The Weeping Goldsmith: Discoveries in the Secret Land of Myanmar - Hardcover

W. John Kress

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0789210320 ISBN 13: 9780789210326

Publisher: Abbeville Press, 2020

Synopsis

Distinguished Curator and Research Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution, W. John Kress, recounts his natural history exploration in Myanmar

In the great tradition of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, this book is a first-person narrative of daunting travel and scientific discovery in the little-known country of Myanmar. Dr. Kress explored many areas in this enigmatic country, surveying its teak forests, bamboo thickets, timber plantations, rivers, and mangroves to document its incredible botanical diversity. Myanmar is one of the great biodiversity hot spots in Asia, but because of its social isolation and reputation for political repression it has been closed to - or avoided by - many scientists. Nevertheless, Dr. Kress was determined to search for and record plants that had not been studied since they were first discovered by Western botanists over a century ago. Among the rarities he came upon was a new species of plant called the weeping goldsmith, a ginger flower whose Burmese name was derived from the legend that the local goldsmiths were reduced to tears because none of their own creations could rival its exquisiteness.

Dr. Kress also relates how he came to appreciate the people and culture of Myanmar through an understanding of their flora, natural habitats, and human-dominated environments. Included are fascinating excerpts from his field journals that serve as counterpoints to the accounts of earlier plant explorers. Illustrating the text are some 200 of Dr. Kress's own colour photographs of the incredible plants, people, landscapes, and temples he witnessed in his travels as well as 30 archival images of Burma taken by past explorers. The back matter features an illustrated portfolio of representative native plants. This lively armchair exploration should appeal to a general readership as well as to botanists, conservationists, and environmentalists.

About this title

About the Author

W. John Kress is a Curator of Botany and Research Scientist at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He is the co-author of A Checklist of the trees, shrubs, herbs, and climbers of Myanmar and Plant Conservation - A Natural History Approach, and has written many botanical articles. Wade Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and has written many books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, One River, and Light at the Edge of the World.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from: The Weeping Goldsmith

The goldsmith was weeping. No matter how hard he tried, with all his skills, his tools, his experience, and his love, he could not re-create nor imitate the intricate structure of this delicate white and yellow-gold flower. He and his fellow craftsmen had worked tirelessly to capture in gold the intimacy and simplicity of the individual parts of the flower. It looked possible. He just couldn’t do it. Perhaps the sacredness of this flower was what prevented him from fully understanding its nature in order to reproduce it. Many had tried, but no one had succeeded. The plant itself could easily be grown in the garden of the monastery, but the goldsmith could not work his precious metal into its gentle form. And so the natural flower itself must be gathered from the fields to serve as a special offering to the Buddha in the village pagodas and household shrines.

Such is the legend behind a real flower that is commonly found in Myanmar. The first time I saw padeign gno, which literally means “weeping goldsmith” in Burmese, the flowers were in a giant pile in a basket. This basket was perfectly balanced on the head of a lovely, slim Burmese woman who wore a long pink longyi as she headed for the local market in Bago. Bago is about fifteen miles (25 km) from Rangoon, the former capital city of Burma—or Myanmar, as it is now called by the military regime currently in control of the government. The renaming of places in modern-day Myanmar is extensive. In fact, in ancient Burma, Bago used to be called Pegu. Rangoon is now referred to as Yangon. And the famous Irrawaddy River has become the Ayeryarwady. As a newcomer myself to this mystifying country I soon realized that the goldsmith was not the only one having trouble understanding the secrets of this forbidden land.

Padeign gno is the Burmese name for a species of plant in the ginger family, in a genus known to botanists by the Latin name Globba. I should have known the species name for this flower. After all, for a professional botanist specializing in gingers and with access to the latest laboratory methods and DNA tests for determining the identification of any plant species, ordinary plants found in everyday markets should pose no problem. I had prepared for my work in Myanmar by studying botanical specimens in museums and compiling lists of species already reported from the country. Yet here I was in the flower bazaar of one of the most populated areas of Myanmar, and I, like the goldsmith, was mystified. Padeign gno is a striking flower,its bright green leaves and long stems topped with a drooping cluster of white bracts enclosing the golden yellow flowers, each on a thin pale green stalk. I knew it should be classified in the genus Globba, but I didn’t know in which species. Here I was, my first time in Myanmar, and I could not properly identify a common flower sold in the market. I was humbled, but I also felt myself being drawn into this country by these simple flowers in the marketplace. I knew they represented only a tiny fraction of the plant life waiting to be discovered in this puzzling land.

In addition to its golden flowers, Burma is often called the Golden Land because of the thousands of gilded pagodas and shrines that have been built there over thousands of years to honor the Buddha. There is almost no place you can go in the country without encountering a shrine to the Buddha. As you sail along the Irrawaddy River, not half a mile will pass without your sighting at least one brilliant white and gold pagoda perched on the crest of a hill or rise. Far from any city, deep in the middle of a pristine teak forest, it is also not uncommon to encounter a small, always elegant Buddhist statue placed on a special boulder or neatly carved into a rock face. About 90 percent of the population of Myanmar practices Theravada Buddhism, which permeates every aspect of the daily social life, behavior, and professional interactions of the Burmese. In fact, beautiful padeign gno serves as a frequent offering at Buddhist shrines, both large and small. The basketful of flowers I first saw was on its way to be respectfully placed at the feet of the giant reclining Shwethalyaung Buddha in Bago.

Why was I, a botanist and plant expert, in Burma? Was it by chance, by luck, or even by fate? My passion for tropical plants had taken me to tropical places in many countries around the world in search of species that were poorly known, new to science, or in need of conservation. I started my career first as a researcher at a small tropical botanical garden in Florida and then as a scientist and curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. I worked nearly twenty years in the tropical lands of Central and South America before my growing interest in the classification of gingers and their relatives demanded that I begin some exploration of the tropical areas of Southeast Asia. In Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, southern China, and Myanmar, gingers are abundant, especially in the monsoonal regions, which have distinct dry and wet seasons. Some gingers are important medicinals used as local curatives; others provide distinctive and essential flavors in daily cooking rituals; and still others have entered the international cut-flower trade because of their horticultural beauty.

My interests were primarily scientific. I am one of the dwindling cadre of scientists called taxonomists who devote their careers to the discovery, description, and classification of plants. Many species, particularly in the tropical zones of the earth, are yet to be found and given a scientific name. One of my jobs as a taxonomist is to travel to remote areas to document the remaining unknown plant diversity. Yet providing a botanical name for a specimen is not my only goal. Each plant species fits into a community of other plants and animals in a unique way. Understanding how a species interacts and evolves with other species is a scientific challenge that requires the patience of observation, the ingenuity to devise critical experiments, and the skill to interpret the data and results. Science is puzzle-solving, and each species I found in Myanmar provided one piece of a very large evolutionary puzzle that I was trying to decipher. For me the gingers were a key ingredient. But first I had to know their names.

My work on gingers and other related plants had focused my geographic sights on Southeast Asia. In 1996 I learned that a field trip to Myanmar was being planned by a group of conservationists at the research center of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo under the leadership of Dr. Chris Wemmer. Chris and his colleagues at the zoo were studying populations of wild elephants and endangered deer in the teak forests of central and upper Burma. I had heard that he needed a botanist as part of his team to help record and describe the vegetation in the habitats where the elephants and deer were found. During my earlier work on gingers I had thoroughly checked our botany library at the museum and could not find a recent book about the plants of Myanmar. I knew that if I could accompany Chris and join this group of scientists heading to Myanmar, I would have an unbelievable opportunity to get a glimpse of a country and a land that had been only poorly explored for plants. When he invited me to go with him to Myanmar, I quickly accepted the invitation. At the time I knew nothing about padeign gno, nothing about goldsmiths, and very little about Myanmar, but all of that would soon change.

Edition details

• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0789210320
• ISBN 13: 9780789210326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288