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A Daisy Chain
May 21, 1999
Imagine, if you will, a farmer
working the land in the southeast corner of what is now Pennsylvania
but at the time was Darby Township. Born in 1699, his nurturing
included the promises a new century brings and his allotted four-score
years and 10 would allow his bearing witness to the birth of a
new nation.
Unfortunately,
he was orphaned at 13 and farmed out, literally, as an agricultural
worker. His name was John Bartram, he was married to Ann, and
together they were raising their nine children on the 102-acre
farm he bought when he was 28. In your mind's eye, see him now
at about 34 as he hefts his weight behind the plough.
Imagine, too, this self-taught botanist, having learned largely
through observation and correspondence, would one day be honored
by King George III as Royal Botanist, and known here in his homeland
as father of American botany.
Of course, since John Bartram was a go-to-meeting Quaker, I see
him wearing the familiar wide-brimmed black hat as he goes about
his chores. On this day in our imagination, we can visualize what
we know to be true. He stops ploughing, bends over, picks up a
wild daisy, studies it intently, wipes his brow with his tired
arm and just stands there. He swirls the slender stem between
his thumb and forefinger, studying the ease with which individual
petals become a swirl of solid white. What is he thinking?
It's been reported he "stopped dead in his tracks." That may be
the way with oral histories and casual journals but, having twirled
a few daisies myself, I don't think it went that way. After all,
daisies are barely less common than dandelions; hardly the first
one he ever came across. I rather think he played the time-worn
game we all play plucking petals. His not the game of "he loves
me; he loves me not."
His, the game of "shall I go; shall I stay?" The daisy whispered
softly, I imagine, "Go." Almost three centuries and 13 miles later,
our paths cross, John's and mine. Bartram's travels took him north
to Ontario and south to Florida where, eventually, a trek along
the Altamaha River brought him and his fifth son, "Billy, my little
botanist," now grown and highly educated in the natural sciences,
to a grove of trees with little white blossoms on their branches.
They bloom in the fall, which of course is a rarity.
There were 60 trees in all and this was a major discovery for
Bartram. He named them -- after his great friend, Benjamin Franklin,
"Franklinia Altamaha," and then took them back to what is now
Philadelphia. His son gathered seeds from this fruit-bearing tree
but they proved difficult to cultivate. Transplanting the entire
tree was the answer. It was unintentional, but nevertheless, uprooting
the trees eventually denuded the grove and the species native
to Georgia appears to be no more.
I didn't venture far off the path but neither did Bartram and
his son.
How they found the orchard is a mystery. Why they went looking
north and south for years is even more of one. Although I am no
pilgrim at Tinker's Creek as Annie Dillard and I wouldn't know
Thoreau's Walden Pond if I fell in, today I went looking for a
franklinia. A census is going on in the area to count these rare
trees among us. I couldn't add to the count. They seem to be gone.
Today, the franklinia grows in Bartram's garden on the former
site of his home in that same southeast corner of Pennsylvania.
The spectacular Philadelphia skyline is on one side of the garden;
a huge franklinia on the other. As I walked a mile or two around
the area of the great botanical discovery, I saw nothing along
the Altamaha River resembling Bartram's find. They are no longer
found in the wild. I can't speak for those who lived here 250
years ago, but history and surviving dwellings tell me they were
caring people just as interested in preserving dying species as
we are today.
I suspect a new twist on an old expression might explain it. You've
heard the saying, "Bloom where you're planted," but I'd think
"Bloom where you're cherished," better tells his story. Here on
the Golden Coast we are so abundantly blessed with white-blossomed
trees, bushes and borders, from spectacular magnolias to dogwood
and flowering crabapples; from tree-high azaleas and sweet scented
jasmine to blossoming peach trees, crepe myrtle and more. We can't
look in any direction without seeing flowering trees year 'round.
We dig, plant, cultivate, cut back and prune, each in its proper
time all year. Yet, with sunshine and rain, tended or not, the
trees often run together, spreading to make one corridor of flowering
trees, reaching toward each other's towering height in one glorious
canopy of shade, blossoming in turn season after season.
Perhaps in its time the small franklinia faded in comparison,
growing closely within the flora and fauna of coastal Georgia,
until no one noticed the diminishing numbers. It wasn't doing
anything for us that wasn't being done by all the others, which
is not to say it won't be missed. We should have loved it more.
We should have drawn it out of its protected grove and studied
it in its new light, a light of appreciation.
In Philadelphia ... well, that's a different story. Visualize
brisk Autumn winds sending leaves from trees native to the area
tumbling to the ground and swirling around your feet. And imagine
suddenly seeing a tree burst into blossom, suggesting as it blooms
that the span between
Fall and Spring is not a time of ill tidings. To those living
in that climate, the blooming franklinia is a harbinger of spring
suggesting rebirth while the year is still in early gestation.
Winter will be a stepping stone toward good things inevitably
coming.
The trees now thriving in the city of brotherly love are cherished,
blooming right where they are. Our census walk took us around
and around looking for what was no longer there ... just so we
could cherish it.
John Bartram and his son catalogued several thousand specimens
of arboreal and plant life. Yet, if someone were to ask him which
specimen was his one life-altering find, I'm sure he'd say, the
daisy.
And it was there all along, right in his own back yard.
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