UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2006

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Prerequisite

Separating the Trees from the Forest
In a class about campus flora, the author learns about plants and people

—Vince Cleary




	Plants in the Landscape uses the entire campus for its laboratory. In1944 UMass Amherst was named the Frank A. Waugh Arboretum after the founder of the department, who had died the previous year.

“I CAN'T SEE THE FOREST for the trees.” How often do we hear this expression, how often do we focus too much on the details at the expense of seeing the larger picture? Professor Jack Ahern ’74 teaches Plants and the Landscape, in which students learn to distinguish between forest and trees, both literally and figuratively.

Ahern, who is chair of the Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning Department, www.umass.edu/larp/department.html says this is perhaps his favorite course to teach. It is obvious in his enthusiasm, and in his uncanny ability to represent physically a tree’s life cycle—first, hands thrust down, illustrating roots working their way through the soil; now, arms extended into the air, mimicking branches reaching upward for the sun’s light.

I audited the fall 2005 section of the class, which attracted 160 undergrads and 14 graduate students. As a member of the latter, we met for lectures at eight o’clock in the morning. In one of our last classes, we learned (no surprise) that Ahern was nominated for a Distinguished Teaching Award.

Our main charge was to learn and identify the common and scientific names for nearly 200 plants. Ahern would lecture on 15 to 17 plants each week, using his own excellent slide photos, then we would track down the same plants on campus. One of his personal favorites is the Eastern White Pine, Pinus strobus, the “Monarch of the Forest” to the early European settlers. Probably his least favorite is the Crimson King Norway Maple, Acer platanoides ‘Crimson King,’ an asexual cloned cultivar that has become highly invasive.

Graduate student François Verhoeven, Belgian-born and educated, led us on our morning expeditions. His leonine mane of red hair was easy to follow. After graduating with his European degree in landscape architecture, Francois worked in the field for two years in Belgium and France, then two years in Washington, D. C., before coming here. His favorite campus tree is the stately, vase-shaped American Elm, Ulmus Americana, on North Pleasant Street, opposite Skinner, one of the few members of this species that has survived Dutch Elm disease.

Ahern urged us to look with a fine eye at each plant. “Like their human counterparts,” he reminded us, “they may all be members of the same species, yet each possesses characteristics that make them unique.” This idea—no two alike—struck a chord with me, though probably not in the way Ahern intended. In addition to studying plants to note their differences, the weekly campus treks allowed me to note the attributes of my fellow students. They proved a most diverse group, each one of a kind.

Three, a bit older and with a wider range of experience, were from abroad. Yaser Abun-Nasr, from Beirut, Lebanon, has been working on a long-term project there, The Garden of Forgiveness, an installation that attempts to heal some of the wounds of the horrific 1975-1990 civil war that pitted Christians against Muslims. Xiongfei He studied in Chungking, China’s third largest city, and practiced architecture in Shanghai, its largest. Isabel Calle Medina is a Fulbright Scholar from Ecuador, the author of two books on the architecture of her native city, Cuenca, where she teaches. Upon graduation, she plans to return and “work for my city and its development.”

Maggie Leonard and Sarah McMullen are Smith College alumnae now settled in the Pioneer Valley. Maggie owns and operates Smiling Gal Garden Design and Landscaping. The MLA degree will help her “to bid on more complicated, interesting projects.” McMullen worked in the Botanic Garden while at Smith; after graduation she taught English in Japan. She told me her special interests are “urban re-vegetation and reclaiming brownfields.”

Many in the group have experience in landscape work and design: Christine Gale is the fourth generation of her family in the employ of Gale Nurseries in her hometown of Doylestown, Pennsylvania; experienced tree climber and pruner Dan Gooden of Springfield is earning an urban forestry degree “to understand what I’m pruning and why;” Frank Varro worked on the grounds crew at his Minnesota high school and now wants to design urban corporate plazas.

Others had very focused areas of interest: Mackenzie Joseph has worked in historic preservation, helping raise funds for the ongoing restoration of the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, and seeks to bring “green technology to historic areas and places.” Former ESL teacher Lee Jennings is interested in “green roofs,” the flat, planted roofs that are popular in the Pacific Northwest and Europe.

And what were this reporter’s reasons for being in the class? I was determined to learn more about the plants on campus, some of them rare specimens not native to this area or this country. As the course progressed, however, my focus changed. I came to realize the exceptional nature of my classmates; they, along with the plants, became the subject of my study. I imagined the students as saplings, young birches, maples, and viburnums branching out in their desire to change the environment in which we live.

I, on the other hand, a retired professor, was a seasoned veteran who had weathered many storms, like one of my favorite campus trees, the Pin Oak, Quercus palustris, specifically the 1908 Class Tree next to Munson. In my seniority, I had something singular to offer, too. The class helped me see the forest and the trees, but I learned something even more important: Once you know how to appreciate them, individual trees, forests, and people become truly exceptional.

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