I nominate to my personal hall of heroes and heroines: Joan Maloof, the author of the recent book Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest (University of Georgia Press, 2005).
Each essay combines a description of a species of tree with the interactions with other organisms that are going on in our last remaining natural areas—an eloquent and impassioned plea for diverse natural forests. She teaches biology and environmental studies at Salisbury College on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; the Coastal Plain habitats she describes are only a little different from the Piedmont here at the preserve, and all of the book resonates.
For the chapter on the beech tree, for example, she details the relationships of the trees with red-backed salamanders, beech-drops (photo from Crow's Nest above), tway-blade orchids, fungal gnats, and many fungal species. Land cleared for pine plantations or subdivisions loses this richness.
Her most famous essay, a version of which was originally published at Terrain.org: A Journal of Natural and Built Environments, is about the chemical compounds found in the air in old-growth forests, and that although they have been little studied, these compounds are likely to offer health benefits to the humans who breathe old-growth air. "Let's hope we don't have to drive too far to breathe it," she writes (5).
It's a small book, but packed with enough information that I'm going to have to reread it right away. She approaches the subject with the rigor of a scientist but also the sensibility of a poet. She quotes often the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (from his "Ninth Elegy," and illustrates the book with the drawings of artist-naturalist John Abbot (from The natural history of the rarer lepidoterus insects of Georgia..., 1797).
We have been selecting interdependent relationships Maloof describes—such as that of oaks, squirrels, a weevil, acorn moth larva, mice, owls, gypsy moths, deer, and songbirds—in our investigations with the kids at our WebWalkers program. We can go out at the preserve and find the evidence, and we can thank Joan Maloof for bringing this wonder to our doorstep.
