced to Peter Davis expeditions in Turkey, obtained from Kath Dryden, and all the greatest plants people of the day in Europe; the choicest alpines from the Himalaya, steppe plants from the Caucasus, Mediterraneans and all manner of western Americans; Tradescantia longipes from the Ozarks (descendants of which Mike Kintgen just propagated at Denver Botanic Gardens). Let's not begin, or I shall never stop...
A few years later he and Lawrence sold the nursery – to my horror. I was out there the year they did so, and met Baldassare Mineo and Jerry Cobb Colley, who mollified me with their enthusiasm, and subsequently took the nursery to new heights, albeit in a different way. Boyd assured me it was for the best – he'd done it long enough. And besides he could now concentrate on plant exploration.
Boyd took an ambitious expedition to Kashmir that resulted in another fabulous presentation (and a huge collection of Paraquilegia grandiflora seed some of which I grew). The correspondence dwindled since the packages no longer came through his hands although Baldassare and Jerry were now communicating regularly with me. The years passed: I visited Medford several times over the decades, and we took a fieldtrip to O'Brien, in the Siskiyous very near the Californian border, and a few nearby spots, and I wandered the magical precincts of the home on Franquette Street I had wondered about so many times... chockablock full of treasures.
Around this time Boyd's wife won a million dollar lottery. This didn't seem to change things appreciably, but we all wondered if it would. I got occasional notes from Phyllis Gustafson reporting on Boyd's health, and word from Baldassare. I called a few times. I even got a warm letter and email pictures from Curt, his wonderful son. Boyd was busy all this time, exploring locally, growing plants and having a good time with his family. Our communications tapered off.
I intended to go back and visit recently: Paul Bonine has offered to show me the Siskiyous, and I must go there with him or Sean Hogan – two avatars of the younger Boyd if there ever could be. I don't know if I have sufficiently underscored that over the course of a few decades, with very little in the way of face time, Boyd effectively delivered the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Horticulture for me: at least that is what it has provided for me professionally in terms of career path.
I shall return to Medford one day, and when I do I shall certainly drive by the home on 522 Franquette – and would like to visit his grave. I shall certainly marvel at the lofty Sequoiadendron in the front yard, planted the year his son was born. Incidentally, that's the same year I was. It's a very big tree today.
Editor's Note:
Boyd Cline, who co-founded Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery in Medford with Lawrence Crocker in 1964, was a vice-president of the North American Rock Garden Society, and he and Crocker received the first Marcel Le Piniec Award from NARGS in 1969, awarded by Lincoln Foster “for enriching and extending the plant material available to American rock gardeners.”
Anyone wishing to read some of Boyd Kline's writing might like to have a look at these articles in the Rock Garden Quarterly (and its predecessors) :
"Saga of the Red Buttes," vol. 22 no.4, p.97
"Exploring the Himalayas of Kashmir" (with Edward Huggins), vol. 37 no.3, p.107
"Some Western Treasures," vol. 39 no.4, p.185, "Calochortus: Why not try them?" vol. 48 no.1, p.25
They can all be found in the online issues on the NARGS website.
