Friday, May 17, 2002

Flora vs. Fauna

In May, my nose comes out of hibernation. In rapid succession, there are the fragrances of tulips, lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley to enjoy, and all in one month.

I used to despise tulips, being accustomed to seeing them planted in uniform scarlet regiments; a cliche of British municipal flowerbeds. Until a couple of years ago, I had no idea tulips could be perfumed. On a whim, one Fall, we ordered a mixed sack of Dutch bulbs from a catalogue. The following Spring, a tulip epiphany bloomed: the diversity of colours and forms was so unlike the odourless, Barbie pink and Crayola red tulips I knew from florists’ refrigerators. The scent of real tulips, planted behind a border of pansies, is a delight each morning in the yard.

The other great pleasure of May is the return of Spring wildflowers to the local woods. Last week, I had a pleasingly muddy walk in Bendix Woods, a few miles west of South Bend, just in time to catch the second flush of wildflowers in the beech-maple areas. Too late for the flowers of Squirrel Corn, Hepatica and Spring Beauty, still, we saw drifts of white Trilliums, just turning pink and transparent, and a milky way of Rue Anemones. Under twin, leafy umbrellas of May-Apples, their flower buds dangle like dense, green gumballs.

A non-native myself, I’m gradually learning American flora with the aid of my botanist husband and our trusty Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, which identifies plants by structural features: number of petals, symmetry of flowers, leaf shapes. I am learning the vocabulary of western botany: the distinction between pinnately compound leaves and lobed leaves, between bracts, sepals and petals. But I prefer the homely poetry of the folk names to the Latin terms for the plants themselves: the names Bloodroot, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and Dutchman’s Breeches have a bawdy energy.

We’ve been working on a wildflower patch at home, stocked from the Farmers’ Market and Fernwood, with modest success. Despite the chain-link fence and my experiments with mothballs and tabasco, the local rabbits regard our garden as their private salad bar. When they aren’t raiding the bird-feeder, the squirrels, too, will pop over for an appetizer of tender, wild rose shoots. It’s hard to sustain a big-hearted Thoreauvian embrace of Nature, when I see that some small and wanton mammal has nipped the heads off the celandine poppy, only to discard them, when I was longing to the flowers bloom. It’s also true that there’s something oxymoronic about the very idea of cultivating a wildflower garden in suburban South Bend.

In thinking about such things, I’ve found Michael Pollan’s 1991 book, Second Nature, quite helpful. The book traces Pollan’s own reflections on the relation between Nature and Culture, as he tries to make a garden from a worked-out farm in Connecticut. Pollan gives a beautifully written account of how he learns by trial and error what he can grow and what he wants to grow in his garden. At the same time, Pollan uses his experiences as a test of different views about how humanity should relate to nature. In the end, he rejects a wilderness ethic, that favours leaving nature untouched. He realises that even the weeds that invade his garden when he tries “letting nature take its course” are not natural or indigenous, but were accidental introductions by European colonists. The book culminates in a sketch of a new environmental ethic that builds on the idea of a garden as a place in which is worked out a local, pragmatic compromise between nature and culture.

Of course, as I peer through the fine rain into my back yard and smile at the goldfinch and scowl at the squirrels visiting the feeder, I know I am being inconsistent. Both creatures are equally parts of nature, perhaps equally to be valued. But the fact remains, I reflect sourly, the goldfinch doesn’t dig up my precious tulip bulbs.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on May 17, 2002
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