One of the delights of visiting the UCD Botanical Conservatory is meeting the Director of the Conservatory - Tim Metcalf. Tim is a very special person who loves plants and loves teaching others about plants. Over the years, he has nurtured hundreds of student interns who have come to the Conservatory to learn about plant care and propagation. He has also served as faculty advisor to the UCD Botany Club, and because of his welcoming personality, the Conservatory serves as a center of activity for the Botany Club on Picnic Day and for Plant Biology graduates on the day before graduation (they decorate their hats with tropical plants).
However, Tim was not always a botanist. -In fact he is quite honest that he didn’t choose his profession; rather, his profession chose him. Tim, who grew up in Woodland, came to UCD as an undergraduate math major. As a freshman in 1965, he answered an ad for a work-study position with Harold Drever, who was in charge of the research and teaching greenhouses (then located at the Wellman Hall site). Harold was looking for someone who could lift a 50-pound bucket of soil; Tim could, and so began his involvement with the UCD greenhouses! Despite keeping the job for five years, Tim still didn’t consider botany a viable career option, and he didn’t take any botany courses.
Upon graduation with a math degree (and business coursework), Tim obtained a job in Sacramento as a warehouse manager. He worked at that job for one year, the company sold out, and he found himself back on campus looking for a job. Harold mentioned he had an opening for an assistant who would also work part-time in the Conservatory with Bijan Dehgan. Tim took the job in 1972 and he kept it! During his first years, he worked and took classes, completing a masters degree in horticulture in 1980. He credits his in-depth knowledge of plants to both his love of the subject and wonderful teachers in the departments of horticulture and botany. The subject of his masters thesis was the genus Dorstenia in the Moraceae (fig family), specifically the caudiciform taxa that inhabit the xeric/seasonally wet environments of Arabia and the horn of Africa. Caudiciform plants have enlarged woody stems (caudices) at ground level that serve as perennial storage organs.
Tim fell in love with caudiciform plants immediately, because of their sculptural shapes, subtle colors, and sense of age, persistence, and strength. Cacti, on the other hand, did not hold his fancy, due to painful childhood experiences. It wasn’t until later that Tim became fascinated with the growth and development of cacti, especially the seedlings with their little round bodies and little hair tufts (nascent spines) between the two pointy cotyledon leaf ears. Over the years, many other plants have captured his imagination, including orchids, seedless vascular plants, and carnivorous plants. All of these plants are now well represented in the Conservatory, which Tim took over from Bijan in 1980.
Since Tim assumed his curatorship, he has doubled the Conservatory collections and expanded its programs. He developed the popular Conservatory internship and volunteer programs. UC Davis student interns enroll with Tim for credit, attend weekly seminars on plant propagation and greenhouse management, and work on a special project of their own; they also lead tours after they are fully trained. Volunteers come to the conservatory weekly on Tuesday evenings to propagate plants for the yearly plant sale (held in conjunction with the Arboretum Plant Faire), which is a major fundraising event for the Conservatory.
The Conservatory also has well-attended public outreach programs. A tour of the Conservatory is now integrated into the introductory biology curriculum at UC Davis, bringing ca. 1,500 students a year through the collections. Another 1,500 students pass through as part of the Conservatory’s K-12 outreach programs, and at least another 2,000 visitors come through during Picnic Day, the annual open house in February, and other tours. The Conservatory is a rare find in the Central Valley, and educators jump on the chance to bring their students for a visit.
In 1995, besides directing the Conservatory operation, Tim’s responsibility was formally extended to include the Plant Biology research greenhouses at Orchard park, which spreads him thinner than ever. He is able to supervise work in the twenty Conservatory, teaching, and research greenhouses (as well as the plantings in the Robbins Hall courtyard) by working with an excellent staff, - Ernesto Sandoval (Curator and outreach coordinator) and Doug Walker (in charge of plant health and computerization), as well as dozens of students and volunteers.
