1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:06,180 Ping Yu: (music) Hello, everyone. 2 00:00:06,260 --> 00:00:13,500 Ping Yu: Welcome to the Blooms and Beyond podcast, a podcast that uncovers plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. 3 00:00:13,960 --> 00:00:15,000 Ping Yu: I'm your host, Ping. 4 00:00:15,420 --> 00:00:16,480 Ping Yu: How's everyone doing today? 5 00:00:16,980 --> 00:00:27,280 Ping Yu: I'm doing great because I have one of the legend and well-known international horticulturalist here today with me, Dr. Dave Creech, to share his plant stories. 6 00:00:27,660 --> 00:00:33,180 Ping Yu: I believe anyone who's interested in horticulture or gardening may have heard about him or his story. 7 00:00:33,260 --> 00:00:37,940 Ping Yu: If not, don't worry, you're gonna hear all of those in today's episode. 8 00:00:38,420 --> 00:00:42,020 Ping Yu: So I don't wanna steal any more thunder from our speaker today. 9 00:00:42,180 --> 00:00:47,120 Ping Yu: Without further ado, here are the conversations with Dr. Creech, Dr. Dave Creech. 10 00:00:47,200 --> 00:00:48,000 Ping Yu: I hope you enjoy. 11 00:00:48,100 --> 00:00:53,720 Ping Yu: (music) Well, hello, Dr. Dave Creech. 12 00:00:53,780 --> 00:00:55,120 Ping Yu: Welcome to the podcast. 13 00:00:55,400 --> 00:00:59,640 Ping Yu: I know a lot of people have known you, including me, for a long time. 14 00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:05,860 Ping Yu: But first off, can you tell our audience about a little bit about what you do and who you are and what you do? 15 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:07,220 Dave Creech: Thank you, Ping. 16 00:01:07,260 --> 00:01:08,140 Dave Creech: Good to see you. 17 00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:09,800 Dave Creech: Dave Creech. 18 00:01:09,900 --> 00:01:12,180 Dave Creech: I'm at Stephen F. Austin State University. 19 00:01:12,280 --> 00:01:22,320 Dave Creech: I've been here since, believe it or not, 1978, and I was a nine-month assigned horticulture teacher in the Department of Agriculture, 20 00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:29,160 Dave Creech: and basically have had a wonderful career teaching from 1978 to 2007. 21 00:01:29,340 --> 00:01:36,600 Dave Creech: I retired in 2007, and I was hired back to direct SFA Gardens, which is our true love here. 22 00:01:36,640 --> 00:01:45,460 Dave Creech: It's 138 acres of campus property, and most of it is bottom land, but still, we've built a beautiful garden in the last 40 years. 23 00:01:45,820 --> 00:01:48,140 Dave Creech: And Ping, this is our 40th anniversary. 24 00:01:48,300 --> 00:01:49,320 Ping Yu: That's great. 25 00:01:49,380 --> 00:01:50,060 Ping Yu: Congrats. 26 00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:50,940 Ping Yu: The 40th. 27 00:01:51,460 --> 00:02:00,880 Ping Yu: It's like I- Because I know you, I still remember the first time I saw you was when I was doing my PhD back in Texas A&M in 2017. 28 00:02:01,020 --> 00:02:03,420 Ping Yu: It's crazy to think about how time flies. 29 00:02:03,800 --> 00:02:04,940 Ping Yu: But- (Dave Creech: know) 30 00:02:04,980 --> 00:02:10,940 Ping Yu: Yeah, but I do know that you've spent your whole, or your entire life in horticulture. 31 00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:21,380 Ping Yu: Can you tell us about what first sparked you, your interest in plant, in horticulture, and how I know you grow up with plants. 32 00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:27,040 Ping Yu: Can you tell us a little bit more in that route and share your horticulture (Dave Creech: Well,) story? 33 00:02:27,640 --> 00:02:29,940 Dave Creech: Well, I have a little interesting background. 34 00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:39,300 Dave Creech: When I was two years old and my sister was six months old, my dad was a vo-ag teacher, an agriculture teacher in Central Texas, and he got a phone 35 00:02:39,360 --> 00:02:42,560 Dave Creech: call from Washington, and they had a job for him in India. 36 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:50,860 Dave Creech: And so when I was two years old, Mom and Dad and Sue and I, we off we go to India, and we spent five years there. 37 00:02:50,900 --> 00:03:01,580 Dave Creech: We spent two years in East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, and we spent another three or four years in Burma, which is now Myanmar. 38 00:03:02,260 --> 00:03:07,960 Dave Creech: And so I didn't come back to America until I was about 16 years old, believe it or not. 39 00:03:08,660 --> 00:03:14,360 Dave Creech: And so I'd had, been raised as a child in Asia, so that had a lot to do with it. 40 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:24,780 Dave Creech: My father was an agronomist, and he always took me in the Jeep to the field plots with his students in Nagpur, 41 00:03:24,860 --> 00:03:25,380 Dave Creech: India. 42 00:03:25,920 --> 00:03:32,260 Dave Creech: And I really was just a little whippersnapper, but I was very mesmerized with agronomy, growing grains, really. 43 00:03:33,120 --> 00:03:37,100 Dave Creech: My interest in horticulture didn't come until I was at Texas A&M. 44 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:46,960 Dave Creech: And so when we came back to America, I finished high school, and I started in agronomy, and I was interested in, what would you say, feeding the world, 45 00:03:47,480 --> 00:03:50,080 Dave Creech: saving the world- (laughs) (Ping Yu: Yeah) saving the world with agronomy. 46 00:03:50,760 --> 00:04:00,600 Dave Creech: And but then I had a professor at Texas A&M, his name was J.B. Storey, and I got to know him in a class, and I really 47 00:04:00,660 --> 00:04:01,220 Dave Creech: liked him. 48 00:04:01,260 --> 00:04:02,800 Dave Creech: And he was six foot four. 49 00:04:02,900 --> 00:04:03,200 Ping Yu: Wow. 50 00:04:03,900 --> 00:04:06,700 Dave Creech: And he was a very powerful personality. 51 00:04:07,380 --> 00:04:17,380 Dave Creech: And when I was registering in my second semester of agronomy, he grabbed me in the main room there, it used to be the basketball coliseum, 52 00:04:17,459 --> 00:04:28,360 Dave Creech: and we were holding little punch cards, and he took me around all the tables that were there, and he introduced me as the next great horticulturist. 53 00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:31,940 Dave Creech: I wasn't a horticulturist, but he made me be one. 54 00:04:31,980 --> 00:04:35,660 Dave Creech: And back then, we really respected the professors and were scared of them. 55 00:04:35,760 --> 00:04:40,780 Dave Creech: So I just shifted over to horticulture because of him, to be honest with you. 56 00:04:41,600 --> 00:04:50,340 Dave Creech: And he was a pecan person, and I met Hollis Bowen, and I worked in the fruit program at Texas A&M University and managed the orchard. 57 00:04:51,100 --> 00:04:52,460 Dave Creech: But I wanted to buck out. 58 00:04:52,660 --> 00:04:53,820 Dave Creech: I wanted to leave. 59 00:04:53,900 --> 00:04:57,080 Dave Creech: Just too much education at A&M, you understand that. 60 00:04:57,140 --> 00:05:03,140 Dave Creech: And when I got a bachelor's degree, I got a National Science Foundation fellowship that I could go anywhere with. 61 00:05:03,180 --> 00:05:04,680 Dave Creech: And so I went to Colorado. 62 00:05:05,320 --> 00:05:07,760 Dave Creech: Colorado State University was my master's. 63 00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:09,500 Dave Creech: I thought, gosh, that'd be wonderful. 64 00:05:09,680 --> 00:05:11,880 Dave Creech: The skiing is really good there. 65 00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:13,620 Dave Creech: I'm gonna enjoy the lifestyle. 66 00:05:14,200 --> 00:05:15,680 Dave Creech: And off we go to... 67 00:05:15,960 --> 00:05:18,040 Dave Creech: I went off to Colorado to get my master's. 68 00:05:18,100 --> 00:05:28,040 Dave Creech: But I missed Texas, I missed my parents, I missed my family land, and I came back for my PhD, and I got my PhD in fruit physiology in 1978. 69 00:05:28,840 --> 00:05:39,520 Dave Creech: After that, I was hired by Texas A&M to be the very first extension specialist in fruit and vegetable for Overton, 70 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:40,180 Dave Creech: Texas. 71 00:05:41,140 --> 00:05:51,640 Dave Creech: And I stayed there a few- I was only there a few months, and this job at SFA came open, Ping, and I suddenly saw the light 72 00:05:51,740 --> 00:05:55,660 Dave Creech: and I decided that, oh my gosh, it's a nine-month contract. 73 00:05:56,400 --> 00:05:57,600 Dave Creech: Well, I had a peach orchard. 74 00:05:58,160 --> 00:06:04,960 Dave Creech: I had a 35-acre peach orchard that I had built since I was at Texas A&M, my PhD. 75 00:06:05,100 --> 00:06:06,200 Dave Creech: I'd bought some land. 76 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:15,040 Dave Creech: Back then the land was $300 an acre, it was very cheap, and I started a peach orchard 'cause I love peaches. 77 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:15,720 Dave Creech: I still do. 78 00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:26,780 Dave Creech: And essentially, I was a 12-month contract with A&M, and here's a job that's nine months and I'm off in the summer, perfect for peaches. 79 00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:37,300 Dave Creech: And so (laughs) I jumped ship from the center of the universe, it's Texas A&M, you know that, you were at A&M, and basically it's the center of the universe, 80 00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:48,420 Dave Creech: and I left the Mecca on the Brazos, I left it to go to a very small university near the Louisiana border, and I've been here for 47 81 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:49,320 Dave Creech: years. 82 00:06:50,100 --> 00:06:53,400 Dave Creech: And it's been an amazing ride and I've had a wonderful career. 83 00:06:53,440 --> 00:07:02,880 Dave Creech: And there's a lot of advantages that people don't realize by going to a small university compared to one that's large, and a lot of it has to do with 84 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:03,480 Dave Creech: scrutiny. 85 00:07:03,580 --> 00:07:12,840 Dave Creech: I've had a lot of freedom to go and do and be without filling out another form, and (laughs) I know you understand. 86 00:07:13,460 --> 00:07:20,920 Dave Creech: And I started doing international work in the early 1980s, and I went four, five times to Guatemala. 87 00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:23,620 Dave Creech: I did some work in Mexico. 88 00:07:24,580 --> 00:07:31,020 Dave Creech: I did Pakistan four or five times, to Pakistan, Northwest Frontier Province mainly. 89 00:07:31,840 --> 00:07:39,780 Dave Creech: And then I started in on China in 1994, and I went 27 times to China. 90 00:07:40,020 --> 00:07:42,120 Dave Creech: Done Chile, done New Zealand. 91 00:07:42,740 --> 00:07:52,880 Dave Creech: So I've had this wonderful experience that I probably couldn't have pulled off at a larger university just 'cause of the paperwork, and this allowed me 92 00:07:52,920 --> 00:07:58,360 Dave Creech: to go, and I turned in a travel request maybe a week ahead of time and I was gone. 93 00:07:59,080 --> 00:08:08,020 Dave Creech: But I have never regretted for a moment having come to a smaller university because, I mean, I love East Texas, I love the piney woods, and College Station is 94 00:08:08,180 --> 00:08:10,000 Dave Creech: not a horticultural paradise. 95 00:08:10,460 --> 00:08:11,060 Dave Creech: Did you know that? 96 00:08:11,140 --> 00:08:16,460 Ping Yu: No, not really. No, it's hard to grow things, hot, and it's super dry during summer. 97 00:08:16,500 --> 00:08:25,680 Ping Yu: And so when you're, like, talking about, like, the nine months at SFA, and I was like, yeah, that's another three months in summer in 98 00:08:25,940 --> 00:08:26,680 Ping Yu: College Station. 99 00:08:26,820 --> 00:08:28,420 Ping Yu: It's just miserable. 100 00:08:29,180 --> 00:08:30,580 Ping Yu: So that's a good point. 101 00:08:30,720 --> 00:08:30,960 Dave Creech: (laughs) Yeah. 102 00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:38,480 Dave Creech: And also the water quality (Ping Yu: Mm) is terrible for growing a lot of plants in College Station, and the soil has a high pH. 103 00:08:38,540 --> 00:08:38,680 Ping Yu: Yeah. 104 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:42,100 Dave Creech: And College Station is where a lot of plants go to die. 105 00:08:42,120 --> 00:08:45,040 Dave Creech: (laughs) It's really a tough environment, tough environment. 106 00:08:45,620 --> 00:08:49,580 Dave Creech: We used to try to grow blueberries, believe it or not, which are acid-loving. 107 00:08:49,580 --> 00:08:50,440 Dave Creech: It's not gonna happen. 108 00:08:50,480 --> 00:08:55,560 Dave Creech: But I still love Texas A&M, and I have a lot of good friends at A&M and across the South. 109 00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:58,520 Dave Creech: And I've branched out into ornamentals. 110 00:08:58,620 --> 00:09:07,400 Dave Creech: So that story was always interesting, 'cause I was fruit and I was hired for fruit and vegetables, but I woke up in the mid-1980s and we had a savings 111 00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:16,720 Dave Creech: and loan bust, and we had a cattle bust, and the economics were bad, and we had no students interested in fruit and vegetable. 112 00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:27,240 Dave Creech: Everybody was- Ping Yu: No, now it's the- (Dave Creech: Every-) opposite right now because it works, so in ornamental, one, people don't get money to do anything, 113 00:09:27,560 --> 00:09:32,380 Ping Yu: and two, people don't think it's essential compared to fruit and veggie. 114 00:09:32,620 --> 00:09:42,880 Ping Yu: At least it's a current condition or situation where whenever people talk about crops, they talk about the food, the vegetables, small fruit, 115 00:09:43,240 --> 00:09:43,820 Ping Yu: and all that. 116 00:09:43,880 --> 00:09:48,060 Ping Yu: Nothing. (Dave Creech: Right) Like, for ornamentals, they were like, "Oh, just flowers." 117 00:09:48,140 --> 00:09:48,460 Ping Yu: They can... 118 00:09:48,980 --> 00:09:50,140 Ping Yu: I don't... 119 00:09:50,480 --> 00:09:59,800 Ping Yu: Actually, if the economy is not great, they were like, "I can sacrifice, I can live a life without ornamentals, but I cannot live a life 120 00:09:59,900 --> 00:10:00,580 Ping Yu: without food." 121 00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:09,140 Ping Yu: So that's the situation where (Dave Creech: That's correct) the environment, that current generation where people were thinking. 122 00:10:09,420 --> 00:10:19,560 Ping Yu: And that's actually one of the reasons why I wanted to have this podcast, again, to raise awareness, and hopefully people will appreciate the ornamental 123 00:10:20,140 --> 00:10:21,160 Ping Yu: a little bit more. 124 00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:30,600 Ping Yu: In horticulture, it's not just fruit and veggie, but also ornamental. They have to, we have to have both (Dave Creech: Yeah, think so) to have a good, 125 00:10:30,640 --> 00:10:32,100 Ping Yu: to have a good life in general. 126 00:10:32,680 --> 00:10:42,980 Dave Creech: And actually, the job market, in our situation, I'm sure it's true at A&M, at UGA, is, it's pretty darn good in the ornamentals, like retail nurseries, wholesale nurseries, 127 00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:43,660 Dave Creech: landscape. 128 00:10:43,740 --> 00:10:46,520 Dave Creech: I got a lot of former students in the landscape business. 129 00:10:47,280 --> 00:10:56,300 Dave Creech: And that's a great joy, whereas those folks that headed off into fruit and vegetable, there's not that many- (Ping Yu: We-) And so it's- Ping Yu: I don't know what is the 130 00:10:56,380 --> 00:11:06,380 Ping Yu: data or status in Texas, but in Georgia, our ornamental is the top four or five, depending on how you calculate with 131 00:11:06,420 --> 00:11:16,480 Ping Yu: the gate value, and then the employment, the amount of job opportunities that they created, so we are the top five or top four commodity groups. 132 00:11:16,940 --> 00:11:24,660 Ping Yu: However, we are not well valued as much as we should in terms of them. 133 00:11:24,980 --> 00:11:32,960 Dave Creech: That's exactly- You make a very good point, and I say this all the time, 'cause I'm in a department of agriculture, and poultry rules. 134 00:11:33,660 --> 00:11:38,460 Dave Creech: Poultry, chickens rule, and basically cattle rule. 135 00:11:38,640 --> 00:11:42,240 Dave Creech: Now, we're bigger than poultry, and we're bigger than timber. 136 00:11:42,440 --> 00:11:51,720 Dave Creech: We have a great college (Ping Yu: Yeah) of forestry, but if you look at the gate value of ornamental horticulture, the retail nurseries, wholesale nurseries, and the 137 00:11:51,760 --> 00:11:54,140 Dave Creech: landscape associated, it's four or five billion dollars. 138 00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:54,900 Ping Yu: Yeah. 139 00:11:54,960 --> 00:11:56,640 Dave Creech: It's pretty, pretty impressive. 140 00:11:56,700 --> 00:12:03,880 Dave Creech: A lot of people don't ever think, a lot of kids, I think a lot of students, young high school kids, are not aware that there's this wonderful career they can 141 00:12:03,940 --> 00:12:06,280 Dave Creech: have in (Ping Yu: Yeah) horticulture, the ornamental field. 142 00:12:06,360 --> 00:12:06,500 Ping Yu: Yeah. 143 00:12:06,820 --> 00:12:10,540 Ping Yu: Yeah. 144 00:12:10,760 --> 00:12:20,840 Ping Yu: (music) So with your background starting from the fruit and vege and all the way, now you are doing a wide range of crop species, let's put it that 145 00:12:20,900 --> 00:12:21,160 Ping Yu: way. 146 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:25,240 Ping Yu: Among all those plants, what is your favorite? 147 00:12:25,660 --> 00:12:32,100 Dave Creech: It has to be bald cypress and the cultivars of bald cypress and some of the hybrids. 148 00:12:32,140 --> 00:12:42,460 Dave Creech: And we probably have the best collection of Taxodium, and there's several reasons for it, is that when you plant a bald cypress, you 149 00:12:42,540 --> 00:12:45,760 Dave Creech: can get a tree that can last 3,000 years. 150 00:12:46,140 --> 00:12:49,700 Dave Creech: And it's- And people say, "Well, how big will it get?" 151 00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:54,520 Dave Creech: And I usually say, "Well, in 1,000 years it'll own your whole lot, your whole home lot." 152 00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:54,760 Dave Creech: Yeah. 153 00:12:54,900 --> 00:12:56,900 Dave Creech: Basically, it's gonna be a big tree. 154 00:12:57,660 --> 00:13:08,100 Dave Creech: And the fact that it is 65, 90 million, Taxodium dubium goes back 90 million years, and it has a genome four times 155 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:09,680 Dave Creech: as big as a human. 156 00:13:10,280 --> 00:13:18,440 Dave Creech: It carries the gene. It's a survivor, and it was once all over the world, and now it's restricted to North America and Mexico primarily. 157 00:13:18,540 --> 00:13:20,480 Dave Creech: Well, that's it, North America and Mexico. 158 00:13:21,220 --> 00:13:30,820 Dave Creech: And so we're at the confluence here in East Texas of the bald cypress, pond cypress, and then you have to go west and you get the Montezuma cypress genetics 159 00:13:30,880 --> 00:13:31,660 Dave Creech: of Mexico. 160 00:13:31,740 --> 00:13:41,940 Dave Creech: And I've always enjoyed collecting bald cypress cultivars, and we have 136 cultivars and selections in a collection here, and they're all planted in a perfect 161 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:42,780 Dave Creech: location. 162 00:13:42,900 --> 00:13:48,080 Dave Creech: I mean, they're right on a creek, Lanana Creek, and it was a degraded creek. 163 00:13:48,140 --> 00:13:50,580 Dave Creech: It was basically brush-axed on the side. 164 00:13:50,620 --> 00:13:56,060 Dave Creech: There was no trees there, and they'd mow the edges of the banks, and that was about it. 165 00:13:56,120 --> 00:14:05,120 Dave Creech: And so we had a perfect location, if we could keep them alive for two to three years to get their roots to get down into the creek, which they've 166 00:14:05,180 --> 00:14:05,660 Dave Creech: done. 167 00:14:06,280 --> 00:14:07,880 Dave Creech: And it's a swift stream. 168 00:14:07,940 --> 00:14:13,080 Dave Creech: It floods every now and then, but that's what bald cypress can prosper in. 169 00:14:13,140 --> 00:14:17,500 Dave Creech: And we have managed to increase our collections greatly. 170 00:14:18,140 --> 00:14:28,200 Dave Creech: My work in Nanjing, my work here in the '80s and '90s led to an email from Professor Yin Yunlong at Nanjing 171 00:14:28,340 --> 00:14:35,500 Dave Creech: Botanical Garden, and I had never met him, heard of him, or anything, and he had found me on the web. 172 00:14:36,340 --> 00:14:39,780 Dave Creech: And basically he asked if would I like to go to China. 173 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:48,300 Dave Creech: Well, I don't just- I gotta get some verification, so I went over to a Chinese colleague of mine, Dr. Shiyou Li, and I said, "Is this guy real? 174 00:14:49,180 --> 00:14:50,420 Dave Creech: Is he a real person?" 175 00:14:50,660 --> 00:14:52,340 Dave Creech: I thought it was a bot or something. 176 00:14:52,840 --> 00:14:55,600 Dave Creech: And he said, "No, no, no," he checked him out and he said, "Yes, you should go." 177 00:14:55,640 --> 00:15:03,740 Dave Creech: And so I went to China in 1994, and then I've been going pretty much ever since, until COVID. 178 00:15:03,840 --> 00:15:06,560 Dave Creech: I haven't been back to China since COVID. 179 00:15:06,640 --> 00:15:17,000 Dave Creech: And to be candid, there's a change in the political climate, which has impacted my trips to China, and their visits to the USA. 180 00:15:17,180 --> 00:15:27,200 Dave Creech: But I made so many fast friends, brought Chinese graduate students here, had visitors from China, took people to China from 181 00:15:27,260 --> 00:15:32,200 Dave Creech: different universities, and kind of fell in love with the culture, to be honest with you, Ping. 182 00:15:32,300 --> 00:15:41,920 Dave Creech: I fell in love with the food, (laughs) fell in love with the research, and just, I really fell in love with a lot of the amazing amount of 183 00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:45,380 Dave Creech: work that's being done in blueberries, all kinds of crops. 184 00:15:46,100 --> 00:15:56,160 Dave Creech: That, as a breeder, it's really hard to look at a field of 100,000 seedlings and know that you're working towards maybe selecting a dozen, and 185 00:15:56,200 --> 00:15:58,300 Dave Creech: it's kind of crazy actually in a lot of ways. 186 00:15:58,340 --> 00:16:05,360 Dave Creech: The scale of their work in bald cypress was stunning to me. Just, I couldn't believe it. 187 00:16:05,420 --> 00:16:14,000 Dave Creech: And we've ended up garnering through USDA Beltsville quarantine 15 different clones of bald cypress. 188 00:16:14,100 --> 00:16:20,760 Dave Creech: These are rooted cuttings, and there's one out of the whole mix that ended up being disease resistant. 189 00:16:20,840 --> 00:16:22,740 Dave Creech: It doesn't get fall blight. 190 00:16:23,520 --> 00:16:31,160 Dave Creech: It's- Cercosporidium is a problem on our natives, and it's pretty immune, and so it wants to be kind of evergreen. 191 00:16:31,220 --> 00:16:40,560 Dave Creech: It's half bald and half Montezuma, and the Chinese deserve all the credit they can for recognizing the combination of those genetics. 192 00:16:41,220 --> 00:16:44,140 Dave Creech: And so we have taken that clone. 193 00:16:44,620 --> 00:16:46,920 Dave Creech: My friends there let me name it. 194 00:16:47,180 --> 00:16:57,360 Dave Creech: It's called 'LaNana', and it's in the trade now, and I just found out from Twinwood Nursery that we have 2,000 of them going into 195 00:16:57,420 --> 00:17:00,060 Dave Creech: Memorial Park in Houston. 196 00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:08,580 Dave Creech: And they're gonna be like huge soldiers in a row to recognize the death of the... 197 00:17:08,900 --> 00:17:10,460 Dave Creech: war dead of World War II. 198 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:13,140 Dave Creech: And it's a perfect plant because it's a clone. 199 00:17:13,840 --> 00:17:18,100 Dave Creech: For your audience, you know, if you plant bald cypress seedlings, they're all different. 200 00:17:18,140 --> 00:17:25,280 Dave Creech: They're all like you and I, and they all grow at different rates, and they're all gonna look different when they get to be teenagers, and they're all gonna be 201 00:17:25,500 --> 00:17:26,580 Dave Creech: different when they get old. 202 00:17:27,120 --> 00:17:36,200 Dave Creech: But if you use a clone, they are cut out of a cookie cutter (laughs) and they are perfect, and they fit that kind of design if you're doing highways 203 00:17:36,280 --> 00:17:37,520 Dave Creech: or railroad tracks. 204 00:17:38,440 --> 00:17:48,440 Dave Creech: Coastal Windbreak Forest Project, they use a lot of these clones, and nothing outgrows each other, and there really ends up being these beautiful stands of long-lived 205 00:17:49,100 --> 00:17:50,580 Dave Creech: carbon sequestration. 206 00:17:50,620 --> 00:18:01,020 Dave Creech: There's all kinds of environmental reasons for more trees, and that's one of the mantras we have here, is how do we get a psyche 207 00:18:01,080 --> 00:18:04,200 Dave Creech: in the country where we plant more trees? 208 00:18:04,940 --> 00:18:15,360 Dave Creech: I think the audience might appreciate when I first brought Chinese friends here in the 1990s, that the drive from the Houston Airport to 209 00:18:15,440 --> 00:18:22,700 Dave Creech: Nacogdoches is Highway 59, and there's a big median there, and this median is mowed. 210 00:18:23,540 --> 00:18:25,860 Dave Creech: And my Chinese friends couldn't understand it. 211 00:18:25,980 --> 00:18:36,100 Dave Creech: They didn't understand why there weren't trees in the median, and they didn't understand why the whole side of the road wasn't trees, 'cause that's this 212 00:18:36,220 --> 00:18:38,140 Dave Creech: approach that they take in China. 213 00:18:38,800 --> 00:18:48,260 Dave Creech: On the big G highways, there are trees going down the sides, so there's a buffer on the side, and there's a wonderful swath of trees down the middle. 214 00:18:48,900 --> 00:18:53,880 Dave Creech: And you can go as fast as you can go, in some cases, on the big G3s. 215 00:18:54,760 --> 00:19:02,980 Dave Creech: And I tried to explain to them that we don't do that in America, 'cause when we have an accident, we want to glide gently to a stop in a 216 00:19:03,040 --> 00:19:03,600 Dave Creech: prairie. 217 00:19:03,620 --> 00:19:07,680 Dave Creech: (laughs) We don't wanna have trees that you crash into. 218 00:19:07,740 --> 00:19:17,920 Dave Creech: And anyway, it opened my eyes in terms of how reforestation can work, and how large an industry it is in China, 219 00:19:18,620 --> 00:19:25,840 Dave Creech: and how many millions of trees are going in the ground, and how people are being moved into beautiful homes in the valleys. 220 00:19:25,880 --> 00:19:33,600 Dave Creech: And the mountains are being allowed to go back to vegetation, and go back to different uses, ecological forestry zones. 221 00:19:33,660 --> 00:19:35,600 Dave Creech: And there isn't any doubt about it. 222 00:19:35,700 --> 00:19:45,780 Dave Creech: I've been so lucky to watch China go from many villages and hamlets to skyscrapers, high-rise apartments everywhere. 223 00:19:45,860 --> 00:19:51,820 Ping Yu: I know, but- It's extremely- Sometimes, like, I grew up in a small village, but now the village is gone, and I... 224 00:19:52,340 --> 00:20:00,320 Ping Yu: Sometimes I feel like I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing in terms of the economic growth, and then the people are living 225 00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:05,880 Ping Yu: a better life (Dave Creech: Very good question) people are living a better life in terms of the, like, economic perspective. 226 00:20:05,920 --> 00:20:15,920 Ping Yu: However, like, the environment that people are living, and people are, like, everywhere, it's kind of like similar to, I guess, anywhere else in the 227 00:20:15,980 --> 00:20:16,660 Ping Yu: whole world. 228 00:20:17,020 --> 00:20:27,080 Ping Yu: If they wanted to develop a residential property, they just do, clean cut all those plants or all those trees and then develop the, or build in 229 00:20:27,160 --> 00:20:37,240 Ping Yu: the high buildings and all that, but then they kind of lost the environmental, or the ecosystem in that region. 230 00:20:37,640 --> 00:20:40,000 Ping Yu: And so I don't- Dave Creech: It's true. 231 00:20:40,140 --> 00:20:50,420 Dave Creech: I have a little story to tell you, 'cause Professor Yin is my Chinese brother in a lot of ways, and he's just retired, and his 232 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:56,300 Dave Creech: group broke the Taxodium genome, and he would call me in the middle of the night, you know, celebrating. 233 00:20:56,340 --> 00:21:06,400 Dave Creech: And basically, his father, his mother had passed, and we were in northern Jiangsu, and he said, "I'd like you to meet my father," and I said, "Yes." 234 00:21:07,140 --> 00:21:16,300 Dave Creech: So he took me to the village that he was raised in as a child, which was turned into agroforestry, fish farms. 235 00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:21,480 Dave Creech: It was basically a new industrial dis- And they had ground up the buildings. 236 00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:26,180 Dave Creech: You could- And made roads out of them, and you could see little pieces of plate. 237 00:21:26,260 --> 00:21:27,120 Dave Creech: I saw a fork. 238 00:21:27,220 --> 00:21:30,160 Dave Creech: Every- It was amazing before they cover it all up. 239 00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:36,220 Dave Creech: And then we went to the- They had moved the entire village. 240 00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:45,260 Dave Creech: Everybody wanted to move, and they moved them into seven or eight high-rise apartments with a wonderful plaza in between all of them. 241 00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:52,340 Dave Creech: So the entire village moved, and his father was on the fourth or fifth floor. 242 00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:58,420 Dave Creech: If you're old, you get a lower floor than you do. (laughs) The youngsters were on the high floors. 243 00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:07,919 Dave Creech: And his father had this wonderful little apartment, had a big screen TV that Yin had bought him, had a nice kitchen, had a nice bathroom, and two small bedrooms. 244 00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:11,660 Dave Creech: And I asked him, I said, "How long were you in the village?" 245 00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:14,780 Dave Creech: And he was like, "20 generations." Ping, 246 00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:16,920 Dave Creech: "20 generations." 247 00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:19,720 Dave Creech: We have no history compared to that. 248 00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:23,340 Dave Creech: And I couldn't- So he didn't speak English. 249 00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:23,860 Dave Creech: Yin does. 250 00:22:23,940 --> 00:22:28,940 Dave Creech: I said, "Yin, ask your dad, was he angry about making this move?" 251 00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:32,720 Dave Creech: (laughs) And his dad was shocked that I said that. 252 00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:34,180 Dave Creech: He said, "Look at where I'm living. 253 00:22:34,220 --> 00:22:34,980 Dave Creech: This is beautiful. 254 00:22:35,100 --> 00:22:39,080 Dave Creech: I have heat and cool, and all of my friends are here." 255 00:22:39,220 --> 00:22:47,880 Dave Creech: And he goes down to the big plaza between all the high-rise apartments, and he knows all his friends, and he's playing mahjong, he's playing his dominoes. 256 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:53,240 Dave Creech: (laughs) And the young people are off hip-hopping and dancing, and there's flag dancing and everything. 257 00:22:53,300 --> 00:23:01,300 Dave Creech: And I thought, "Well, you know, this is amazing," because in America, we are really, we wanna protect our land. 258 00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:08,540 Dave Creech: I mean, it's- It was just kind of a shock to me in a way, and I was very, very impressed with his attitude. 259 00:23:08,580 --> 00:23:15,640 Dave Creech: It's more of a collective mentality than the independent free spirit that we oftentimes associated with Texans. 260 00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:15,660 Ping Yu: Mm. 261 00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:15,960 Ping Yu: Yeah. 262 00:23:15,980 --> 00:23:26,060 Ping Yu: (laughs) Back to the bald cypress, 'cause I remember I visited the SFA Garden when I was 263 00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:34,040 Ping Yu: a PhD student at Texas A&M with one of the classes that I was taking with Dr. Arnold. 264 00:23:34,100 --> 00:23:34,180 Dave Creech: Yes. 265 00:23:34,260 --> 00:23:34,560 Ping Yu: Arnold. 266 00:23:34,900 --> 00:23:43,080 Ping Yu: So we were able to see the weeping bald cypress that you guys have, that created the big arch in there. 267 00:23:43,180 --> 00:23:44,140 Ping Yu: I was amazed. 268 00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:54,320 Ping Yu: And can you tell us a little bit about the weeping bald cypress, and does those coming from the clones that you brought, were- Can 269 00:23:54,340 --> 00:23:55,500 Ping Yu: you tell us a little bit about that? 270 00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:55,760 Dave Creech: No. 271 00:23:56,180 --> 00:23:57,060 Dave Creech: Not exactly. 272 00:23:57,580 --> 00:23:57,760 Dave Creech: Yeah. 273 00:23:57,900 --> 00:24:02,040 Dave Creech: This tree was discovered, believe it or not, in New Zealand. 274 00:24:02,580 --> 00:24:08,800 Dave Creech: And then a friend of mine in the northwest brought it in, and he was gonna- I thought it was the best thing that ever happened. 275 00:24:09,100 --> 00:24:11,480 Dave Creech: It's a very- It's called Cascade Falls. 276 00:24:11,540 --> 00:24:12,920 Dave Creech: It's a very strong weeper. 277 00:24:13,780 --> 00:24:18,579 Dave Creech: So anyway, I thought it would be extremely popular. 278 00:24:19,120 --> 00:24:24,440 Dave Creech: I thought it'd take over every Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe's, because I thought this was the ultimate tree. 279 00:24:25,220 --> 00:24:32,380 Dave Creech: So anyway, I booked in 200 liners, grafted liners, and he was charging $5 royalty for the patent. 280 00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:33,180 Dave Creech: It was patented. 281 00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:34,780 Dave Creech: It's off of patent now. 282 00:24:35,540 --> 00:24:43,640 Dave Creech: And so I had 200 of them, and I put some at Tyler Botanical Garden, and then I had a lot of them here, and we just manipulate them. 283 00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:50,780 Dave Creech: And then I talked a friend of mine, Doug Arnold at Trees USA, former student, and he grew 500 of them. 284 00:24:51,540 --> 00:24:57,820 Dave Creech: And he grew them all the way up into 30s on a nine-foot bamboo pole, and they were beautiful, and he couldn't sell them. 285 00:24:57,940 --> 00:25:01,580 Dave Creech: He sold half of them, 500, and he ended up with 250. 286 00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:02,820 Dave Creech: He cut them off. 287 00:25:03,380 --> 00:25:07,120 Dave Creech: He put them in a 45 or a 60-gallon trying to get them a little bigger. 288 00:25:07,580 --> 00:25:15,360 Dave Creech: Still did not have the receptivity of it, and he called me and he said, "Dave, I can't move this bald cypress. 289 00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,440 Dave Creech: I like it, but it's just not that popular." 290 00:25:18,500 --> 00:25:19,920 Dave Creech: And he says, "Do you want these?" 291 00:25:20,460 --> 00:25:22,100 Dave Creech: And I said, "Of course I want these." 292 00:25:22,300 --> 00:25:25,460 Dave Creech: And he sent several tractor trailers. 293 00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:27,320 Dave Creech: They were big 60-gallons. 294 00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:29,560 Dave Creech: My staff was against it. 295 00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:36,980 Dave Creech: My staff are always- You know, we're busy, and so- But we got these beautiful weeping bald cypresses, 12 foot tall. 296 00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:45,820 Dave Creech: So I had plenty of them to work with, and we put some different locations on the campus, and then I sold some, got our money back for the 297 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:46,640 Dave Creech: tractor trailer. 298 00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:50,900 Dave Creech: He made me pay for the tractor trailer cost, but I got the trees for free. 299 00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:57,180 Dave Creech: And then we have the connection between Ruby Mize and the Mast Arboretum. 300 00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,340 Dave Creech: I said, "Well, this will be a perfect archway," so we planted them. 301 00:26:01,100 --> 00:26:04,900 Dave Creech: This is a tree that the new growth wants to go straight down. 302 00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:07,900 Dave Creech: It doesn't wanna go anywhere, or sideways. 303 00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:09,740 Dave Creech: It'll grow on the ground like a snake. 304 00:26:10,500 --> 00:26:12,480 Dave Creech: It is gravitationally challenged. 305 00:26:13,380 --> 00:26:19,100 Dave Creech: And so I built bows out of steel, pipe really, and then we just tied it to it. 306 00:26:19,140 --> 00:26:25,280 Dave Creech: We left those bows there for two or three years, and in two or three years it turns to wood, and it's firm. 307 00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:32,560 Dave Creech: And so we've been, we're gonna have this bald cypress tunnel, and it's really a very unique feature, picture. 308 00:26:32,660 --> 00:26:39,380 Dave Creech: If you Google Taxodium distichum 'Cascade Falls', we're one of the top searches. 309 00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:41,880 Dave Creech: Put SFA in there and you can find it. 310 00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:46,480 Dave Creech: And it's become a place where people propose to be married. 311 00:26:47,340 --> 00:26:56,460 Dave Creech: This is where people go, kids at SFA go and have weddings, and it's a love tunnel, Ping. 312 00:26:56,620 --> 00:26:57,360 Dave Creech: It really is. 313 00:26:57,420 --> 00:27:06,539 Dave Creech: It's really a beautiful thing, and it's ended up being, well, particularly in the summer, it's shade, and it's nice, and I just think it's one of the best features 314 00:27:06,639 --> 00:27:08,780 Dave Creech: I've ever seen in any g- I really love it a lot. 315 00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:17,080 Dave Creech: It's probably about 100 and something feet long, and it's very, very easy to maintain, and I have it under a high voltage line. 316 00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:24,820 Dave Creech: I got permission to do anything I want under a high voltage line, as long as it doesn't get above 15 feet, and that's what this is. 317 00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:29,500 Dave Creech: So we've got us a bald cypress tunnel of love at SFA Gardens. 318 00:27:29,540 --> 00:27:30,720 Dave Creech: It's quite popular. 319 00:27:31,380 --> 00:27:39,680 Dave Creech: There's another one that Don Shadow introduced, it's called Falling Waters, but it's not as weeping, and I don't like- It kinda wants to shoot up every now and 320 00:27:39,740 --> 00:27:40,000 Dave Creech: then. 321 00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:50,060 Dave Creech: And so, as far as a utility tree, I've always had this dream that we would plant our highways and our byways with trees, but that's just a 322 00:27:50,120 --> 00:28:00,340 Dave Creech: project that I've never been able to get off the ground. And even in Nacogdoches, in College Station, and at Athens, it's really hard to get trees 323 00:28:00,540 --> 00:28:09,840 Dave Creech: going up and down, allées of trees, even though when you have the space. And I've been working on Nacogdoches a long time, and we haven't been able to 324 00:28:10,120 --> 00:28:17,680 Dave Creech: sell the idea that everybody needs to put a big tree in front of their business, and we need to get our utilities underground. 325 00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:28,060 Dave Creech: And everybody wants to plant a crape myrtle, which is okay, but, you know, there's a lot of crape myrtles out there, and- Ping Yu: Agreed. 326 00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:41,200 Ping Yu: Back to the bald cypress, how long does it take from the original bald cypress become the love tunnel 327 00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:42,060 Ping Yu: in SFA? 328 00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:44,580 Ping Yu: How long does it take to form the effect? 329 00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:53,740 Dave Creech: It's in full sun, and so it was quick, within a few years, but it's the scale, the side branches, everything, so it makes it dense. 330 00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:57,660 Dave Creech: But I'd say in three or four years we had- Ping Yu: Three, three to four years? 331 00:28:57,900 --> 00:29:02,100 Dave Creech: Bald cypress, the bald cypress. Yeah, it's all- It grows very fast. 332 00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:07,040 Dave Creech: All bald cypress is faster, but it doesn't really like to grow in the spring. 333 00:29:07,220 --> 00:29:09,540 Dave Creech: It's really waiting for the summer heat. 334 00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:10,380 Ping Yu: Mm. 335 00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:14,779 Dave Creech: And when we get the summer heat, this thing will really kick into high gear. 336 00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:19,600 Dave Creech: If you have water in the summer, you can get four to six feet in a year. 337 00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:21,520 Dave Creech: And that's a historical thing. 338 00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:25,000 Dave Creech: And no matter what you do, it's hard to get it to grow in March, April, or May. 339 00:29:25,060 --> 00:29:29,580 Dave Creech: It'll grow, but it just really gains speed when it gets up into (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) the heat. 340 00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,920 Dave Creech: Remember, this is a plant that was here with the dinosaurs. 341 00:29:32,980 --> 00:29:33,440 Ping Yu: Wow. 342 00:29:33,820 --> 00:29:34,900 Ping Yu: With the dinosaurs? 343 00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:36,140 Dave Creech: In- Yeah. 344 00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:36,640 Dave Creech: Yes. 345 00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:40,600 Dave Creech: And the Taxodium dubium, and it was once all over the world. 346 00:29:40,660 --> 00:29:41,520 Dave Creech: It was in China. 347 00:29:41,580 --> 00:29:42,120 Ping Yu: I know, yeah. 348 00:29:42,180 --> 00:29:52,180 Dave Creech: It was all over the world, and it's restricted now, and it's got this long genetic history around the world, and it carries 349 00:29:52,300 --> 00:29:53,900 Dave Creech: the g- all kinds of genes. 350 00:29:53,960 --> 00:30:02,220 Dave Creech: You know, they- When all of the ice melted, this thing was- It's found in the Gulf of Mexico, 90 feet of water. 351 00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:04,500 Dave Creech: You know, there was one off of Alabama. 352 00:30:04,540 --> 00:30:13,060 Dave Creech: They found standing (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) trees that go back the intense time when things were Ice Age, really. 353 00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:23,240 Dave Creech: Pulled the water away, when the water was- You know, on beachfront property here, if all the ice melts in the Antarctica and in the Arctic, if we lose 354 00:30:23,300 --> 00:30:32,300 Dave Creech: the polar ice caps, I'm in Nacogdoches, Texas, I live on Swift Hill, I am beachfront property if we have that kind of climate change. 355 00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:42,340 Dave Creech: And so taxodium has endured a huge amount of stressors over tens of thousands of years, so it carries the genes 356 00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:43,060 Dave Creech: of hardiness. 357 00:30:43,460 --> 00:30:54,260 Dave Creech: I think that's most interesting to me, is that when we first brought in Montezuma cypress, which is (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) in Mexico and South Texas, and some co-mingling 358 00:30:54,360 --> 00:31:00,760 Dave Creech: in the Central Texas, I believe, Frio River, et cetera, that I didn't think they'd live. 359 00:31:00,900 --> 00:31:07,020 Dave Creech: I- There- 'Cause when you go to Mexico, they're not experiencing the kind of cold we get up here (Ping Yu: Not at all) in Texas. 360 00:31:07,780 --> 00:31:17,360 Dave Creech: But in 1983, I had a big Mon- not a big Montezuma, had a good young Montezuma, and it was unimpacted, and it was coming out of an area that 361 00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:18,740 Dave Creech: rarely freezes. 362 00:31:18,780 --> 00:31:21,520 Dave Creech: And so that was kind of an eye-opener for a lot of us. 363 00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:22,860 Dave Creech: We really didn't know much. 364 00:31:22,900 --> 00:31:32,900 Dave Creech: We just always thought Montezuma cypress was probably tropical, but it's not, and I've got them in Oklahoma and Ar- It's not as hardy as some of the bald cypress, 365 00:31:33,660 --> 00:31:38,240 Dave Creech: but it is quite, quite a bit more hardy than we ever anticipated. 366 00:31:38,300 --> 00:31:48,240 Dave Creech: And the Chinese were the very first to come up with the concept of crossing the bald cypress with the Montezuma cypress to get rid of the knees. 367 00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:58,620 Dave Creech: So the hy- I like knees, but mostly, Neil Sperry's a friend of mine, and I know he hates knees, and a lot of people hate knees 368 00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,780 Dave Creech: in their landscape, and landscapers hate them 'cause it tears up the lawn mowers. 369 00:32:03,620 --> 00:32:12,400 Dave Creech: So basically, the knees are pneumatophores, and a lot of people don't know what the heck they're for, and there's a lot of debate about them. 370 00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:18,040 Dave Creech: And you can cut them off and it doesn't impact growth, so what's the point of them? 371 00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:24,000 Dave Creech: And so there's been a lot of debate about reasons why a knee is there. 372 00:32:24,740 --> 00:32:25,780 Dave Creech: I have a theory. 373 00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:28,520 Dave Creech: Have I told you my theory on the knees? 374 00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:30,260 Dave Creech: I have no proof. 375 00:32:30,940 --> 00:32:40,960 Dave Creech: So taxodium at one time, if you go back 60, 70, 80 million years ago, there were dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs would come up trying to eat, 376 00:32:41,820 --> 00:32:44,400 Dave Creech: eat the bald cypress, eat everything in sight. 377 00:32:44,460 --> 00:32:45,260 Dave Creech: They were huge. 378 00:32:45,900 --> 00:32:49,760 Dave Creech: And at that time, the knees were actually very pointed. 379 00:32:50,380 --> 00:32:51,600 Dave Creech: They were like a spear. 380 00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:59,300 Dave Creech: And so when the dinosaur stepped in there, it step on his big foot, and he- It protected the- (laughs) I made this up. 381 00:32:59,340 --> 00:33:00,500 Dave Creech: This is just a theory. 382 00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:02,000 Dave Creech: (laughs) This is not science. 383 00:33:02,060 --> 00:33:05,720 Ping Yu: So, to protect them from being eaten by dinosaurs? 384 00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:06,420 Dave Creech: Yes. 385 00:33:06,700 --> 00:33:11,220 Dave Creech: That's my theory, and I've said this in meetings, and everybody walks away shaking their head. 386 00:33:11,220 --> 00:33:12,380 Dave Creech: (laughs) I even tell people- (Ping Yu: know) 387 00:33:12,420 --> 00:33:19,540 Dave Creech: You never know. They are thought to- There's one interesting thing, and it was work done at the University of Florida, and a lot of people don't know 388 00:33:19,620 --> 00:33:21,460 Dave Creech: this, is that the needles are feathered. 389 00:33:21,500 --> 00:33:30,900 Dave Creech: And Jeff Gillum was, I loved his work at the University of Florida, and he had two 427 Chevrolet engines hooked together in sequence, and he had a fan, 390 00:33:31,740 --> 00:33:35,640 Dave Creech: and he could put a 180-mile-an-hour hurricane on a tree. 391 00:33:36,740 --> 00:33:44,160 Dave Creech: And a bald cypress, and he had this huge concrete box, and the thing with it, and then he'd put the trees in there. 392 00:33:44,740 --> 00:33:47,080 Dave Creech: Like an oak tree, it'll snap off. 393 00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:49,880 Dave Creech: Like an elm, it'll snap off. 394 00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:56,900 Dave Creech: That bald cypress will just lean over, and it'll just feather in 180 miles, but it won't break. 395 00:33:57,740 --> 00:34:06,460 Dave Creech: So it's a plant that evolved along the coast, and it ends up having all of this ability to deal with (Ping Yu: Mm) the hurricanes that come. 396 00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:13,720 Dave Creech: Some people think that the pneumatophores, the knees, are also- They're the moths in Florida. 397 00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:22,200 Dave Creech: And so you'll have a colony, and the knees collect debris and washing, et cetera, and that builds land. 398 00:34:22,240 --> 00:34:25,760 Dave Creech: And a lot of those things become knolls, they become berms. 399 00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:33,480 Dave Creech: They- And the bald cypress is kind of building its own soil, it's catching all this trash, and- Get it? 400 00:34:33,780 --> 00:34:35,000 Dave Creech: This is a theory. 401 00:34:35,100 --> 00:34:35,700 Dave Creech: I don't know. 402 00:34:36,260 --> 00:34:40,320 Dave Creech: I do know this, that if you cut them off, they've done the work, the tree's unaffected. 403 00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,780 Dave Creech: It doesn't slow, doesn't kill the tree, doesn't slow the tree down. 404 00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,520 Dave Creech: It's just- So we're not exactly sure. 405 00:34:46,580 --> 00:34:51,660 Dave Creech: All I know is that landscapers hate them, hate the knees, 'cause they come up in the yard. 406 00:34:52,140 --> 00:34:54,680 Dave Creech: If there's any moisture around, they do come up. 407 00:34:55,240 --> 00:34:59,080 Dave Creech: So the Chinese have- And you don't really need that along a highway either. 408 00:34:59,140 --> 00:35:05,600 Dave Creech: And so the Chinese bred the Nanjing back in the '60s, was some of the first breeding efforts. 409 00:35:05,740 --> 00:35:08,540 Dave Creech: And anyway, it's fascinating. 410 00:35:08,860 --> 00:35:17,600 Ping Yu: (music) Is grafting the main production method for bald cypress? 411 00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:22,460 Dave Creech: In the United States of America, 99% are seedlings. 412 00:35:22,500 --> 00:35:22,900 Ping Yu: Oh, gosh. 413 00:35:23,620 --> 00:35:30,040 Dave Creech: And we have not embraced cultivars, except in certain horticultural circles. 414 00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:31,000 Dave Creech: It's not a... 415 00:35:31,740 --> 00:35:41,760 Dave Creech: It's a tiny percent, whereas in China and other places it's been basically going with cultivars that are reproduced by grafting 416 00:35:42,460 --> 00:35:43,960 Dave Creech: or reproduced by cuttings. 417 00:35:44,220 --> 00:35:47,860 Dave Creech: What's interesting about the cuttings is that it needs to be a young clone. 418 00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:52,080 Dave Creech: If it's a thousand-year-old bald cypress, you can't root it. 419 00:35:52,420 --> 00:35:56,580 Dave Creech: It's just, it's basically- It lost its ability as juvenile. 420 00:35:56,980 --> 00:35:58,260 Dave Creech: So that's a problem. 421 00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:03,800 Dave Creech: So the Chinese breed them, and then they make selections in a field. 422 00:36:03,819 --> 00:36:08,480 Dave Creech: They grow the seedlings out, and they let them sprawl the first year, and then they... 423 00:36:08,540 --> 00:36:11,000 Dave Creech: I was in a field with close to a million trees. 424 00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:11,940 Dave Creech: I was shocked. 425 00:36:12,180 --> 00:36:12,700 Dave Creech: Babies. 426 00:36:12,740 --> 00:36:16,600 Dave Creech: They're all babies, and they cut them off after the first year. 427 00:36:16,660 --> 00:36:20,200 Dave Creech: They grow them in the field, they just sprawl around, because they're cutting grown. 428 00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:26,560 Dave Creech: And when they're cutting grown, a lot of times they'll sprawl, and you don't know what's gonna happen. 429 00:36:26,580 --> 00:36:28,000 Dave Creech: They're plagiotropic growth. 430 00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:29,260 Dave Creech: They think they're a branch. 431 00:36:29,620 --> 00:36:30,500 Dave Creech: Topophysis. 432 00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,100 Dave Creech: Your students probably know what topophysis is. 433 00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:39,960 Dave Creech: It's basically if you take a cutting off a side branch, takes it a while to realize it needs to be a tree. 434 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:41,040 Dave Creech: It thinks it's a branch. 435 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:42,360 Dave Creech: Plagiotropic growth. 436 00:36:42,660 --> 00:36:44,340 Dave Creech: Big problem with bald cypress. 437 00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:49,320 Dave Creech: And people don't understand it, and so you end up not training it. 438 00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:56,660 Dave Creech: But you can come in after one year in a one-gallon can and cut it off about this high above the ground, and it'll pop you a good leader. 439 00:36:56,740 --> 00:36:59,160 Dave Creech: That tree is trainable that way. 440 00:36:59,960 --> 00:37:02,300 Dave Creech: And that's what China taught me. 441 00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:08,440 Dave Creech: It took me a while to understand that concept, exactly like, "Why do you have this field of sprawled trees?" 442 00:37:08,860 --> 00:37:11,720 Dave Creech: But you come back the next year, and boy, they will really grow. 443 00:37:11,740 --> 00:37:13,360 Dave Creech: They'll grow six feet the second year. 444 00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:23,360 Ping Yu: And I do remember where I do kind of observe some of the differences in terms of the plant and use in landscape, and then even just in 445 00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:23,920 Ping Yu: general. 446 00:37:24,340 --> 00:37:34,100 Ping Yu: 'Cause I have seen a lot of taxodium when I grow up as a kid, 'cause I live in southwest- southeastern China. 447 00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:40,080 Ping Yu: We can see those taxodium species everywhere, and they give... 448 00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:40,980 Ping Yu: A lot of them, I... 449 00:37:41,340 --> 00:37:45,100 Ping Yu: We love, at least I love them, 'cause they have those little tiny... 450 00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:52,500 Ping Yu: Those leaves can give you a softness in the landscape, or a feature, but here we don't see a whole lot. 451 00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:53,880 Ping Yu: Even for the... 452 00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,080 Ping Yu: Another one would be the weeping plants. 453 00:37:57,620 --> 00:38:07,740 Ping Yu: I don't know why Chinese people love weeping plants, at least from my observation, they love that, but here in the States I don't see a whole lot, 454 00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:10,240 Ping Yu: at least not in the landscape. 455 00:38:10,740 --> 00:38:14,020 Ping Yu: For instance, we can see the weeping willow on the... 456 00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:20,620 Ping Yu: Everywhere you go, especially parks, along the lakes and along the rivers, you can see them everywhere. 457 00:38:21,140 --> 00:38:23,960 Ping Yu: But here I really don't see that. 458 00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:25,480 Dave Creech: That's a good question. 459 00:38:25,580 --> 00:38:26,160 Dave Creech: I don't know. 460 00:38:26,300 --> 00:38:29,740 Dave Creech: It's like, one of my favorite plants is sweet olive. 461 00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:36,700 Dave Creech: Like, why is sweet olive not popular in America? 462 00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,080 Dave Creech: And it's one of the top 10 traditional flowers. 463 00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:45,280 Dave Creech: There's festivals basically to, you know, celebrate the season. 464 00:38:45,340 --> 00:38:45,880 Dave Creech: And there's... 465 00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:50,760 Dave Creech: I was at a sweet olive conference, and there was 169 varieties, and I couldn't believe it. 466 00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:52,080 Dave Creech: That was just out of control. 467 00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:55,620 Dave Creech: I mean, it was really amazing to me, the diversity of sweet olives. 468 00:38:56,420 --> 00:39:06,460 Dave Creech: And here I'd say it's a minor (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) minor crop, a minor ornamental, and yet it has rather impressive fragrance, and it's so durable and can 469 00:39:06,500 --> 00:39:07,780 Dave Creech: live 2,000 years. 470 00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:11,040 Dave Creech: And, you know, it's just, it's really kind of a (Ping Yu: Yeah) beautiful thing. 471 00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:14,100 Dave Creech: So it's just a matter of where you grew up. 472 00:39:14,180 --> 00:39:19,060 Dave Creech: And most of the landscapes, if you look at the Gulf South, a lot of them are Asian. 473 00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:21,740 Dave Creech: I mean, let's face it, crape myrtle kind of rules. 474 00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:29,780 Dave Creech: $100-plus million business, and now we have an insect that followed it, and it's now here from China, crape myrtle bark scale. 475 00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:30,800 Dave Creech: Thank you for that. 476 00:39:31,780 --> 00:39:36,920 Dave Creech: And, you know, I'm in the fruit business, and so when I think of fruit, a lot of it's Asian. 477 00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:39,100 Dave Creech: A lot of people don't appreciate that. 478 00:39:39,220 --> 00:39:39,940 Dave Creech: If you look at... 479 00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:41,380 Dave Creech: If we get rid of... 480 00:39:41,580 --> 00:39:51,640 Dave Creech: If we only go with American fruits, blueberries, and there are some plums here and there, but we're out of luck, and no cabbage, no- A lot of vegetables are 481 00:39:51,700 --> 00:39:53,100 Dave Creech: Chinese or Asian. 482 00:39:53,980 --> 00:39:56,740 Dave Creech: And we're not talking about banning broccoli. 483 00:39:57,540 --> 00:40:07,060 Dave Creech: And we need to appreciate that the plant will have been placed that is not invasive. (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) I don't like invasive natives, I don't like invasive exotics. Ping Yu: I think one 484 00:40:07,100 --> 00:40:17,080 Ping Yu: of the reasons- So that's just- In terms of the plant species or the popularity of those, I think a lot of those are related to the culture that, like 485 00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:19,400 Ping Yu: you said, the way- where you grow up with. 486 00:40:19,460 --> 00:40:27,700 Ping Yu: And then if you grow up with the plant, and that simple plant can, wherever you go, can remind you home. 487 00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:38,160 Ping Yu: And then sometimes the plant can also symbolize a certain culture, that I guess that's one of the, my take on from some of the 488 00:40:38,500 --> 00:40:48,640 Ping Yu: Chinese love for willow, for willow trees, and even for osmanthus, because it's a smell, it's a feature, it's 489 00:40:48,740 --> 00:40:51,600 Ping Yu: a plant that will remind you of home. 490 00:40:51,740 --> 00:40:54,560 Ping Yu: That will remind you with your childhood. 491 00:40:54,940 --> 00:41:04,100 Ping Yu: And all those things has something to do with the plant in and of itself, and people, if they are not close to that culture associated with the plant, they 492 00:41:04,140 --> 00:41:09,800 Ping Yu: don't have the attachment or they don't have the bond with the plant, so people are like, "Okay, yeah, it's just a tree. 493 00:41:09,860 --> 00:41:11,060 Ping Yu: I don't really care about it." 494 00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:13,520 Dave Creech: No, there's even family trees. 495 00:41:13,700 --> 00:41:23,940 Dave Creech: I worked with a family, Yongfeng Nursery, in that they bought a sweet olive (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) for their family tree at their place, and 496 00:41:24,720 --> 00:41:25,840 Dave Creech: Ping, it was huge. 497 00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:27,860 Dave Creech: It was a big tree. 498 00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:33,440 Dave Creech: It was tens of thousands of dollars, and the rich people in China will spend a fortune (Ping Yu: Yeah) 499 00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:38,220 Dave Creech: (Ping Yu: Yeah, I know) some of these, $100,000, and they don't even blink. 500 00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:46,880 Dave Creech: It was kind of shocking to me to see some of the (Ping Yu: Yeah) nurseries that specialized in trees coming out of the forest that are 1,000 years old, and they'll 501 00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:48,480 Dave Creech: dig them out and they'll make them live. 502 00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:48,700 Ping Yu: Mm-hmm. 503 00:41:48,740 --> 00:41:49,740 Dave Creech: They'll make them live. 504 00:41:50,420 --> 00:41:52,460 Dave Creech: I've even seen them with transfusions on them. 505 00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:53,720 Dave Creech: You've seen them- (Ping Yu: Yeah, I know) 506 00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:56,740 Dave Creech: know where they put (Ping Yu: Yeah) bottles up and they bleed. 507 00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:57,860 Ping Yu: It is crazy. 508 00:41:58,560 --> 00:41:58,640 Ping Yu: Yeah. 509 00:41:58,660 --> 00:42:07,000 Dave Creech: They were pre- Ping Yu: (music) So, Tom, can you mention a little bit about the FSA Garden? 510 00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:10,180 Ping Yu: Can you tell us a little bit more about it and how... 511 00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:12,860 Ping Yu: 'Cause I've been there, it's gorgeous. 512 00:42:13,060 --> 00:42:22,780 Ping Yu: It's gorgeous, and you guys have a lot of good, cool, exotic plants, collections over the years, and you may brought them from other countries. 513 00:42:22,980 --> 00:42:25,100 Ping Yu: I would say a majority of them are from China. 514 00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:30,340 Ping Yu: I don't know if that's right, but can you tell us a little bit about that, Japanese maple? Yeah. 515 00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:38,020 Dave Creech: Well, we started in 1985, really a little bit earlier than that, but we say 1985. 516 00:42:38,740 --> 00:42:45,620 Dave Creech: And we had a little quarter-acre patch, just a quarter of, half quarter of a football field, and we started growing. 517 00:42:45,660 --> 00:42:52,580 Dave Creech: And then in the two years, we had taken around the agriculture building and the greenhouse facilities, and I was in... 518 00:42:52,700 --> 00:42:59,200 Dave Creech: I like to grow things, and so there was some land next to me in the bottom, and I wanted it, and athletics wanted it. 519 00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:00,640 Dave Creech: (laughs) And I got it. 520 00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:09,200 Dave Creech: And it was an administration, which is unbelievable. Ping Yu: (laughs) It's- So we had- Like, you cannot compete with athletics, never. 521 00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:11,400 Dave Creech: Anyway, it's floodplain. 522 00:43:11,540 --> 00:43:14,880 Dave Creech: It was floodplain, and it was all privet. 523 00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:23,580 Dave Creech: It was terrible, and my students and I got out there, and I kept telling them that this is gonna be one of the great gardens in the South. 524 00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:28,500 Dave Creech: We're gonna have all this genetic diversity, and we're just gonna grow and grow and grow. 525 00:43:29,180 --> 00:43:32,500 Dave Creech: And they just kind of winked at each other and thought I was crazy. 526 00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:33,900 Dave Creech: They've all told me this now. 527 00:43:33,940 --> 00:43:37,860 Dave Creech: They're all- A lot of them have retired, some of those original students are retiring. 528 00:43:38,460 --> 00:43:42,580 Dave Creech: But they all remember that I was convinced that this was gonna be a great garden. 529 00:43:42,700 --> 00:43:52,260 Dave Creech: As you already know, at universities, gardens can come and go, and they can be here, and then the next thing you know, it's a parking lot. 530 00:43:53,040 --> 00:44:01,320 Dave Creech: But I was convinced that we had the key to success, and we headed out the door, and I was very lucky to have a lot of friends in the 531 00:44:01,380 --> 00:44:02,220 Dave Creech: nursery business. 532 00:44:02,380 --> 00:44:03,660 Dave Creech: We were so pathetic. 533 00:44:03,900 --> 00:44:06,140 Dave Creech: I was not an ornamental horticulturist, Ping. 534 00:44:06,380 --> 00:44:11,420 Dave Creech: I was a fruit and vegetable guy, but my students were all ornamental horticulturists. 535 00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:18,140 Dave Creech: I really wanted, because of fruit and vegetables, I wanted to put the trees in rows so I could get a tractor up and... 536 00:44:18,540 --> 00:44:20,760 Dave Creech: And they made fun of me, my students did. 537 00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:23,760 Dave Creech: And so I said, "Well, let's design a garden," and they designed one. 538 00:44:23,860 --> 00:44:25,540 Dave Creech: I just wanted to grow the darn things. 539 00:44:25,580 --> 00:44:33,300 Dave Creech: And basically, we have good horticulture for two years, and we take care of the water for two or three years. 540 00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:38,060 Dave Creech: That's our goal, is after that, you better learn how to live in East Texas. 541 00:44:38,140 --> 00:44:47,380 Dave Creech: And that's, I think that's a mantra that we've had for the fir- Keep the weeds away, have some mulch around the plant, have a fairly decent planting hole, and 542 00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:49,980 Dave Creech: take care of the water for the first two years. 543 00:44:50,660 --> 00:44:58,460 Dave Creech: And in most cases, a tree that can get a little care and attention in the first two years, it'll go on forever. 544 00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:02,160 Dave Creech: But if you, it's a baby, and you understand a baby. 545 00:45:02,900 --> 00:45:05,760 Dave Creech: You cannot just ignore a baby for two years. 546 00:45:05,820 --> 00:45:13,000 Dave Creech: You gotta give it two or three years of care and culture, and some fertilizer and some feed, and this and that, and then it can live to be 100 547 00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:13,580 Dave Creech: years old. 548 00:45:14,240 --> 00:45:17,620 Dave Creech: And so that's the same attitude that we take here for trees. 549 00:45:17,700 --> 00:45:24,440 Dave Creech: And I think we were very lucky in that we connected well with a lot of other gardens, and they felt so sorry for us. 550 00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:31,340 Dave Creech: The nurseries just thought we were pathetic, and they just handed us a lot of plant material, and we'd plant it and we'd make it live. 551 00:45:32,060 --> 00:45:40,340 Dave Creech: And then connecting with some of the botanical gardens, the National Arboretum, Atlanta Bot, and Auburn had a garden. 552 00:45:40,380 --> 00:45:43,720 Dave Creech: There was just a lot of friends in the academic world, and we'd kinda share. 553 00:45:43,820 --> 00:45:45,760 Dave Creech: Of course, this was all pre-patent. 554 00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:50,140 Dave Creech: There were no patented trees by academia in the early days. 555 00:45:50,180 --> 00:45:52,780 Dave Creech: That really is something that happened in the 1990s. 556 00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:59,020 Dave Creech: And that's a change in, oh, you can't have this, you can't have that. 557 00:45:59,100 --> 00:46:00,080 Dave Creech: I may patent this. 558 00:46:00,180 --> 00:46:01,100 Dave Creech: I may patent that. 559 00:46:01,620 --> 00:46:10,960 Dave Creech: So patenting has been a restrictive thing in a lot of sharing, 'cause people get nervous about giving away plants that are destined for the royalty trade or for 560 00:46:11,260 --> 00:46:11,740 Dave Creech: patents. 561 00:46:11,780 --> 00:46:20,760 Dave Creech: And so, you know, we are at SFA, and we've never- We've patented a few plants that are- But we're not Texas A&M, we're not the University of 562 00:46:20,820 --> 00:46:21,440 Dave Creech: Georgia. 563 00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:23,980 Dave Creech: It's a different world here at SFA. 564 00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:28,860 Dave Creech: So I think that in a lot of cases, patenting can slow a plant's progress down. 565 00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:29,840 Ping Yu: Very much so. 566 00:46:30,140 --> 00:46:36,500 Dave Creech: We do have a lot of patented plants given to us, and we put 'em in the garden, but we're real careful not to get 'em into our plant 567 00:46:36,580 --> 00:46:44,080 Dave Creech: sales or let 'em get distributed, et cetera, 'cause that's become a funding stream for a lot of the companies that are out there. 568 00:46:44,100 --> 00:46:44,140 Ping Yu: Mm-hmm. 569 00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:48,520 Dave Creech: The big nurseries are interested in- (Ping Yu: So-) And universities, too. 570 00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:49,820 Dave Creech: Y'all patent (Ping Yu: Yeah) plants all the time. 571 00:46:52,900 --> 00:47:03,660 Ping Yu: About how many plants, 'cause you said you got, like, early in the phase of developing the garden, you receive or exchange plant materials to, like, other gardens 572 00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:04,760 Ping Yu: throughout the US. 573 00:47:05,100 --> 00:47:07,580 Ping Yu: Well, many south region, I guess. 574 00:47:08,039 --> 00:47:14,980 Ping Yu: But how many plants have you (Dave Creech: Oh) collected throughout your 40 years in the garden? 575 00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:24,180 Ping Yu: And about what ratio would you say, among all those plants you have in the garden, how many of them are from abroad? 576 00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:27,140 Ping Yu: 'Cause I know you brought some material from abroad. 577 00:47:27,860 --> 00:47:28,580 Dave Creech: How many? 578 00:47:28,740 --> 00:47:34,400 Dave Creech: Of- You know, we have an accession list (Ping Yu: I know) every year that's between 500 and 1,000. 579 00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:36,320 Dave Creech: Not all of them live. 580 00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:39,940 Dave Creech: We kill- (laughs) It's not a perfect machine here. 581 00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:43,800 Dave Creech: We kill a lot of plants, and we have a new problem. 582 00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:48,900 Dave Creech: We have wild hogs on campus that are killing me, and that's- I'm- But I'm not allowed to shoot 'em. 583 00:47:49,740 --> 00:47:54,220 Dave Creech: And so we have issues with floods, knocked a few trees south of us. 584 00:47:54,260 --> 00:48:00,840 Dave Creech: And, but I would say that over 50% are probably not of southern origin. 585 00:48:01,460 --> 00:48:05,780 Dave Creech: And that adds in the herbaceous (Ping Yu: Mm-hmm) as well, the perennial world. 586 00:48:06,500 --> 00:48:14,120 Dave Creech: I would say that we are emphasizing more and more native plants as a backbone, and I'll tell you why, and it's 587 00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:20,360 Dave Creech: 2021, February 16, we went to minus four (Ping Yu: I remember that) degrees. 588 00:48:20,420 --> 00:48:21,240 Ping Yu: I remember that. 589 00:48:21,660 --> 00:48:22,480 Dave Creech: You were here. 590 00:48:22,660 --> 00:48:25,220 Dave Creech: I was actually here too, in East Texas. 591 00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:28,780 Dave Creech: I was at home, and it- I couldn't get to the road. 592 00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:31,400 Dave Creech: I was trapped four days at my house. 593 00:48:31,500 --> 00:48:32,300 Dave Creech: No electricity. 594 00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:33,340 Dave Creech: I have a wood heater. 595 00:48:34,020 --> 00:48:36,940 Dave Creech: My dog caught a rabbit, I needed it to eat. 596 00:48:37,180 --> 00:48:39,900 Dave Creech: It was a fight to get the rabbit away from the dog. 597 00:48:39,940 --> 00:48:42,940 Dave Creech: And basically, it was a pretty tough time. 598 00:48:43,020 --> 00:48:46,240 Dave Creech: We had blown all the pipes in the dorms here. 599 00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:49,380 Dave Creech: I'm sure you might have experienced (Ping Yu: Yeah) the same thing. 600 00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:56,480 Dave Creech: But when the dust, the dust settled on it, Dr. Mengmeng Gu and I saw, what an opportunity to evaluate plant material. 601 00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:06,840 Dave Creech: And we did go out the gate, and we've got a wonderful database, but it got confused because- Well, she left to go to Colorado. 602 00:49:06,860 --> 00:49:13,220 Dave Creech: (laughs) But basically it got confused because we had a wonderful- A lot of them grew back. 603 00:49:14,020 --> 00:49:23,980 Dave Creech: So we had wonderful magnolia collection from Asia, and many of the evergreen magnolias were six and eight inches in diameter, and I thought they were gonna be the next 604 00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:24,860 Dave Creech: great tree. 605 00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:32,320 Dave Creech: But minus four, it killed them to the ground, or it killed them to the trunk, and, but the growth came out real, real fast. 606 00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:42,380 Dave Creech: Well, we had a good winter that following winter, 2022, and then the next December we had no freezes. 607 00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:49,320 Dave Creech: We had bananas on the banana plants, and on December 23rd we went to nine degrees. 608 00:49:49,940 --> 00:49:54,900 Dave Creech: And what happened was, that killed the magnolias dead as a hammer. 609 00:49:55,700 --> 00:49:58,340 Dave Creech: And so they had grown back, they were too vigorous. 610 00:49:59,020 --> 00:50:03,200 Dave Creech: It was a confluence of a perfect storm, a perfect group of temperatures. 611 00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,000 Dave Creech: The minus four took them to the trunk. 612 00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:15,560 Dave Creech: Two years later, the nine-degree Fahrenheit event with no p- Everything, no freezing temperatures, no frost. 613 00:50:16,340 --> 00:50:20,260 Dave Creech: And that was a shock to me, 'cause I have been out on the trail. 614 00:50:20,340 --> 00:50:30,600 Dave Creech: I give a lot of talks here and there, and I'd say, "Oh, this Magnolia maclurei, foveolata," there's a whole bunch of wonderful, beautiful, fragrant magnolias, 615 00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:35,620 Dave Creech: and I thought they were perfect, but they weren't. 616 00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:40,500 Dave Creech: And so I think it's real important to recognize that when the dust settled, guess what happened? 617 00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:43,220 Dave Creech: Our natives made it, at least at SFA. 618 00:50:43,900 --> 00:50:49,320 Dave Creech: We have troubles with live oak, but live oak is not really native in Dallas-Fort Worth. 619 00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:51,880 Dave Creech: It's native along the Gulf South. 620 00:50:52,580 --> 00:51:02,599 Dave Creech: So when it went to minus eight, minus nine, minus 11 in Northeast Texas, there were live oaks, they're all seedlings in general, that died. 621 00:51:03,420 --> 00:51:12,060 Dave Creech: And we lost, you know, lacebark elm, almost- That's exotic, but there was a lot of trees that really took it on the chin. 622 00:51:12,500 --> 00:51:21,200 Dave Creech: So now my new mantra with this new wisdom is that, plant 80% of your landscape, and the backbone of it, in natives. 623 00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:25,980 Dave Creech: And native trees, and shrubs, and you get excited about natives. 624 00:51:26,020 --> 00:51:28,600 Dave Creech: There's some beautiful natives that are never utilized. 625 00:51:29,260 --> 00:51:39,500 Dave Creech: And then the other 10 or 20%, you can go off there and wander off into some strange Chinese plant, or Indian plant, or Nepal, and that 626 00:51:39,620 --> 00:51:42,460 Dave Creech: way your whole landscape is not trashed. 627 00:51:43,100 --> 00:51:46,300 Dave Creech: I can't tell you how many people, they got into gingers. 628 00:51:46,620 --> 00:51:51,800 Dave Creech: Houston Botanical Garden had a very heavy emphasis on semi-tropical and tropicals. 629 00:51:52,240 --> 00:52:01,020 Dave Creech: Mercer had invested a lot of money in lots of different tender, but they normally will go through the winter, but all of a sudden we get one of those 630 00:52:01,140 --> 00:52:03,600 Dave Creech: barn burners, and I think we're gonna have more of them. 631 00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:09,300 Dave Creech: I think we have a highly energetic climate, and we have to be ready to face that future. 632 00:52:09,419 --> 00:52:09,600 Ping Yu: Yeah. 633 00:52:09,860 --> 00:52:16,620 Ping Yu: (music) Conversation like this only happen when you support the show. 634 00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:22,760 Ping Yu: For more information and find ways to support us, please go to bandbpod.com, 635 00:52:24,100 --> 00:52:25,580 Ping Yu: bandbpod.com. 636 00:52:26,040 --> 00:52:31,380 Ping Yu: If you like what you are hearing, spread the word and share this podcast with the people you love. 637 00:52:31,820 --> 00:52:37,260 Ping Yu: Make sure you hit that subscription button and give a review for the podcast. 638 00:52:37,820 --> 00:52:47,640 Ping Yu: And, as always, go check out the show notes to learn more about this topic and other topics we featured on the show at bandbpod.com. 639 00:52:47,940 --> 00:52:49,040 Ping Yu: Thank you for listening. 640 00:52:49,120 --> 00:53:09,980 Ping Yu: Till the next time, stay healthy and go plants. 641 00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:10,260 (music)