THE DECIDUOUS FOREST from the series Wild Plants in Flower is one of my favorite books. Maybe this is because these are the plants that I know best; the flowers from the woods of my childhood.
The photographs by Torkel Korling are beautiful, but I think the reason I like the book so very much is because of the essays and species notes by Robert O. Petty, longtime biology professor here at the College.
Listen to his description of the image on the cover:
“Spring light in a young forest, a crowd of trillium above decaying leaves—we have been here before. But long before us, before the millennia of glaciers brought summer as but a taunting of the sun, recurrent drought had shaped evolving strategies—autumn and spring of the deciduous forest, where to survive was to win by loss, or not at all. Slowly our curve of earth tilts south again, and here and there we find the ancient secret.”
I think of Bob Petty’s essays as I drive through the country here. In the spring I pull out my copy and wander into the woods.
But of all of the photographs, I am most drawn to one of a surpris-ingly familiar place. I believe it was taken in the woods behind my home over three decades ago. My family calls it Bluebell Valley, and it is just gorgeous when completely covered with these lovely blue flowers. A sure sign that summer is on its way.
Yet, as the weather is cooling here, I think about the end of this book:
“By October, the forest is burning amber and crimson in the brief evening light. There is a sharp and pungent sweetness to the air—the smell of walnuts. The nights are cold.
“A sudden wind drifts storms of yellow leaves and tumbles fruits and seeds. A night rain breaks the last dead leaves away from ash and maple. The walnut trees are long since bare—the last to get their leaves, the first to lose them. Here and there in the dry oak woods, a clatter of acorns breaks the stillness. The youngest oak and beech trees wear their dead, russet foliage into winter.
“The wild flowers are only a rumor now. The plants are dormant. All the ancient strategies are one.”
As I return to this lovely little book each spring I wonder: Was Petty a biologist with poetry in him, or a poet who studied biology?