“… my professor advised me to go to Mount Auburn Cemetery:“ That is where you will see real trees,” he said. And so I did.” irst impressions are important. In the fall of 1973, I was an undergraduate starting my training as a botanist at Harvard. After I had studied every tree I could find in Harvard
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Yard, my professor advised me to go to Mount Auburn Cemetery:“ That is where you will see real trees,” he said. And so I did.
Not only did I discover species of trees and shrubs that I had never encountered before, but I experienced a level of beauty and engagement that drew me further into the world of nature. I admit that I did not even notice the gravestones and mausoleums; it was all about the plants.
This visit was only the beginning. I have now traveled the planet as an evolutionary botanist studying plants, discovering new species and figuring out how they interact with their environments. I can’ t attribute it all to my visits to Mount Auburn Cemetery, but those were critical early steps in a life-long voyage. I was honored to be invited to speak at the Cemetery about my new book, Smithsonian Trees of North America, and to present here a few of its salient points.
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