A Librarian for Plants: Serendipity in a Gainesville Garden

I first encountered Marc Frank’s personality three years before I met him. Someone else invited me to walk through an amazing garden in Gainesville, though the owner wasn’t there. This was fine because the place was packed—I mean packed like a plant hoarder’s haven, with green treasures of all sorts. 

Sometimes, it’s fun to plunder people’s plants without them. I’ve done this before and thought - damn, they are nutty, and I’m glad they are not here. But in this case, during the ensuing three years I’ve imagined that person, that place, and looked back at the pictures and said, I sure hope I meet that guy sometimes.

Yesterday, at a conference near Orlando, I walked in late to a session. I didn’t even know what the topic was. The room was dark. A skinny guy on stage delivered what I assumed would be a typical academic presentation about Bartram and Victorian botanists in Florida. Until… he dropped a botanical bombshell: Gaillardia, the beloved Blanket Flower that graces the covers of countless native plant books, isn't native to Florida at all.

Something struck me about this guy as he went on. A light bulb went off when I saw his name: Marc Frank, Botanist for the University of Florida and the Florida Museum of Natural History. This was the collector, the gardener, the owner of that wonderland in Gainesville I’d floated through years ago. I would not miss this chance to meet the guy.

Later, I introduced myself and quizzed him about his plant inquiries. “How do you figure out a plant everyone calls native is not?  And who asks you to do that?”

“I’m sort of like the librarian for plant questions,” Marc explained, “I’m the resource person that all IFAS* employees call if they want to know some obscure detail about any plant. I can delve into books and websites and help them out.”  

Later, a very well-connected plant person told me that Marc was being modest. “Marc is the plant resource person for everybody in Florida,” she said.

(*IFAS is the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences for the University of Florida. IFAS has thousands of employees.)

Marc has the lean frame of someone who bikes everywhere (because he does) and took an unconventional path to botany. After high school, he left Augusta, GA, to become an archaeologist, then landed in Gainesville, and at 40, returned to school to study botany. This diverse background proved invaluable in his botanical detective work.

The Blanket Flower mystery exemplifies his methodical approach. Reading through 1800s-era botanists' accounts of Florida, Marc recounted the 10-year trail of other botanists (Alan Weekly), and they noted something odd: no early travelers mentioned this showy, brilliant orange flower that blooms year-round. It is not the kind of plant nineteenth-century botanists would overlook. Other research revealed older references to the plant in coastal Texas and Mexico. After a decade of research, the evidence was clear: Blanket Flower, like many Floridians, is a beach-loving transplant that naturally found its way to the Sunshine State and then on around to the Carolinas and beyond.

Marc's work reminds us that our understanding of "native" and "natural" continues to evolve. Sometimes, it takes a plant detective with a passion for both history and botany to show us that nature's story is more complex - and more interesting - than we imagined.

Gold-tipped with pinky-orange centers, Blanket Flower is often included in native plant lists and seed mixes.

I'm grateful for that afternoon of snooping around his garden, wondering about the person behind such an extravagant collection. After years of speculating, it turns out he's exactly who I hoped he'd be – the kind of person who not only fills his yard with botanical treasures but also bikes across town to overturn century-old assumptions.

Some mysteries are worth the wait.

I love that Marc has shelves stacked and packed with plants on his front walk!