A Cultivated Life

A dedicated mentor and an informal teacher to many in the plant community, Lynn Lowrey was legendary for his contagious passion for plants. Lowrey’s curiosity about the natural world was unbounded and his knowledge nearly encyclopedic. “You could go on a field trip for a day,” son-in-law Mike Anderson says, “and it was like taking a whole semester of horticulture!”

Friends say that Lowrey’s expertise was, in fact, so great that consulting him for information about a particular plant was almost like consulting the plant itself. “If you liked a tree and met Lynn Lowrey,” joked Tapley, “it was like meeting the tree, only better, since a plant can’t talk about itself. His knowledge about individual plants and trees led you to a place where you wanted to know even more.”

Lowrey’s enthusiasm and expertise attracted a wide and diverse following. He welcomed anyone—young or old, expert or novice, scientist or backyard gardener—who was curious, and he nurtured passing interests in plants into abiding passions. Even in his 70s, he loved to tromp around for hours on research trips with companions 40 years his junior. “He could get along with young folks or old folks, it didn’t matter,” Tapley recalls. “It was the common bond with plants that counted.”

Though Lowrey received a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Louisiana State University in 1940, he acquired his knowledge of plants largely through constant reading, observation, and experimentation on his own. After serving in the army for four years during World War II, Lowrey dedicated his life to the study and cultivation of plants, opening his first nursery in 1957. “Every minute of the waking day, he was thinking about plants, reading about plants, and going on field trips,” Anderson remembers. “He always wanted to go off to the woods and look for something new. He’d be reading about a plant, and he’d want to go find it.”

Lowrey was the leading pioneer of the native plants movement in Texas, long before talk of biodiversity became fashionable. Both at the several nurseries he owned and during his tenures as an expert grower at other nurseries, Lowrey was an advocate for the propagation of the naturally rich plant life native to the region. While other landscapers eagerly satisfied customers’ demands for the most popular and stylish species from abroad, Lowrey followed his curiosity on regular expeditions throughout Texas and northern Mexico, tirelessly combing the wild areas for unusual and underrepresented species to collect and cultivate. Lowrey’s interest in native plants made his landscaping methods considerably more time-intensive than those of many of his peers, because rather than simply purchasing plants readily available on the market, Lowrey would have to first locate in the wilderness and then patiently grow to salable size most of the plants he used.

Through his self-directed studies, Lowrey became an exceptionally well-versed general horticulturist as well as one of the world’s foremost experts on plants native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. In fact, foreign visitors to the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., often were advised to make Texas part of their travel plans just so they could chat with Lowrey about the region’s flora.

Lowrey’s service to his colleagues in the plant community and to the environment earned him many honors, including a special award from the Native Plant Society of Texas for almost single-handedly rescuing the Texas pistache (Pistacia texana) from extinction. The Texas pistache is just one of several species that continue to propagate and flourish because of Lowrey’s efforts.

A poignant final chapter of Lowrey’s legacy was his integral involvement in research on the Chinese happy tree (Camptotheca acuminata). In the last years of his life, a surge of interest in research on the cancer-fighting properties of Camptotheca meant that the trees were in short supply. Lowrey was called in as an expert to advise on the growth and cultivation of the trees. Soon after, Lowrey and the nursery owned by Patsy and Mike Anderson donated 600 healthy Camptotheca trees to a hospital and cancer research organization. In addition to sharing his expertise about the tree’s growth and care with the researchers, Lowrey worked hard to raise funds and forge interpersonal connections that would aid in this research. As a tribute to his dedication, a rare Camptotheca species, first found by a team of researchers on an expedition to China, was named after him—Camptotheca lowreyana. Lowrey was later to take the experimental medication Camptothecin in his own battle with cancer.

Lowrey’s dedication to cancer research was just one of countless examples that friends and admirers cite of his remarkable generosity toward both plants and people. Lowrey’s love of the plant world was so deep that he wished to share it at every opportunity, frequently making gifts of plants to friends and customers. “He never made a lot of money,” Tapley recalls, “because when you went out to his nursery and were admiring these young trees, he would hand them to you, and when it came time to pay, there was no paying! If you liked it, it was yours. He would have gone across the state, found a seed, brought it back, planted it, and grown it for you. It was truly a gift.”

Though his expertise was continually sought from around the world, friends say that Lowrey always considered himself an amateur. Quiet and unassuming, Lowrey often was described as a quintessential Southern gentleman. Tapley recalls Lowrey’s impeccable forbearance in his constant role as teacher and mentor. “When we first began to unravel the richness of our ecology,” Tapley says, “there is so much to it, and I found myself asking a lot of questions. Because of Lynn’s generous way, he wouldn’t allow himself to think that I was bothering him, though looking back, I was bothering him! But I learned a lot from him, and I was indeed very grateful for his being so generous.”

Years before Camptotheca lowreyana, botanists wanted to name another rare plant, a species of legume found in Mexico, after Lowrey. When Lowrey was unbending in his refusal of the honor, the plant was eventually named Myrospermum sousanam after another horticulturist. No doubt the proposition of the Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum at Rice would run against the same dogged humility. “Of course, he would have been the first person to say, ‘You’re not going to put my name on it,’” Anderson chuckles. “He would have been so mad!”

Although Lowrey likely would have been displeased that the new arboretum bears his name, he would have been delighted by the educational opportunities it will provide horticulturists of the future—professional and amateur alike. Each time he opened a new plant nursery, he would say, “I’m going to make this place a showplace. People are going to come from all over the country to see my plants,” recalls Anderson. Now that dream is coming true at Rice on a scale Lowrey might never have imagined.