Botanist Sherwin Carlquist believed keeping plants indoors was a form of torturing the plants because they were not outdoors in a natural environment. In 1956, when he was 26, he designed his and his parents’ Hope Ranch home, blending Japanese and mid-century-modern design on a large lot with a view of the Channel Islands. Less than a decade later, he had authored his first milestone book on the biology of islands and began replacing the Hope Ranch lawn with botanic specimens from distant islands and continents.
Sherwin made dozens of trips to islands all over the world. In October 1966, he spent a week marooned on a small atoll — the Pearl and Hermes Reef — 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu. The Coast Guard cadets who had rowed him to a sandbar to study its plants couldn’t relocate the tiny islet for several days when they returned to fetch him, its loftiest point being almost invisible at only eight feet above sea level.
Sherwin was stranded among some of his favorite research subjects — native plants of the Hawaiian island chain, the world’s most remote archipelago.