The Dry Garden: Here’s to the Egolf Tree

Posted on | September 2, 2011 | No Comments

An artist friend of mine calls crape myrtles “living bouquets.” In the hottest weeks of summer, the man to whom we owe thanks for the white, pink, lavender and red bouquets now before us, often un-watered and somehow unwilted, is Donald Roy Egolf. From 1958 until his death in 1990, Egolf was a plant breeder at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. His contribution was so outstanding that this column, besides constituting the deepest of bows to those wonderful plants, bears the suggestion that we rename the crape myrtle the Egolf tree, or Egolfus donaldii, so as to take in many new compact and shrub forms.

Click here to keep reading a Labor Day salute to Donald Egolf and crape myrtles in the Los Angeles Times.

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