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

Gayle Brandow Samuels

Published by Rutgers University Press 2005

Enduring Roots

Encounters with Trees, History, and the American Landscape

Gayle Brandow Samuels

In the series Studies in Modern Science, Technology, and the Environment

https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813556086

Overview
Contents

About this book

Trees are the grandest and most beautiful plant creations on earth. From their shade-giving, arching branches and strikingly diverse bark to their complex root systems, trees represent shelter, stability, place, and community as few other living objects can.

Enduring Roots tells the stories of historic American trees, including the oak, the apple, the cherry, and the oldest of the world’s trees, the bristlecone pine. These stories speak of our attachment to the land, of our universal and eternal need to leave a legacy, and demonstrate that the landscape is a gift, to be both received and, sometimes, tragically, to be destroyed.

Each chapter of this book focuses on a specific tree or group of trees and its relationship to both natural and human history, while exploring themes of community, memory, time, and place. Readers learn that colonial farmers planted marker trees near their homes to commemorate auspicious events like the birth of a child, a marriage, or the building of a house. They discover that Benjamin Franklin’s Newtown Pippin apples were made into a pie aboard Captain Cook’s Endeavour while the ship was sailing between Tahiti and New Zealand. They are told the little-known story of how the Japanese flowering cherry became the official tree of our nation’s capital—a tale spanning many decades and involving an international cast of characters. Taken together, these and many other stories provide us with a new ways to interpret the American landscape.

“It is my hope,” the author writes, “that this collection will be seen for what it is, a few trees selected from a great forest, and that readers will explore both—the trees and the forest—and find pieces of their own stories in each.”

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
CHAPTER ONE – TAKING ROOT: THE CHARTER OAK Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER TWO – FAMILY TREES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
CHAPTER THREE – APPLES: CORE ISSUES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER FOUR – THREE CHERRIES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
CHAPTER FIVE – RETURNING NATIVES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
CHAPTER SIX – THE TREE THAT OWNED ITSELF Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
CHAPTER SEVEN – METHUSELAH’S WALK Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
About the author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	194

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 214

eBook

Published: December 1, 1999
ISBN: 9780813556086