Botany Is a Lost Art

Plants fascinate me; I'm a botanist, so it's a given. I'm also a forty-something college professor with a wife and kids. Sometimes I feel guilty because I like plants more than I do people. I didn't always want to be a botanist, and I haven't always liked plants.

As a kid, every summer I was dragged along on the dreaded "family vacation." One summer, I think I was twelve, stands out among a sea of bad memories. Much of it was the same as every other vacation we ever took -- hours stuck in a car with my loud, obnoxious younger siblings on our way to a destination where my father would make sure we only visited the most mind-numbing sites the place had to offer. I can't recalled where we went or how long we were there, but before we left, my father said we could pick a souvenir, as long as it was something that was cheap. Souvenirs help you remember, but I didn't want to remember this trip. Ever. Because I buckle under pressure, I grabbed the nearest, least-expensive thing: a venus fly trap. It was officially the most ridiculous thing I owned.

Once home, the first thing I did was put the fly trap where I put everything I hate: on the hideous teal desk my father built. Maybe if it sat there long enough, it would die -- but it lived for reasons that are beyond me. My anger ignited with renewed passion each time I walked into my room and saw it sitting there, staring at me accusingly as it slowly withered...but not slowly enough. One day I came home after school, and gave in. Although it felt like I'd had the plant forever, school had only just started and we'd gotten back from vacation the week before. Hopefully it wasn't too far gone. I got out a book at the library and started learning how to care for it -- how much sun, what kind of soil, is a bucket okay, or does it have to be in a terrarium? I liked catching bugs for it to eat. After a short time, I found myself...talking to it, as I fed it or just when I was alone in my room. Before long, I'd named it George.

George had this appeal that as a plant, it couldn't judge me. It couldn't tell me I was weird, or too quiet, or creepy. I told him everything, things I never could tell anyone. I felt really attached to that little carnivore...taking care of him became my favorite part of the day. I checked often to make sure George was healthy, and when he wasn't, I enjoyed learning how to fix his environment. No teenager admits his hobby is taking care of plants, so I guess it's a good thing that I didn't have a lot of friends. As I amassed even more plants, so much so that my brother joked about my room being a "fucking greenhouse, what crazy shit", this fact ceased to bother me. The few friends I had were irrelevant in the long run; I wasn't the type to keep in touch.

College was weird. My major was undecided and I opted not to bring any plants along with me -- I doubted my roommate would react well to my doing so. When sophomore year rolled along and I was being forced to declare a major...man, I had no idea. But when I thought about it, really thought about it, only one major made sense: botany. Now, generally, I wouldn't imagine botany to be a major that is really offered, but I was surprised to find it at my school. In the absence of my plants, I was able to realize just how much I liked them. I was surprised that no one was surprised, but I guess it just took me a little longer than everyone else to understand how much I owed George, for all he'd done for me. Perhaps that moment was my first step towards botany, but I like to think that the first step was thirty-five years ago on a boring family trip that became something extraordinary.