I have spent part of a fall weekend hot on the trail of a woman named \u201cDodo Hanbury Forbes.\u201d \u00a0The quest began when I unpacked Ms. Forbes\u2019 namesake plant, a tall, pink-flowered Phlox paniculata. \u00a0The phlox was hale and hearty and is residing in a shady area on my back porch for a couple of days until it is ready for planting. \u00a0In the meantime I have been trying to find out more about Dodo, searching the Internet and reference books on all variations of the name.<\/p>\n
It is common practice for plant hybridizers to name prize specimens after wives, daughters, mothers, muses and other significant females.\u00a0 I expect Dodo Forbes fell into one of those categories.\u00a0 Given the maiden name, \u201cHanbury\u201d and the last name, it is reasonable to assume that the real Dodo\u2014was given name was probably something more formal, like Dorothy- was English or American.<\/p>\n
DeGroot\u2019s catalog refers to \u2018Dodo Hanbury Forbes\u2019 as \u201cstill one of the best pinks [phlox],\u201d implying that it is an older variety. \u00a0However in the fast-changing horticultural marketplace, this could mean that the Dodo is anywhere from twenty to one hundred years old.<\/p>\n
The best clue I found came from a book available through Google Books. \u00a0In his 2011 work, Phlox: A Natural History and Gardener\u2019s Guide<\/em>, author James H. Locklear refers to phlox growing at his in-laws\u2019 former house in Warrensburg, Missouri. \u00a0He describes those plants as \u201cclear colored cultivars that bore splendid names like\u2026\u2019Dodo Hanbury Forbes\u2019\u2014bred a half century before by the likes of Ruys of Holland, Symons-Jeune of England and Scholhammer of Germany.\u201d\u00a0 This means that \u2018Dodo\u2019 was most likely bred and introduced in the 1950\u2019s and, for reasons listed above, I suspect an English breeder was responsible.\u00a0 A little more research uncovered references to a group of \u201cSymons-Jeune phlox\u201d from that period.<\/p>\n So\u2026Dodo H. Forbes is still something of an enigma, but now I know that she meant something special to the plant breeders at Symons-Jeune. \u00a0That and her lovely, clear pink blossoms are enough to earn her a place in my garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have spent part of a fall weekend hot on the trail of a woman named \u201cDodo Hanbury Forbes.\u201d \u00a0The quest began when I unpacked Ms. Forbes\u2019 namesake plant, a tall, pink-flowered Phlox paniculata. \u00a0The phlox was hale and hearty and is residing in a shady area on my back porch for a couple of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[363,364,365,361,368,367,366,362],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-summer","tag-dodo-hanbury-forbes","tag-d-h-forbes","tag-phlox-breeders","tag-phlox-paniculata","tag-pink-phlox","tag-plant-names","tag-symons-jeune","tag-tall-garden-phlox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}