It is safe to say that for most members and guests who attended the Sept. 30 Garden Club meeting, it was the most fun they’ve had with leaves (other than jumping in a pile of them) since the grade school project of ironing leaves between waxed paper and mounting them on a poster board with labels. The audience members were perhaps even more receptive than they were back then to the delights of discovery and the rewards of close observation. Naturalist, writer, and educator Michael Wojtech, who lives with his family in Western Massachusetts, was the featured speaker at the club’s first meeting of the new season. In his presentation Wojtech led the audience to see that, in the words of writer Annie Dillard: “In complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance.”
Wojtech grew up in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, a dense expanse of forest near the coast where sandy soil welcomes such things as pygmy pines and orchids. In 2001 he left a job in business to get a master’s degree in conservation biology from Antioch University New England. It was an immersion into a totally new landscape, he said, but he felt at home. Realizing that buds form on trees in the fall and remain all winter, he became fascinated with them and spoke to his advisor about doing his thesis on buds. Told that the subject had been heavily explored, Wojtech decided instead on a field guide to bark. Over the next seven-and-a-half years, that thesis developed into a book called, simply, “Bark.” More recently he wrote the text for artist Julia Kuo in a book called “Drawing Trees and Leaves.”
Garden Club members use critical thinking and collaboration to determine a tree species by the characteristics of its bud and leaf. From left: Pauline Carroll, Claudia Wesley, Mary Ann Piasecki, Theresa Ledoux, and Bob Ledoux. (Courtesy photo)
It was leaves—from bud to maturity—that Wojtech wanted his audience to engage with by looking closely at them. He pointed out that each species of tree has a different pattern of packing a leaf and flower into a bud, and within every bud is a fully formed miniature with characteristic species traits. Through a series of slides Wojtech discussed the many characteristics of a tree bud and the variety within each characteristic. The bud position on a twig may be terminal, lateral, or both. The shape may be pointed, blunt, or rounded; the scales that cover it are most likely overlapping; and its protection is hair or a coating of a resinous substance. Wojtech similarly went through characteristics of leaves and the variation within each one.
Then came the most fun—the practice of looking. It was also an exercise in critical thinking and collaboration, skills applicable to so many of life’s challenges. The audience split up into teams, and Wojtech gave each team four laminated sheets describing a particular species of tree. Two of the sheets were about buds, one a close-up of the bud of the species, and the other a chart showing the characteristics of buds in general. The other two sheets did the same for a leaf. The task of each team was to observe the enlargement of the species bud and determine its unique characteristics from the chart, do the same with the leaf, and try to identify the species.
My group’s species had a large red terminal bud, with a shape we decided was blunt, and several lateral buds that looked like red gumdrops. Since the side buds were not opposite one another, we determined the pattern was alternate and that the buds were covered by overlapping scales, protected by a waxy-looking substance.
Observing our leaf and choosing the best description for each of its characteristics, we decided we had a simple type; ovate shape; pointed tip; toothed margins; heart-shaped base; and pinnate venation, where veins branched from a single midrib. One of our team guessed our species was a linden.
Each table reported its findings and Wojtech verified their guess or supplied the correct identification. Our prediction of linden (American basswood) proved correct. Other tables described red oak, white oak, big-toothed aspen, quaking aspen, bitternut hickory, ash, and white ash. Wojtech pointed out that red oak is distinguishable from white oak by its pointed leaf tips as opposed to rounded ones.
On his website Wojtech states that his goal is: “To engage people in a process of curiosity, discovery, and wonder that they can take with them and continue to practice in the landscapes where they live and frequent.” Short of inspiring me to jump into leaves again, Wojtech helped me to see the wisdom of writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams, whose words he quoted: “Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is to stay at home, so we can learn the names of the plants and animals around us; so that we can begin to know the tradition we’re part of.”
