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By Pauline Masson – Imagine 50 year after you are gone and your former acquaintances and neighbors spot a clump of yellow blossoms tucked under a chance tree line and immediately think of you. That’s what is happening right now, as it does each spring, in our area.
In every neighborhood, along fence rows and entry lanes, in planned flower gardens and wild untended places, and under more trees than the ubiquitous Dogwoods, a bumper crop of 2022 daffodils are waving their yellow trumpets in a salute to the late John Howe.
From mid March to May arguably no area in the state of Missouri, or maybe no place anywhere outside of Holland, has more non-commercial daffodils in bloom than eastern Franklin County, thanks to this solitary flower lover.
John Howe, 1894-1970, was the chief grower and longest resident at Howe Valley Farm on North Thornton Road. In his 60 years residency there, he transformed his home place into a horticultural wonder.
He told visitors that he only attended school through the fourth grade but that was a misleading bit of self-effacement. His vocabulary and love of talking were legend.
He brought a certain fame to Pacific by welcoming a steady stream of distinctive horticulturists, university students and newspaper reporters to Howe Valley. They came here to witness his skill at the ancient art of grafting trees. His specialty was grafting shoots of one nut tree onto another to produce a more palatable nut. That was only one of his interests.
In 1904, he entered his grapes in competition at the World’s Fair in St. Louis and captured a first place gold medal. Now his grand nephew Bill McLaren has built an imposing cedar pavilion, with 20-foot high ceilings, preserving the old Howe Farm family kitchen in one corner. Bill’s daughter Kristin Benford operates a country wedding venue there. They display a large elaborately framed certificate proclaiming John Howe’s first place gold medal. After his mother, Edith McLaren’s passing, as Bill sorted through her things, tucked away in a small box he found the actual gold medal.
Not one to rest on his laurels, in 1910 John Howe took the train to the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming to spend the winter working at a saw mill while he studied Shropshire Sheep. I have a photo of him, twenty years later, standing in front of barn looking out at a small herd of super wooly Shrophires.
I found one of his letters home from Wyoming that revealed his broad interests. Writing to his brother, he described in elaborate detail the water management in the basin, annual snow fall, crop yields, the cost of groceries in Cody, voting practices (women could vote there and most did), dude ranches, and timber.
“Last week I cut down the biggest tree around here. It as about 28 inches across the stump and made three 12-inch and two 14-inch cuts. It was about nine inches through the small end and was 86 feet high. The boss says there’s about 6,000 feet of lumber in it”
This is no fourth grader writing.
At home, John Howe became legend for his grafted nut trees and his tree collection from every corner of the world, that rivaled Henry Shaw’s famous garden in St. Louis. But his true love was daffodils.
He cultivated 450 varieties of daffodils at the farm, knew them all by their Latin names, and made a living selling bulbs. Although something of a hermit, he continued his occasional foray into self-promotion. In 1932, he carried a bushel basket of daffodil bulbs to Shaw Nature Reserve – when it was still known as The Arboretum – and asked that they be planted. To this day, daffodils blanket the open sections of the reserve. It’s worth a visit now, just to see the wonder of it.
In true tribute, each spring when the daffodils bloom, the Missouri Botanical Garden publishes a homage to John Howe under the banner “Daffodils at Shaw Nature Reserve.” This year they say there are thousands of daffodils around the Pinetum Lake. One year they said there might be a million – all descendants of John Howe’s bushel of bulbs.
He sold bulbs of one of the hardiest daffodil species, the Sir Watkins, for a penny each and that’s what we’re seeing along every road in the area. But he was known to pay as much as $5 for a rare bulb.
Left to their own devices, daffodils self-propagate and multiply, and their numbers will grow all on their own. But at Howe Valley Farm, which John Howe’s relatives have transformed into a magnificent country wedding venue pictured above, they plant new bulbs each year.
To experience just how pervasive John Howe’s daffodil legacy is in our area, go for a drive.
Such glorious history of such of such a wondrous legion of a real man.