Another post in a series about Mr. Huntington's Garden by the botanical director of The Huntington.

Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter early in the morning of April 12, 1861. Two days later, Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fortification off the coast of South Carolina, but not before lowering the American flag and keeping it as a souvenir. A fragment of that flag is bound into a volume of a unique set of books in The Huntington Library.

Another post in a series about Mr. Huntington's Garden by the botanical director of The Huntington.

Walt Disney's animated movie Sleeping Beauty (1959) begins with a live action shot of a spectacular gold-plated book adorned with jewels. As the narrator reads the opening lines, the camera pans in on the colorful paintings, and the viewer is soon transported to a far away land.

Another post in a series about Mr. Huntington's Garden by the botanical director of The Huntington.

Another post in a series about Mr. Huntington's Garden by the botanical director of The Huntington.

Here's a scandal: While the Huntington painting Penelope (Pitt), Viscountess Ligonier immortalizes a woman who indulged in salacious affairs and managed to survive a very public divorce, its real story is not about the sitter at all.

William Deverell, the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW), chats with USC doctoral student Sarah Keyes about her research on the Overland Trail experience of 250,000 Americans who moved west before the Civil War. This is the first in a new series highlighting the work of USC graduate students.

Another post in a series about Mr. Huntington's Garden by the botanical director of The Huntington.

When Ben Oki first saw a bonsai tree as a curious youngster of six, he asked his father what bonsai was. "It's something people do when they retire," his father explained. Luckily for the world of horticulture, Oki didn't wait that long to start.