One of my favorite shoulder season plants is my magnolia. The beautiful white blossoms in the spring and the glorious yellow leaves in the fall bookend a summer of hardy greenery. Then all winter long, the dormant flower buds will pop out adding interest and promise during those final snowstorms in late March and April. If you're looking for something that provides something new in every season, add magnolia to your list.     Brevities #OTD  Today is the birthday of the botanist William Herbst who was born on this day in 1833. As a child, William would accompany his father on horseback as he visited his patients across Bucks County in Pennsylvania. While his dad met with the sick in their homes, William stayed outside and passed the time collecting flora and fauna for study. When he grew older, he spent time formally studying botany, in addition to attending Medical School in Philadelphia.   Although he became a doctor like his father Frederick, William Herbst was truly a botanist at heart. He developed a passion for fungi and he wrote a Fungal Flora of the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania in 1899. Once, after sending a specimen to his botanist friend, a Professor CH Peck, Herbst received a kind acknowledgement letter, which read in part:  "That was a splendid fungus you sent me. It is an undescribed species of Sparassis. I propose to name it, with your consent, Sparassis Herbstii."   In 1906, doctors were still making house-calls. Herbst died after visiting a sick patient. His obituary in The Morning Call  in Allentown, PA said,   "[Herbst] suffered from a fall. Leaving a sick-room to go to the bath room, he opened a stairway door by accident and plunged to the bottom in the darkness... [Then] he sank into a coma from which he did not awake.    The doctor was one of the most lovable of men. He was firm and honest in his convictions ... [and] His beautiful nature was exemplified in the poem, "Welcome Spring Flowers," which "he wrote many years ago...     Many a time he was asked why he did not settle in some city where his [botanical] talents would receive prompt recognition, but his answer invariably was that he could study nature better in his old home."   When Herbst died, his widow donated his collection of 5,000 fungi to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.    #OTD  On this day in 1886, the botanist Wilhelm Nikolaus Suksdorf began his journey by train to Cambridge, Massachusetts to go work for Harvard's top botanist, Asa Gray.    Now I know what you're thinking. This must be another story about a budding young botanist who makes his way to Harvard and then writes his ticket to success and fame. But that is not the story of Wilhelm Suksdorf.   Suksdorf was born in Germany, but his family soon immigrated to Iowa.   The Suksdorf's had nine children, but after their two little girls died, the Suksdorfs were a family of seven boys; often referred to as the seven Suksdorfs. (Wilhelm was number six).   Wilhelm was a sickly little boy; maybe that’s why he ended up being such a homebody. When his older brothers went to Ames Iowa for college, botany was part of the curriculum. (Imagine that?!) It was through his older brothers that Wilhelm learned of Asa Gray's botany manual. After he heard about it, he wanted one for himself. So, when he was twenty years old, he bought himself a copy and he used it to learn about the plants around the family's Davenport Iowa farm.    After his older brothers went West to find their fortunes, it wasn’t long before the entire Suksdorf family followed suit. They ended up buying land along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest and they settled in an area they named Bingen.   Wilhelm attempted to study botany at Berkeley. But, after two years, decided to quit. Suksdorf was 26 when he left Berkeley and returned to the family farm to help his brothers with their dairy operation.   Back in Iowa, the Suksdorfs had been part of a large German immigrant population. They were able cont