JARS v64n2 - 55-year-old Letter from Joseph B. Gable to Dr. John Creech

55-year-old Letter from Joseph B. Gable to Dr. John Creech
Sandra F. McDonald, Ph.D.
Hampton, Virginia

Recently an interesting letter that Joe Gable wrote to Dr. John Creech in response to a letter Gable had received from Creech came to light, and this has been donated to the Rhododendron and Azalea Manuscripts Collection in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The letter was dated January 1st, 1954, and had been in John Creech's possession until about 2006, at which time Dr. Creech passed it on to Don Hyatt. Don recently passed it on to me to put into the Manuscripts Collection. Dr. Creech died August 7, 2009, in Columbus, North Carolina. Joseph Gable died in 1972.

Dr. Creech made ten different plant collecting trips to Asia during his work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). He expanded the Azalea collection at the U.S. National Arboretum and established the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum there. He became director of the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., in 1973, the year after Joe Gable died. Creech remained director until he retired in 1980, after being with the USDA for 33 years.

Dr. Creech and Kaname Katō translated the mid-17th century book A Brocade Pillow: Azaleas of Old Japan (Ihei 1984) into English. Creech referred to Gable on page xviii: "Azalea development [in the U.S.] really began in the late 1930s when Morrison initiated the Glenn Dale azalea project and Joseph Gable, of Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, undertook efforts to produce new hardy azaleas. These American pioneer breeders stimulated a number of breeders into action during the next forty years, many of whom based their hybrids on the creations of Morrison and Gable. [Etc.]" Asiatic azaleas and rhododendrons were obviously of great interest to Creech. Evergreen azaleas registered by Dr. Creech included both 'Ben Morrison', which he selected from Morrison's work, and 'Mrs LBJ'.

Joe Gable was interested in Asiatic species of rhododendrons. He grew many rhododendron species and hybrids from seed and had a nursery where he sold apples from his orchard, and plants, later including rhododendrons and azaleas. He corresponded with rhododendron enthusiasts on our west coast, in the east, and in England. He had seen rhododendrons from afar in 1918 when he was sent to England with the 319th Field Artillery Band, 87th Division and had become interested in them. His correspondents sent him seed and pollen in their letters. This was before the days of the A.R.S. when publications about rhododendrons were rare and information was hard to find. His rhododendron plantings became a rhododendron woods as the plants matured and were known and visited by many rhododendron enthusiasts.

His first rhododendron was R. maximum , which he dug from a mountainside near his deer and bear hunting grounds in north-central Pennsylvania about 1917 or so, according to Henry Yates. Later Gable obtained material from the Smoky Mountains and eventually Asian species from his British correspondent and hybridizer Mr. Magor. He had a rather far reaching correspondence.

A book by Livingston and West (1978) has a chapter about Joseph Gable which tells a lot about his family and his work.

There are about 160 Gable plants in ARS Plant Registrar Jay Murray's plant database, with about 90 of them registered. There was no ARS Plant Registrar for rhododendrons in the early years of Gable's work.

In his letter to Creech, Gable mentions opportunity for "pioneering" in rhododendron breeding in the Sciadorhodion section. Apparently, very little has become of this line of breeding, at least in the U.S. Species in the Sciadorhodion and Brachycalyx sections are most often grown and special selections of these species named.

There are articles about Joseph Gable in a few old Quarterly Bulletins of the ARS. Some of these articles are online at Virginia Tech at http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JARS/. There are articles in both QBARS Vol 21, No. 2, April 15, 1967, and QBARS Vol 15, No. 1, January 16, 1961. He was a recipient of the ARS Gold Medal.
Joe Gable's letter is reproduced verbatim with original spellings, misspellings, and punctuation. However, species names have been italicized for easier reading. Some species names seem to follow older rules of capitalization. Special thanks to Kendon Stubbs for his work with the old letter.

References
Ihei, I. (Kato, K. (translator) with Creech, J.L. (Introduction and commentary)). 1984. A Brocade Pillow: Azaleas of Old Japan . Weatherhill, New York, NY: 161 pp.
Livingston, P.A., and F.H. West. 1978. Hybrids and hybridizers . Harrowood Books, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: 256 pp.

SPECIALIZING IN AZALEAS & RHODODENDRONS		CHOICE APPLES IN SEASON
	JOSEPH B. GABLE NURSERYMAN AND FRUIT GROWER STEWARTSTOWN, PENNA. PHONE 7-R-3
January 1st, 1954

Dear Mr. Creech:
I have just come across your letter of Dec. 4, which it seems has not been answered. It is a most interesting letter and I laid it aside until I could get more time to answer - and to check up on just what I have along these lines and what I might have for you. Also I was away for over two weeks in December. I plan to answer a letter and think over what I can do about it and then - sometimes - I think I have written it down and mailed it.

As for R. quinquefolium I have no plant at all under that tag now even though my notes say that I sowed seeds in 1928 and several times since. All that have flowered seemed to be R. reticulatum or one of its many forms - (following Wilson in the Monograph of Azaleas). Personally I think there are too many different things under the one specific name.

However there is a plant growing here under the tag "R. pentaphyllum" that several visitors who know their azaleas think is R. quinquefolium . It is one of two plants bought from Harlan P. Kelsey of Boxford, Mass. in 1927. The other plant died perhaps five years ago and this one seems in the best of health but has not yet flowered. I wrote to Kelsey a few years back and he replied that he had not known of a single flower on any of that lot of plants. My plant is in rather dense shade now and should no doubt be moved out from under the trees that have grown over it in these twenty five years. I just forget about it.

Your crosses of R. reticulatum and Weyrichii sound interesting and hope they will do alright with you in spite of their losing vigor the second year. Let us hope it is some environmental check and not a genetic fault.

One of your observations would seem a little along lines of what I wrote above - that your seedlings of this cross are "absolutely identical" - since this would tend to strengthen the theory that the various forms coming under R. reticulatum are rather well fixed in their forms genetically and one does not get all the variations in form that are accredited to this species in seedlings from one individual plant. It is my experience that if I grow seedlings from the form with small flowers and seed capsules less than ¼ in. long I get that in my seedlings and also the form with ¾ in. capsules and much larger flowers and leaves ( rhombicum ? [= reticulatum ]), comes true. Another pronounced form with tiny seed capsules and leaves very hairy approaching Amagianum in general appearance - I have never tried from seeds as it loses its buds so regularly but it is the more shapely in plant form. The "rhombicum" is the prettiest but the tall growing form with the ¼ in. capsules is the hardier. I have long considered - I have been 'considering' it too long for here it is the 4th of Jan. and I am just back to my typewriter to find your unfinished letter in it and I can not quite recall what was being 'considered'.

But now I believe it comes to me! That the Sciadorhodion and closely related Rhodora sections offer best opportunity for "pioneering" in rhododendron breeding and also the greatest challenge? Or if we 'consider' the later classification based on the 'Species of Rhododendron' the subseries, Canadense, Schlippenbachii, Tashiroi and - possibly (- Nipponicum and Obtusum ?)

The only hybrid of Schlippenbachii that I ever flowered was a hybrid of Mucronatum var Led. alba x Schlippenbachii ! And the only hybrid of the Rhodora section that I know of having flowered is Canadense x Japonicum or R. Fraseri [Group] made by George Fraser of Vancouver Island. This I saw in flower in the Arnold Arboretum a few years ago, so it may be some that can be perpetuated whereas my cross mentioned above with the seeds sown in 1928 kept dying off until it was missing from the 1934 inventory. A few plants grew with unusual vigor and it was these that lasted longer and perhaps four flowered. These more vigorous seedlings were all much deformed and tended to have fasciated stems. My notes record one stem three inches wide, very heavily covered with large leaves and with one flower resembling Led. alba but pale pink or rose in color and heavily spotted red. Most of the florets on this and the others that bloomed were distorted and inferior.

Just how many matings in this group were attempted here I do not know. Generally nothing is recorded in the inventories until it is transplanted into pots or outdoor beds and most of this class never reached that stage. The notes are made up from the inventories and these infant mortalities are unrecorded. At the moment a single four inch pot with a plant in it that purports to be Weyrichii x Schlippenbachii and that from its looks may be just that, is all I have to show for all the attempts I have made in this field. But I am decidedly of the opinion that something can be done. I get so little time to make crosses when the time comes to do it. Some I plan much to make are never made and others so hurriedly and carelessly. It is right in the busiest season and only me to do it all.

But I think and plan to do these things and suggest them for your cogitation as to whether you think them worthwhile to work on, and my plan now is this = to try hybrids of the more closely related species of this group irrespective of their probable garden value, the object being to get some hybrids started as sometimes hybrids soften up a species for further crossing. Sometimes too they make mules but these species are undoubtedly closely related and if clannishness and tendencies to apomixis (did I spell that right?) can be once broken we might get some strain that would accept pollen much more readily than anything we have at present. Perhaps too long a campaign for a veteran of my age but you are still on the field for many long campaigns we hope, but if such a strain would appear it would certainly help? Your Weyrichii x reticulatum -(or of course any other cross in this group) - might produce such a clon and all seedlings that flower should be tried until one or two have been found that will hybridize easily regardless of their other characters. It is possible for the extremes in fertility and sterility to occur in the same lot of seedlings examples with me being atlanticum x japonicum and Racemosum x Keiskei with something less that five per cent showing full fertility and perhaps seventy five sterile.

The rhododendrons prunifolium , alabamense and canescens that you mention have all passed out here though canescens lived to flower quite similar to roseum which is much prettier, hardier and difficult to obtain satisfactory - i-e., - fertile hybrids from.

Prunifolium ought to be hardy and I would like to try it again as I hear it grows in spots that should be as cold as I am. I do not know where to obtain a good plant well dug and all. The plants I had were apparently collected - and roughly - and never came back to normal vigor.

Alabamense I should think is hopeless but Austrinum was hardy enough though I have lost my plant from drought. This last by luteum has given some fine tall growing vigorous yellows and quite fertile. The flowers are on the small side but make up for it in the masses produced.

As to there being no place for any other azaleas but those of the Obtusum group , in 'areas where they are hardy' — it may prove true. But this I know. If we ever get back to our normal winter climate again in the eastern U.S. the present great fringe area where thousands and millions of these plants are being grown now for some 8-l0 years is going to be practically wiped out and a lot of varieties and species will disappear from the more favored sections too. And the so called "hardy" Gable azaleas will get a black eye too - perhaps both eyes. We have had several periods of mild winters in my azalea growing experience with a corresponding build up in the number of varieties and amount of plant material which we lost when a hard winter came but never such a long continued series of mild ones as this.

We used to cut ice for summer use and store it every winter. We thought it had to be six inches thick to be of any use. Until we got our electric refrigerator I never knew a winter when we did not get plenty of it and once cut ice two feet thick - too d--n thick for the guy who has to do it! Now I do not think we have had six inch ice on our pond for ten years or more. I have no record and may be wrong but it has been a long time. Could it be that we will never see twenty below [°F] again? Around zero and that only for a night or two has been all we have gotten lately. Once we had about a week when the temperature staid below the whole time or nearly so. I do know that it was seven below at noon one day when a neighbor came and asked me to help dig a grave in 28 inches of frozen soil where it was bare. There was two - four feet of snow among my plants.

Well lets hope those extremes of around twenty below are no more anyhow.
I had a New Years wish for "Plenty of Work and a Lot More Success", which might be a good one to pass on to you?

With Most Sincere Regards,

[signed] Joe Gable
Jos. B. Gable