703. INDIGOFERA HOWELLII Brian Schrire, Susyn Andrews and ...

Howell and Forrest became good friends and on the third Expedition
(1912–1915), Howell supervised two of Forrest’s collectors who were
left behind to collect in and around the Tengyueh area; he also
provided a room to dry their specimens (McLean, 2004).
On the fourth Expedition (1917–1920), Forrest collected F.14880
(K!) in fruit during September 1917 on the Mekong-Salween Divide,
at Lat. 28 ◦ 12 ′ N, between 3048 and 3353 m. This 1.2–2.7 m shrub
was growing in open scrub and pine forests. It has been variously
identified as Indigofera sp., I. pendula or I. galegoides DC. but is in
fact I. howellii. There were eight major sponsors for this particular
expedition, one of whom was Reginald Cory. Seeds of F.14880 were
distributed from the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) garden at
Wisley as A72 and A687 (Forrest, 1929). Plants grown from F.14880
went to the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin in Dublin, where a
specimen was collected from the Iris Border Wall on September 21,
1937 (DBN!), as well as to the Arnold Arboretum, Boston. Glasnevin’s
material had come from Cory and a plant was still alive in 1984, S.
Andrews s.n. (K!). Alfred Rehder had collected specimens at the Arnold
in August 1920 (K!).
In the United States, other specimens of Indigofera howellii had been
collected by Rehder in 1925, 1928 and 1929 (A!) at the Arnold. Seed
had been sent from RBG Edinburgh (no. 18234) in the early 1920s
and identified as I. wardiana, an unpublished name. In Cowan (1952),
the author made no mention of any of the above collections when
discussing the various Indigofera species that Forrest had collected.
Reginald Cory (1871–1934) was a director of Cory Brothers,
who owned colliery, shipping and oil firms. He inherited Dyffryn, a
magnificent estate in the Vale of Glamorgan, outside Cardiff, from
his father and according to the landscape architect Thomas Mawson
was regarded ‘as an amateur landscape gardener and horticulturist
of insight and ability.’ At Dyffryn, Cory planted out trees and shrubs
grown from expeditions that he had helped to finance, e.g. to China
and other countries, including four of the seven George Forrest
expeditions (Elliott, 1998; McLean, 2004; Day, 2006).
Following Cory’s death in 1934, there was an unfortunate period
when many plants were sold before the house and gardens were
© The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2011. 81