roses, in the event of an 'emergency', you should google any question you may have. The Gardenweb is not set up to respond to urgent requests, though if the forum is a frequented one (like this one), you'll have your answer pretty darned fast. But if you typed in the words (for example): "spinach genus and species" or "spinach botanical name" as pippimac suggests you'd have the results yourself in about one second. I still use Google as my search engine, but there are others out there. Bing is becoming more popular. Don't take this the wrong way; there are so many of us here who love to help, but when I see the word 'urgent', I worry a bit. There have been people who have posted urgent questions about their pets or even children eating something-or-another....and using the GardenWeb to get help! Can you imagine? Just don't begin using Google too much! We'd miss you around here. And everybody learns by asking AND answering questions.

Just to remind people that the (almost certainly) irreversible change to charging a fee would get the Arboretum only between 7 and 8% of their budget. It will of course cost something to administer the fee, so perhaps 5% is a more realistic number? Regardless, the presence or absence of the fee is not going to make an enormous difference in the overall health of the park. And I would argue that they could get more than 7 or 8% if they were just a bit more creative. Eric, you say "People are not donating like they used to. Memberships are way down from a few years ago". I believe you have identified the problem, at least in part. The Arboretum is bad at fundraising. This needs to be fixed. I don't know the people involved, but it's clear they are not reaching out to us "plant people" as well as they should. I also strongly suspect they are failing to tap the immense wealth in San Francisco and its suburbs, which I would expect would be their true source of money. Reaching out to "plant people": I suppose there are many ways one could describe Strybing's incredibly low profile. As I mentioned above, many of the big names in the horticultural world are totally unaware of their sales. But this is perhaps even more telling: I've only been to the Conservatory of Flowers (the glasshouse, also in Golden Gate Park) and the UC Botanical Garden a couple times each in the last couple years. However, I just checked: emails from UC Botanical Garden in the last year: 38. From the Conservatory of flowers: 18. From Strybing: 0. (note that I have received a number of personal emails from employees and volunteers at Strybing in response to questions.) Strybing fails to promote itself and I assume to raise money. That needs to be fixed before they make an irreversible step like charging money. Yes, those of us who post on a forum like this will continue to go to Strybing. Those aren't the people we should be concerned with. People like my mom, as I mentioned, will be less likely to go. Strybing is unlikely to ever raise that much money by selling more plants, by the way. $200,000 would be 20,000 $10 plants, even assuming 100% profit, which divided by 10 or 12 sales is close to 2,000 plants per sale...impossible. However they could clearly raise more money by raising their profile a little bit and appealing to all of the wealth in the area. If they start holding events for the rich and they make this place of beauty a center for those people, a good fundraising effort should be able to raise 10% more money. However, if they do run out of money and can't take care of all their plants, I suspect they can save quite a bit of money by neglecting their most abundant one--the grass--which is all over. Let the grass die and go uncut, yet preserve the important plants. The park will become an "eyesore" in the opinion of many, yet they will preserve what counts. I bet the dead overgrown grass would draw attention and that extra 7 or 8% of the budget would quickly appear. There are many creative ways the Arboretum could raise money. The newspaper article said that $10,000 was spent to pay a lobbyist to push for the $7 fee. If they had instead spent the money on a consultant to look at ways to raise the profile of the Arboretum, appeal to the wealth of the area, and raise money, I suspect the need for the fee would vanish.

It came from a garden in New England, the gardener's name was Yvonne. It likely appeared as a seedling from one of the dwarf types since she had been growing it for years and back in those days you couldn't find a giant form of Splendens of any kind. A friend of hers named Emily kindly spread it around to all of us. Somewhere on the internet is a picture of Yvonne and her husband with the plants towering over them. Either they weren't tall folks or else their plants were taller than any examples I have ever grown. Yvonne and her husband died of very old age a few years ago.

thank you sooo much!!! now i understand how so many different plants would have the same name. so all of those varieties have been farmed, therefore named sativa. thank you again.