Botanist's Reverie

This morning our flowering plants class walked out for one of Dr. Blum’s infamous m ii-field trips. We walked over to the shingle oak which blew over in last week’s storm. Though more appropriate to the dendrology course I took under him back in the fall of ’09, Dr. Blum discussed the growth rings and the significance of what they represent. He asked for a volunteer to count them. I’ve always had too short of an attention span for the tedious task of counting growth rings but when no one came forward I volunteered anyway. Beginning in the heart wood center I began, keeping my place with an ink pen: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve…seventy-one. The old tree was seventy-one.

It was a large seventy-one, owing to growth a few years ago in which it put on half an inch per year for a few good years. But in recent years the old tree had gone into decline. The last four or five years exhibited growth rings of less than a quarter inch. The days were numbered for this tree. Dr. Blum pointed out how some of the newly exposed roots already looked dead. The shallow, spreading roots of this variety of red maple didn’t allow for the strong anchoring of the white oaks with their taproot systems. But the tree had grown tall and large, much larger than the surrounding walnuts which were a good ten years older, having been planted from walnuts brought back from Mount Vernon by a former grounds keeper.

                Afterwards we walked on, Dr. Blum and myself at the front discussing the scene in A Sand County Almanac where Aldo Leopold discusses the oak he cut down for firewood and in its rings remarks on how the tree had faired under different owners (really paying overseers) of the land. We talked a little of Loren Eiseley and wondered why such a brilliant, thoughtful and somewhat dark author had fallen out of the public consciousness in the decades since his death in 1977.

                This is the last class I will take with Dr. Blum. It is a wonder that I was able to learn his botanical knowledge even now. Back in ’09 he missed weeks of class toward the end of the semester with a mysterious medical condition. As the story goes he was in the bar taking a shot in celebration of his birthday when he went down with internal hemorrhaging.

                But I’ll take what I can from these old school naturalists, who have paid their dues participating in the hard-living lifestyles of botanists of old. There is an art in the knowledge of plants. From learning the vocabulary, interpreting fuzzy differences in an attempt to find order and a sense of belonging for a specific plant, to hours spent collecting, pressing, and mounting herbarium specimens I don’t doubt all great botanists see themselves as artists in some way. What is art if not identifying the order in a world that otherwise seems chaotic to the untrained eye.