Page 32 - Tài liệu Ebook cây cảnh Bonsai and Penjing

1980. A Rhode Island native, Creech’s creativity and gardening skills

kept him and 1,500 fellow prisoners of war alive in remote Poland
during World War II. Returning to civilian life in 1947, Creech joined
the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Foreign Plant
Exploration. In 1955, he made the first official American plant-hunting
trip to Japan after World War II, searching for plants to be used for
food crops, pharmaceutical research or ornamental purposes. While
there, he met Yuji Yoshimura, leading to Yuji’s eventual move to the

U.S. where he played an important role in bringing bonsai to
Washington, D.C.
An enthusiastic and successful plant hunter, Creech was involved
in the introduction to the United States of new varieties of camellias,
azaleas, daylilies, chrysanthemums and sedum. Most famously, he

found and collected the seeds of a Crapemyrtle (Lagerstroemia fauriei)
on the remote Japanese island of Yakushima, which became the
source of powdery mildew resistance in the modern crapemyrtle
hybrids developed at the U.S. National Arboretum.
When Dr. Creech became Director of the U.S. National Arboretum
in 1973, he began to imagine what role the arboretum might play in the
nation’s Bicentennial Celebration in 1976. Inspired by David Fairchild’s

instrumental role in the gift of flowering cherry trees from Tokyo to
Washington in 1912, and relying on his own experience and contacts,
Creech thought the gift of a few bonsai from Japan might be possible.
The rest is history, as they say, well told in Creech’s book, The Bonsai
Saga, excerpts from which are included as Chapter Seven of this
book.

John Creech and Masaru Yamaki in the Japanese Pavilion, visiting Yamaki’s Japanese White