Western Carolina Botanical Club

Compiled by Cindy Carpenter, January 17, 2020

•  White Pine: graceful growth; appearance in the wind- “….swift and enchanting changes of light against masses of bluish green.”- Loundsberry
• “And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean to be some happy creature’s palace.” –Lowell
• Cells- lakes of life (Flowering Earth- Donald Culross Peattie)
• Carbon- the keystone atom in every molecule of living tissue (Peattie)
• Chloroplasts are tiny jewel boxes holding sun-catching pigments. -re-phrased from David George Haskell, The Forest Unseen
• “Like a lot of us humans it takes age and maturity to sweeten a persimmon.
  When its skin gets wrinkled and it begins to look saggy, then it’s in its prime…”
  (Doug Elliot e-newsletter)
• “The great winter buds of the Shagbark hickory open like flowers in May.” – Julia
  Ellen Rogers, Trees Worth Knowing
• Oaks – a family of cup bearers (scaly acorns, Trees Worth Knowing- Julia Ellen
  Rogers)
• The Scarlet oak is like a flaming torch set among the dull browns and yellows in
  our autumnal woods. (Rogers)
• Bur oak (mossy-cup oak) acorns suggest dainty birds’ nests
• Sourwood flowers on the ground look like teeth (suggested by a child to Cindy
  Carpenter)
• “If you have joy, take it to the trees: there it will be chastened and heightened. If
  you have a grief, take it to the trees: there it will be chastened and relieved.” –
  from a 1954 paper by Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck, Goethe und der Baum in which he
  considers the saying an old rule.
• “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green
  thing which stands in the way.” –William Blake
• “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that
  the tender branch thereof will not cease.”- Job 14:7.
• “…drink in the beauty and wonder at the beauty of what you see.” – Rachel
  Carson
• “…we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same
  way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.” – Joyce Meyer
• “Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” –
  Rabindranath Tagore
• “Trees are your best antiques.” – Alexander Smith
• “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” – Chinese
  Proverb
• “A tree falls the way it leans.” – Bulgarian proverb
• “Between every two Pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.” – John
  Muir
• “For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.” – Friedrich
  Nietzsche
• “Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.” – Shel Silverstein
• “A tree against the sky possesses the same interest, the same character, the same
  expression as the figure of a human.” – Georges Rouault
• “We can learn a lot from trees: they’re always grounded but never stop reaching
  heavenward.” – Everett Mamor
• “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we
  think of it; the tree is the real thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “We can grow up with trees and see them change with us.” – Bernd Heinrich, The
  Trees in My Forest
• “Planting a seed is like planting a part of ourselves.”-Heinrich
• “An old tree is an island of life in all seasons.” –Heinrich
• “A tree practices priorities.” – Heinrich
• Airborne acorn dispersers like blue jays give oak trees legs of life. Cindy
  Carpenter, inspired by Heinrich’s The Trees in My Forest
• A tree’s delicate root system is full of surprises.
• “Trees are motherships of biodiversity.” – Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of
  Trees
• “Centuries of experience are stored in an old tree’s roots.” – Wohlleben
• “Trees live their lives in the slow lane.”- Wohlleben
• “Like a human social security system that ensures individuals don’t fall behind,
  trees’ well-being depends on their community.”- Wohlleben
• When we hold an object made of wood, we are holding what has spent years
  outside, experiencing the environment in its own unique way. Cindy Carpenter,
  inspired by reading The Hidden Life of Trees
• “Just breathe among the trees and you’ll know you belong.” Billy B.
• New life is nurtured by an old log.
• “He that plants trees, loves others besides himself.” – Thomas Fuller
• “Every tree has little intimate signs that point the way to discoveries of the spirit,
  of art, of mechanics, of astonishment at natural miracles, and of reassurance
  about life itself in a violent world.” – from A Pocket Guide to Trees: How to Identify
  and Enjoy Them, by Rutherford Platt
• Trees are towering examples of nature’s bliss and usefulness. – a theme from
  April Welch, Active Learning Exercise in theme development
• “Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows
  and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light- to see its perfect success.” –
  Henry David Thoreau
• “Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man
  manages his affairs as well as a tree does.” –George Bernard Shaw
• “I like trees because they seem more designed to the way they have to live than
  other things do.” –Willa Cather
• “So it’s not like the trees are in the environment; it’s like the trees are the
  environment.” – from Teaching the Trees by Joan Maloof
• “The nature-lover is not looking for mere facts, but for meanings, for something
  he can translate into the terms of his own life.” – John Burroughs, The Gospel of Nature