In 2003, a Yale graduate student named Nathan Havill came to the Arnold Arboretum to collect samples from its hemlocks. He was studying the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive insect that had reached the Arboretum in 1997. Two of the trees he sampled had arrived as seed in 1983, a gift from Chollipo Arboretum in South Korea. They were labeled southern Japanese hemlock, Tsuga sieboldii. Havill's genetic work showed they did not match.
Fourteen years later the trees had a new name, Tsuga ulleungensis, the Ulleungdo hemlock. Young Ulleungdo hemlocks grow above Beech Path, on a walk many Jamaica Plain residents already take.
That story explains the exhibit that opened last Saturday in the Hunnewell Visitor Center. Living Connections: The Arnold Arboretum and Korea is mostly photographs and archival records. Its real subject is a set of living trees in Jamaica Plain, and those trees are still teaching botanists things more than a century after the first Korean seeds arrived.
What Is Inside Hunnewell Through June 13, 2027
The exhibit runs from October 24, 2026, through June 13, 2027, in the Hunnewell Building at 125 Arborway. It is free during regular Visitor Center hours. The Arboretum's visit page lists the Visitor Center as open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the grounds as open daily from sunrise to sunset.
The center of the exhibit is Ernest Henry Wilson's 1917 to 1919 expedition. The Arboretum describes it as one of the most extensive surviving visual records of early twentieth-century Korea. Wilson photographed plants along with architecture and daily life, and many of the places he recorded are now hard or impossible to reach. The exhibit places that work within Japanese colonial rule, the division of Korea, and the Korean War. It also shows how Korean people and botanists were often left out of the records, and how the Arboretum is now restoring Korean names in botanical literature.
Regular visitors will notice one change. The scale model of the Arboretum grounds inside the Visitor Center is off view while the exhibit runs.
The exhibit page also says that Wilson's images "trace the origins of specimens that continue to grow in Jamaica Plain." Taken literally, that line sends you back outside.
The Hemlock That Outgrew Its Label
The Ulleungdo hemlock story goes back further than the 1983 seed. Wilson visited Ulleungdo, a volcanic island in the Sea of Japan, in spring 1917. The botanist Takenoshin Nakai guided him. Wilson collected herbarium specimens and photographed the hemlocks there. Both men called the trees southern Japanese hemlock. The Arboretum's history of that expedition notes that Korea was under Japanese occupation and that Japanese forestry officials accompanied Wilson.
The name held for decades, including on the two trees grown from the Chollipo seed. After Havill's results, Peter Del Tredici returned to Ulleungdo in 2008 with American and South Korean researchers to collect from more populations. Del Tredici is now a senior research scientist emeritus at the Arboretum. Garth Holman, a University of Maine graduate student, did the genetic analysis. His 2014 dissertation supported treating the trees as a separate species, and the name Tsuga ulleungensis was published in 2017. Holman's work also showed that the Ulleungdo hemlock is more closely related to the northern Japanese hemlock, T. diversifolia, than to the species on its original label.
The original tree is accession 1251-83*B. The Arboretum Explorer gives its location as EG-32-NW. The Ulleungdo hemlock plant bio lists three traits to look for: flat needles, a broad V-shaped branching pattern, and cones whose bracts have rounded margins. Compared with the southern Japanese hemlock, its leaves and leaf stalks are larger, and its cone bracts have wave-like teeth instead of fine ones. Since hemlocks are evergreen, November is as good a time to find it as June.
Three Korean Lines Within Walking Distance
The hemlock is the newest discovery, but the Arboretum's Korean collections go back much further. Its first collections from the Korean Peninsula date to 1905 and are linked to John George Jack. Frank Nicholas Meyer also collected in Korea during his China and Central Asia campaign. The exhibit explains why Korea mattered so much: its harsh climate is similar in many ways to New England's, so its plants were good candidates to survive in Boston.
Two trees with named locations show how long that line runs.
| Tree | Accession | Where on the grounds | Korean connection | What to look for now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Korean stewartia, Stewartia pseudocamellia | 8-43*A | Near Centre Street Gate | Grown from 1943 seed whose parent trees came from seed Wilson collected in Korea in 1917 | Winter bark in beige, dark green, and gray, with some panels that look like brushed aluminum |
| Three-flowered maple, Acer triflorum | 97-77*A | North side of the walk where it bends up toward Peters Hill | Grown from seed received from Hyupwha Heungsan Co. in Seoul in early 1977 | Fall color in orange, red, yellow, and purple, then peeling bark through winter |
| Ulleungdo hemlock, Tsuga ulleungensis | 1251-83*B | Young trees above Beech Path; Explorer code EG-32-NW | Seed from Chollipo Arboretum, 1983 | Flat needles, V-shaped branching, cones with rounded bracts |
The stewartia's parent trees grow at the top of Bussey Hill. Wilson collected their seeds in 1917 at the foot of Mount Chiri-san, 지리산, in what is now South Korea, and the seeds reached the Arboretum's propagation operation in early 1918. The 2021 Arboretum story Astonishing Bark gives the tree's Korean name, 노각나무. It describes "panels of bark that radiated a look of brushed aluminum." The story also suggests that the sunnier spot near Centre Street Gate may explain why this tree's bark is more striking than its parents' bark on Bussey Hill. That description is from January 2021. The bark of a living tree changes, so check what it looks like this winter for yourself.
The three-flowered maple falls between Wilson's expedition and the modern collecting trips. The Arboretum's A Walk Through Time, Part 2 says it was planted in front of an evergreen screen to show off its form and bark. That page quotes dendrologist Michael Dirr describing the bark as "a blend of cream, buff, and pearly gray brown." There are 18 three-flowered maples on the grounds, and the oldest dates to 1923.
The 1977 Expedition Is Still Growing on the Grounds
The maple's seed arrived in early 1977. Later that year, Stephen Spongberg and Richard Weaver traveled to Korea, the first Arboretum collectors to go there since Wilson. The Arboretum's account of that expedition names Carl Ferris Miller of Chollipo Arboretum among their Korean hosts. At Chollipo they collected Korean hornbeam and thorn-elm. On the way to Seoraksan they collected three-flowered maple and Sargent's viburnum.
The trip produced 505 collections across 327 taxa, and the Arboretum counts 200 collected trees still thriving on its grounds. Those numbers cover Japan and Korea together.
Several Korean-origin trees are easier to find with the Explorer than with a path name.
- Korean maple, 1400-77*B, grid 8-SW. The Arboretum's maple collection page describes Korean maple leaves turning from yellow to red in fall.
- Korean hornbeam, 1951-77*A, grid 32-SW, of Republic of Korea origin.
- Korean fir, 490-2016*B, grid 34-SE, of Republic of Korea origin.
Each grid is a 400-by-600-foot block of the Arboretum map, divided into NW, NE, SW, and SE quadrants. The Arboretum points visitors to the Explorer and a printable grid map to find a specific plant.
The Next Chapter Is in the Nursery
The exhibit also covers current work, and the most recent of it cannot be seen on the grounds yet. From September 17 to October 3, 2024, Michael Dosmann and Chris Copeland collected in South Korea with scholars and collectors from Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul National University, Mokpo University, and Chollipo Arboretum. They brought back 24 collections of 21 taxa. Those seeds go to the nursery first and only later into the permanent collections.
Chollipo appears in every chapter after Wilson. It hosted the 1977 collectors, sent the 1983 hemlock seed, and joined the 2024 fieldwork. The trees from that 2024 trip will take years to reach planting size. The hemlock grown from Chollipo seed spent twenty years on the grounds under one name before genetic sampling gave it another.
Getting There
From the Orange Line, ride to Forest Hills, exit through the door marked "Arnold Arboretum," cross Washington Street, and walk up the Arborway. The Forest Hills Gate is on your left. The walk along the Arborway sidewalk to the Arborway Gate and the Hunnewell Building takes about 12 minutes. From the #39 bus, get off at South Street at Bardwell Street, take Custer Street to its end, and turn right onto the Arborway. Public parking on the Arborway includes six accessible spaces on either side of the gate, and it can fill up during lectures and other large programs.
The exhibit runs through June 13, 2027. That covers the stewartia's winter bark and the three-flowered maple's April flowers. The stewartia blooms in July, a few weeks after the exhibit closes.
At Maxfield & Company, we have followed Jamaica Plain since 1994. Part of knowing a street is knowing which Arboretum gate is closest and which paths neighbors walk every week. If you are weighing a move near the Arborway or Centre Street Gate and want to talk through how that access shows up in a home's value, Get in Touch.
