Association, an organization authorized by the Regents in 1925. Subsequently, expeditions to Mexico and the Southwest have been made every year. From the standpoint of publicity the most notable of these has been the trip of Dr. Elzada U. Clover and Miss Mary Lois Jotter, to the canyon of the Colorado. They are to the present time the only women who have ever attempted and survived the trip by boat through the canyon. Lundell was still connected with the Gardens at the time of the Michigan-Carnegie expedition to Guatemala in 1933 and of his first Michigan excursion to Mexico (1934), after which he was transferred to the Herbarium and the Botanical Gardens' participation in the biological survey of the Mayan area ceased. More recently the Gardens have participated in Mexican exploration through collaboration with Dr. Forrest Shreve, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Dr. Ivan M. Johnston, of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, in a study of the Sonoran Desert.
Only four head gardeners have been so designated by official appointment. The first was Martin Bilon (1916-21), who had become greatly devoted to Bartlett's Oenothera research in the United States Department of Agriculture; he came soon after the transfer of that work to Ann Arbor. He only returned to Washington at the latest date that permitted him to regain his civil service status. He was highly skilled in the handling of experimental cultures and in propagation. As gardener assigned to assist the famous rose-breeder, Dr. Walter van Fleet, he had saved, by means of grafting, fine horticultural rose varieties that had originated as interspecific hybrids whose embryos proved incapable of producing a primary root. He devised the method of grafting them, as minute objects in the cotyledonary stage, on unhybridized stock seedlings.
The second was Adriaan P. Wezel (1921-30), trained in Holland, an expert grower of chrysanthemums whose plants took prizes with unfailing regularity. He is known in Holland as a writer on American horticulture for Dutch periodicals. He left Michigan for a corresponding position at Smith College. From 1930 until 1935 Jacob J. Van Akkeren was the acting head gardener. He was succeeded by the present incumbent, Walter Kleinschmidt, who was trained at our Botanical Gardens and has reached his present position by conspicuous success in the complicated routine of growing plants for research and instruction.
