Publicity
Together Again
November 8, 2002
The Campus Chronicle, Vol. XVIII, Issue 11
for the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
During a visit to Durfee Conservatory on Sept. 25, Mary Sumner Snyder reacquainted herself with the snake lily, a rare plant species that she first encountered more than 50 years ago at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.
In the early 1950s, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph published the photo at left showing Snyder (then Mary Sumner) with the five-foot tall plant cultivated by museum preparator Reingold L. Fricke.
"Reuniting Mary in pictures with this particular plant after so many years is a testimony to her enduring interest and love of horticulture," says Durfee director John Tristan. "For the past eight years, Mary has been a volunteer at Durfee Conservatory. She came initially to fulfill a 60-hour work requirement for certification as a Master Gardner. She has never stopped coming and has logged well over 1,000 hours of volunteer service."
Tristan says the snake lily is a botanical oddity of great interest due to its unusual "flower" and growth habit. Its reproductive architecture or flower is a specialized structure composed of a spathe and spadix which combine to form a "strikingly large, foul-smelling, purple black tube up to five feet tall." The phenomenon can be viewed in early March, he said.
Snyder, who met her husband, Dana, at the University of Pittsburgh, came to Amherst in 1955 when he joined the Zoology faculty. He retired in 1990.
