It's National Rainier Cherry Day. Rainier cherries were bred at Washington State University by crossing Vans and Bings. They are one of the most delicate and challenging cherries to grow because of one big drawback: their thin red-yellow skin. This     makes them super sensitive to the elements and they bruise easily.  Even if a grower can address these challenges, they still must contend with the birds.  Birds LOVE Rainiers and can eat as much as 1/3 of the cherry crop before the harvest arrives. Watch what happens if you add a few Rainier Cherries to your bird feeder.     Brevities   #OTD Today in Fettercairn Scottland in 1857, the amateur botanist David Prain was born. He would ultimately become the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Calcutta and Kew. Prain was sent to Calcutta in 1887 to be the curator of the herbarium. He researched Indian hemp, followed by other crops like wheat, mustards, pulses and indigo for the Bengal government.  Prain's most important work involved Cinchona plantations.  The bark of cinchona trees contains quinine which is used to treat malaria.  In Prain's obituary, it said that he set up a system to send every village in India quinine through the local post offices thereby saving unnumbered lives. During Prain's directorship at Kew, the medicinal garden was installed at Cambridge Cottage and the Japanese gateway was acquired for the 1910 Japan-British exhibition. Prain also reinstated the Kew Bulletin.  Prain's biggest professional challenge at Kew came not from a plant, but a person. William Purdom was a sub-foreman at Kew and he was passionate about making sure that the garden staff was being treated fairly. The discord stemmed from some of the gardeners at Kew discovering that their positions were only temporary. Having wages well below market levels didn't help either.  Even though all of this was set in place before Prain assumed the directorship, it fell to him to fix everything.  Prain's humble origins gave him a heart for his workers and he did his best to remedy the situation. Despite Prain's reasonable efforts to mediate the situation, Purdom made it personal. Prain finally forced the issue basically saying that it was either him or Purdom.  In a magnanimous gesture, Prain worked to get Purdom a spot on the expedition to China by Harry Veitch and the Arnold Arboretum. Today, history looks back at Prain with admiration, that he could recognize the talents of an employee, even while disagreeing with him - and all the while acting with fairness and integrity.     #OTD  Today in 1941 the Amarillo Daily News ran an article featuring Charles Sumner Lambie who was a Denver area civil engineer by day and a rare orchid breeder by night.  Lambie grew up in Pittsburgh tending the family garden.  He later married Margaret McCandless and together they raised nine children.   As his engineering firm became successful, Lambie's wife said he turned to the hobby of raising orchids as a means of relief from the stresses of his job. Mr. Lambie shared an upside that he discovered about greenhouse gardening: He no longer suffers from hay fever as he did when he gardened outside. After sharing the various types of orchids grown by Lambie, the article shared Lambie's method for documenting his plants. Here's what it said: "Mr. Lambie has a card index file ... on each plant. Here is a simple entry from the card of C. Talisman: "L.O. Talisman: 6 inches, December 1938, Christmas; Winter Bloomer, October to early summer, variable. Flowers large, Sepals and petals – Light to dark rose. Lip, dark rich crimson; Throat purple with yellow – gold veins." Mr. Lambie puts a protective canopy over the orchids when they are in bloom and he sprays them several times a day. When Mr. Lambie leaves town on business, Mrs. Lambie makes sure that the orchids are watered several times today. As the reporter for the story was leaving, Mrs. Lambie showed him a small orchidAnd shared that Mr. Lambie was give