Green side up

Language is a funny thing, especially English as it is a linguistic conglomerate which makes for lots of potential fun. And for botanists and horticulturalists, nothing is more fun that when someone tries to make sense out of soil versus dirt.

Here I will pass along neither dictionary nor professorial opinion, but the New England yankee wisdom dispensed by my Father, the gardener. If anyone referred to the material in his garden as dirt, he'd reply, "It's soil." "Dirt is something you find under your finger nails and in certain kinds of books and movies." No one ever has been accused of using soily language, so this distinction always made a certain sense to me.

Of course as a biologist I know that soil is a complex substance, part inorganic and part organic. A cubic centimeter of soil, a volume about the size of a sugar cube for those of you somewhat metrically challenged, could harbor some 8-20 million organisms. Even the smell of soil, that earthy odor, comes from the metabolic activities of certain bacteria.

So something might start out as dirt, but if composted correctly, it can become soil. And in this I note that for years I have used two layers of newspaper covered with straw to mulch my kitchen garden. Although the data is not publishable, I'm quite certain that the opinion pages of our local newspaper compost the most quickly and thoroughly.

Dealing with ecological rejection

I firmly believe in sabbatical leaves, and it is my great good fortune to have been allowed to take four of them. The academic world of science is difficult and it takes a concerted effort to try or explore new things, to learn new areas of science, and while taking a break from the week to week routine. As this is being written my fourth and last sabbatical leave is winding to a close. I'm taking a week to visit friends, a week to attend national scientific meetings, and that leaves two weeks to prepare for classes. Already I have people clamoring for a laboratory guide.

As part of this leave's exploration into new topics, I collaborated with an old friend and colleague. I dragged him to the rain forest to study insects that consume flowers, but aren't involved in pollination (my usual tropical topic). These insects had never been studied before, and in fact no one even knew these flowers were their brood substrate, or that they had two broods, a smaller one that produced bigger adults, and a larger one that produced smaller adults, or that they had a female biased population, and a number of other things. And we had fun doing it.

Oh, but science isn't science until its published, and our manuscript was just rejected. And the reason was it was too much natural history and not enough ecology. This means we didn't conduct an experiment aimed at determining some ecological principle, but just figured out a previously unknown biology. In the eyes of ecological snobs, ecological studies trump natural history. But ecological study is impossible until you know enough about the system to manipulate it.

Ecology is coming of age. It's getting snobby. Long treated as an inferior, less than demanding, descriptive field of science, barely divorced from Victorian natural history, ecology is now asserting itself by dumping on the very field that gave rise to ecology. This is because biology is done by people, and many people have need of a pecking order and having someone lower down to peck at to feel good about themselves. And this is nothing but someone inforcing their personal belief that ecology, as they define it, is better, more important, higher quality science than natural history.

Fortunately I know how to deal with such rejection. My lapsed membership in the organization will now be on permanent hold. Another publishing venue will be found, and our natural history will become part of biological knowledge, and then some stinking ecologist will use our study to do some "real science" that can get published in a top ranked journal, well, top ranked for ecology.

A rose, is a rose, so how does I knows?

Our woody plant horticulturalist stopped by yesterday with a piece of leafy twig. "What do you think this is?" he asked. Hmm, after assessing the specimen, I said, "Well, it's in the rose family." He already had guessed that, but beyond that it wasn't obvious. Now this particular specimen turned out to be a bit unusual, a species I had never seen before, and if that were not the case, he wouldn't have needed my input at all. This particular specimen proved to be a tree quite uncommon in this area (Sorbus aria, whitebeam). After visiting several references, several possibilities were eliminated, and it wasn't until I tried an old woody plant identification key, one that includes ornamental species, that things began to make sense. This species has a simple leaf and most species of Sorbus have pinnately compound leaves, a single axis with two rows of leaflets. Well and good, between the two of us, we nailed the ID and felt pretty good about ourselves.

But here's the thing. Neither one of us ever considered any other possibility after initially deciding this plant was a member of the rose family, instead of one of the other 700 or so families. Now the rose family is a pretty big group of plants, 100-120 genera and 3000 to 3500 species. What made us decide rose family?

It's strange but I don't actually know. Of course I can recite a list of characters, but most of them were not present because there were no flowers or fruit. Yet this twig, with its dozen and a half leaves and buds somehow just looked "rosy". My first thought was a pear, but this specimen's leaves had a double saw toothed margin (pear's are mostly smooth edged), wooly white hairs on the back side of the leaves (never seen a pear like that), and rounded buds (pears are usually more pointy). OK so not pear, more cherry like, but the bark was very un-Prunus, no horizontal lenticels and shiny buds. And finally by a process of elimination I ended up at Sorbus, even though the leaf seemed all wrong (simple leaf rather than pinnately compound). Once this hurdle was cleared, the details fell into place. Score one for the botanist.

This is the hard thing about plant identification. At a certain point, you have enough experience, that you can simply use a gestalt. Some sort of search image is triggered that shoves you in the right direction. And even though I have been teaching such courses for years, I just don't know how to teach this. You simply must work at identifying plants long enough and if you are good, this sense comes to you.

I play a dirty trick on students learning plant ID by giving them two very closely related plants sequentially, sometimes the same species, but just with different colored flowers or leaves. Some few look upon the 2nd specimen with a puzzled look, and then ask, didn't we just do this? Some are even more certain, and toss it aside as knowing I tried a lame trick. Others without an iota of recognition labor through another step by step slog through an identification key, and act surprised when the same species comes up again. Interestingly this exercise has proven to be a great predictor of their over all performance in the course. And I wonder if this skill, this perception, is tied to the ability to conceptualize, to go past the details and grasp the essential underlying idea. Because that's how this works with plant ID. The species ID is in the details, but the broader classification, in particular the family level taxonomic grouping is in the conceptualizing of the commonalities.

That's one good thing about experience. You do get better in doing some things with age. And you can't hold a specimen up to your computer monitor and get any closer to an ID. Technology isn't making any serious inroads into such skills at all. You can scan it, or digitally photograph it, and put it on the internet, but sooner or later, it's someone like me who tells you what it is.

A long time colleague of mine once expressed his concern and apparent inability to teach such skill. "Maybe we can just rip their heads off and pour it in," he said. Sounds like fun.

2008's Botanical Geek Tour

The question was how best to stimulate the economy with those tax rebates provided by the USA? Well, our idea was to organize a 2nd botanical geek tour whose purpose is to visit botanical gardens and other places of botanical interest, and along the way to eat and drink well. So we stimulated the economy by travelling to London for a long weekend in late May to visit the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, the Chelsea Flower Show, and the Chelsea Physic Garden. You might argue that this did little to stimulate the USA's economy, but this is an international form of the trickle down effect, so I'm sure the USA understands if the impact is a bit indirect.

Kew Gardens were not disappointing, although I have visited other more attractive gardens, but few with such grand vistas. Here is the largest, oldest Victorian glasshouse still in use, and the collection it houses is quite impressive. One of the cycads inside is probably the oldest potted plant in the world. The plant in the foreground is Gunnera, which is a basal lineage of the true dicots, and it's sort of strange seeing it so far from its Central and South American rainforest home.

The Chelsea flower show was quite amazing, the displays quite often provoking the question, "how did they do that?" However, although the daily attendance is capped, the crowds were equally amazing. Still all other garden/flower shows pale by comparison. My favorite was a small garden where everything, roof, walls, table, etc. were covered in moss.

The Chelsea physic garden is rather small and tucked away in a corner, but they have over 4000 labelled species arranged both medically and taxonomically in its 4 acres. The garden has been around for over 350 years, but has only been open to the public in recent decades.

Now you can get a bit foot-sore and tired with so much tramping about in the name of botanical edification, and the remedy for that is to sit yourself down at a local pub for a bit of refreshment. The Coach & Horses is right outside the main gate to Kew Gardens and it came recommended by a British colleague. A fine pub but this is as close to botany as he ever got. I wish I knew why pubs in Britain have so much more atmosphere than most bars in the USA, which seem fixated on the number of TVs screens they can cram in.

The next botanical geek tour may take us to Sweden, the home of Linnaeus. But it will have to wait until the next stimulus check appears, or when Lincolnland comes across with a decent pay raise, or hell freezes over.

Most successful plant in the world

People call universities to find things out that aren't easily looked up, and for many years all the weird plant related questions have been forwarded to me. I'd like to think it was because of my success at answering such questions, as opposed my being weird. So it was not a surprise when my phone rang recently and someone wanted to know, for an article they were writing, what was the most successful plant in the world?

Now that's an interesting question because it can be answered from several different perspectives depending upon how you define success.

My first idea was that the most successful plant in the world was one of the domesticated grasses, a cereal grain. From its beginning as a wild middle eastern grass wheat has become the most commonly cultivated plant in the world. But rice provides the majority of calories to the majority of the world's people. And altogether cereal grains occupy something like 70% of all tillable land.

Now such plants are successful because they were useful and important to humans. Cereal grains have moved with us and native plant communities removed for the culture of these cereals, and in a manner of speaking cereal grains have become immensely successful. But without human intervention, they would not long persist in such vast areas.

And of course there are weeds. Weeds are adapted to disturbance, so they grow rapidly reproduce quickly, in great numbers, and then disperse widely. You probably didn't need to be told that, but now you know why. Nature produces disturbances, so weeds occur naturally to take advantage of these sites. But the thing that humans do best, and most frequently and thoroughly, is create disturbance, so weeds have greatly benefited by human activities. Agriculture can be defined as a systematic disturbance of natural communities for the purpose of growing domesticated plants and animals. So weeds have greatly prospered and gained great success as a result of human activities too, but they have done it on their own. No wonder such successful plants are so hard to eradicate.

Another concept of successful is longevity. Some aspen or sagebrush clones appear to be 10,000 years old, and that's a long time for one individual to exist. Some bristlecone pines are known to be over 7,000 years old. Such long-lived organisms are certainly successful. Osmunda cinnamomea, the cinnamon fern, certainly is a longevity contender too. 70 million year old fossils of this fern have been found that are virtually identical to the living species. This makes this fern the oldest known species, period, plant or otherwise. I have a fossil fern stem from the Carboniferous era over 300 million years ago that is anatomically identical with modern Osmunda ferns. So the group has been around for a long, long time. Selaginella, a clubmoss, is another genus with a very long history dating to the early Carboniferous, and that makes it the oldest living genus.

If you take a broad definition of plant, then perhaps a particular cyanobacterium (sometimes called blue-green algae), like this one pictured here on the right, might be considered the most successful and influential plant in the entire of Earth history. Sometime 2 to 2.5 or so billion years ago this cyanobacterium became a chloroplast giving rise to all of the other green organisms. When you look outside your window you see green because this incredibly tiny green cell, now functioning as a cellular component in all plants, has been duplicated in countless numbers. Cyanobacteria, including chloroplasts, are the only organisms that use water in photosynthesis for a hydrogen source, which leaves oxygen as a by-product. All of the oxygen that makes up 20% of Earth's atmosphere (and its ozone layer) is a by-product of photosynthesis. Talk about influential! This changed Earth history completely. Aerobic organisms such as ourselves were not possible until there was oxygen in the atmosphere. So in terms of sheer number, ubiquity, and influence, the cyanobacterium that became a chloroplast is probably the most successful green organism in the entire of Earth history. But we are probably wrong to call it a plant.

So there you have it. Depending upon the type of success you were looking for, those are the most successful plants.

The trouble with trying to get religious students to think

The American Center for Law and Justice recently claimed to have championed the rights of a religious student who was being persecuted by professor.

But the Center for Inquiry has another version of the story. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has recently boasted of a "victory" in protecting a college student's rights to religious freedom. In postings on its website and in a radio broadcast on June 4, 2008, the ACLJ has trumpeted the claim that a demand letter one of its staff attorneys sent to Suffolk County Community College prevented a Christian student from receiving a failing grade from a professor who wanted to penalize her because of her religious beliefs.

The CfI says nothing could be further from the truth. "The ACLJ's spurious claim of a legal 'victory' is just slightly less outrageous than its brazen attempt to intimidate a philosophy professor from doing his job—which is to get students to think critically," commented Ronald A. Lindsay, Executive Director of the Council of Secular Humanism, who has talked to the allegedly biased professor. "As far as I can tell," observed Lindsay, "the ACLJ's letter accomplished nothing other than providing an excuse for soliciting donations."

The scholar that the ACLJ falsely accused of bias is a longtime philosophy professor who has taught more than 13,000 students over a period of thirty-six years. He has a well-deserved reputation for fairness, and has served as President of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers and as an officer in many other organizations. Although the ACLJ's radio broadcast alleged that the professor "hates" the very idea of Christians, this professor has taught students of many different faiths, and no faith, over the years, all without incident until the ACLJ's campaign of vilification. Indeed, after the ACLJ made its baseless accusations, students in this professor's philosophy class, including religious students, defended him, stating that he does not pass judgment on students because of their beliefs, but simply challenges them to examine all beliefs critically, including their own. His students have stated that they cannot identify the professor's own views based either on the course materials or the textbook authored for the class by the professor, and he does not pressure them to adopt any particular position.
"I would not be doing my job as a philosophy professor," explained the professor, "if I did not require students to think about their beliefs and provide reasons in support of their beliefs— not my beliefs or anyone else's beliefs. Critical examination of beliefs, including one's own beliefs, and training in reasoning are among the primary objectives of a philosophy course, and of a liberal education in general. Only professors who are negligent or indifferent allow students to earn good grades simply by providing as a reason for an assertion 'well, this is what I believe'."
The professor will not discuss in detail his interaction with the student who complained to the ACLJ about him, because he does not believe it is appropriate to share the details of a student's coursework with the outside world. However, he does have a right to defend himself against false accusations. The core of the ACLJ's claim is that the student was in danger of failing the class because of the professor's religious bias before the ACLJ intervened. "That claim is preposterous," according to Pecorino. "At no time did I tell her she was in danger of failing. When I had to project a grade for her earlier in the semester, I projected a 'C' and that was when she was most resistant to providing any reasoning to support her assertions. She was not open to examining her own beliefs or to entering into the dialectical process of inquiry in community because, according to her, she already had all the answers." And what of the ACLJ's claim that the student had a failing grade average of 54 prior to the ACLJ's intervention? "That is a misleading use of information. I use a cumulative point system in grading," explained the professor. "In other words, as students progress during the semester, they earn points for each assignment, with a possible total of 100 points by the end of the semester. She at one point probably did have 54 points, but that in no way indicates she was in danger of failing. She had 54 points, not a failing grade average of 54. All students start the semester with 0 points, so by the ACLJ's logic, all students are in danger of failing."

And did the ACLJ's letter influence the professor, either directly or indirectly through pressure from college administrators? "Absolutely not," the professor states. "I received no pressure form my college administrators, only support, and although I was a bit bothered by all the hate emails and other communications that resulted from the ACLJ's campaign against me, I did not let that affect my grading of this student. I take my responsibilities as an educator too seriously for that to happen. The student received a 'B' because she earned a 'B,' no more and no less."
The ACLJ's campaign against this professor cannot be dismissed as insignificant. As the professor observes, "Essentially, the ACLJ is claiming a religious exemption from the obligation of students in public colleges to engage in critical thinking, and this claim strikes at the core of higher education. If permitted to go unchallenged, this claim will weaken our democratic and pluralistic society." Lindsay agrees, adding, "For a democracy to succeed, we need citizens who can provide reasons to support their beliefs. We cannot reason together if all we have are groups of individuals who adamantly insist they have all the answers because of some supernatural revelation and who are unwilling to consider opposing viewpoints. The ACLJ is a very slick, very well-funded organization, and its animosity toward critical thinking is even more troubling than its willingness to distort the facts."

We’ve all had students like this. Only a couple of years ago I had a student in a senior seminar class, a “capstone experience” for biology majors who refused to discuss or even justify their positions or opinions. I had “no right to pass judgment”. Of course I wasn’t passing judgment, I was trying to get students to think and support their positions in a manner scientific. Now that was the catch. It just doesn’t cut much mustard to tell me that human life begins at the moment of conception because the Bible says so (and it doesn’t). Their complaint about my bias against their religious perspective went no further than a dean of undergraduate studies who decided is was perfectly OK that a professor of science would ask science majors to justify positions in a scientific manner. Even then I was not requiring anyone to argue for any particular positions, but interestingly enough, all of the biology majors changed their initial ideas about the beginning of human life, not all in the same way, as they learned more, thought more, and gained more knowledge. Only one student dogmatically stuck to their initial position no matter what; they remained unfazed by new information and new ideas. And if such people are actually model citizens, then demoncracy is indeed in trouble should they ever gain a majority.

And it again brings up the idea that I have blogged about before that religious thinking interferes with learning. I was greatly relieved to learn that this student was not a biology major, but had gotten into the class via some strange non-major major. After this experience I investigated this non-major major and ultimately was instrumental in killing this academic monster.

Of course in this specific instance the Catholic Church jumped on the idea of conception as the beginning of human life because of they wanted a fixed point at which to say an individual with a soul existed. The logical inconsistencies that have arisen as science has moved on are causing all manner of problems unless the faithful just continue to believe. Religion and science may coexist, but dogmatism and science can never coexist.

Field work - snapshots in ecological time

Only other field biologists can appreciate and sympathize with this problem. Studies done in the field cannot control for all the variations in nature, in particular normal variations in weather patterns, and so each study is actually a snapshot in ecological time. The trouble is that we try to extrapolate from these snapshots, and sometimes that doesn't work. And even worse you worry that the effects of weather can overwhelm your treatments.

The effort involved in field work makes the situation even worse. The steadfast effort involved in maintaining long term field studies is beyond most of us. For this reason I really admire Deborah and David Clark whose quarter century survey of tropical forest tree growth in Costa Rica is laudable just for its longevity, its contribution to understanding changes that may accompany global warming notwithstanding (Tropical rain forest tree growth and atmospheric
carbon dynamics linked to interannual temperature variation during 1984–2000. D. A. Clark, S. C. Piper, C. D. Keeling, and D. B. Clark. 2003. PNAS 100:5852-5857.). If you haven't read this paper and want to see good evidence of changes that accompany increases in carbon dioxide and temperature, I recommend it.

In just the 3d year of our field study on the effects of hemiparasitic plants on the prairie community, and already the year to year variation seems destined to swamp any treatment effects. Last year our plots had so many hemiparasite seedlings that we wondered if eradication was a feasible treatment. They just kept sprouting, and we just kept weeding. Those seeds were the product of the 2006 season. The spring of 2008 was very different. It was cold and wet, and this affected the number and/or activities of bumblebees because seeds of our hemiparasite are scarce even though it flowered like crazy. Last year I could collect seeds in huge numbers, nearly 250,000 in about 20 mins. But this year a similar investment in collecting produced a very small volume in comparison. Guess we won't have so many seedlings to remove next year.

But that's not all. Last year produced a bumper crop of seeds, but so far they have not been germinating like last year at all. In 2007 we could find hundreds per square meter, and this year when we decide to monitor seedling mortality, seedlings are hard to find. It makes for easier eradication, but is messing with out demographic study.

That's just how field work goes. And it's why those rare long term studies are so valuable. If we monitored pollination, and seed production, and seed germination for 25 or so years, we would probably understand many of the variables. But when something gives you a significant result, well, dang, you just know it's important and real because everything was working against you getting any results at all.

Biological significance of political boundaries

About a dozen years ago after returning from a couple of months of tropical field work I though wouldn't it be a really great idea to get some of our students out of the familiar agro-urban environments of Lincolnland and teach them about tropical rain forest first hand. This has been a most successful endeavor, although not without having been a gigantic pain at times in terms of logistics, red tape, and other non-educational factors.

Although things had gone along well enough, it was long since past time to have this highly successful education endeavor recognized as a formal course offering. Now any good academic knows what a huge amount of hassle is involved with proposing a new course, even one that has been taught annually, successfully, via a loophole. But still the arguments were strong, and the track record good. So you can imagine my surprise to receive the following question posed by a curriculum committee whose collective intelligence is now exposed as a inconceiveably low.

"How can you justify to the tax payers of Lincolnland your use of limited resources to take students on a tour of tropical rain forest in some Central American country?"

Wow! Such a sheer naked exposition of ignorance has a way of taking my breath away. But the chair of the committee assured me this was a serious question and approval could hang in the balance depending upon the eloquence of my response.

I did my best. I cannot for the life of me think of one single way in which the arbitrary political boundaries of our particular tribe have any bearing upon the biology of organisms, the interrelated web of life, the truly global knowledge that is biology. True, political boundaries do play a great role in making the study of biology and the travel of biologists and their students a trying and more difficult task, what with all their rules and regulations. You see there just isn't a Lincolnland biology, or a 'Mercan" biology, either. There is one biology. The effects of tropical deforestation will not have to apply for a visa or seek papers from the Lincolnland bureaucracy.

I cannot help but wonder what the questioners might think are justifiable topics to teach students in our particular kingdom? Do members of this committee who have approved all manner of "tours" and study abroad courses think rain forest biology less relevant to biology majors than European history or foreign language is to humanities majors? Can well-educated academics actually be so ignorant, so scientifically illiterate? So I am dealing with people who only know human cultural artifacts as matters of significance. Imagine what this committee demands of astronomers! What do you mean our state isn't the exact center of the Universe?

And we take our students on a field trip, during which I am an instructor, an educator. There is a single destination, the class goes there and learns tropical biology through instruction and investigation. I'm not a tour guide and the class is not on a tour. While I know this type of superficial travel is the norm in the humanities, it isn't how we do business in biology. Of course, some institutions do take their biology students on tours, and some have stopped by the particular field station where our field trip takes place. They come, they go, and still my class investigates, studies, and learns. And while the "tour guides" rush around with all the logistics, us instructors, provide direction, send our troops out to learn, while we sit on the veranda drinking excellent coffee and watch the tours pack their gear. The difference between a field trip and a tour are very profound. Want to bet which participants learn more?

Of course our official purpose is to "train people for the work force of Lincolnland". So just by educating students, I'm failing to fulfill my duty to the taxpayers "train". Sit up! Speak! What's one more transgression?

Then there is the truly amazing fact that the students themselves pay for this educational experience in the tropics. The taxpayers aren't supporting this in any direct, substantive means at all. I'd better get a junior colleague to write the response because I'm not sure I can do it without tearing their heads off!

Science education versus religious thinking

A recent commentary (Science Education and the Future of Humankind) by Leon Lederman, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, asks, “Can we modify our educational system so that all high school graduates emerge with a science way of thinking?”

And of course he calls upon scientists to get involved especially in educating science teachers. Who can actually argue with this? No question about it, teachers are the key component, especially those in elementary education for two reasons. One, they reach kids during formative stages, and two, they are among the most woefully poorly trained to teach science.

Now I’ve recently commented on increasing the amount of science in liberal arts core curriculum, but I’m not going to hold my breath about any change there. We can probably teach teachers to become better at instructing science, but not without drastically changing the way we educate teachers. Teaching is a profession. Can you name any other profession that does not demand post-graduate education? Part of the problem is that teaching gets the shorted in terms of educational demands. How can anyone become proficient in a subject area and proficient in a profession is a 4-year curriculum? I maintain that it is not possible, although many teachers do manage to do a fine job, it is in spite of their education not as a result of it. Teachers should earn a regular BS/BA degree before embarking upon professional study to become proficient in teaching.

But even this isn’t going to solve the problem because deeply rooted religious beliefs are antithetic to scientific thinking. All those people who seek accommodation between religion and science are on a fool’s errand because very few religious practices are fully compatible with science (Unitarians being the one obvious exception).

I have seen the conflict first-hand in too many students. If they accept an evidence-based way of thinking, their religious experience is threatened and they find themselves faced with accepting ideas that they do not believe or want to accept on the basis of their religious beliefs. If faith is important, then evidence is not, and vice versa.

In a senior seminar class of mostly biology majors I presented a lesson on the morality of stem cell research. I am careful not to present anything that might be considered my position. Most agreed that human life began at conception, except one Jewish student who said it begins at birth. I had them seek information and discuss other ideas of when human life begins. As they got more sophisticated and were exposed to more different ideas, many of them modified their positions as they gained knowledge, for example, in the UK embryos less than 12 days old are used because up until this time twinning can occur. This one simple fact was very significant to many students, as was the idea of brain death and the commencement of higher level brain activity at around the 25th week of development. However a few dogmatically stuck to their guns (“life begins at conception”), forcing them to ignore or dismiss any information that ran counter to their religiously-based positions.

Pitting scientifically based learning in school against religious indoctrination at home and at church will only increase the divide and probably generate more pressure to publically fund religious schools or allow people to opt out of public school taxes on religious grounds.

Lederman is one smart guy, but he hasn’t been down in the educational trenches in a long time, if ever, and he just doesn’t know what most people are thinking.

Yellow Moutan (tree) Peony

The combined demands of gardening and field work often do not leave me with enough time to "smell the roses" especially in May. After a Sunday of garden toil, it only seemed fitting to devote the cocktail hour to enjoying the fruits of all this labor. The shrubs on the far side of the lily pond were alive with migrant birds (redstart, chesnut-sided warbler, orioles, scarlet tanager), and the late afternoon sun often illuminates portions of our gardens with long, low rays.

And there, in quite lovely lighting, was a yellow Moutan peony. After discovering this plant quite by accident many years ago, tree peonies have become quite a favorite of mine. Paeonia suffruticosa is a shrubby plant with big dark green compound leaves and large flowers of diverse colors. Tree peonies often have flowers 7-8 inches in diameter. Although they do not have the biggest flowers, the yellow-flowered ones remain special, probably because yellow-flowered varieties have been absent (until very recently) among standard herbaceous peonies. My other tree peonies have flowers ranging from white across several shades of pink, pale pink, coral, red, to purple, but as if not wanting to be common, the yellow ones always flower later, after the others are nearly done. The flower pictured is about 5 inches across. The flowers only last for 5-7 days, typical enough of flowering trees and shrubs, all of which have brief bursts of reproductive glory. So it is important to take enough time to appreciate these sunlit little suns during their annual display.