Prickly Perfect!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 2, 2021

Success!


At the MMA, we have been focusing on better establishing our gardens as pollinator pathways and ensuring that they are full of native species. I have blogged about this several times recently.


One plant, that some may find unusual, is the Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus. Believe it or not, it is found on Nantucket but in limited areas– specifically Coatue and Great Point. It is in fact, native to Nantucket, as well as Massachusetts and New England – and the only cactus that is so it’s incredibly special.


For many years, the MMA had a much different garden in front of the Maria Mitchell Vestal Street Observatory. It was a large native plant and herb garden that took the entire space that is now grass and a small garden. In that old garden, the cactus grew in abundance but over time it almost faded away. When the area was re-landscaped after the 1987 Seminar Room addition to the MMO, a smaller garden was created and the remaining cactus was carefully transplanted into the new one. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the transfer very well and was lost. 


I have been trying to re-establish some here on Vestal Street over the last few years. Thanks to the generosity of several grants from the Nantucket Garden Club, I have been able to purchase quite a few native plants and wildflowers, the cactus among them. Believe it or not, my bunny “friends” love to eat them! So the battle has been raging. My netting and now the myriad of fences has been working – to some degree – and this small group of cacti is trying very hard to thrive. 


Happily, when I was watering the other day, I noted that one had finally flowered! You see two images of it here and then a third is a bud coming along where I planted a few more along the side of the Hinchman House, our Natural Science Museum.

Hooray for small gifts! (And, victories over the bunnies!)


I guess it bloomed in time for Miss Mitchell's 203rd Birthday!  Which was yesterday - August 1.


JNLF

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July 31, 1883. I had two or three rich days! On Friday last I went to Holderness, N.H.. to the Asquam House; I had been asked by Mrs. T to join her party. There was at this house Mr. Whittier, Mr., and Mrs. Cartland, Professor and Mrs. Johnson, of Yale . . . The house seemed full of fine, cultivate people. We stayed two days and a half. And first of the scenery. The road up to the house is a steep hill, and at the foot of the hill it winds and turns around two lakes. The panorama is complete one hundred and eighty degrees. Beyond the lakes lie the mountains.  The Asquam House sat atop Shepard Hill and was built in 1881. A hotel, it has space for fifty guests, it was located near Squam Lake and became part of a summer enclave that developed there in the later part of the nineteenth century. Today, the area is a National Historic Landmark, but sadly, the hotel was demolished in 1948. Maria would have been familiar with these people seen here – and others I did not include – but particularly John Greenleaf Whittier who was something of a family friend. He was close to one of her younger brothers, William Forester. JNLF
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