Enduring Roots: Encounters with Trees, History, and the American Landscape

In a delightful crazy-quilt of American studies, Samuels (Women in the City of Brotherly Love... and Beyond) focuses on trees--in the natural environs and in U.S. history--to explore the intersection of the past with the present. She begins with the Charter Oak in Hartford, Conn., which was given a hero's funeral in 1856. This revered white oak served as a meeting place for generations of Native Americans; according to legend, beleaguered colonists hid Connecticut's liberal charter in its hollowed trunk in 1687. Trees are woven into the fabric of our national saga in surprising ways, explains Samuels. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Jefferson grew apple orchards; Benjamin Franklin launched an export industry by introducing the Newtown Pippin apple into England. Samuels delineates the battle of prairie and heartland trees against drought, fungus, freezes and, through the 1980s, against legislation aimed at banning species fallen out of favor. She explains how the Japanese flowering cherry tree came to grace the Potomac--a complex tale of politics, pest control and cross-cultural exchange featuring Commodore Perry, President Taft, Nancy Reagan and Japanese rulers eager to root their national symbol in Washington's official landscape. Samuels shuttles fluidly between ecology, botany, folklore, poetry, travelogue (including her own trips to California's majestic, four-millennia-old sequoias and bristlecone pines) and sociological research--which reports, for example, that the presence of trees reduces urban violence and enhances suburban communities' feelings of cohesion. Her essays comprise both an uplifting meditation on trees and an unusual investigation of the American cultural landscape. 38 b&w illus. (Dec.)