Aberration
only valued when it’s not our own species, See also Affection
Abstraction
See Berkeley Hills; Garden maps; Hic et nunc
Accident
causes cresting; can’t make it happen, See also Fear; Knit; Pruning
Acer maximowiczii
green arms reaching toward the bit of open sky, Bed 230
Acorn woodpeckers
gorgeous as clowns, rare but a group have arrived 2.19.15
See also Eruption year
Acres
Ben tops all with twelve; “it’s triage,” says Eric, with three, 7.22.16
Acronyms
FPFP: friendly people among ferocious plants
TWR: trash, water, recycling
SOL: shit out of luck
TBOJ: tidbits of joy
VPs: volunteer propagators
VTS: visual thinking strategies
HP Willie: she’s in charge of houseplants
WFRS: World Federation of Rose Societies
See also ET; Evo-devo
Actants
source of action, human or nonhuman; also protoactants, very small
or fast sources
“our plump tuxedo cat Callie filled my lap, a deep orange dragonfly came by—we both zinged to attention!” Rebekah 6.22.16
See also Conatus; Excitable; Upper hand/capitalism’s
Addition
basis of the botanical collection, this index also, poets
"Add / words but let / things be," Inger Christensen [1]
ferns to the palm and cycad garden, to shift a dull story
of a stake in the ground and build out from it, Maria 1.26.16
must we always have to have a metaphor to live by?
See also Value
Adiatum sorus
a maidenhair with spores in a pocket on the leaf margin, some naked, no cover, Fern House
Aesthetics
how branches cut the air, Deepa
priority of: “second to the survival of the collection,” Jason
letting what wants to be, be, Deepa
durational: “give access to other temporalities . . . to times as they are felt in diverse bodies,” Adrian Heathfield [2]
See also Biotic Portal at Strawberry Creek; Time, durational
Affection
for monstrose . . . “everyone loves the Pachypodium lamerei,” Basil 5.20.16
for odd-shaped plants, with bends, or funny surprises, plants that are unashamedly themselves, Kay 3.14.16
for conversations with the garden staff
See also Aberration; Buckeye; Exerted flower parts, lot of; First memory of a garden; Gifts, fair relations; One-of-a-kind
Agency
See Actants; Dispersal; Money
Airflow
“after all, anybody is as their land and air is,” Gertrude Stein [3]
crowding causes withering everywhere
Alienation
“Nature continues to loom as the elusive, originary Other—a system we are fundamentally native to, but unavoidably separate from,” Jeffrey Kastner [4]
insisting language is only a tool, poet
until seeing something beautiful: “Beauty quickens. It adrenalizes. It makes the heart beat faster. It makes life more vivid, animated, living, worth living,” Elaine Scarry [5]
See also Links and leads/Their Lonely Betters; Mimicry
Allen’s hummingbird
it’s back, from where: first to come, first to leave, Chris 2.6.16
two feathers distinguish it from the Rufous, Sarah 2.21.16
See also Charisma
Ambivert
a gardener who gives public tours, Ken 4.15.16
Amplexus
See Piggybacking
Analysis
is inert; knowledge rather is an activity like (making) dough: “a dynamism, folding over automorphically on itself,” Steven Connor [6]
is only part of it: we “are distributed, dynamically spread-out, world-involving beings,” Alva Noë [7]
See also Gigantomachy; Pulchritudo
Anemochore
“I am willing,” from poem of same title, Meredith Stricker
wind’s chore to disseminate seed
Animal-like
end of the Liriodendron chinense leaf is a hammerhead shark, Deepa
"The mammalogist in me sees this banksiae cone as having a mousey quality," Chris 1.16.16
category/prosthetic between human and habitat, allows a vicarious integration, poet
“The self is a guinea pig,” Leslie Scalapino
See also Like; Secrets
Animals in the garden
“grounding; making a surprise new friend,” Michelle
noisy bird in the leaves at twilight mistaken for . . . a mountain lion? poets 8.9.16
See also Acorn woodpeckers; Allen’s hummingbird; Autumnal recrudescence; Baby; Beauty/mountain lion and deer; Bees; Birds; Bobcat; Bouncing balls; Camouflage; Chickens; Deer; Dingo; Elephants in the room; Eruption year; Eye to eye; Flood; Grizzlies; Hairy; Hunter/hunted; Inner sanctum; Lesser goldfinch; Pipevine swallowtail; Slugs; Snakes in the garden; Swainson’s thrush; Wood rats
Annatto
the hidden color in cheddar cheese and peach yogurt sometimes, from the Bixa lipstick tree, Tropical House, Deepa 3.25.16
Anthropomorphism
cacti are lovable chubby cartoonlike characters, Basil 5.20.16
a very hungry caterpillar, whispering trees, corporate yard
“We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing that hurts or pleases us,” David Hume [8]
better than dehumanization?
See also Babiana; Belly plants; Intimacy; Mother plants
Ant ferns
if a fern hosts ants (e.g., in its hollow rhizomes that look like a gnarly brain), it’s an ant fern; “How does that benefit the plant, people always ask,” Corina
Answers
ants in an ant fern get housing, fern benefits from the fertilizer they leave behind
food sovereignty, not government programs and temporary land projects, Jonathan 5.31.16
“If there are more of us who regain the capacity to do our own sorting of the elements that belong to our time, we will discover the freedom of movement that modernism denied us,” Bruno Latour [9]
"the way that the healing is going to begin in the Bay Area is to recognize that Ohlone people are still here,” Corrina Gould, Indian People Organizing for Change [10]
temporary, more like ceramic bowls, See also Time
Anxiety
over water: too much, too little
over loss of species: “all plants are in a web with all others—we can’t afford to lose any,” Kimberlie 3.14.16
over “uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation . . . All that is solid melts into air,” Karl Marx [11]
Bryan’s blood pressure shot up 10 pts when he heard Chris was retiring 9.8.16
See also Handwringing; Vulnerability
Arcadia
any real or imaginary place offering peace and simplicity, dictionary.com
beside the Australian grass tree, “I could make my home in it,” Bed 507B, a boy 7.22.16
See also Answer/temporary; Blackboys; Paradise
Arid House
jealous of the gardener who gets to care for succulents jeweled like Tiffany boxes
pure display, reification, no room for humans, Ramsay 3.25.16
whisperer: “I listen to the cactus [in the Arid House work area/plant clinic], sometimes there’s so little to work with, a little nubbins nearly completely dead. Each is either very sick or very precious. Some are showing signs of being happy, not so faded-looking. I shake them, wobble them, sense a little sturdiness,” Basil 5.20.16
See also Gumballs; Mechanisms
Aristolochia
meaning best birth, due to its fetus-shaped flower, but in fact highly toxic, cause of fatalities in childbirth
“If you didn’t kill off all the so-called witches, we’d know better,” Michael 5.25.16
See also Doctrine of signatures; Larva; Metaphor; Paradox; Pipevine swallowtail
Aroid
Aroused
come this way, look back this way: see the . . . , photographer 1.22.16
See also Autumnal recrudescence; Excitable
Arrow bamboo
a newt passes between the stems toward the garden boundary nearest Japanese snowbell, Bed 216
Art students
“more exciting if it didn’t have a warning” 3.14.16
Asters
“good place for a treat” Bed 242, Rena 1.22.16
Attention
a continuum; the more it expands, the greater the coordination and readiness to move—and if you do move, you won’t hold on, Elyse 2.2.16
better by moonlight, when “we are so much more aware of the subtle shifts [that occur] from being among plants,” Kay 3.14.16
leads to affection
“Seeing happens inside, in the brain stimulated by the eye, which is stimulated by . . . we don’t know what,” Norman
squirrel stops chewing as I walk past, poet 3.8.16
“One wanted, she thought . . . to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, it’s a miracle, it’s an ecstasy,” Virginia Woolf [12] See also Ecstatic
Attraction
unto death: nectarlike secretions on the lips, slippery waxy compounds, downward-pointing hairs, digestive enzymes
See also Beauty; Birding breakfast; Sex
Auction, annual
plants assembled by gut instinct—equal amounts of trashy beautiful, quirky, and rare 4.29.16
used to be a place for bargains, now people are getting it—it’s a fundraiser
“I may accidentally spend a few $100s on plants,” overheard 4.29.16
“I’m resolved not to buy, but other people will foam over the bid sheets,” Jonathan 4.29.16
and talking it up:
“this variegated Haworthia maughanii is a steal; it’s hundreds of dollars on eBay,” says auctioneer, and price jumps to $200 and poet’s bid fails
“Score a piece of the Andes! It won’t rot away after a month or two,” Bryan 4.29.16
“This silver tree—you can grow it. I did. It got to 20 feet before it died. Can see it from space,” Anthony 4.29.16
“Spikes without the pain—Beschorneria yuccoides, unarmed agave relative, you won’t trip and poke your eye out,” Anthony 4.29.16
“Rarest plant in room. Uber-rare!” Crowd falls silent. “You’d be the only person within 1,000 miles with one” (Mahonia X savilliana ‘Boulevard’), Anthony 4.29.16
“Let’s geek out on terrestrial bromeliads. Flowers are Startrek from 80s,” Anthony 4.29.16 See also Puya/fucking stunning
and disappointment: “I’m not going over $200. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on a plant in the past, and there’s a 50% mortality rate,” Brian 4.29.16
Authority
“To have a representative collection is to have both the minimum and the complete number of elements necessary for an autonomous world—a world . . . which has banished repetition and achieved authority,” Susan Stewart [13]
how to handle and display newts: “DON’T put larvae in with adults—adults may cannibalize the young . . . Don’t touch newts with your hands. Newts don’t wear hand lotion”
See also Dinosaur food; Dominionistic; I want to teach you . . . .; Noah’s Ark
Autumnal recrudescence
birds singing mating songs in fall, as if spring has come
See also Charisma; Ideology; Love; Poetry
Babiana
if we make smoke water from burnt baboon leaves, it might break the dormancy of the baboon seeds; it’s the smoke rather than the heat that does it—”you mean make a bong?” Meghan, Pam, Mary 5.11.16
“It worked! After a few times, the seeds germinated,” Meghan 9.14.16
Baby
blankets 12.22.15
birds have high notes so predators can’t find them; tits have high notes too, Sarah 2.19.15
if a collection is one gardener’s baby, it fails later; turn out the pot of something that was rare and nothing there
first baby newt sighting 2.20.16
“baby birds have been begging outside the window the whole time of our meeting,” Chris 7.8.16
cattails on baby bottoms; down of seeds used for diaper material, Bed 180A
Bad
creek water spilling over into desert section
400 carbon dioxide molecules per million
people stealing other people’s plants out of their carts at the spring plant sale
See also Dutchman’s pipevine; Pathogens; Snakes in the garden; Spreads easily
Baker’s larkspur
“two hours too late,” See Date/October 22, 2004
not a good year for this plant, Holly 3.24.16
See also Loss; Native; Slugs
Bamboo cycad
four leaves at each node make a ribbon bow, Bed 250A
Banana (Musa basjoo)
where the poet Basho gets his name, Bed 301B
Deepa passes out round pieces of paper made from its pulp 3.24.16
peel beside the path; thinking it’d degrade? not thinking? 7.29.16
Barbed
beauty portal
gift, plant horridus
“creatures” in Arid House, “beautiful to love them,” Carol 3.4.16
Bats
See Cancer-weed
Bathrooms
heart-shaped petals collected here and pressed for family program tea
between men’s and women’s room, poets greet coming and going, every Friday
Earth Day, Ken says in passing, “this is my happy place” 4.22.16
See also Facilities services; Surprise; Yes
Beauty
“against which one can think the uncomfortable,” Kathleen Marie Higgins [14]
local, particular, affecting poets as a generosity
“the beautiful is always strange,” Baudelaire
“my response to nature is really a response to beauty. The water looks beautiful, the trees look beautiful, even the dust looks beautiful,” Agnes Martin [15]
“mountain lion and deer come together like two branches fused. Not pretty but beautiful,” Michael 4.17.16
trashy kind may trump rarity at annual plant auction, Chris 4.29.16
Belladonna, so named because the berry juice was given to women to enlarge pupils for purposes of attraction, Bed 405
See also Annatto; Attraction; Creation; Order; Poison; Wild areas of garden; Wood rats
Beavertail cacti
what was a toe becomes a foot; toe flowers, Bed 158
See also Anthropomorphism; Like
Beds
of nails, of roses, on the wrong side of, numbered sequentially
“I would construct couches and beds made of leaves stitched with spindly yet pliant branches and scented with the most aromatic flowers so that we could sleep for 20 hours a day like lions and sloths,” Stephen 6.22.16
Bees
are disappearing
“Tell me who you are,” Sabrina 1.30.16
Tropical House hive; bees fed honey at times; leave in fall to find a better home
See also I Want to Teach You . . . ; Seduction
Belly plants
tiny plants stop plant-people in their tracks,” Jason 3.4.16
“truly underappreciated, why?” Michelle 3.4.16
Belonging
native-to-site oaks, though only broadly considered part of collection
clouds and soft light, suddenly easy to be present, fit in, poets 6.17.16
and not: a Chinese maple above the Asia pond has become infested with fungal diseases, “we are not in central China; [being here] wears a tree down” 6.17.16
2-year-olds can tell you the outlier in the group, poets
See also Fungal relations; Home
Benches
two at dead ends
and donors, in memory of
on the hill, foreground, base of coastal redwood, Bed 500
See also Jobs/sit on; Queen of Hopeful; Sex; Water fountains
Bergmann's Rule
in a given species, body size is greater in animals in northern habitats
Berkeley Hills
part of Pacific Coastal Ranges
sign says; sitting in the dirt to test it; a diorama of home, a museum of here, or a selfie, or authentic as Duchamp’s urinal, which reminds us of all sorts of things, having it all, not just peeing, poets
Bestsellers
See Garden director’s retirement/“remember the ‘silly socks’ . . .” ; Venus fly traps
Big
omnipotent voice, from speaker on the studio roof
if you were an alien watching people board a plane, you’d be impressed by the biggest human, right? poet
nectary gland for a bat snout
money spent on tree work
largest wheelbarrow used by gardener working farthest from the barn, Jason 1.26.16
“I don’t think art can stand up to nature. Put the best object you know next to the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, redwoods. The big things always win,” Walter de Maria [16]
See also Dirty finger jobs/large man; Shelter; Size
Biophilia
our innate affinity with other living systems, coined by E. O. Wilson
in art: pastoral, landscape painting, environmental art, eco art, ecopoetry, acoustic ecology, site-specific projects, social sculpture, slow food, earthworks, bio-art
See also Dominionistic; Dreams; Ecopoetry; Gumballs; Talking to plants
Biotic Portal at Strawberry Creek
as arbitrary and human generated as Linnaeus’s system? poets (as architects)
big data is a big thing, Brent Mishler [17]
“connections that have never been made before,” Deepa 6.17.16
engagement, research, cataloging, but generative not analytical, just like contemporary art, Maria 1.26.16
supertasking: “like Tristram Shandy, so detailed that it takes the author one year to set down the events of a single day . . . can never be finished” Wikipedia [18]
“everything that congests in the moment,” Sabrina 1.30.16
previously called “Seeing What Happens”
“Oh, I get it. It’s Linnaeus upside down,” John 4.21.16
“what is the territory? . . . The territory never gets in at all . . . Always, the process of representation will filter it out,” Gregory Bateson [19]
“They want to participate in this thing, but there is no thing. The desire is the participation,” Alex [20]
See also Heterotopias; Maps; Place; Poetry; Systems; etc., etc., etc.
Birch, Betula utilis
yielding boats, canoes, covering for wigwams, roof tiles, containers, writing paper, shoes, letter B, Bed 170B
See also Gifts/it’s always by favour; Trees
Bird cage fungus
sighted below rose garden, size of pomegranate, bright orange, smells like corpse, riddled with beetles and flies, Jason 1.26.16
See also For kicks and grits
Birding breakfast
we watch the birds eat breakfast? Logic 3.25.16
a big group of women fill it up, See also Inside
Birds
best places to see them: California, Mediterranean, near fences, creepers in Asia
mixed-species flocks like the oaks
and bird netting in propagation area: goldfinches wait for gardener to pull it taut and then dive through the biggest holes for the big seeds of endangered large-flowered fiddleneck, Holly 3.24.16 See also Lesser goldfinch
“project feeder watch” how Sarah got into ornithology
“The person inside a literary creation can be both viewer and insider. The window is open and the bird flies in. It closes and a drama between the bird and its environment begins,” Barbara Guest [21]
“Did you hear that? The parent arrived—the frequency just increased,” Chris 7.26.16
Blackberry
of the rose family, poor relation
pops up everywhere, like "like" and "very," See also Editing; Pruning
zero tolerance policy, but we can’t keep up; sell the thornless in the shop
See also Invasives; Reality
Blackboys (missing name for Xanthorrthea)
"I never said the word black, because I didn't know it was ever said to mean beautiful, to mean love, to mean life. I had never heard it to mean honor, power, a person or creation of value," Helen Klonaris [22] See also Arcadia; Poke in the eye
Black walnut
once thought to cure head ailments (walnuts look like brains); today, good for heart, See also Doctrine of signatures; Like
Blue
-eyed, gentle [sic], and governed by laws = white people, Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae 1735
-eyed local wood rats with no scales on their tails
Bobcat
“would often show up out of nowhere; we were here a lot when I was 8, my sister was 5,” Steve
See also Deer/kill on the boundary
slow time in, 4.10.16
best, Mexico/Central America section
See also Context
Botanical confusion
and convergent evolution (nature vs. nurture)
look alikes that are not alike: cacti + euphorbias; cycads + palms
Middle Ages: Europeans translated nearly every tree named in foreign manuscripts as “oak" [23]
“Reindeer ‘moss’ is a lichen, Spanish ‘moss’ is a flowering plant, sea ‘moss’ is an alga, and club ‘moss’ is a lycophyte. So what is a moss?” Robin Wall Kimmerer [24]
toxic juice of pipevine (aka birthwort) used to aid childbirth since thought to resemble a human fetus
See also Cresting in cacti; Like; Paradox
“Botanical eyes”
a European naturalist stealing the source of quinine in 1735 [25]
Boundary fences
where a severance of context occurs, selectivity begins
See also Deer/kill on the boundary; Fence around the garden; Garden
Bouncing balls
scientists can’t decide how to classify the wren tit; only member of family in North America, related to European warbler, song sounds like a bouncing ball, Sarah 2.19.15
Bridges
to move a visitor’s “aah” experience to a focused mindfulness, new director 5.20.16
See also Missing; Wishes/to steal from garden
Btw
“I am a California buckeye [stranded in wrong section],” Rebekah 6.22.16
Buckeye
aka dairy farm tree; inosculation
“burly gnarled bones speared by a cow,” Jane 6.22.16
Buds
and bud-eaters
limbs and buds; leg buds of baby newts
Bumper cars
See Golf cart
Buying plants
“people are attracted to beauty and the idea of beautifying their spaces with plants. The care of plants requires time, patience, and work, which might not be as attractive to us,” anon 5.13.16
“not huge into buying and feel good about successful growing,” anon 5.13.16
See also Auction, annual; Gift shop; Money/care
California fuchsia
hummingbird beak glove, Bed 30
California sagebrush
“feather duster; used to attract dirt and cleanse a place,” Bed 22A, Zippie 5.25.16
Camellia
first memory of a garden, eating these, visitor
leaves used for brownish yellow dye, and bark a reddish brown dye, Bed 216
Camellia japonica: all at once, Bed 246
Camouflage
someone grabbed a pile of sticks and a rattlesnake was sticking out the end, Meghan 6.17.16
See also Snakes in the garden; Surprise; Survival strategies
Cancer-weed, Bed 309
“late, wet winter—
full cactus bloom spring
I was diagnosed, and cactus came
bats feed on cacti who bloom at night
sip night nectar
in the night of my cancer found nectar
sealing own wound
spine away such rain blooms” Beth Murray [26]
Candy
See Opuntia robusta; Scat
Capitalism
“Capitalism is not an economic system; it is not a social system; it’s a way of organizing nature,” Jason Moore [27]
Carnivores
“Don’t put your hands in there—sheep have gotten caught and never gotten out. Puya, like hula,” Anthony 4.29.16
horticulturist gestures toward the carnivorous plants and one of the pitchers rattles
See also Authority/how to handle
Catch in the act
See Poison oak/drug-addled person; Puya/flowers are Startrek; Time and space
Cedar, Port Orford
ten trees in a circle, growing as one, girdled/edited by rodents, Bed 254B
Chain fern
broken by path, linking down to water, Bed 231
See also Creek collection plants
Chamaedorea nubium
dorea, as in gift; remembering a felucca ride on the Nile at Aswan, Bed 250A
Change
the story of the universe in one word
“Form is primarily mobile life in a changing world,” Henri Focillon [28]
“Does our perception of nature change over time—personally and socially? Does our place in nature change? As we go thru life, and as society embraces ‘nature’ or not,” anon
“To be counted on: / new leaves / new dead / leaves” Lorine Niedecker [29]
ash tree fungus no longer brainy, more like scat, darkening up, Gideon 6.25.16 See also For kicks and grits
turns out it’s not fungus but a slime mold; add algae and you get lichen, Gideon 9.8.16
See also Creation; Cresting in cacti; Impermanence; Time
Chaos
couldn’t take the chaos of the vines, propagator had to switch to succulents
couldn’t take the tumult of children’s museums, came to UCBG, new director 5.20.16
Charisma
birds out the window as a child, like plants, everywhere, but more charismatic, Sarah 2.21.16
of small cacti, “chubby-headed little pets” 5.20.16
of a “lovely orchid on the table, lovely, but not lovely enough to eat,” Michael 6.22.16
“If one tree fruits, they all fruit—there are no soloists,” Robin Kimmerer Wall [30]
Cheese sandwiches
whose turn to bring?
See also Dairy farm; Tradition
Chickens
three bantams found in the redwood grove 5.17.16
See also Lost and found
Chinese aloe
“looks different than the aloe we’re used to . . . I wonder if it’s used directly on the skin or if you drink it,” Eva 6.17.16
Christian names
Adam’s needle, Bed 308
Bleeding heart, Bed 15A
Blue-eyed Mary, Bed 15A
Christmas fern, Bed 302
Christmas rose, Bed 405
Desert candle, Bed 706
Devil’s walking stick, Bed 314
Finger of God, Green House 2
Glorybower, Tropical House 1003
Jack-in-the-pulpit, Bed 309
Jerusalem thorn tree, Bed 706
Lamb’s ears, Bed 404
Pink Easter lily cactus, Bed 158
Red angel’s trumpet, Bed 602
St. Catherine’s lace, Bed 111A
St. Johnswort, Bed 404
Tea of heaven, Bed 226
Claiming
artists have claimed nature, rejected it, claimed it, rejected it
See also Classifying; Names
Claims
same-stuff: an “insinuation that deep down, everything is connected and irreducible to a simple substrate resonates with an ecological sensibility,” Jane Bennett [31]
of uniqueness: human, in the eyes of God
Clammy
Clampettes
and leaks; band-aid solutions, Anthony
See also Irrigation
Classifying
by personality, Bryan 3.4.16 See also Profanation
by poem reference 3.14.16 See also Excitable/the tulips
by their use, assuming all plants were/are used (even . . . will be), Ken 3.4.16
“The collection seeks a form of self-enclosure which is possible because of its ahistoricism. The collection replaces history with classification, with order beyond the realm of temporality,” Susan Stewart [32]
“The hostility of it: this is this, that that. My insides resist,” Aife 5.25.16
Clematis fusca
where is it? Bed 216
Cliches
none in nature, Saxon 1.22.16
plenty on the internet
See also Kitsch
Climate change
“The market left to itself will not reconfigure the energy system and transform the economy within a generation,” John Ashton [33]
CAL fire; Monterey County is burning, 8.2.16
See also Bad; Dates/March 3, 2016; Elephants in the room
Closed
best time, frogs sing their heads off, mystical evening light, Paul 1.29.16
“and the wildlife gets a needed break from us humans and our insatiable desire to explore and know,” Ann 4.10.16
South Park Drive during newt migration season
Cold
coldest spot in the garden: Tropical House
that kills: not how cold but how long it’s that cold, Paul
set in fridge to break dormancy 42 degrees
Collaboration
“ants, creepy crawlers: tiny unknown farmers ” 3.4.16
nothing lives in isolation here
one speaks, the other listens for telling bits, poets
bats come to white flowers at night, push snout into large nectary glands, Jason
Collections
and erased contexts, Susan Stewart [34], See also Noah’s ark
and no border patrols, e.g., birds flying in, seed in their guts
big science, big business in early modern world
colors of a place, all relate, and affect us, Mimi 2.19.16
privileged, until one catches a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, or the skyline of Strawberry Canyon, or a glimpse of a bird or a squirrel, or the smell of soil and leaves
what’s outside: “time, hole in tree, exchange of gasses, carbon, care” 4.17.16
See also Uncollected; Wrong-feeling/to want to nose around
Color
today we meet an artist who is renaming the colors in the garden 2.19.16
needed, as much as the alcohol, to get a successful auction going 4.29.16
as plant bias: oceans and waves of color; sumptuous, tender color; malevolent color; waterfalls of color, droplets weaving, blending, separating; intense, hot, and deeply frigid color; color that becomes form 4.10.16
I want a job here to “regroup the garden based on a color palette, make a color wheel garden,” Kimberlie 3.14.16
See also Blackboys; Blue/-eyed, gentle (sic); Collections; Names
Composition
complete: deep pink blossoms of the Cercis chingii against the fans of the windmill palm, Bed 170B
incomplete: the geography of the body without space/habitat, Elyse 3.3.16
and dominion: “Matter is that element in the datum which has no destiny. Forms domesticate it, make it consumable,” Jean-Francois Lyotard [35]
and security report from a garden elsewhere: Zombie palms flank the door 6.17.16
Compost tea
and uninvited weeds
sprayed not sipped
Conatus
(Spinoza) the force in every animate creature toward the preservation of its existence, dictionary.com
See also Actants
Conifer posers
sheoak: neither a conifer nor an oak, and not necessarily a she, Bed 503
Conquer
by naming, put to rest a nagging question
See also Thrill
Construction poem
“A fallen limb
A post
A beam
Leaves to shelter
Build a house
For me
But I live in Fruitvale
In a basement
Not far from here
with some plants,” Bridgit 4.10.16
See also I want to construct . . .
Container
“nature holds time for us. It’s the space of feeling we enter into,” anon 4.17.16
Context
suggestion of, See Collections
“to work out as many different models of where poetry can exist, where poetry can be inserted, can be read, experienced, performed; what are the various different ways that we can make poetry have contexts,” Myung Mi Kim [36]
Cork oak
4,000 bottle stoppers per harvest [37] Bed 804
nine years to grow a new bark
Corporate yard
barn, chem room, plastic house, workshop, gorilla cage, label printer and rack, prop house, research house, cinder bins, House 1, House 2, weather station, fire hose with bats
Country fashion
common names
teeming life sturdily replicating itself, no shame
to saw and shave through to a kernel
utilitarian relationship to plants
Creation
“Each individual organism is alone with its own risk, goes nowhere, comes from nowhere: it is creativity all the way down,” Bruno Latour [38]
“It is life itself that creates life,” Agnes Martin [39]
“No creativity, no hope—but painting like Nature, painting as change, becoming, emerging, being-there, thusness, without an aim, and just as right, logical, perfect, and incomprehensible,” Gerhard Richter [40]
See also Dreams/tea from a paint brush
Creek across street
supports monster flowering plum (worst weed), and birds carry seed here
Creek collection plants
types of: aquatic, canopy, emergent, evergreen shrub or tree, forest floor, understory, vine
habitats of: along streams, canyons, cold springs and creeks, creek edges, damp places, marshes, moist forest floor, shady damp slopes, stream banks, in moving water, wet places, woodlands
Creek in CA section
"the creek wins, banks too steep to garden," Ben
large native oak fallen into it 3.18.16
Cresting in cacti
tip growth is interrupted, and plant forgets how it once grew, may convolute along its seams, Basil 5.20.16
See also Affection
Crosswalk
bridal procession
signal: “not far off from the one long, strong note of a California toad,” birder
talk: “smells good here” 3.24.16
talk: “an olive-sided flycatcher is in the redwoods—hear the first two syllables of ‘quick-3 beers’?”
Cultivated
cultural nature, See Country fashion
Cupcake
compared in value to a small aloe, Michael 4.28.16
See also House/Melocactus; Value
Cupped and quartered
versus single-petal roses
Cycads
two females coning on Africa Hill, one smooth green, the other covered in brown hair 2.6.16
and extinction: can’t get female and male plants together, “worse than elephants, they don’t move,” John 1.29.16
See also Money; New; Value
Dairy farm
previous tenant of 200 Centennial Dr.
Damask rose
stick your nose in it; portal to childhood, poet 4.22.16
See also Smells
Data
of poets
of scientists
Dates
Endangered Species Act, 1973
De Anza expedition, 1776
Silent Spring published 1962
March 3, 2016, “it appears that average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere have breached the 2 degrees Celsius above ‘normal’ mark for the first time in recorded history, and likely the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago. That mark has long been held (somewhat arbitrarily) as the point above which climate change may begin to become ‘dangerous’ to humanity. Slate.com
October 22, 2004, poor endangered Baker’s larkspur survived a flood but scraped away by a backhoe
2035, my retirement, looking forward to it, Rafael 4.15.16
July 13, 2016, See Times, the/“Pokémon Go . . .”
Death
“DEAD” stamp; plants on file no longer part of collection
assisted; tulip tree sapling planted beside. “Just your basic entropy,” Anthony 12.2.15
missed sometimes and the label stays, especially if a gardener is new, See Clematis fusca
by blooming, the monocarpic Puya, See Showstopper
slow, by disease (Manzanita); dead tree = planting opportunity
synonym for Deceased, which was stamped on the entry card for my safe deposit box, Jane 6.22.16
fast, by toppling, e.g., old oak into creek
“death march with cocktails,” the retirement process, anon 6.24.16
by expert tree cutters, knobcone pine 4.22.16
imminent for passionflower, “I’ll leave it one more week for a photo,” Peter
“I took the red bark and know this is a place I hope to have some of my ashes thrown,” Cecilia 4.17.16
“I run a bonsai hospice,” Michael 4.28.16
See also Deer/kill, on the boundar
Deer
sighting on the hill: “but we’re not here to see mammals,” said the birder 2.21.16
kill, on the boundary: “blood and bile everywhere, anus with ‘M&Ms’ tossed away from rest of carcass, ribs chewed on,” Gideon 5.13.16
trapped in the back 5 acres, “it’s probably sleeping now,” Eric 7.22.16
“fear the deer because they eat all the things,” Jonathan 8.5.16
Desire
and roses; bred to people’s fancies year after year; more blooms, single stems
and orchids; locked up
See also Collections; Garden is a department store; I want to be a . . . here; I want to construct . . . ; I want to teach you . . . ; Narcissus; Night, and I want to . . . ; Paradise; Preferences; Purchase pleasure; Puya/“fucking stunning . . .”; Queen of hopeful; Romance-novel-type plant names; Seduction; Sex; Venus fly traps; Zookeeper
Dimorphic behavior
some ferns when producing spores change leaf shape from simple to pinnate
See also Transformation
Dingo
Ben rides by standing on one 6.17.16
See also Questions
Dinosaur food
unusable name for cycads, by director’s and associate director’s edict
name used for horsetails
Dirty finger jobs
some prefer gloves, See also Jobs
“We propagators differ from the other volunteers, e.g., the meeters and greeters, in liking to get our hands dirty,” Carolyn 5.31.16
large man with dark soil under his finger- and toenails sells us on his Soil Bloom, shows us pics of giant strawberries 5.31.16
Discipline
verb and noun: no conclusions or judgment, See Data
and lack of order in gardens generally: “maybe we don’t really care about getting it all right” 6.17.16
Dispersal
“The ‘personal’ is already a plural condition. Perhaps one feels that it is located somewhere within . . . ? One can look for it and already one is not oneself, one is several, incomplete, and subject to dispersal,” Lyn Hejinian [41]
See also Seed
Doctrine of signatures
sixteenth century belief that God marked objects with a sign of their use for humans; herbs that resembled parts of the body were thought to heal those body parts
See also Aristolochia; Black walnut; Imagination/magical thinking; St. Johnswort; Toothwort
Documented
good data and long-term security: Pterocarya tree growing above the stone bridge on the lower road stays [42]
Dominionistic
the jar: “It took dominion everywhere,” Wallace Stevens [43]
dilemma: we rescued a Western fence swift inside a church from a slow death by dehydration, then wondered where would it be safe outside. Every square foot is likely to be mowed, dug up, have rocks unloaded onto it. We could only hazard a guess, because nowhere around humankind is safe. Though we try to be merciful—hmm, Ann 4.10.16
“my affiliation with nature? Dominionistic with a little utilitarian thrown in. If no one else has answered this way, this is the elephant in the room,” Shirley 1.31.16
that’s us; drives the creation of garden, its upkeep, our pleasure, but we refuse to see it, poet
all the paving and planting over what was once sand dune ecosystem in SF, Liz 4.10.16
“In the city, where haven’t I seen that! But then I see roots spilling and gurgling over the cement lots and realize that if we gave that a chance, we’d be completely overcome in a short time. Global warming is the ultimate message that we have no dominion over nature, that there is a price we are paying and that our evolutions are not complete—were we destined to hurl ourselves and the planet to doom? How small are our gestures—how far does their impact reach? Erin 4.10.16
“open the tap, boil water, make tea” 4.17.16
other examples: raging infection quieted with antibiotic medicine; strings holding up a tomato planting 4.10.16
“off the coast of Laos was the last time I saw a space free of human dominion over nature,” Christine 4.17.16
“Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over everything thing that moveth upon the Earth,” God [44]
See also Capitalism; Narcissus; Poke in the eye
Domino effects
Double life
amphibians: land + water
director: fundraiser + scientist
poets: fiction + nonfiction
retired director + volunteer propagator
volunteer: violinist + tissue culture propagator
See also Garden maps; Hyperreality
Doubling back and over
“History gains its shape from the ways in which it reads itself or gathers itself up, as we say, reflexively, as well as the ways in which its time happens to fall out,” Steven Connor [45]
See also Analysis
Dreams
wish to “dream among the oak knoll and sounds of the creek,” Prima 3.14.16
“Great horned owls were lined up like soldiers along the path, facing me. ‘Wait a minute, you’re not a great-horned owl,’ I said to the burrowing owl trying to fit in,” Logic 3.25.16
tea from a paint brush (Escrito bloqueada) fosters creativity, Aife 5.25.16
Drought
“‘Just add water,’ no longer as easy as it sounds,” Chris 3.14.16
long-root strategy
“great for attendance,” Paul 1.29.16
succulents keep the water they’ve got
See also Questions/is it drought
Dutchman’s pipevine
toxic leaves; only food of the pipevine swallowtail caterpillars; a trace remains in the butterfly for protection, See also Paradox; Poison
flies enter flowers attracted by scent, and become trapped by hairs, which then wither to release the fly covered in pollen
See also Doctrine of signatures; Like; No/no separation; Smells; Symbiosis
Economy
Stewart likes the economy of poetry, “playing on people’s history and emotions” 4.29.16
Ecopoetics
“What if structures of perception are not "subjective" (i.e., added by humans to raw data) or "objective" (i.e., provided by things in themselves), but are articulated within media of relation and interaction such that to speak is to surge up into a medium that isn't projected, but is ongoing, like an environment? Might we see ourselves then as participants in a noninstrumental language?” Forrest Gander [46]
“It's a kind of boundary work, about networks and crossing,” Jonathan Skinner [47]
“The problem for poets is always how to present these things in a non-didactic and imaginative way,” Brenda Hillman [48]
See also Attention; Experience; Poetry
Ecopsychology
“My mind stops racing when I enter the garden. It’s a place of sanity and joy,” Sylvia 3.25.16
Ecstatic
“My heart in hiding / Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!” Gerard Manley Hopkins [49]
Editing
gardening is like editing: what to leave in, what to take out 12.4.15
See also Pruning; Cedar, Port Orford
“my bias is for this: the burst of life in spring, strokes of lichen on rocks, roses in my garden blooming like monsters from some tropical world,” Jaime 4.10.16
“In real life, we get everything we want and need, just like the grass. It is all laid on,” Agnes Martin [50]
Eggs
frogs lay theirs in the propagation house, tadpoles swim in the water trays alongside the carnivorous plants 5.31.16
newt eggs in sacs on the waterlily stalks
See also Transformation
Elan vital
“current of life,” Henri Bergson
“let the words write the words,” Fanny Howe [51]
Elephants in the room
climate change
have the poet-vendors been paid?
value of a poacher’s tubers, no roots, no names
“Our current guilt-ridden worship of the environment is a sign of moral and cultural disarray, and I doubt if it lasts,” J. B. Jackson [52]
See also Dominionistic
Endangered
see red dots
what’s the difference between rare and endangered, See also Questions; Rare; Threatened
time—“There is only constant change,” Victoria Vesna [53]
“The whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively without wisdom,” E. F. Schumacher [54]
Entrance garden
designed collaboratively, and proudly, by the gardeners
"not the arrival of an active voyager in an awaiting passive destination but an intertwining of ongoing trajectories, from which something new may emerge,” Doreen Massey [55]
See also Here and now
Equilibrium
taking language out of it, to create a chaotic pitch that feels like life in motion, full of accidents, opposite of a still life, poet, after reading Andrew Joron
See also Language; Questions
Eruption year
for varied thrush, the bird on the cover of Sibley’s
nothing so noticeable this year, Sarah 3.25.16
ET
i.e., evapotranspiration, all that happens when you get drizzles
Eternity
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity,” Henry David Thoreau [56]
See also Paradise; Time and space
Ethnobotany
quick lexicon: “food, fiber, dye, timber, cordage, medicine, scent, adornment,” Deepa
Euphorbia
the child’s voice low and quiet, “it’s poisonous” 3.4.16
Evil
“Once we take evil into ourselves, it no longer insists that we believe in it,” Kafka [57]
Evo-devo
= evolutionary developmental biology, e.g., species splitting (speciation)
Exchanges
“Time becomes smell here. I walk in and I forget about time because smell takes over—what is it that is filling the air,” A 4.10.16
Excitable
“The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here,” Sylvia Plath, See also Classifying
“Don’t miss the Puya! It’s dripping with nectar!” visitor 4.15.16
“Whenever any nerve or muscle is stimulated, the polarities [of the electrical charge] across the [cell] membrane reverse . . . in about one thousandth of a second. This . . . is the action potential, the unique phenomenon of neuromuscular membranes . . . their excitability,” Deane Juhan [58]
Exerted flower parts, lot of
garden bouquet, delivered by Anthony
“In mathematics and logic, process and result are equivalent,” Wittgenstein [59]
Expansion
symbolism of the maple tree, See also Acer maximowiczii
on poetry walks, participants are encouraged to note and claim their resistance to anything, to double the space of inquiry, poet
Westward
Experience
“in the moment observational, pollinated with memories from past times with people not of the age they are now,” anon 5.25.16
“just this morning, a red paper poppy opened—the 4 cross of petals swaying in the breeze suggested a butterfly,” 6.22.16
inner or outer? Is a garden in between inner and outer?
“We are animals. We are organic. We ingest, digest, and excrete, we metabolize, we secrete and we dry out. And we live all of that,” Alva Noë [60]
“the loneliness [in Oahu] scared me or maybe I felt small,” anon 5.25.16
“Experience is awareness (if I am not aware of an experience, I’m not “having” it); awareness involves naming,” Norman Fischer [61]
See also First memory of a garden; Point of view
Expert
“hang on, I’ll tell you in a moment. I wrote a book about roses,” poet 5.13.16 See also Cupped and Quartered; Smell
definition of the environment from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Division: “much more than the oceans and the ozone layer. It is air, soil, water, plants, animals, houses, restaurants, office buildings, and factories and all that they contain,” from The Safe and Effective Use of Pesticides [62]
Eye-to-eye
with a fox, Susan 1.8.16
with this exotic cultivated forest, Maria 1.26.16
with a treetop fallen into creek 3.18.16
with a doe and her fawn, after twilight, poets 8.9.16
“sympathy is the product of the interaction that we call beauty, an interaction in which both parties become aligned in value and, in the process, become in some sense equal,” Wendy Steiner [63]
Facilities services
check sewage pump, put alarm on it 3.18.16
change the type of towel dispenser in all UC bathrooms to discourage students from playing with long sheets of towels, but leave a roll of towels in case dispenser gets stuck
See also Corporate yard; Mechanisms/Arid House
Failure
and clay soil: “What seems to fail is what we plant,” Ben 12.2.15
and cultural conditions, See Airflow
of toyon: “When you start in a container it causes problems later in life,” Ben 12.2.15
“if you never fail, you never learn,” John 1.29.16
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better,” Samuel Beckett [64]
of hierarchies, of didactic systems: “The world does not break up into neat university departments,” Hans Haacke [65]
to find any way to encourage visitors to place garbage in the garbage can and recycling into the recycling bins—thought to be a particular problem for museums, from flaunting their authority and rendering visitors childlike
Famous couples
poiesis/praxis: to unveil and bring into presence/to masterfully make, See also Greek; Profanation
aerobic and anaerobic
birds and bees
former garden director Roger Raiche and garden benefactor Myrtle Wolf, mutual appreciators and plant namers: Vitis californica Roger’s Red, Arctostaphylos pajaroensis Myrtle Wolf
See also Mystery vs. miracle; Value/we give it two ways
FAQ
can’t be answered: what’s your favorite plant and when is the best time to visit? Paul 2.5.16
how does that [an already imagined reciprocity/hint of symbiosis] benefit the plant? See Ant ferns
what exactly are the poets doing here? See Unknown
Fashion
and repetition, coming and going on a rainy day, See also Taste
“I’ve got lots and lots of outfits,” Meghan 3.4.16
meadow flowers demoted by Kant, as merely beautiful, not sublime
in museum studies—now it’s not about your learning what the experts know, but rather your being led to think on your own
artists have claimed, rejected nature repeatedly
Deepa’s silk madder-dyed top 3.25.16
annual fashion show in the redwood grove
designer, famous, spotted on the dye plants tour 3.24.16
“[as a reader to plants] I would like a uniform, a faded blue jumpsuit, white label with blue stitches framing “Plant Reader,” here on a hook in the Julia Morgan building along with a pair of tall rubber galoshes, black, muddy,” Aife 5.25.16
hand-tailored seed bags in sage-green organza and chiffon; taupe nylon stockings in the wild, Holly 3.25.16
Fasting
new stars: drought-tolerant plants; long suffering
Fatal attraction
forked tongue of cobra lily drips with nectar at the entrance to its mouth, Fern and Carnivorous Plants House
Fault
line, below garden, running through the stadium, goal post to goal post
“[Chris is] kind to a fault . . . makes me think I have a caring problem,” Anthony 9.8.16
Favorites
“nandina: mother plants them all around our western Kentucky homestead, my mother’s love, our passion for flowers” 2.21.16
“garden spots yet to discover”
pole pruners
pedagogy, poet
Tropical House, Deepa
Latin faves: Artemisia, artemis, knowledge; Digitalis, digital pulse; Solanaceae, solace, darkness, sleep; Common fave: bloodwort
huge redwood on the hill
“tiny white flowers that smell good, heated by sun,” A 4.10.16
“lovage. We’ve met before, in English poetry,” poet
piece of language—Ruth Sacks’s skywriting, in 2005, over Cape Town: “Don’t Panic” [66]
Fear
“I like knowing about plants and ecosystems, and I am frightened of it all and comforted by it,” Shirley 1.31.16
redwood branch fell, went 2 feet into the ground, Peter
of children growing up with experiences only of artificial beauty—how will that affect how beauty is perceived 30 to 50 years from now? Maartje 4.17.16
“fear of the bugs that bite” 4.17.16
of ticks, See also Phobias
Fence around the garden
keeps out deer kills, See also Grizzlies
couple who exited the garden in the Mexico section, onto the fire trail, follows it, begs staff to let them return through a gate
fails to keep out? Poetry walk participants make a chorus: pollution, noise, crime, birds, clouds, pests, good climbers, wanderers, doubt, smells, drones, bugs, poverty, sounds, imagination, etc.
fails to keep out? “I don’t want to think about what the fence doesn’t keep out, because being here offers so much respite from all that,” Anita 6.22.16
See also Boundary fences; Paradise; Shelter
Feral
a gardener claims she is, her experience here
bantams, given temporary shelter in the old cactus house until a gardener assures himself they aren’t cockerels and takes them home, See also Lost and Found
cats, trapped
cat on anniversary poster?
Fertility
and newts: spermatophores (capsules) deposited by male, female comes along and picks them up with/into her cloaca
and methods of sperm delivery: hand
orchid seeds need a suitable bed and a nice fungal partner
See also Bees; Pipette; Wind
Fickleness
when I try and try, and then you die; or you get 3 hours of a.m. sun and suddenly explode with growth— “such a brat!” Eric 7.22.16
Field trip mom
went from, to docent for children; “it’s all about telling stories,” Susan 6.17.16
Fire
-resistant bark of the sequoias makes them vulnerable to humans, See also Irony
First memory of a garden
“at the lake. I’m in the water, of course. Overhead that blue, blue sky of the Midwest. Around the lake, pines, dark fringe. I’m turning around, around, enacting the shape of the lake . . . In a minute or two, I’ll leave the water way of being, but not just yet,” Betsy 5.25.16
“watching my grandfather pick a rose for my grandmother,” Buffalo, NY, Michael
“sneaking strawberries and green onions from the school garden in elementary school with my BFF:)” anon
“a public park in the Bronx . . . most vividly a blizzard, when I was maybe 8 years old, blanketing the park so thickly that we tromped up and down the hill all morning until we could sled at noon, hating to stop for lunch, eager to return that afternoon, while the city was almost stopped completely by the snow,” Z 5.25.16
See also Understanding; Views
First Wednesdays
free entrance
Fit
“If I was at home, I’d be doing the same thing,” Basil 5.20.16See also Jobs
artistic form, to be lively, needs to be close enough to life, poet 6.17.16
Five senses
“The garden is not just a landscape; it is smells and sounds and temperature, and textures,” Christine 4.17.16 See also Experience
Floating
“can I float something by you?” poet 2.14.16
O and K cut from magnolia petals twirling downstream
“I’m floating on my back, the better to imagine what or who the clouds might be,” Betsy 5.25.16
Flood
“the time the pond flooded, we were scooping out the newts from the mud to save them; there seemed to be hundreds then, and so few now, but we are coming to terms with the fact that our vision of those numbers that day was distorted,” Chris 2.5.16
“Chris and I rescued a thousand newts,” Paul 9.8.16
See also Bad; Point of view
Floral arrangements
and rites of passage: baptisms, weddings, funerals
and power meetings See Witness
who made Chris’s corsage? 9.8.16
Fluttering
strongly flattened petioles of poplar leaves cause them to twist and bend in the slightest breeze
See also Anxiety
Folds
and dynamic volumes, or topologies, See Analysis; Doubling back and over; Potential
Food
Himalayan blackberry: birds, humans, See also Outlaw; Scat
jelly palm fruit favorite with squirrels, Bed 250A
mulberry leaves for silkworms, See also Bed; No
Foods of the Americas exhibit; stellar jay hops in 10.23.15
sassafras (toxic to humans, do not eat), See also Mitteny
bantams fed matzos while waiting to be adopted, See also Chickens; Feral/bantams
See also Composition/and dominion; Oak knoll; Teeth
For kicks and grits
spraying water on the ash tree fungus, Gideon 6.24.16
Framing
best view of palms from inside the conference center, Meghan 3.4.16
“When the person who is you is the viewer, you believe an extraordinary strength exists in that position. You are outside the arena of dispute or creativity or blasphemy,” Barbara Guest [67]
Fundraising
for the Julia Morgan building, and then for 2 vases, which “had to be the right period,” Gale 6.24.16
“I’m not a money-raiser,” Chris 9.8.16
Fungal relations
metaphoric: between the propagators and the garden; one embeds the other
symbiotic: as in being alive in the mind of the other, equaling love, poet
pathogenic: verdant in the Asia section by the creek, where the air is damp and still
See also Home; Nasty; Pathogens; Shelter
Fuzzenacea
invented family name for furry plants: psycho-medicinal, medicine can be administered by rubbing face on plant, Amanda 3.14.16
Gaps
never: “Once upon a time, the past was the past and the present was today . . . and the distance between them was neatly visualized in a forward moving line . . . And with this rectilinear and irreversible time came the vision of an inexorably progressive and productive future,” Elena Filipovic [68]
See also Time/a crumpled handkerchief
Garden
logo: Rhododendron arboreum; national flower of Nepal
wisdom: “Learn about pines from the pines, and about bamboo from the bamboo,” Basho [69]
“the garden walls and fences have many breaches—gates, washed-out soils, Strawberry Creek—which allow fauna from the domesticated wildlands outside to influence the garden, for extended and short terms,” insider 3.4.16
“Here at the garden, nature is cultivated and appreciated, not forsaken. We work alongside nature, something that is unique in this world,” insider 3.4.16
“Is like a department store,” says Ramsay. “What do I mean? There’s always a lingerie department [gestures toward the palms and new green lawn].” “I knew you’d say lingerie department,” interrupts Steve, “people always say lingerie after department store” 3.25.16
“I’ve never thought of a garden as being a safe place. The orange blossoming honeysuckle . . . thrived in our garden, but frost took it,” 6.22.16
See also Fence around the garden
Garden director’s retirement
“he regarded the garden as a jewel that needed to be kept,” when rumors were that UC wanted to ditch it; he turned the Titanic,” Ramona 6.24.16
“he couldn’t make it for a year without me,” Peter, former gardener of roses section 6.24.16
“beginning of my solo flight,” new director 6.24.16
gift of poetry [the kind he likes]: “Rhodies are red, Puyas are blue, I will miss you Paul, and the newts will too,” Deepa 6.24.16
gift from hort staff: “he’s always asking how many trees in the redwood grove, so we found out, how many do you think, Paul?” “1,300.” “No, 474” 6.24.16
gift that follows convention: “from the accessions, a titan arum, that we are hoping will bloom one day, not for taking home, but named now ‘Paul Licht Senior Prince’,” Chris 6.24.16
“challenged each other, but we grew—I hope we did?” Jonathan 6.24.16
“remember the ‘silly socks’ and mugs that you were sure wouldn’t sell? they’re hot sellers, and we’ll miss your advice,” gift shop buyer, smiling, waggling socks in air 6.24.16
“you know how to sell this place,” Holly 6.24.16
Garden maps
“‘Here’ . . . is not a place on a map. It is that intersection of trajectories, the meeting-up of stories; an encounter,” Doreen Massey [70]
“The map is not the territory” Alfred Korzybski (don’t confuse Africa Hill with . . .)
difficulties with: “"we now use the country [knoll, canyon, creek] itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well," Lewis Carroll [71]
Gaze
of Rena, away from pool to coning cycad forms on Africa Hill 1.22.16
of God
of Linnaeus
of collector/namer, See Blackboys
of night-vision cameras on boundaries
See also “Botanical eyes”
Getting in on the game
first attributed to poets, later discovered that Holly made the rogue sign, placing it next to the welwitschia, Arid House
Ghosts
Gifts, fair relations
peril, such as a drop-off, a step into or across water
“after attending a new church, the congregation gifted us a succulent,” Amy
five years old: “my mother brought me a bunch of lilacs first thing in the morning and put them by my bed,” visitor 2.12.16
“This [decentering, no longer absorbed in our own narratives] seems like a gift in its own right, and a gift as a prelude to or precondition of enjoying fair relations with others,” Elaine Scarry [72] See also Eye to eye
of Euphorbia horrida and E. polygona Snowflake from Brian and Basil to poets
of a king palm leaf cradle from Chris to poets
“my mom, growing up in Brownsville, NYC, found an old bike that was too big for her, but she learned to ride it so she could get to the park and see trees,” Rebecca 1.8.16
separate the bays from the oaks to prevent the former giving SOD (sudden oak disease) to the latter
of a brass twirly sprinkler head, plumbed to a pipe on a stand, as a farewell present to a gardener who loved the sound of twirlies
between the scales and Argentine ants on the corn in the crops garden—the ants “tend” the scale, drive off their predators, so they can feast on the poop of the scales
“It’s always by favour of nature that one knows something,” Wittgenstein [73] See also Knowledge
“Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn,” Lewis Hyde [74]
parting, Chris is given a 5-year family membership 9.8.16
Gift shop
list of living accessions binder stored; does anyone ever ask for it?
souvenirs as “unmarked graves,” Susan Stewart [75]
“you want monetary value, you go into the gift shop,” John 1.29.16
See also Garden director’s retirement/remember the “silly socks”; Value
Gigantomachy
“This opposition between the natural and the supernatural, immanence and transcendence, mere objects and meaning, matter and spirit, fact and value, defines a large part of the official ideologies of the West,” Bruno Latour [76]
“Landscape’s most crucial condition is considered to be space, but its deepest theme is time,” Rebecca Solnit [77]
God
“is beautiful and loves beauty,” Aidah 6.22.16
Golf cart
“Damn, I so want that thing,” Maria 1.26.16
watch out: “if he [former director] gets you in the golf cart, you’re going to be involved in the garden one way or another,” advisory board chair 6.24.16
Goodspeed’s expeditions
generations ago, plants live on, great, great, great grandchildren of
Nicotiana otophora, Bed 656
Graham Thomas
“a rose worthy of any garden,” Gideon 6.25.16
voted the world’s favorite rose by the WFRS in 2009, See Acronyms
Greed
for narrative and quotes, poets
for groups of palms, though it may lead to instability, crowns falling on house
predator of endangered plants; people are driven by a desire for the biggest of and also by the last of—don’t ask me why, I’m not a psychiatrist, Holly 3.24.16
Greek
the Latin names, to many visitors
Green
switch to compostable trash bags all over university, Rafael 5.22.16
See also Ideology; Paradox/green
Green waves, silken mind
“I touch the breath in the wind,” Nuola 3.14.16
Grizzlies
backed up Sunday morning, lot of flow and debris, Chris 3.6.16
mesh keeps fawns from slipping between bars
Gumballs
What’s your flavor, I mean your primary affiliation to nature—
Playful: You love animation, irony, catching life in the act; you love slips of the tongue, overheard dialogue, places you can step into the creek; you want, can’t wait, to get into the game.
Wildlife protector: You notice the birds, newts, lizards, and scat piles more than plant labels; you want to know that there are secret habitats being protected for animals; you want to experience an eruption year for acorn woodpeckers or snakes.
Activist: You know that climate change is already affecting the garden; you have questions about water use, species shifts, what needs to be done not just talked about; you don’t fall for paradise; you want the rest of us to wake up all at once. Now.
Pragmatist: You know that plants die here and you “have to lose a few to grow a few,” that UC is all about money and increasing visitor numbers, that a sense of refuge is good enough for most of us; you want to support a plant sale, though you know you’ll buy too much.
Dreamer, optimist: You’re always positive and hopeful, the glass is half full and you know how to carpe diem; you’d love to teach the rest of us how to let go, and just appreciate the light shining through the camellia bush in bloom.
Primordialist: You are hungry; you like deep shelter but also adventure, and knowledge—how to distinguish a rustle from a mountain lion, what a deer kill looks like; you want to spend the night here.
See also Biophilia
Habitat
“Why is there only one place?” Holly 3.25.16
Habits
paths raked every Friday morning, scratch, scratch
people don’t come here when it rains
people don’t look up, Jason
Ralph picks up all fallen sticks
you earn space by refusing a habitual motion, Elyse
native plants with big seeds left behind in climate warming, can’t disperse uphill
not eating during workday; a meal slows you down, can feel it when bending, gardener 4.15.16
“dragging hoses can become normal,” Anthony 5.20.16
docents continued to stop proceeding on the path in Mexico/Central America section even after the barricades were gone, Eric 7.22.16
Hairy
woodpecker, spotted in an oak 2.21.16
coning cycad on Africa Hill 2.16.16
manzanita, Bed 216
white spines on silver-torch cactus, Bed 157
Handwringing
one hand comforts the other during vigil
over species shift and loss
“I am appalled by the idea of humans choosing one species to save over another. Why not save it all?” Jaime 4.10.16
“Can we save everything? Too much to hope for? I hope not. If so, then please save the most fragile and vulnerable first” 4.10.16
“I want to save everything. I don’t want anything to die,” Deshara 4.10.16
See also Climate change; Noah’s Ark
Hardening
gradual exposure, large lath section, aka the gorilla cage
from oversaturation of loss of species
Herbarium sheets
of beds; last hundreds of years [78]
Here and now
See Hic et nunc
Heterotopias
counter sites to real places within a society that exist but are inverted, like a cemetery or a brothel
“The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world. [It] has been a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia since the beginning of antiquity,” Michel Foucault [79]
See also Arcadia; Paradise
Hic et nunc
in the garden, each of its particulars reproducing, replicating, as best it can (nothing an abstraction)
“the air is cool and a gentle breeze plays with strands of loose hair,” Elizabeth 5.25.16
and failing to be: “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future,” Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore [80]
(in google.doc of this index)
HI HAZEL!
HI THERE! I CAN’T STAY AWAY FROM HERE!
ME, EITHER.
WHY IS THAT? WHAT’S SO COMPELLING ABOUT IT? COLLECTING?
CREATIVITY
See also Evo-devo
Hiding places
“you poets sure are hard to find,” Ben 3.25.16
“Poets Are Up the Creek,” sign outside studio
“up in a tree or under the dirt, Matilda 3.25.16
“the woman’s bathroom,” Izzy and David 1.2.16
“it felt hidden but wasn’t,” Elizabeth 1.8.16
and strychnine, obtained from Nux vomica
“under a mother fern”
“under a trellis and on a bench, writing in my notebook,” Linda 1.8.16
“I have hidden behind a redwood tree in my backyard,” Nyssa, age 8
Home
“I’ve been thinking about roots . . . the fungi and interactions and patterns that they make with one another . . . as my daughter heads off to college, somehow this feels comforting,” Rebecca 4.10.16
“we love this place—most of us don’t have anything to do with botany or anything,” Tim, advisory board member
See also Feral/bantams; Fungal relations
Horsetails
popping up everywhere—nobody’s concerned? should we pull them? poets 3.26.16
House
ecology, from Gr. oikos (house) + logy (study of)
“Language is our house of being,” Heidegger [81]
Melocactus grows a protective cupcake house for reproduction, Arid House
See also Mimicry
Hula hoe
Ben hoeing fine grass in the path after rain reveals its name 4.22.16
“is it related to the hula hoop?” Joseph 4.16.16
and then there’s “Puya, like hula,” Anthony 4.29.16
Humboldt lily
“19th century madam in Wild West, 21st century marijuana brand,” Aife 5.25.16
Humility
“the garden corrects you,” Chris 3.4.16
why when I ask someone with a badge if they know something do they say “not really” then end up telling me lots of things? visitor 2.21.16
“I feel miniaturized, under the gaze of a giant microscope,” Ramsay 3.25.16
See also Plant people
Humongous
portmanteau word, huge and monstrous; aspiration for this index, poet
leaves, I love them, Deepa
See also Big; Winners
Hunter/hunted
“an animal looks at me, I look at it; spins the circles/cycles of life that attach to one another, food circles, water cycles, you can cycle in 100 directions,” Rebecca 1.15.16
ceanothus is a fire follower, Ben
“I like, on a nonverbal level, to see who is out and about; I’m a birdwatcher with a life list,” Ann 1.29.16
possum carcass behind a rock in the rose garden, Susan 1.8.16
species shifting, animals moving faster than plants, communities disassembling
visitors are good, the more the merrier, but they have a negative impact on the collection, careful what you wish for
common garters hunt tadpoles in the Japanese pool, See also Photo op; Snakes in the garden
King snakes, so called because they eat other snakes, including rattlers
used to be a fund to pay for gardeners to go on plant collection trips; really hard to get collection permits now, Eric 7.22.16
Hyperreality
See Garden maps
Hypersensitivity
of unorthodox (recalcitrant) seeds, to low temperatures, cannot be stored
See also Threatened/take feelings home
Ideology
“For the advocates of green capitalism, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine a non-market, low-carbon economy,” Paul Mason [82]
Imagination
“think wildly”; artists embedded in M.I.T. labs, NYT 3.6.16
pretend your body is a tentacle, Ramsay 4.10.16
thimbleberry: “drink this tea when your sewing isn’t going well,” [83] Aife 5.25.16
funnel flower (Blooma distilae) helps distill complex ideas in simple language, [84] 5.25.16
magical thinking and healing, See Doctrine of signatures
“The only realism in art is of the imagination. It is only thus that the work escapes plagiarism after nature and becomes a creation,” William Carlos Williams [85]
Impermanence
evident from our weekly visits
what everything comes down to
Impressed
gardener is, by Chinese fan palm’s “keep goingness,” Bed 240
gardener is, by bird cage fungus’s use of insects to disperse itself, same mechanism as plants use
See also Nasty; Surprise
Indexer
as curator of people’s experience of book/garden, poets
the more you bring into the poem, the more inclusive and real it seems, Patricia 2.19.16
Indigo
vats of indigo in Japan kept alive hundreds of years, See also Universal
Infestation zone
supplies pests to rest of garden
Inflorescence
dense word (no wonder it’s preferred), origin is from late L. “come into flower”; definition includes complete flowerhead: stalk, stems, bracts, and flowers
Inner sanctum
of pack rat, the gardener finds a room lined in fur, finely chewed aromatic plant material to keep the bugs away, See also Nests; Pathogen
Insider
signs up quickly for a coveted shift at the hospitality desk
“I could tell you things about the plants that would break your heart,” Malcolm 6.13.16
Insomnia
birds that never sleep
See also Night; Night bloomers
Intimacy
“there’s something intimate about cacti,” Basil 5.20.16
visitor wants to shrink down and explore the ridges and folds of the cactus
"What is the language of here? What is the language nurtured here?" a rawlings [86]
See also Wishes
Invasives
best competitor, native trees, Ben 3.4.16
by definition, whose? See also Nobility
shifting upslope, as climate warms, faster than natives
Irony
only section without clay soil is where the plants need it (Mexico/Central America)
only poem on the poetry walk was not read by the poets 6.22.16
none of the visitors ever talk to us about plants, poets
most popular place in this prestigious botanical museum collection is under the uncollected native oaks at the Oak Knoll
plants are coaxed into growing but are not allowed at any age to reproduce by themselves
See also Failure; Rare; Walks
Irrigation
irritation, source of, local
staff repairs all irrigation pipeline under 2 inches
See also Gifts, fair relations/of a brass twirly
I want to be a . . . here
caterpillar gatherer (and raise them at home), Sarab 4.10.16
audio ecologist, anon 5.25.16
botanist responsible for the succulents and cacti, Maartje 4.17.16
collector of sound—I don’t know why a bird’s pitch is high, what the job of each sound is—and identifier of smells, including smell of soil, smell of cold air, A 4.10.16
composer of tone poems that I play for the plants, birds, insects, residents, anon 4.10.16
iconoclast: “the only way to love your job is to have a hobby you hate even more,” Isaac, boy of destiny 4.10.16
mapper of scents, anon 4.10.16
meditation leader, using all the senses—sounds of birds, smells of plants, taste of chocolate or mint leaf, Jane 6.22.16
mixologist/poet/DJ, outlaw rock ‘n’ roll plant organizer, Sarah 4.10.16
on-site caretaker, anon 4.10.16
organizer of re-establishing native flora and fauna, anon 4.10.16
plant dreamer, plant napper, Jo 4.17.16
plant renamer—I would rename all the plants according to my own interests, predominantly their tactile qualities, Amanda 3.14.16
professional sleeper, anon 4.10.16
reader to the plants, primarily poetry, but I would consider installments of a novel for a thick-trunked tree,” Sue 5.25.16 See also Fashion/[as plant reader]
storyteller: improvising with a group walking through the garden, drawing for inspiration on plants, labels, countries, Anita 6.22.16
witness: sit at an intersection of paths (with a little chair and desk) and write down my thoughts, observations, and the comments of people passing by, Linda 4.10.16
I want to construct . . .
a butterfly garden, with specific plants to attract specific butterflies, Sarab 4.10.16
a hole where time doesn’t exist, and 19 feels as free as 25 or 50—an eternity of hedonism in one hole
compost pile—to see the ugly too, Michael 4.17.16
ecosystems in the deepest part of the pond, most hidden part of the bushes, Jake 4.10.16
vertical garden, Isaac, boy of destiny 4.10.16
mansions of dreams of light and perfume, anon 4.10.16
something ephemeral, transparent, JCR 4.10.16
tiny secret glades where only children and other small beings can fit, then I’d serve them tea and tart green fruits, anon 4.10.16
microscope stands and binocular stations, Christine 4.17.16
“tea tables,” Jo 4.17.16
small cameras in plexiglass tubes to observe roots, fungus, microbes, Christine 4.17.16
“ways to make the garden easier to access for handicapped individuals, with guides to facilitate walks who understand their limitations,” anon 5.25.16
“a safe, quiet place to nap under the trees,” Michael 5.25.16
I want to teach you . . .
all of nature vibrates with chi or prana and has its own melody, Barbara 6.22.16
beauty here has been achieved by hard labor—a labor of love, anon 4.10.16
the connections among rock, liquid, animal, flower, mind—macro- and microscopically, anon 4.10.16
do no harm, be kind to bees, drive less, everything doesn’t have to be perfect, things die, Michael 4.17.16
to enquire about people’s individual interests, encourage interaction, observe and share, anon 5.25.16
humility and enthusiasm, anon 4.10.16
to pay attention to your visceral reaction to what you see—pretend your body is a tentacle, Ramsay 4.10.16
Japanese snowbell, styrax
See Arrow bamboo, Bed 216
Jar
organizes view, See also Dominionistic; Undeveloped areas
Jellybean Yellow
year-round color off the deck of the Julia Morgan building, bright weddings
Jelly palm
cherry-size fruit tastes of pineapple, squirrels know and don’t share, Bed 250A
“should be a crop food; it is in Brazil,” Michael 5.31.16
Jobs
“insecurity guard: help visitors get up the courage to plant something even if it might die,” Michael 5.25.16 See also Death
“curate plants based on conceptual themes rather than functional needs,” art student 3.14.16 See also Names
maintain moisture level for moss and ferns, Prima 3.14.16
“sit on the sheltered benches and smile when people come by,” Lynn 3.14.16
elemental coordinator who shows the track of energy; plants performer, dancer who feels the energies inside the plants and expresses them, so breath in the landscape can be shared (cf. artist Nils-Udo), Nuola 3.14.16
a monthly media curator of art, films, poetry around humans’ relationship with nature; first topic: how real is a manufactured garden? anon 4.10.16
owl watcher 4.10.16
dramaturge 4.10.16
See also Dirty finger jobs; I want to be a . . . here
Kicker
what works for the garden and what doesn’t (in other words, don’t bring your problems here), volunteers gatekeeper
“We kicked some serious butt together, Chris” Anthony 9.8.16
Kitsch
language that’s crying at a funeral, not showing me anything, poet
“garden variety”
Knit
after the giant landslide, a rotational slump 30 feet below ground, we planted heavily to knit roots together, Eric 7.22.16
Knowledge
“Everyone knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is willing to move,” Søren Kierkegaard [87]
“What sort of sin is that, wanting to be like God and to know good and evil?” Ernst Bloch [88]
See also Authority; Gaps; Gifts, fair relations/It’s always by; Names; Unknown
Known
plants in a living collection by definition don’t always live, may even go extinct, Chris 6.17.16
Koreanspice viburnum
cloying as Easter, upturning leaf margins dead or coppered, Bed 170A
Labels
“three more and it’d be a memorial,” Amanda 3.14.16
See also Latin; Poison oak; Words
Lactation
milk for tea spilt in/sours bag, poet
“When I say ‘trees suckle their children,’ everyone knows immediately what I mean,” Peter Wohlleben [89]
See also Dairy farm
Language
a new name means more knowledge, Chris 12.16.15
and birding: if you don’t have a name, it’s a tree full of birds, poet 3.25.16
“is an emergent phenomenon . . . a surreality,” Andrew Joron [90]
galleries in tree trunk look like language or code, Isabella 2.21.16
“language and writing are of value in the human world primarily because in other forms, they are implicit in a world very much larger and older than that,” Robert Bringhurst [91]
tree conversations via pheromones wafting on the wind coded with messages, Robin Wall Kimmerer [92
what’s a word compared to thriving? poet 12.16.15
“Does it need to be an act composed by a human entity? Does it need to occur with a certain kind of material, on a certain material, within a certain time frame?” a rawlings [93]
See also Knowledge; Talking to plants; Words
Lapse
“I came here 30 years ago and have not returned until this poetry walk. We’d picnic on the lawn and read each other poems and short stories,” Cecilia 4.17.16
Late
newts are, were last year also, people are worried
Latin
lasting authority of, Greek to many visitors
Laurel (Laurus nobilis)
used for crowns and where “poet laureate” originates
Daphne (Gr for laurel) asked her father, the river god, to save her from Apollo so he turned her into a laurel
Lazarus plants
plants once thought extinct but that have been found alive, Liz 4.10.16
Leaves
tulip tree leaf and “the missing point,” Pat 12.11.15
mittens, of sassafras, three distinct leaf patterns on one tree
fallen, left on path in the Asia section: “If the water is too pure it has no fish,” Jessica 11.5.15
leaf cutting on sphagnum multiplies into many carnivorous plants
See also Death; Food
Lesser goldfinch
many of them perched, waiting for quitting time
eat the Baker’s larkspur seeds; getting under netting
Liberation
“A minor sub-swarm of freethinking and over-educated ants originally from Yorba Linda, California, rally together and decide that they want to be the ones to walk in the sun, that they will take it upon themselves to attain a better life for freethinking ants everywhere, effective immediately,” Sawako Nakayasu [94] See also Swarm
Like
life-like, border-like, heart-like, like garden like mind
“looking up at the giant sequoia reminds me of that Georgia O’Keeffe painting,” Michael 6.22.16
pipevine flowers look like human fetuses so the plant was thought to aid in childbirth long ago; toxic leaf juice causes kidney failure, urinary tract cancer, See also Botanical confusion; Paradox
nontoxic butterflies developed to look like toxic pipevine swallowtails to trick predators
wet tongue of cobra lily attracts insects
See also Narcissism
Links and leads
www.thedevilsdictionary.com, Eric
www.radicaljoyforhardtimes, Tom
www.nytimes.com/books/first/t/thoreau-fruits.html
ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/02/08/climate-change-is-leaving-native-plants-behind/, Linda
www.ecologicalart.org/nilsudo.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Macfarlane_(writer)
Learning the Trees www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/33182
Their Lonely Betters, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJR-wyK2NQg
Linnaean classification
bar-coding of nature
“In the early modern world, European botany was one system of plant knowledge among many,” Schiebinger and Swan [95]
Litter
biodegradable, banana peel, Bed 500
cutting back on handouts
Little goes a long way
cochineal insects
strychnine
a small cactus with a single pale pink flower: “like a rough person singing a wonderful song,” Basil 5.20.16
Live chat
See Hic et nunc/in google.doc
Loitering
male newts hang around, sometimes for months, after the job
“Time slows down. All the way down to almost stopped and then a bird flies by and time spins in a circle. [It] holds me like a hand and sets me down beside the old buckeye tree,” Sue 5.25.16
Longing
Tantalus stood in a pool up to his chin in Hades beneath fruit-laden boughs and the water receded at each attempt to eat or drink
See also Belonging; Paradise/the longing
Losing track of, here
time, Maartje 4.17.16
boundaries we place on reality, so we can experience our bodies and feel our way through the world, opening our hearts, David 4.7.16
Loss
document loss and dying state; several plants about to go extinct, Chris 6.17.16
best madrone grove in the area cut and burned to create the Mexico/Central America section
“when you could get away with things like that,” Eric 7.22.16
“We prefer to seek out a paradise that we can continue to lose, time and again, so that our conversation about what we’ve lost, and about our feeling of unconditional want, can continue,” Inger Christensen [96]
Lost and found
papier-mâché cheetah in the parking lot
3 bantams in the redwood grove
new bridge reappears 5.12.16
Love
“Problem with vines is they love each other; every Tues we pull them apart,” Pam 5.31.16
retirement party tributes 6.24.16, 9.8.16
Lumpers
mass accessing: trees on banks, oaks in oak knoll
plants grade together, See also splitters
Lying
stellar jay mimics a hawk in the Asia section to scare the other birds away from food 2.21.16
accommodated by language: mock-, faux-, false-, pseudo-
See also Survival strategies
M&Ms
See Scat
Maddenia
under the giant valiantly blooming, Bed 245D, 3.25.16
Manzanita acrostic
Gallant
Nuanced
Arctostaphylos
Rooted
Labia
Jo, Bed 657, 4.17.16
Maple
slow death above the Japanese pool, unnoticed until Chris points it out, Bed 228, 7.2.16
across from it, a dwarf Siberian pine, dead, empathetic homesickness? Bed 221
See also Death; Trees
Marching band
big sound fills stadium of redwoods
escorts Paul and the rest of us from the redwood grove to the party in the Julia Morgan building
See also Garden director’s retirement
Mechanisms
Arid House heating and ventilation
and living cells: message from roots to open pores of leaf tips
pole pruner blade articulates 180 degrees
electrical storm triggers plants to “green up” and prepare for rain
Metaphors
and translation
and human projection: foothills, mouth of river, forest floor, See also House
gone amok; fetus-shaped flower of the toxic pipevine and the erroneous connection to aiding childbirth
Mickey Mouse
See Rinky-dink
Middle Kingdom
former name of Asia section, Elaine
Mimicry
“No matter how alienated we may become, we produce patterns that mirror the natural world,” Victoria Vesna [97]
and art: “Nature is a Haunted House/ but art a House that tries to be haunted,” Emily Dickinson, See also Ghosts; Lying
and poison: Eastern tiger swallowtail adapted to mimic the pipevine swallowtail
Mirror
“This garden is a reflection of what’s possible in the world . . . May we slow down to reflect,” Aidah 6.22.16
Missing, objects
where’s the new bridge? 2.13.16 See also Lost and found
Missing, people
who among the populations in the Bay Area is not here in this index or at the garden? poets, new director
See also Blackboys (missing name for Xanthorrthea); Original/“Every morning I wake up . . .”; Questions/does the way a poem is made; Questions/ “Please keep asking”
Missing, topics
Dacher Keltner’s research on awe
what goes on at the Jane Gray Research Greenhouse across the street
most of the gardeners’ knowledge, most of the garden’s public events
what lies just outside the boundary
natives propagators
Mitteny
leaves of sassafras the most mitteny of all, See also Leaves
Modern dance
fan palms are the dancers of the garden “as Loie Fuller showed us,” Michelle 3.4.16
See also Composition
Money
colonial botanical monopolies short-lived
somewhere, a woman, after a nice chat with a botanical garden director, wrote a check for $1 million
UC can’t receive it from just anyone
care is for the sake of the collection; monetary value—go to gift shop
and the mercantilist: “He removes the object from context and places it within the play of signifiers that characterize an exchange economy,” Susan Stewart [98]
and food deserts: answer is food sovereignty, says urban agriculture student, 5.31.16
wealth is an abundance of different greens, Jo 4.17.16
and low wages for hort staff: “hint, hint, new director,” Holly 9.8.16
See also Auction/annual; Value
Monkey puzzle trees
seeds planted in 1983, same caretaker until 2015, Beds 657, 658
gardeners puzzled over cause of withering
Moon cycles
affect subtle bodies in the soil
planting during the new moon
See also Old Farmer’s Almanac
Morse code
lichen, “a tactile language system,” Eleni
See also Language/galleries in tree; Staccatologue
Moss virus
coined term for when soft tissue of cactus folds outward like an anemone, Ella 4.10.16
See also Botanical confusion/Reindeer moss
Mother plants
cycle through; divide the rhizomes of the pitcher plants
See also Sad
Museums
as monuments to what is lost, John Berger [99]
living vs. . . . dead?
children’s—glad to have left them, too old for the constant tumult designed into the exhibits, new director 5.20.16
come on Monday, the atypical day, to not overburden the parking lot 6.17.16
Music
summer concerts in the redwood grove
of place, in concert: fan palms, bird song, water flowing
propagating venus flytrap, violin in the closet, Akiko 5.31.16
See also Time, here/our time is “atonal . . .”
Mystery vs. miracle
“Ein Gedi Botanical Garden, Israel, blazing, burning dry with an oasis quiet except for birdsong. Miracle [of] water in relentless heat. The meaning of miracle becomes real, a revelation of reality,” Shirley 5.25.16
See also Value/we give it in two ways
Names
birders speculate about why the yellow-rumped warbler is called myrtle warbler in their native Canada—too shy to say rump? 2.21.16
name plants after something from that time—Elvis plant, deCaprio flower—for a history lesson and a melancholy of the past, M 4.10.16
“common names for easier public recognition,” Barb
evocative names, not descriptive ones, Sarah 4.10.16
names in English help me to visualize the plant (baby tears, pretty face, baby blue eyes, mule ears), Ann 4.10.16
“give me the specific epithet every time” 3.15.16
hammer the presumptuous name and replace it with a humbler, unobtrusive one—turn down the volume either way 4.10.16
“not just a tree full of birds, but a Wilson’s warbler that just flew up from Mexico,” Sarah 2.21.16
engraved by unnamed volunteer
bandit intimidator: name of chipper machine
the poet unnames things, Octavio Paz
“the vein in which we decide to spell,” D. Leto 12.11.15
indigenous, takes place of colonial in the New Zealand section
indigenous, the oldest form, would be considerate to the plant because that name would have more to do with the plant than the namer,” Amanda 3.14.16
indigenous, “but keep the colonial to remember how things can be recontextualized and taken over,” Ella 4.10.16
“Kinnikinnick” by any other name would never do!” Ann 4.10.16
“I’d like to see a direct translation of the scientific Latin or Greek names” 4.10.16
“name plants by the name of their owners,” anon 3.14.16
dawn redwood, coined by San Francisco Chronicle science editor to sell his story of its “discovery,” ignoring the tree’s names in China—water fir, water larch
exercise on poets walk: “Attach words to things that show the slight gap between object and name” 4.17.16
“the name could change all the time,” art student 3.14.16
“do I have a name for the fungus that looks like vomit? I’ll get back to you on that. . . . Debbie, maybe?” Gideon 6.24.16
who named the dawn redwood? San Francisco Chronicle science editor—let’s call him Blogs, poet
See also Narratives/create; No/no names; Poetry/opening; Words
Narcissus
fall in love with innocence, whiteness, trance of, death pool 1.20.16
checking for likes
Narratives
create meaning: “a jar in Tennessee,” Meghan
of the palm, cycad, and fern: organize by leaf shape
can be obscured, in forgetting
one thing next to another is what we call the universe, Borges
turn toward, assert survival
Native
derived from Old French natif, innate, produced by birth; later native, born in bondage (probably before 1425)
trees, cornerstone for other native life, Ben 3.4.16
See also Invasives
Nasty
poison oak, birds drop it in here
stink at the edge of New Zealand section—blue flowers of the poisonous solanum there or Gideon just applied fish meal?
epilobium, spreads exponentially when seeds pop out on touch
anus of a deer thrown aside, after kill at garden boundary
“I don’t like my bare foot on the ground,” M 4.10.16
See also No/“wilderness—eeww”
Nation
January 5, national bird day
April, national poetry month
See Rules/Convention on Biodiversity
Nature
“all the elements interacting here,” Holly 3.4.16
art can’t match it, See Winners
the breath of a place—the hills, plants, earth, water, sun merged together; its resonant sounds; its energy field, which includes organisms’ growth patterns, Nuola 3.14.16
as a value concept, as opposed to “manmade,” slips into ideal
“could mean anything or everything here,” Isaac, boy of destiny 4.10.16
“naturally people are going to make machines, on and on until we can’t any more,” Norman Fischer [100]
battle cry of weeds, student
is that tree different from this folding table? poet 2.19.16
a coal-fired power plant is as much a part of nature as a tree, Steve 3.15.16
"is [life?] green, brown, flowering, overgrown, past its prime” 3.4.16
from Latin natura, birth, character, from nasci, be born, See also native
is everything, it’s grown out of the same matter, Jean 2.19.16
holds time for us, David 4.17.16
it “produces us, even as we (physically, conceptually, discursively) produce it,” Jeffrey Kastner [101]
on a spectrum, use the word interchangeably, Patricia 2.19.16
“the stillness of botanic life,” art student 3.14.16
“too distracting, so she moved her desk away from the window; then later moved it back,” John 1.29.16
“what do you mean by nature?” Shirley, in an email 1.31.16
PBS: fast-growing plants taking over city buildings, mating
“we hide the fact that it’s all manmade,” and “now everything is monetized at the university,” Paul 1.29.16
say instead “wild” or “preserved,” or “undisturbed”
we are starved for it; the only nonsynthetic thing at CVS is the cotton for wounds, Elizabeth 3.18.16
“I need to step backwards toward topography, earth, further into climate and gravity, then forward and in reverse as human nature, wish, affordance, commerce,” Todd 4.17.16
“a peaceful place that reflects the awesomeness & wonder of God,” Angela 3.18.16
nature is “paradise on earth—humans were evicted from paradise but permitted to make one here!” anon 5.25.16
“‘Non-human nature’ might be a more accurate phrase,” Jo 4.17.16
See also Questions/does the way a poem is made
Needle palm, porcupine palm
threatened in the wild, spines can’t protect it, Bed 250A
See also Endangered; Spines; Thorns
Nests
pack rats continue to build up nest around the inner sanctum unrelated to function; Eric has seen nests as high as 5 feet
Paul points to the hummingbird taking spiderwebs off the cactus for its nest
See also Palm skirts
New
Mahonia cross, bred in a backyard, hushes the plant sale crowd, See Auction/ annual
what new thing can I find here that I haven’t seen before—like, today, the shoots of spring green growth, like hands, on the conifers, Ramsay 3.25.16
and lost: last wild specimen of a cycad species identified in 1980s dynamited out of cliff in South Africa this year
not—it’s just a blue jay with yellow Puya pollen stuck to its forehead 4.15.16
propagated: “we make new plants from old plants; they want to spread—see how many seeds there are on the Juncus!” Kris 5.31.16
“Play frees and distracts humanity from the sphere of the sacred, without simply abolishing it. The use to which the sacred is returned is a special one that does not coincide with utilitarian consumption,” Giorgio Agamben [102]
“I’m going to keep calling myself ‘the new director’ for as long as I can” 9.8.16
Night
is for owling, batting, mothing, salamandering in this well-protected garden; wildlife gets a needed break from us humans, with our insatiable desire to explore and know, Ann 4.10.16
of floral parts
of frog song: after hours, garden becomes mystical, Paul 1.29.16
roaming foxes captured on the night camera
“In their sleep, kingbirds chuckle to themselves,” birder’s journal, 100 years ago, in Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Sarah
night flight calls of birds during migration, “sseeet”; big area of research, Sarah 3.25.16
poets place black socks on signs to make ready for animals, spot two deer on the way out 8.9.16
See also Bats
Night, and I want to . . .
sleep in the Tropical House, Deepa
“experience silence and see what silence and darkness draw out,” Jake 4.10.16
absorb the sounds of nature while sleeping on banana leaves, Ala 3.14.16
“come here on a full moon and see what leaves shimmer the most,” Kathryn 4.10.16
record sounds and sleep under stars 4.10.16
trace the light trails of the insects 4.10.16
sleep in a warm cocoon, Lynn 3.14.16
have a tea party in the night garden, a singalong related to plants and landscape, walking with lanterns, telling fairy stories and family stories, Nuola 3.14.16
“go on a questless vision—scared but living in an eternity of dark dark green” 4.10.16
“to be only in my skin in the skin of the dark in the dwelling of the garden,” Rebekah 6.22.16
See also Zookeeper
Night bloomers
evening primrose, Beds 375, 376, 378
night gladiolus, Bed 132
four o’clocks, Bed 604
poets, especially twilight
No
“I don’t want to live here. I’d rather live in my own garden,” John 1.29.16
no limericks—I mean they’re welcome, they just may not appear, Maria 1.26.16
no cleaning up the decomposing fungus that has taken a turn and become very fragrant but not in a good way, Gideon 6.24.16
newts are not reptiles
no money put into trees; bald cypress too closely planted, cover my eyes going past them, Chris 2.5.16
no names, no categories, no language = paradise
silkworms are entirely domesticated now
“fragrant herbs for opening orifices—not represented in this collection”
“wilderness—eeww. I’m urban. Yosemite? it’s a shopping mall with cliffs,” Shirley 1.29.16
“no nature means no humans,” M 4.10.16
“No Roots” on a plant label in cactus clinic means the plant will rot if watered, Basil 5.20.16
“no, they aren’t my babies; I love to create them and am excited to see them doing well, but at heart I’m really just an experimenter-scientist,” Kris 5.31.16
“no separation between figure and ground—we are each the ground to the other’s figure—between lichen and bark, between Dutchman’s pipevine and caterpillar,” Sue 5.25.16
no referring to that Penstemon hartwegii selection as Big Red, no making up names here
Noah’s Ark
model of representation without context
“save as much as we possibly can—the garden as Noah’s Ark,” Barb
save “nature species . . . but color and textures come next in line,” Erin 4.10.16
Nobility
and being anti-this and -that; allowed to carry extreme feelings
“I think I should get on my horse. Bye!” Ramsay 3.25.16
9 a.m. and Anthony is “surveying the realm” 4.15.16
“I only grow the single-petaled roses, like Rosa Phyllis Bide,” Anthony 4.29.16
“I am appalled by the idea of humans choosing one species to save over another. Why not save it all?” Jaime 4.10.16
“Humboldt Lily—a maven of the Wild, Wild, Cannabis West,” Jane 5.25.16
Nodes
knobby knuckles whence suckers sprout
Nolina
razor-sharp fronds; Eric shows us the scrapes up and down his forearms, Bed 369
Nomenclature
“a cage went in search of a bird,” Franz Kafka [103]
older name trumps newer one when two species are found to be the same
palm expert can change his mind from one visit to next
let “different groups of people change the names—artists, kids, indigenous people, shy people, dancers—have a workshop for that,” Nuola 3.14.16
“Phlomis” sounds like a comic buffoon, “Hechtia” a female villain; “Epilobium” a cross between classical music and human biology; “Cryptomeria” sinister, yet mysteriously benevolent
one forgives that the sign isn’t where it should be
See also Names; Nouns; Verbs
Nouns
doubling as verbs: landscaping, birding, rose, plant, fan
as symbols, e.g., iris: on an AIDS quilt, for a man who grew irises, and his friend remembering the poem “The Blue-Flag in the Bog” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Laura 3.18.16
a child’s first words are predominantly nouns [104]
Numbers
1 percent of seeds from a plant take
1 in 8 California native species shifted their range toward cooler terrain in last 100 years, Wolf et al. [105]
2 reasons posited for why Berkeley rattlers are more docile than Central Valley rattlers—Berkeley settled earlier and vicious rattlers eliminated, Berkeley climate a soothing influence 6.17.16
4 candidates for director, 2 fit
33 or more species of birds sighted in 2-hour garden walk, Sarah
40 native species of Ceanothus
100 years old, or too young for the rose collection, though Graham Thomas has been snuck in
346 volunteers at UCBG
474 trees in the redwood grove, counted for director on his retirement 6.22.16
4,000 years, greatest reported age of a giant sequoia
$5,000, goal of the annual plant sale auction
14,245 people employed at UCB
30,308 dead plants in the garden database; 21,983 living ones
$40,000 grant from Creative Work Fund
400K, total estimated number of known plants on planet
(“Of Being Numerous,” Oppen): leaves, blossoms, cells in bodies, microbes, grass, eggs of newts
so many plant tags here, how would you get a grip on them all? Patricia 2.19.16
See also Labels; Opening
Oak knoll
architecture
visited during my treatments, faded, makes me teary again
significance of acorn harvest for the Ohlones; they danced and men chanted the word for ‘acorn’ and then the word for ‘plenty,’ Malcolm Margolin [106]
under the oaks, Sue wonders if anyone eats acorns these days 6.22.16
Oaks
from Japan, neater than CA oaks, Bed 230
one mature native fallen into the creek; sunshine now reaching fuchsia-flowered gooseberry and California buckeye in Bed 35, and spiny redberry, California nutmeg, and Hearst’s ceanothus in Bed 11, 3.18.16
Oh, spiders
Old Farmer’s Almanac
225th anniversary edition
not found in the staff room
accessed online Sept. 7, found this prediction: “Trump Betrayed? Sept. 30 will go down as the day that ruins his presidency.”
LeftHandLady on Amazon gives book five stars: “I bought it to get the lunar cycle with the hopes my hair will grow faster”
weather as astrolog
Omnipotence
See Big; Winners
Once-bloomers
learn to love them, and deciduous plants, “not everything looks good all the time,” Michael 5.25.16
One-of-a-kind
and monstrose . . . no two recover from damage in the same way
See also Imagination
Oooh!
goes the visitor group in the Fern House as Corina turns back the leaf of Niphidium crassifolium to reveal a spore pattern as regular as a French parterre
let’s “take some of the edginess off of all these decisions we think we have to make—like, what is poetry for, or who's going to read it anyway . . . just have evidence that it exists and it's real, and applicable to life,” Myung Mi Kim [107]
Opening
“(i do not know what it is about you that closes / and opens; only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)” e.e. cummings [108]
“A sort of secret door-opening at those points where rough woodland met unkempt meadow,” Richard Hoggart [109]
Rafael unlocks about 500 doors on the Berkeley campus then drives up the hill and cleans the bathrooms beside our studio
“When your eyes are open, you see beauty in anything,” Agnes Martin
efforts to “daylight” parts of Strawberry creek in Berkeley
See also Fertility
Open studio
Fridays 11–2
fallen frond; “did the ants take it down?” child from the camp asks 8.5.16
three generations, all CAL educated, regale us with stories of eating camellia blossoms—one sibling though ate rocks, married a geologist—offer us chocolate bark 11.10.15
“a studio is a state of mind and not a physical location . . . What matters most to me is paying attention,” Ann Hamilton [110]
See also Attention; Big/omnipotent voice; Biotic Portal/“They want to . . .”; Hiding places/poets are up; Opens/Rafael unlocks; Questions/will the new director; Sounds/after rain; Swarming/ants in our; Teeth/squirrels
Opuntia robusta
cochineal insect harvested from plant and squished to make red dye for Skittles and Campari, See also Little goes a long way
Order
Civitates Orbis Terrarum (first atlas); Meghan compares index to
this is a this, that is a that, nailed it; it’s what we do: name, learn, catalog, buy, Patricia 2.19.16
origin replaced by classification, Susan Stewart [111]
“Nature stands over humans. In our great aquarium, it seems indifferent; I do not believe in God, you see,” Jaime 4.10.16
Original
Chochenyo/Huchiun band of Ohlone people here first
“Every day I wake up and I’m blessed to be in my original hometown. The original place my ancestors have always been, in the village of Huichin [Berkeley],” Corrina Gould [112]
Ostrich trees
Overheard
“I may accidentally spend a few $100s on plants” 4.29.16
snakes were found in the pipes pile 4.15.16
“he recently flowered, I enjoyed having him here; now I need to straighten him up and turn him” 5.31.16 See also Threatened
on the loudspeaker: “horticulturists please help herd the turkeys out of the garden,” Catherine 5.31.16
See also Crosswalk/talk
Orthodox
seeds that survive drying and/or freezing; for opposite See Recalcitrant
Outlaw
and Havahart traps; released outlaws beyond garden borders
“I want to be self-sufficient, but to get there in a selfless way,” Jonathan 5.31.16
Oxymorons
bunny-ear prickly pear
cobra lily
hairy beardtongue
spotted deadnettle
stinking cedar
sweet flag
sweet wormwood
Paeonia suffruticosa
one flower left, Bed 450, 3.25.16
Palm Palm skirts
for roof rats, squirrels, paper wasps that make nests like pale blue and yellow waves
“let them have shag,” Shirley 1.29.16
See also Nests
Papyrus
relationship of pith to pithy in ancient Egypt
Paradise
“just being,” Patricia 2.19.16
“The longing was part of it / because the truth was never part of it,” Inger Christensen [113]
“should not be sheltered,” Maartje 4.17.16
“A park where only beasts could stay, not men,” Hegel [114]
See also Fence around the garden/fails to keep out?
Paradox
newts eating their own eggs
research into plants that are extinct in the wild, trying to successfully grow plants that don’t have a home anymore, Holly 3.24.16
green is the hardest dye color to make from plants, Deepa 3.25.16
pruning: cut back to promote growth
Aristolochia (aka birthwort) means “best birth” though it’s highly toxic to humans
“To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us,” Rebecca Solnit [115]
See also Unknown
Parajubaea torallyi, mountain coconut
largest item in plant sale auction goes to Richard, who already has two of them; “I feel very good,” he says at the moment of winning it, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable admitting it—but yes, I’m at 10 on the scale of purchase pleasure right now” 4.29.16
See also Big; Collections; Plant sale
Parasites
“One big language parasites another, and a coup de main takes over the channels built up over generations,” Nicholas Ostler [116]
See also Gifts, fair relations; Pathogens
Parking lot
confusion around the ticket machines
original site of UCBG on campus became a parking lot and remained so until 2007
quickly fills up during plant sales, weddings, concerts
See also Anxiety
Past
a souvenir’s “function is to envelop the present within the past. Souvenirs are magical objects because of this transformation. . . . The place of origin must remain unavailable for desire to be generated. All souvenirs are souvenirs of nature, yet . . . [they] speak to the position of their owner in nature and not to themselves in nature,” Susan Stewart [117]
See also Cresting in cacti; Damask rose; Experience; Favorites; First memory of a garden; Gifts, fair relations; Lazarus plants; Teeth; Time; Views
Pathogens
Armillaria, on the oaks
canker fungi, on the rhodos
gophers, in the crops garden
Phytophthora, on the ericaceous plants
powdery mildew, on the vegetables
scale, on the corn
squirrels, in the crops garden
Verticillium, on the maples
See also Blackberries; Gifts, fair relations/separate the bays; Death
Penetrance
i.e., loving gorgeous barbed creatures in the Arid House that get under your skin, coined by Carol
Penstemon hartwegii Benth, Bed 375
loaded with flowers the shape and size of pen caps; affectionately called “big red” by garden staff 7.22.16
See also Hybrid vigor; Names/the name could change
Pests
poets approaching the gardeners pad and pen
See Pathogens
Phenologists
“I’m just an observer,” John 1.29.16
poets as
Phenotypic
as in expressing a variation according to place; the way goldfish are small in a small bowl, Holly 4.15.16
See also Pollinator perches
Phobias
killing something that I wanted to cherish 4.10.16
snakes falling from trees, Rena 4.10.16
snakes in the grass 4.10.16
insects—but as a young child, before it set in, I used to scoop up nests of earwigs in my bare hands, Linda 4.10.16
ticks, anything that attaches itself to my body, leeches, my body as a feeding ground, Alex 4.10.16
“sequestration away from nonhuman nature. I am afraid of human nature,” Jo 4.17.16
“spiderwebs on the path against my cheek,” Kathryn 4.10.16
“I dream about tsunamis, drowning, knowing my activities caused the seas to rise quickly and violently, and then I wake up and remember this is true,” Erin 4.10.16
“vanishing into nature,” Ella 4.10.16
“walking in the woods, thinking of animal eyes registering me,” Matt 4.10.16
See also Fear; Penetrance
Photo op
common garters coiled on lily pads, Chris [118]
Piggybacking
in courtship
in meetings
Pipette
to the tune of Barney’s “Please and Thank You” song
Pipevine swallowtail
and look alikes; other swallowtails adapting to look like pipevine swallowtails to trick predators into thinking they’re toxic
See also Lying; Metaphor
Place
“can only ever be personal . . . will always connect to somewhere in our autobiographies,” Tacita Dean [119]
and location: a pallette of color that comes up out of the landscape; Wissahickon schist is the color of Philadelphia, Mimi 2.19.16
is exotic when elsewhere, other; go to Adam Chodzko’s “Better Scenery, 2000”
“my generation have grown up in the industrial blight, and it’s not rustic woodside that we remember,” Smithson [120]
I fell asleep on a moss bed when I finally got to the island, poet
soft edges, senses open, lispy conversation between land and sea, Patricia 2.19.16
“marble floor is cooling the bottom of my feet as I walk, we all walk, toward the same direction, having the same destination, both in this life and the next. Some people are dressed in two pieces of white cloth and sandals revealing dry and cracked feet. Others are wearing traditional garments from their home countries. I am dressed in shirt and pants with no shoes on. I took them off to feel the marble,” Stephen 6.22.16
See also Borrowed views; Dominionistic/jar; Garden maps; Poetry/trust; Time
Plant consciousness
and sensitivity, Mimosa pudica (“the sensitive plant”) reacts to touch, overtouch it and it stops reacting
Plant names as titles for bodice rippers
Cupid’s Dart
Love Lies Bleeding
Love Nest Sundew
Love-in-a-Mist
Pinus Rigida
Pinus Rudis, Endlicher’s Pine
Silver Heart Ginger
Teff Ethiopian Lovegrass
Plant people
“these are plant people so they’re reasonable,” Bryan 4.28.16
their humility reminds poet of translators
Plants
See Acer maximowiczii; Adiatum sorus; Aristolochia; Blackboys; Paeonia suffruticosa; Palm skirts; Parajubaea torallyi; Poison oak/drug addled; Poke in the eye; Pollinator perches; Queen of hopeful; Queen of the Andes; Queen palm; Pronouns/fluid; Talking to plants; Woolly curls; Zauschneria; Zombie palms; Zone pushers
Plant sales
“the restless are getting natives,” Michael 4.17.16
“what are you buying?” “something to kill,” Michael 4.28.16
“goal for everything—sell,” propagator 6.8.16
See also Auction, annual; Gift shop; Natives; Parking lot
Plenty
“in this garden, millions of moments of nature even if the whole is not totally ‘nature,’” Kay 3.14.16
“‘There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in,’ says Graham Greene [in The Power and the Glory], which we might amend to include many moments, many doors, and many versions of a future,” Grant Hildebrand [121]
along the path by the creek; it has many prepositions for us—over and back over the water, beside the aroids on the steep bank, under the redwood trees, into dark shelter, through raindrop-filled branches of viburnum, up to the sunlit Asia pool and its band of newts
See also Effusion; Experience; Flood; Numbers; Oak knoll; Viburnum foetidum
Poetry
is the glue, Maria 1.26.16
potted plants in the Arid House are lyric poems
this index is epic
“Trust the place to form the voice,” Susan Howe [122]
the disorder/order relationship in nature and a poem, Ben 3.26.16 See also Strangler fig
index as renga (linked verse) with the header as the hokku (haiku)
its complexity is potential, needs reader to activate it
“What if there were worker brigades and we all decided on five different ways that we could bring poetry to some place, or to go into a situation and see what poetry is already there. Poetry is simply how you participate in language, and we all do that,” Myung Mi Kim [123]
opening for it here: scientific signs that admit not knowing
“The hatred of poetry is internal to the art . . . use the heat of that hatred to burn the actual off the virtual like fog,” Ben Lerner [124]
“What of a poet who does not know the proper names of native and non-native fauna and flora, who sees ‘a yellow flower by the creek’—not a Mimulus?” Harryette Mullen [125]
See also Ecopoetry; Famous couples; Profanation
Point of view
changed by witnessing nature here as a “very detailed, important echo system,” vowing in the future to “take care of even grass and small plants,” Ala 3.14.16
“Can we say: a mistake doesn’t only have a cause, it also has a ground? I.e., roughly: when someone makes a mistake, this can be fitted into what he knows aright,” Wittgenstein [126]
mistaking a hose for a snake 5.21.16
“What do you have to cling to as your body? This is all the more apparent when we look at it from the point of view of the elements; in the conjunction and dispersal of the elements, what elements can you definitely consider your own body?” Dogen [127]
See also Dispersal; Money/and the mercantilist; Narratives; New/not—it’s just a blue jay; Nobility; Overheard
Poison
and antidotes, horsetail to alleviate the burn of stinging nettles; serpent, also on staff of healing
“The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison,” Lewis Hyde [128]
word for poison in Danish is gift
See also Gifts, fair relations; Horsetails; Paradox; Snakes in the garden
Poison oak
drug-addled person ran with the lopped-off part of a hallucinogenic cactus through the poison oak and into arms of police
protecting Baker’s larkspur in the wild
oil on 200-year-old Native American baskets still causes rashes
Poke in the eye
“If you like the spikes without the pain—Beschorneria yuccoides, rather than agaves,” Anthony 4.29.16
to climb a hill that has no view
the towering dawn redwoods by the creek are younger than the poets
valuable research collection receives scant funding from university
See also Answers; Auction, annual; Xanthorrthea
Pollinator perches
for hummingbirds on the Puya—it’s a high-elevation Puya, and hummingbirds are bigger at high elevations and maybe need to conserve energy and perch while feeding; coastal Puya doesn’t have perches 4.15.16
Potential
knowing when to act: death (Chinese fan palm), life (Cheiridopsis pillansii): watch it, Meghan 2.5.16
kneading dough (Bachelard’s “primary paste,” Serres’ metaphor for knowledge, time and history)
reader of poetry is given a stimulus rather than a product
See also Analysis; Doubling back and over; Money/somewhere, a woman
Precipitation poem
“Raindrop
Drip
Splatter
Fall
Burble
Rush
Lap
Torrent
Missel (K’s favorite, meaning mist but still get wet)
Bionn eartaich
Pour
Plop
Dag
Gulching
Teem
Pissing
Blatter
Sleet
Volley,” Kimberlie 3.14.16
[rain image]
Preferences
“only the tall plants should exist, with the exception of tiny plants” 3.14.16
“the yellow rubbery mushrooms that grow in the wet shade” 3.14.16
“I prefer not preferring,” Jo 4.17.16
“I have to admit I like plants that do something nice for me [and] . . . I like plants that are being their very own selves. I am practicing no preferences,” Sue 5.25.16
“invasive species should be lauded for their capacity to invade both artificial and natural surfaces,” Prima 3.14.16
Preparations
for poetry walks: data cards, pens better than pencils, chocolate squares, legal size paper, clipboards, email list, business cards if we can locate them, find a place/plant (like turquoise-flowering Puya) that’s undeniably beautiful to stop and read notes on beauty (California wild rose is too subtle), poets
for repotting a thorny cactus: “how will I handle it, support it,” Basil 5.20.16
See also Oooh!/let’s “take some of the edginess off”; Paradox/“to calculate on the unforeseen”; Process; Walks
Privileges
“A view may uplift, but it is also far away, from milk, for example. Being down in is being part of and not separate from, grounded in the hubbub. So, is view a privilege? Of course. A selective privilege,” Jane 5.25.16
volunteer badge gets us a free ride on the shuttle, poets
permission to stay after hours to make the night video 8.9.16
chance to ask our collaborators, the gardeners, and visitors so many questions, poets
Process
“we always start with the most concrete demand,” Jean 2.19.16
where wild resides 1.26.15
“What is a frog before it is a frog? It looks like an orange-bellied knute, however it is spelled. It waits until we have all crossed the creek to find something on the water’s surface to eat. But I remember frogs from decades ago and wait,” Jane 5.25.16
See also Exerted flower parts, lot of; No/“no, they aren’t my babies”; Oaks/one mature native, fallen; Ostrich trees; Outlaw/“I want to be self-sufficient . . .”; Times, the; Transformation/“I have had my share . . .”
Profanation
off the paths in the beds: squirrel chase, bird mobbing, toddler on the loose
name plants by personality, Bryan
“Once profaned, that which was unavailable and separate loses its aura and is returned to use,” Giorgio Agamben [129]
See also Zookeeper
Promises
“I’ll come back to do bird walks,” Chris, on hearing how much he will be missed 6.17.16
not to record what might hurt another, poets
not to take more than our share of the docents’ closet, poets
to describe our project in one sentence, poets
“I’m not going far,” Chris at his retirement party
Pronouns
fluid; “today it’s a he” [Magnolia dealbata], Kris 5.31.16
Pronunciation
George Berkeley (pronounced “Barkley”), See also Questions
“Puya, like hula,” Anthony 4.29.16
song sparrow’s: one or two clear introductory phrases and then a jumbly warble, Sarah 2.19.15
See also Crosswalk/talk
Proto language
ah, OK, oooh, wow, yuck, ouch
words without syntax, “defective items”
“Fossils of one-word stage of language evolution—single word utterances that are for some reason not integrated into the larger combinatorial system,” Peter Macneilage [130]
“My habits range in age from a few days to several thousand years,” Bruno Latour [131]
Pruning
cut back to increase growth and fruitfulness . . . prunes?
See also Editing; Paradox; Tradition/“admire and acquire”
Pulchritudo
P. adhaerens = dependent beauty, P. vago = free beauty, says Kant, and Derrida questions why this recourse to a dead language, unless “to maintain the norms in the state of utmost rigidity, to shelter them in a hermetic vault,” Derrida [132]
See also Alienation/until seeing something beautiful; Eye-to-eye
Purchase pleasure
bears no relation to weeding, watering, maintenance
degree of depends on whether purchase is a thing or an experience
momentary, at time of purchase, versus afterglow happiness
dreaming of: “a wine palm would be a big high; no one gets rid of one during their lifetime,” Richard 4.29.16
fear of plant dying tempers it, but “you have to kill a few to grow a few,” Brian 4.29.16
See also Auction/annual; Gift shop; Greed; Money; Parajubaea torallyi, mountain coconut; Value
Puya
“flowers are Startrek from 80s. Don’t put your hands in there—sheep have gotten caught and never gotten out,” Anthony 4.29.16
“fucking stunning. I want to bite its thick meaty beauty!” Jo 4.17.16
Quarantine
from Italian quarantina “forty days,” See also Fasting
Queen of hopeful
“this sick palm, about the same, though I could almost say it’s looking better; if it grows out of this phase—it’s lost its single growing point and is all twisted—it’s really going to be fantastic,” Meghan 2.6.16
I want to be an idle bench-sitter here, part of the scenery, to show people how to slow down, Elizabeth 3.18.16
Queen of the Andes
takes 80–100 years to bloom then dies, Bed 655
See also Death; Showstopper
Queen palm, Bed 250A
how much is it worth? “negative thousands”; requires too much water, sheaths fall down point first, fruit stains concrete black, realtor 1.29.16
“now I remember, every year we went to South Carolina, pine and palm meadows, the sound and shadows,” Shirley 1.29.16
ants nesting in seeds interest researchers, Neotrop Entomol
See also Open studio/fallen frond
Questions
is it drought or the new normal?
how do we reconcile the fact that our lifestyle is not sustainable?
how to make smoke water, which should work better than ashes, to break the dormancy of baboon bulbs, Meghan, Mary, Pam 5.11.16
were we destined to hurl ourselves and the planet to doom? How small are our gestures—how far does their impact reach? Can we find peace with this death? Erin 4.10.16
are there rare plants that are not endangered?
why does the Julia Morgan building have high windows along one side, as if originally set into a bank? Steven 4.10.16
what is a garden without a propagation area? what is acting as a front for what? poet 5.31.16
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Berkeley, [133] See also Pronunciation
“Does the way a poem is made have any relation to the way the world makes itself?”poet, at launch of Biotic Portal, quoting Andrew Joron [134]
why does the Julia Morgan building have a suburban garden around it instead of part of the Mexico section?
will the new director stop by the docent meeting, the propagators meeting, the poets studio?
“Why, I mean really, is one plant different from another?” 5.13.16
“what does the fungus say about the passing of the past generation of annuals?” Christine 4.17.16
“what does a dingo do?” poets 6.17.16
will conservation work help the environment? staff 6.17.16
“Please keep asking questions,” Chris [135]
what does the bee see?
Rain
“gutters and drains, guys, come on,” Anthony, quoted by gardener 3.4.16
path-washing event
the elements, being cold and wet, scary, almost a phobia, visitor 4.17.16
See also Anxiety; Handwringing
Rare
a handful still kicking, See Endangered; Value
filmy ferns came all by themselves to the top of the waterfall, part of collection now, Corina
visitors telling us about plants they’ve noticed, poet
Superkabuto (name means marking on Samurai helmet) rarest plant at the auction, a “collector’s plant,” 4.28.16
See also Auction, annual
Ratios, percentages
50% mortality rate on rare plant purchases, “you have to kill a few to grow a few,” Brian 4.29.16
cut off half of each leaf of a cutting, to balance the loss of water to transpiration from too much leaf surface with the need for as much leaf surface as possible for photosynthesis, Pam, Mary 5.31.16
deficit was equal to half the budget for 13 years
1 gardener to 3 acres in Mexico/Central America; 1½ gardeners to 14 acres in California
Rattan (Calamus australis)
whence wicker furniture comes, Bed 1002 Green House 2
Reading
“In nature’s infinite book of secrecy/ A little I can read,” Shakespeare [136]
library, where we meet our collaborators, open to members
reading came first (tracks, weather, scat) then writing [137]
Reality
“the science of gardening and weeding is the study of reality and how it works,” Amanda Ackerman [138]
“movement . . . is,” not the thing that moves, Henri Bergson [139]
“We have never plunged into a homogenous and planetary flow arriving either from the future or from the depths of time. Modernism has never occurred,” Bruno Latour [140]
it’s not real if it isn’t paradoxical, poets
See also Change; Garden maps; Getting in on the game; Paradox; Times, the
Recalcitrant seeds
disperse
kicking out at the heels
“let my seeds go,” staff 3.4.16
“that’s sort of like your son,” one visitor to another 4.1.16
opposite is “orthodox,” reports Chris 5.13.16
Redwoods
redwood on the hill, away from the creek, how does it survive? Jason 1.26.16
giant sequoias planted in 1945
coastal redwoods planted in 1930s
dawn redwoods planted in 1980s
See also Big; Fear; Sleeping Beauty/metasequoia; Tallest; Winners
Religion
“When nature enters, religion has to leave,” Bruno Latour [141]
museums as temples: what is sacrificed? Giorgio Agamben [142]
See also Soul
Replication
"There cannot be sparse life on a planet. It would be as unstable as half of an animal," James Lovelock [143]
European nations stole stolen plants from one another
in pollen release from catkins of white mulberry, “the stamens act as catapults, releasing stored elastic energy [at] approximately 350 miles per hour, over half the speed of sound, making it the fastest known movement in the plant kingdom, Taylor, Card, House et al. [144]
“What is the felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird? It seems to incite, even to require, the act of replication,” Elaine Scarry [145]
Rescue
salamanders from a home pool, five a day, chest pumping works on some, Pat 3.18.16
Magnolia dealbata in propagation area: volunteer took four cuttings and layered near a stem tip, “not an ideal place for layering, or an ideal time of year for layering”
See also Threatened; Wound tissue
Restraint
birds’ reward, sweeter berries late winter, Dale 1.30.16
give plant plenty of time to declare itself dead (palm cut while Meghan was away: “It was time”) 2.6.15
Reverse
“every time I come across a snake (usually a rattler), I split in the opposite direction” 4.10.16 See also Phobias
“paths to keep,” Michael 4.17.16
See also Excitable/whenever any nerve
Rhizomes
and clones; clusters of poplar trees, See also Nodes
all ferns have them; tree ferns’ rhizomes grow straight up
of this project, tracked here 1.5.16
Rhododendron forsterianum
arching over path makes a portal, Bed 232
give goats milk and brandy for rhododendron poisoning
Rhododendron occidentale Myrt's Blush
a UC Botanical Garden selection; Myrt was well liked, people called her Pinky
Rhododendron protistum 𝗑 R. grande
nectar dump—shake flowers, drink, Jason 1.26.16
Rhododendron tsutsui
blood orange blossoms; visitors turn their backs to it looking at newts, Bed 229, 2.21.16
Rights
“I have the same right to write as a tree has to produce leaves,” Inger Christensen [146]
See also Missing, people
Rinky-dink
our idea of nature, “Mickey Mouse,” says Robert Smithson [147]
Roger Raiche
former garden director, named Ceanothus ‘Joan Mirov’ and Ceanothus thyrsiflorus ‘Kurt Zadnik’, after two friends of the garden
See also Famous couples
Rosarians
a certified rose expert visits Gideon; could go in multiple directions 6.25.16
I wrote a book about roses once, poet
See also Graham Thomas
Rules
animals, oblivious, See also Profanation
no growing plants from seed
wild collecting requires permits
Convention on Biodiversity—U.S. hasn’t signed it
See also Authority; Collections; Nomenclature/older name trumps
Sacrifice
dried bodies of insects who’ve fed on opuntia cactus used to make crimson dye, Bed 154
Sad
walking by the pitcher plants, sad buzzing of wasps, flies, Catherine 5.31.16
Sassy
and skulky—Bewick’s wren, long tail cocked up
Save
signage, to remember how species were, Prima 3.14.16
“things that produce oxygen but not too much pollen,” art student 3.14.16
“places of refuge, of inhabitation (trees: oaks, buckeyes), Jo 4.17.16
“the oak trees,” Lynn 3.14.16
See also Overheard/“he recently flowered . . .”; Noah’s Ark; Rescue; Theft
Scale
“tall plants put me in my place,” Eric 3.4.16
“My bias is for tall plants. I want to feel small here. I want nature to overpower me,” Deshara 4.10.16
“I feel miniaturized, under the gaze of a giant microscope,” Ramsay 3.25.16
“tiny plants are more important; if there were only tall trees, we’d have nothing to look at!” Amanda 3.14.16
“tiny reminds us we are stewards,” Ramsay 4.10.16
“tiny plants compel you to stoop; tiny grasses (weeds!) sprout, flower and seed (and spread)—and tiny sempervirens . . . ,” Becky
See also Big; Humongous
Scape
a long leafless flower stalk coming directly from the root
e-
land-
moon-
See also Verb
Scat
and seeds; to scatter
a bunch of M&Ms in anus tossed away from rest of carcass, See Deer/kill, on the boundary
Scripts
originating in material world: tortoiseshell cracks, grass, bones, twigs
of worms on tree stump
“Could an arctic tern be considered a travel writer if her flight patterns are engaged as communicative material?” a rawlings [148]
“The signature of a palm is its striped light,” Elaine Scarry [149]
Seasons
weddings, limited parking, roses signal
as basis for plant names, so they change all the time, Nuola 3.14.16
“The basis of art is change in the universe,” Basho [150]
See also Moon cycles; Mother plants; Museums/children’s—glad to have left them; Music/summer concerts; Strawberry Creek/“If she were to release everything in her . . .”; Transformations
Secrets
“The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas, are specifically addressed to man,” John Berger [151]
“Plants can’t tell me how they want their end of life to go,” Meghan 2.5.16
madder: roots contain alizarin, a rich red dye, Bed 425
See also Overheard; Money/somewhere, a woman; Paradise/“We prefer . . .”
Seduction
methods of: color, red for birds and butterflies; scent, promise of nectar or dead meat; heat, constant temp some beetles like for mating; patterns, female bees, flying insects; deception, look like nectar-loaded flowers; landing strips of petals for lost insects; karate, anthers on a lily flip up and knock insect on back
Seeds
bounty of one-time bloomers; Puya produced millions of seeds, 2015
sparrows jump around for them on floor of rose garden
“Nothing can evolve out of matter which is not therein already contained,” Sri Aurobindo [152]
cultural artifacts, easily stolen
if there were boxes (with paper) throughout the garden to accept reflections from visitors, they could become seeds for poems, ideas, actions 5.25.16
“When a Bird despairs the Gift of a Seed,” D. Leto 12.11.15
“lot of work to propagate from, seedlings very vulnerable, but the beautiful stem pattern differences among the Amorphophalis can only come from seeds,” Kris 5.3.1.16
See also Anemochore; Fashion/hand-tailored seed bags; Nasty/epilobium; Recalcitrant seeds; Theft/a place to
Self-regulation
no evidence of this in collection, poets
sunshine brings a burst of visitors, who say they long for rain, but when it starts to rain they disappear, kiosk staff 2.19.16
trees shading themselves out
See also Lying
Senior Prince
aka the former director
new common name for titan arum, Fern House
See also Garden director’s retirement
Sequoia
without local lore, lost with indigenous people of CA, Bed 245D
named after Sequoyah, son of a Tsalagi (Cherokee) chief’s daughter who invented the Cherokee alphabet, 1770–1843 [153]
Sex
and paradise, Mexico/Central America section: “when you say sex, sex is everything,” Shunryo Suzuki Roshi [154]
and beauty, desire to photograph (replicate) or purchase; big and rare
“As cool as the pale wet leaves of lily-of-the-valley / She lay beside me in the dawn,” Ezra Pound [155]
flies doing it on the bench 6.17.16
flowers and courtship
See also Garden/is a department store; Gift shop; Flowers
Shaggy-bark manzanita
Spanish for “little apple,” Bed 216
Shame
wear a napkin on the head to hide from God feasting on the ortolan bunting that’s been drowned alive in cognac
See also Tradition/“admire and acquire”
Shamrock pea
creeping, faster than the system can catch up with it, away from its name toward Keep to the Path, Bed 216
Shelter
of leaves
on 2½ sides, is perfect for most of us
See also Fence around the garden; Privileges; Understanding
Shoot
easy ones real quick, Saxon 1.22.16
into sun, Dave 3.22.15
Showstopper
the blooming of the Puya (Queen of the Andes) at 24 yrs old
See also Death
Shuttle
hill line, from Mining Circle: pull the cord to stop or annoy the driver
Signs
“The contemporary artist can be seen as a journalist (the word comes from journey) who reflects on the world and creates new markers and signs,” Francesco Bonami [156]
Silence
“Save it, the pure sound of nature,” Ala 3.14.16
Simplicity
“Beauty is that state in which the mind has abandoned the center of self in the passion of simplicity. Simplicity has no end,” Krishnamurti [157]
“Time is inconsequential; it ebbs and flows according to our ability to let go,” anon 5.25.16
“To turn, turn will be our delight, / Till by turning, turning we come 'round right” Joseph Brackett [158]
See also Beauty; Eternity
Sky
“We can get just about anything flying over,” Sarah 2.21.16
See also Acer maximowiczii; Airflow; Belonging; Favorites/piece of language; First memory of a garden; Floating; Views/“The leaves give me cover . . .”
Sleeping beauty
Metasequoia fossils, thought to be extinct for 65 million years, are properly reclassified in Japan and 3 years later a forester discovers a small stand of them in SW China
See also Stasis
Slugs
native, prefer native plants, See Baker’s larkspur
Smells
personal catalog of: different species of ceanothus, some more powdery or sweet, and I’m asking what does this remind me of, Ann 4.10.16
of a single Sombreuil rose overwhelmed the house and had to be removed, poet 5.13.16
and rose breeding; gave up scent for form
of a propagation house, “green smell with a little bit of mold,” Kris 5.31.16
“the hybrid tea rose has a stronger scent than the tea rose,” Janis 6.17.16
“I love plants with fragrance, esp when you can smell them but don’t know where they are,” Michael 6.22.16
See also Taste of scents
Snakes in the garden
gopher snake lounging in the path in CA section, poet 6.17.16
Berkeley rattlesnakes are more docile than those in the Central Valley according to Paul
snake hides its head only, like a two-year old covering her face and thinking she’s hidden? poets 6.22.16
nine species found in the garden, no bites in the past 19 years
Willy leapt over the rattlesnake and trapped herself in the back of the greenhouse
See also Camouflage; Hunter/hunted; Overheard; Phobias; Photo op; Reverse
Soul
“What use is it to save your soul, if you forfeit the world? Do you by any chance have another earth to go to?” Latour [159]
Sounds
“‘surround-sound’ nature,” Barb 3.12.16
after rain, rushing water heard at the studio, oak knoll, main path near Africa Hill 3.16.16
“the breath of the hills, plants, earth, water, sun merge together/the resonant sounds,” Nuola 3.14.16
“The poem—a prolonged hesitation between sound and sense,” Paul Valery [160]
“Terms for small objects tend to have a vowel with a higher spectral center of gravity than terms for large objects”; compare the sound of baby and huge, Peter Macneilage [161]
“I would like to come to the garden at night, have a drink and record some ambient audio,” art student 3.14.16
“if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, what about if it is the last one?” Michael 6.22.16
“I’d like to crouch near the path . . . and listen close to the groans and grunts, and silk unfurling. I’d like to zip up into a treetop and do more listening to what might crawl along branches,” Rebekah 6.22.16
See also Autumnal recrudescence; Baby; Bouncing balls; Crosswalk/talk; Gifts, fair relations/of a brass twirly; Lying; Night/flight calls; Night, and I want to . . . ; Queen palm/now I remember; Questions/if a tree falls; Silence; Tails; Yes; Youth
Spanish moss
growing on the trumpet tree; in the bromeliad family, which includes pineapples, Bed 1002 Green House 2
See also Botanical confusion
Specimens
and immortality: dried pressed substitutes living when necessary, See also herbarium sheets
Spines
detach easily in cacti (compare spineless to detached)
See also Thorns; Zombie palms
Spiral aloe
rotting in the rain 3.6.16
Splitters
too much variation, they split, See also Lumpers
Spreads easily
seeds, bacteria, words like “good,” “bad,” “worst”
Staccatologue
lichen branch, word coined in relationship, Eleni 11.2.15
Stacking and stashing
of deer parts, by mountain lions, in parking area used by staff, in redwood grove 6.17.16
nut husks under the jelly palm, in holes in trees
See also Deer/kill on the boundary
Stains
vs. dyes: stains produced by beets and cabbage sit on surface of fiber; dyes combine with fiber and when they fade, they remain true, Deepa 3.24.16
Stasis
morphological; modern Metasequoia is identical with its late Cretaceous ancestors from 65 million years ago
nature as scenery, language as tool, poet 5.25.16
See also Victorian stasis
Stewardship
daughter of the forest, introduced herself
Friends of Five Creeks
rare in a botanical garden but evident in relation to all the native trees on site, especially the oak knoll, poets
grandmother did all the work in the garden, grandfather taught me to notice the differences in the leaves, Kris 5.31.16
Stickiness
of the sticky monkey flower’s leaves
St Johnswort, Bed 404
little holes of leaves thought to look like pores of skin, once used to heal skin ailments; used now to ease depression
See also Doctrine of signatures; Imagination; Sad
Stomata
from Gr. stoma = mouth: pores of the leaf tips opening during rain, See also Mechanisms
Stowaways
UCBG ants unwittingly transported in backpack and released in San Francisco 3.15.16
rare filmy ferns presented themselves from out of nowhere at the top of the waterfall, part of collection now
See also Tradition/“admire and acquire”
Strangler fig
grows on host tree in dark forests where competition for light is intense; comparing poetry to nature, Ben 3.26.16
Strawberry Canyon
hyenas last howled here 2014 when funding stopped
See also Borrowed views; Deer/kill on the boundary; Lost and found; Nasty/poison oak, birds drop it; Night/roaming foxes; Original; Strawberry Creek; Swarming/ladybugs come down the canyon; Systems/newts come down hill; Time, here/you could hear the coyotes calling; Unknown/will UC bring in goats; Winter Creek; Undeveloped areas/e.g., the Snowberry Creek ravine
Strawberry Creek
along Hayward Fault
spine of investigation
local watershed
“if she were to release everything in her like a river—isn’t living the tension between container and force?” Barbara Tomash [162]
enters bay behind Sea Breeze Market & Deli
See also Anxiety; Bad; Biotic Portal at Strawberry Creek; Creek collection plants; Death/fast; Gifts, fair relations/peril; Undeveloped areas; Washingtonia filifera
Strychnine
in coffee, cocoa, vanilla, annatto; kept off display
See also Hiding places; Little goes a long way; Poison
Stumps
after days of heavy machinery noise, we inspect the stumps, poets 3.24.16
and fungus, growing on the ash tree stump
Subjectivity
names for colors are subjective, Mimi 2.19.16
See also Point of view
Subtlety
we don’t say always; we say it all depends, Holly 3.25.16
two feathers distinguish the Rufous from the Allen’s hummingbird
Success
“A work of art is successful when there is a hint of perfection present—at the slightest hint . . . the work is alive,” Agnes Martin [163]
to care for neglected plants in the propagation area until they are restored and can be sold in the shop, Kris 5.31.16
Armillaria mushrooms were everywhere near stumps, mostly free of it now, Eric 7.22.16
See also Winners
Suckers
one or more for a choice, Jason
sending out, fractals of the whole; poplars, people
fallen oak, Eric is waiting to choose a leader, Bed 372
depending on, after the big tree felling: ginkgo won’t, loquat will
born every minute
Surprise
can’t identify the flowers in the men’s room, Chris 3.4.16
and sadness: Chris’s retirement announced at the annual plant auction 4.29.16
“Oh look, it’s a mouse. Oh, it’s a mouse inside a snake’s belly,” Meghan 6.17.16
See also Bathrooms
Survival of the fittest
not dominion but an organism’s ability to adapt in a continually changing environment, Elizabeth Grosz [164]
population of Pterostyrax hispidus suckers, all chopped but one, Bed 235
“we take cuttings from plants about to die; these guys all thought they were tough at one time,” Basil in cacti clinic 5.20.16
Survival strategies
blending in
standing out
playing dead
metabolize more slowly, like cacti, and don’t give up your moisture
wear gloves for weeding, to stop hands swelling up
why things are so small: you need many to have a few, Patricia 2.19.16
“tiny alpines, in a truncated growing season—just a few months—in harsh conditions grow to full size, flower, and set seed before it snows again. So mighty!” Becky
wear googly eyes on back of hat to scare off predators, Gideon 5.13.16
Swainson’s thrush
mistaken for a hermit thrush; “maybe if it were winter,” Chris 6.8.16
Swamp red currant
only the sound of water from across the main path, Bed 221, 7.22.16
Swarming
ladybugs come down the canyon each year, winter in clumps, outer pine-oak woodland
ants in our studio running up the door jam; spider waiting at the top 7.22.16
Symbiosis
which came first, the pipevine swallowtail or the pipevine?
Darwin’s orchid; Darwin predicted its pollinator co-evolved with this plant, 1002, Green House 2
See also Ant ferns; Answers/ants; Seduction
Symmetry
“Our human bodies predispose us to recognize symmetrical patterns,” Anne Whiston Spirn [165]
“I got a text from one of my employees, ‘The Smiths’ tree does not look good.’ Two days later, Mrs. Smith wrote to say “Our tree got hit by a car,” landscaper 4.17.16
Eric Schulz and Eric Siegel: same tattoo (a tree), same raven painting at home, and a connection to the Devil’s Dictionary—Siegel recommended it immediately to poets, turns out Schulz’s political, sarcastic relative (Ambrose Bierce) wrote it 9.14.16
See also Composition/incomplete; Oooh!
Synonyms
over 240,000 plant names are as yet unresolved as “accepted name or synonym,” BGCI [166]
Systems
constrain choice, Meghan 2.6.16
make something out of duration
“humans can’t deal without categories,” Paul 8.21.15
makeshift, to keep our status quo
newts come down hill of own free will?
stories, incidents, unspoken feelings: wanted to become an index
See also Failure/of hierarchies, of didactic systems
Tails
air through a hummingbird’s makes a “chip” sound
of local wood rats are cute—that is, without scales
See also Sassy
Talking to plants
typed on lantana leaves: “wait for me and witness / you, who wants everything now . . . ,” Kai Lossgott [167]
See also Time/looking; Witness
Tallest
world’s tallest tree: a coastal redwood at 379 feet [168]
Taste
color vs. native plants
“I hate grasses. When I was a master gardener in Florida, I took too many questions about zoysiagrass and bermudagrass,” Kris 5.31.16
in children (tasters) testing world with mouth
See also Candy; Jelly palm; Nobility/I only grow; Teeth; Wishes, to steal from garden
Taste of scents
black walnut = ice cream
melianthus = peanut butter
escallonia = maple syrup, curry
Teeth
human, first memory of a garden, eating camellia petals
human, eating calla lilies colored green with chalk, as peas
squirrels, eating calendula petals in crops garden, Jason
nature, "You never rest with nature, it's a hungry thing," Agnes Martin [169]
owls eat owls, Chris 3.18.16
squirrels, jelly palm fruit, by studio
wood rats, editing/girdling Orford cedars, Bed 312
“Landscapes could be classified in terms of how easily they can be nibbled, BITTEN,” Jean-Francois Lyotard [170]
See also Puya/“Fucking stunning. . .”; Toothwort
Temptation
what “nature” means in this garden, Michael 6.22.16
of orchids
Theft
helmet-shaped rock garden plant, in a motorcycle helmet (nabbed)
newt eggs, home-hatched and released in fog/witch’s circle, visitor 12.11.15
of seeds and plants—precious cultural artifacts—by the Europeans
“snapping lock off and stealing it—off-the-chart pleasure” 4.28.16
“The quotations in my works are like robbers lying in ambush on the highway to attack the passerby with weapons drawn and rob him of his conviction,” Walter Benjamin [171]
“a place to come steal seeds,” Paul 9.8.16
See also Wishes, to steal from garden
Theme parks
See Garden/is a department store; Rinky-dink
Thorns
and repetition, old vs. new, in the side vs. in the finger
plant damaged when removed, thorny subjects
See also Barbed; Spines; Zombie palms
Threatened
we are all eating each other, who said that? Jean
dead branches hanging directly over paths
take feelings home, feel them later, it’s safer, visitor 3.25.16
“timelessness, the present only” 4.10.16
exception: “Rosa Phyllis Bide is not a tree swallower,” Anthony 4.29.16
horticulture as a college program; people can get their own information now, Stew 4.29.16
Magnolia dealbata—a volunteer propagator (VP) took her chance to do some “manhandling—cut his wandering roots, straighten him up and turn him,” Kris 5.31.16
Thrill
See Deer/kill on the boundary; Excitable; Gifts, fair relations/peril; New/propagated; Times, the/“Pokémon Go . . .”
Time
a crumpled handkerchief, Michel Serres [172]
“as plenitude: heterogeneous, informal, and multi-faceted,” Adrian Heathfield [173]
“Looking at the plant releases my boundaries, so time is not needed for experience,” Mei-mei Berssenbrugge [174]
“slow process of conversation, can’t expedite it,” Deepa 6.16.17
and loss; happiness; See Purchase pleasure
“ten thousand years is manageable [to imagine]. You’ve got cave painting and CA flora starting about then,” Todd 7.20.16
“When you read / about Lizard you / may feel bliss. / That’s her deep / moment rubbing / off on you,” Sarah Rosenthal [175]
and waste, See Tradition
Time and space
“You can’t hold places and things still. What you can do is meet up with them, catch up with where another’s history has got to ‘now’,” Doreen Massey [176]
and meeting our selves from a year ago here in this index attempting connection with future reading others, poets
See also Upper hand/capitalism’s
Time, durational
“The return of the body and of prolonged time resists the dematerialized, agitated nature of the current era,” Nato Thompson [177]
See also Biotic Portal at Strawberry Creek
Time, here
minutes of meeting 2.6.16: We discussed the newts, distorted memories of their numbers from the time of the flood and scooping them out of the mud; the bays needing to be separated from the oaks, cos of SOD; the fantasy boardwalk out over an undeveloped area into the architecture of oaks; the first spotting this winter of an Allen’s hummingbird returning, etc.
“When is the best time to visit?” everyone asks the director after asking him which is his favorite plant
“remembering coming here [in 1997] and seeing Aloe polyphylla for the first time,” Michael 4.17.16
“spotted towhee in palm at 4 o’clock,” Chris 5.20.16
“visualize the future and the plants and myself and dream a nice dream,” Matt 4.10.16
expansive, grounded, present, extending indefinitely backwards and forwards, Jo 4.17.16
frame for change: sprouting, flowering, fading, reseeding, spreading 5.25.16
still, a kind of quiet and a form of growth, Jaime 4.10.16
still, but moving, everflowing, one, calm, live, steady, Deshara 4.10.16
cacti have a slower pace, are slower in everything they do; slow the caretaker down; “it’s very nice, the change in myself,” Basil 5.20.16
our time is “atonal to the perhaps more coordinated, in concert,” Chris 4.17.16
“gathering all the genomic data before plants disappear,” Chris 6.17.16
“you could hear the coyotes calling in mass in the canyon, maybe 50 of them, they must have been on a deer chase, a cacophony of excitement, then nothing,” Eric 7.22.16
Timeless
“I’m unaware of time here and I like that,” anon 5.25.16
Time of terror
Orlando
Baton Rouge; St. Paul; Dallas
Time, personal
“goodbye to youth and my tooth,” poet, quoting Gautam Tejas Ganeshan
Times, the
“We have never moved either forward or backward. We have always actively sorted out elements belonging to different times. We can still sort. It is this sorting that makes the times, not the times that make the sorting,” Bruno Latour [178]
“Pokémon Go tops Twitter’s daily users, sees more engagement than Facebook,” TechCrunch [179]
Tinctoria
in the name means dye potential
Titan arums
known as corpse flowers on BBC
one accession, never bloomed yet, named for the retiring director: ‘Paul Licht Senior Prince’ 6.22.16
Toad lily
green thumb and index finger ready to snap, Bed 170B
Tools
and body size
and postal rates
Fiskars Power-Stroke a fave: it’s light and has leverage
Toothwort
does not cure ailments of the teeth, but eat its leaves in salads; make a tasty condiment of its roots, Nursery
Ingredients
3 tbsp finely chopped toothwort root
2 tbsp sour cream
dash of pepper
pinch of cayenne
Instructions
combine ingredients in a mixing bowl and serve with vegetables or crackers [180]
See also Doctrine of signatures, Food
Tour topics
“humility/enthusiasm” 4.10.16
hard labor and love 4.10.16
“meaning of ‘native’; questions, arguments, debates welcomed,” Tony 4.17.16 See also Native
“history of place as human habitat,” Tony 4.17.16 See also Home
“the energizing pause; effortless connection” 4.17.16
“lie down in the path, smell the plants, get very very close,” Jo 4.17.16
“you are the most important living thing around you; treat yourself well,” Michael 5.25.16
Tradition
landscape as scenery, See also Expansion
“admire and acquire”—break off a piece and take it home, but only among friends, absolutely none of that allowed here, Kris 5.31.16
“no upward mobility because no one leaves UCBG jobs—so thank you, Chris,” Holly 9.8.16
cheese sandwiches and chocolate on a bench every Friday, poets
CalDay at the garden, free
poems composed to express feelings at retirement parties, See Wishes, for future
See also Narcissus; Nation; Open studio/three generations; Sacrifice
Transformation
most of the eggs gone 3.26.16
“I have had my share of long durational performances, and I know that when you are working this way, psychological and physical change takes place,” Marina Abramovic [181] See also Biotic Portal at Strawberry Creek
almost invisibly from fall to winter 12.1.15
Trees
Michael wants to build a treehouse high up in the canopy of the tallest tree here 6.22.16
See also Birch; Buckeye; Charisma/if one tree; Links and leads/Learning the Trees; Maple; Privileges; Stumps; Views
Tulips
See Excitable; Unknown
Uncollected
“rocks, birds, water flowing (though the course may be curated), the tops of the irrigation valves, and the benches and table,” Sue 5.25.16
“we visitors are uncollected, like the seeds that blow in from outside; or maybe the poets collected us,” Aife 5.25.16
Understanding
“I’m lying on a plaid blanket—brown and red and green plaid—on my back in the prairie behind Grandma’s house. She’s sitting on the blanket reading aloud to me, Rumpty Dudget’s Tower. The tall turkey foot grass surrounds us. Our blanket a depression in it. Above me I watch the flickering of the silver cottonwood leaves in the breeze, and I hear katydids. It’s Grandma who told me the names of things, and why—the turkey foot grass like a turkey’s foot, the katydids singing katydiddiddid. She tells me to watch the leaves twinkling,” Sue 5.25.16
Undeveloped areas
e.g., the Snowberry Creek ravine, too steep to garden, place of peril
“slovenly wilderness,” Wallace Stevens, See Jar
See also Unknown/will UC bring in goats
Undocumented
lacking data: dying Pterocarya on the middle road will have to go, UC Bee [182]
See also Documented
Uniforms
discontinued 20 to 25 years ago
Universal
every culture has plants with indigo; word travels from Portuguese, via Latin, from Greek, meaning “Indian dye”
the joy of giving: propagator brings in for her friends potted-up divisions of walking iris from her garden
See also Addition/must we always; Danger for poets; Garden/is like a department store; Habits; Upper hand; Winners
Unknown
“by whom? How can anyone know anything?” Paul 3.4.16
“money and weather,” Chris 8.21.15
“not knowing is most intimate,” Dogen
“The question is creative,” Mei-mei Berssenbrugge [183]
on arrival, what to think, because this isn’t Versailles, so what’s the story
“One can know everything about the tulip, exhaustively, except for what it is beautiful,” Derrida [184]
plant is dormant beside its name or a gardener has missed its death
“the poet might not know where we ‘all’ came from, the origin of life and the creation of the universe?” anon 5.13.16
treasure the unknown and not name all the flowers and plants, Maartje 4.17.16
“save the beauty of the unknown, save the wildness of this garden,” Maartje 4.17.16
what kind of poetry is this?
whether a botanical garden’s holding of rare plants constitutes meaningful conservation 6.17.16
what triggers redwood seeds to burst open and scatter?
where are the newts this year, Paul 1.15.16
how to propagate chestnut vine shoots: “we treated them like passionflower cuttings, which is what we usually propagate,” Pam, Mary 5.31.16
whether the new director will let us continue to design our sections, gardener 4.15.16
“humans living in built communities have constructed the category ‘nature’ to refer to what they do not totally possess or comprehend,” Prima 3.14.16
will UC bring goats in to clear the undeveloped acres, Eric 7.22.16
why ladybugs cluster in huge masses in the grasses in winter—body heat?
Unlabeled
and so stepped on, low-lying daisies in the grass 2.26.16
where the labels end, oak knoll, place of dreaming
without a label, it’s basically dead, Eric 7.22.16
Upheaval
fossils of fish in the canopies of old-growth redwoods
soil in Mexico/Central America is former ocean bottom
See also Knit; Fault
Upper hand
who always gets it, the weed?
capitalism’s, the dynamic of increasing speed: “annihilation of space by time,” Karl Marx [185]
See also Names; Nobility; Penetrance
Upright
when raking, no leaning in year after year, one gardener to another
Value
botanical research: highest value to university, See also Poke in the eye
missed boat—cycads overlooked at the spring plant sale
queen palm, “negative thousands,” John 1.29.16 See also Palms
and remorse—every time I look at that plant, I remember the $45 I bid at the auction, trying to push up the price, Chris 4.29.16
small, flat, plain plants are the ones people stand on
superunusuals are traded on eBay, Basil 4.28.16
we give it in two ways: “Deepening makes [matter] seem unfathomable, like a mystery. Elevation makes it appear to be an inexhaustible force, like a miracle,” Gaston Bachelard [186]
Stewart would trade “a shelf of books” for one poem 4.28.16 See also Economy
small potted aloe is worth about a cupcake, Michael 4.28.16
climate change, the price we are paying for being dominionistic, Erin 4.10.16
Matthew, Jason, and Gideon stop work to each hold a bantam found in the redwood grove, See also Feral/bantams
Vanishing
on the stalk, Arisaema cf. ringens, Bed 230, 7.22.16 See also Impermanence
Vault
where dead plant records are stored, See Dead
Veganism
“I want to convert the carnivorous plants to vegans; just kidding!” Isabella 2.21.16
Venus fly traps
bestseller on the plant deck; propagated by tissue culture by volunteers, priced to be available to the community, especially kids, “who love them” 5.31.16
Verbs
compare landscape (a static picture, scenery) to the word in Danish, which shows people shaping the land (land (people and place) + skabe, to shape), Anne Whiston Spirn [187]
See also Knit
Viburnum foetidum
red berry dots hang with white raindrops against white sky, Saxon 1.22.16, Bed 170A
Victorian stasis
palm and cycad garden: neat, well-labeled, broad collection, unseasonal
See also Stasis
Views
and “view-hogging monstrosities of houses that dominate the hillsides just because money can,” Cecelia 4.17.16 See also Dominion; Money
of San Francisco Bay framed by Mary Anne Friel’s installation at the water towers, or by the limbs of native oaks at Oak Knoll
as origin of pleasure, from index by Grant Hildebrand [188]: prospect, concept of, 22. See also prospect and refuge; prospect and refuge, 24-28; balance between, 46-47; exploration and, 52-53; gender differences and, 46-47; in nature, 21-23; peril and, 69, 71-72, 73-74, 79, 85-86; prospect to water and, 29-30
“The leaves give me cover but also allow me to gaze across rooftops, above backyard ball games from which I have been banished, and especially at my mother, directly below me, hanging clothes on the line . . . No one knows I am up in the air with birds and sky all around,” Jane 5.25.16
See also Benches; Point of view; Reality
Vitality of matter
“Why advocate for [it]? Because my hunch is that the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption,” Jane Bennett [189]
“If it’s that vigorous, it’s probably a hybrid,” Eric 7.22.16
Vulnerability
of the maple infested with fungal diseases above the Asia pond, “we are not in central China; [being here] wears a tree down” 6.17.16
with 1 individual left—need to get it propagated; 3 is perfect, then you have 2 if one dies, Eric 7.22.16
“I’m horrified if I lose a plant. I look over old lists of what died. I cannot let that happen again,” Eric 7.22.16
Walks
guided, for the purpose of spotting birds/metaphors/bugs/ferns contradictions/trees/time/butterflies/beauty/meetings
poets invite participants’ resistance 5.25.16
War and peace
columbine, now associated with mass shooting at high school 4.20.99
“Aeschylus rising from the depths of humanity; urn-flowered alum root; stopping blood flowing in an injury,” Elizabeth Anne 5.25.16
attempted coup d’état in Turkey 7.15.16 to 7.16.16
Washingtonia filifera
native but not as happy near the creek as the Mexican Washingtonia robusta
supposed to do with them? get a lounge chair, lie in it and look up into them, Shirley 1.29.16
Water drive
what gets newts in the water, See also Lactation
everyone always ends up at the water
Water fountain
tribute gift; life/death; sipping water next to our studio, who is Jean C. Wilson?
See also Benches; Open studio; Roger Raiche
Water shaming
the only thing that works when cost isn’t an issue, visiting gardener 2.26.16
Weather station
readings every 30 seconds, could be every 5
tuned in: farmers and gardeners See also Old Farmer’s Almanac
Webs
“connections forming to perpetuate life, then snap,” student 3.14.16
hummingbird collecting webs for nest from the cactus 4.1.16
Wedding advice
they’ll only be looking at you and up into the trees—the redwood grove is very churchy—so you don’t need anything else, Jonathan 8.5.16
Weeds
“I want to save the plants people think are weeds. Maybe just one blackberry,” Michael 6.22.16
Whisperers
See Arid House; Queen of hopeful; Talking to plants
Whitechapel
we want to go there; source of Documents of Contemporary Art, poets 1.5.16
Wild areas of garden
drawn to them, but not like wolves, poets
drawn to them, to be defamiliarized, Ramsay 3.25.16
“Weeds are wild but never grow in the wilderness,” Amanda Ackerman [190]
Wild collected
two-word poem describing the garden
with provenance makes it legit
= value, that pure plant DNA from the original site
Wild mock orange
dead leaves of oak caught in tinelike branches, Bed 18A
Wincings
henryi, parkeri: -i, the genitive or possessive case, old-country colonial language, poet
versus responsibility in the present, poet
Wind
yellow pollen in search of receptive female cones; old conifer
See also Anemochore; Music
Winners
best of collection displayed up front
creek: banks too steep to garden, Ben
red-tailed hawks
“redwoods, the big things always win,” Walter de Maria [191]
See also Auction, annual; Parajubaea torallyi, mountain coconut; Wedding advice
Winter creek
across the road, supports a grove of weeds: flowering plums
Wishes, for the future
to Chris, on his retirement, from Anthony, a poem 9.8.16:
"From the gloom of origins
To the splendor of today
from silent Crane's flight
to starry, starry night
may you contemplate man
in his mercurial span
and smile"
Wishes, to see in garden
a new thing, something I’ve never seen before—like today, that new, pale green spring growth, like hands, on the conifer, Ramsay 3.25.16
after flooding garden with black light, what glows at night, Michelle 3.4.16
an elevated boardwalk among the trunks of mature native oaks
longer hours for working people 4.10.16
Wishes, to steal from garden
passion fruit vine, Charlotte
Chinese herbal healing garden, Tom
flowers and herbs, Alexis
some mature palms and cycads, Anthony
the roses, Felix
railing on the bridge in the herb garden, Stepi 4.29.16
Witness
“‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory . . . Therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory,” Antonio Gramsci [192]
of flowers; reproductions of floral arrangements present at historic meetings between heads of countries and corporations [193]
See also I want to be a/witness
Woolly curls
Trichostema lanatum, that’s it! an anxiety of not knowing its name since I saw it, rosemarylike on steroids, in a canyon outside L.A., Sabrina 1.30.16
Wood rats
sick one on path; “even sickly it looked beautiful. Fur like a chinchilla, bunny rabbit ears. I’d take it home as a pet,” Eric 7.22.16
See also Cedar; Inner sanctum; Tails; Teeth
Words
interrupt the wordlessness of gardens
“A word is elegy to what it signifies,” Robert Hass [194]
for plants, likely to change later, so why invest anything in them, Jason 1.22.16
a question is permission to think, reach, craft your own experience, be just as lame as you feel, Jean 2.19.16
“we’re sitting here without labels, none of our organs are labelled,” Patricia 2.19.16
“my relationship to the word is anything but scientific . . . the word endows material substance, by setting the thing named apart from all else. Horse, then, unhorses what is not horse,” C. D. Wright [195]
World
garden as a microcosm of the world; our studio at its navel?
upside down: I get the real-fast-draining, nutrient-poor soil [in the cloud forest], Australia and California plants would kill for that, Eric 7.22.16
Wound tissue
forever wearing it, smooth, often lighter in color
of a Magnolia dealbata, taking advantage of it, after a leaf was removed, to try layering the stem: wrap it in wet sphagnum moss, keep airtight, Kris 5.31.16
See also Nature/we are starved
Wrong-feeling
Eryngium zabelii ‘Neptune’s Gold’, “somewhere between wrong and intriguing,” Anthony 4.29.16
to get used to hand-watering 16 hours week, 6 to 9 months a year, for years, until the irrigation system is upgraded
to want to nose around the Arid House work area rather than look at the cacti collection
genetic drift toward acclimatization, each generation of plant happier in its new country, and the nursery trade wanting a happy plant, wanting it happier and happier, Eric 7.22.16
Wrong ways
"Interaction of the unknown variables inside and outside the arbitrarily chosen limits of the system are probably going to generate misleading or outrightly wrong answers," R. Buckminster Fuller [196]
Xanthorrthea
sphericity; everything is circling something, who knows for what; the eye is round also; I’m living it, Sabrina 1.30.16
See also Blackboys
Xerophytic ferns
playing dead during drought, outside the Arid House
Yes
“let my seeds go”
to a ride with Anthony in the golf cart
to more public transportation to the garden
on hearing first spring bird singing, “there’s sound in the world!” Sarah
woman placing flower posy in vase in men’s bathroom: “they like their flowers too”
“I’m showing wedding planners the redwood grove and they look up—I can tell right away they are going to contract with us,” Jonathan 8.5.16
See also Surprise
Yoshino cherry
tippy buds reflected in water, Bed 228, 2.21.16
Youth
first baby newt spotting 2.19.16
scatter; pushing the buttons at the blue-light emergency station gets the response “UCPD”
See also Time
Z
“if it starts with a Z, maybe more people will swallow it,” Sue 5.25.16
Zauschneria
sorry, Prof Johann Baptista Josef Zauschner; plant now placed within genus Epilobium, See also California fuchsia
Zombie palms
Chris has seen one in Miami and speculates on the name; due to its spines along the trunk? 6.17.16
Zone busters
successful zone pushers, microclimatizers; frontiers people, unafraid of failure, different from hospitality folk
Zone pushers
getting a zone 10a plant to survive in zone 10b; “no one told my palm that,” John 1.29.16
Zookeeper
in Goodnight Gorilla, want to be that here, putting black felt hoods on the plant labels, covering up the words “Botanical Garden,” poet
Did it! 8.9.16
See also Profanation
Footnotes
1 Inger Christensen. 2001. Alphabet. Translated by Susanna Nied. New York: New Directions.
2 Adrian Heathfield. 2009. Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh. MIT Press.
3 Gertrude Stein. “An American and France.” In: David Abrams. Becoming Animal. New York: Pantheon Books. 131.
4 Jeffrey Kastner. “Introduction,” Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
5 Elaine Scarry. 1999. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press. 24.
6 Steven Connor. “Topologies: Michel Serres and the Shapes of Thought.” In: Jeffrey Kastner (ed.). Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
7 Alva Noë. Out of Our Heads. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 82.
8 David Hume. Natural History of Religion.
9 Bruno Latour. We Have Never Been Modern.
10 Corrina Gould. In: “Berkeley (Huchiun) votes for UNDRIP supporting Ohlone rights in Berkeley.” Ohlone tumblr.
11 Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto.
12 Virginia Woolf. 1927. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt Brace. 228.
13 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press. 152.
14 Kathleen Marie Higgins. “Whatever Happened to Beauty? A Response to Danto,” J Aesthetics Art Crit 54(3):281–4.
15 Irving Sandler. 1993. “Agnes Martin.” Art Monthly 169:5.
16 Walter de Maria. 1960. “On the Importance of Natural Disasters.”
17 Brent Mishler. In: J Upton. “Climate Change Is Leaving Native Plants Behind.” KQED Science 2.8.16.
18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation.
19 Gregory Bateson. 1972. "Form, Substance and Difference," Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
20 Alex Nichols, notes while observing our first open studio, Oct. 2015.
21 Barbara Guest. “Shifting Persona,” Forces of Imagination. Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press.
22 Helen Klonaris. 2015. “If I Tell These Stories.” In: C. Rankine et al. (eds.). The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Fence Books. 85.
23 Fred Hageneder. 2005. The Meaning of Trees. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
24 Robin Wall Kimmerer. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. 13.
25 Londa Schiebinger, Claudia Swan (eds.). Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World.
26 Beth Murray. 2015. Cancer Angel. Belladonna. 14.
27 Jason Moore. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso Books. 9.
28 Henri Focillon. 1989. The Life of Forms in Art. Zone Books.
29 Lorine Niedecker. 1985. “Paean to Place.” In: R. J. Bertholf (ed.). From this Condensery: The Complete Writing of Lorine Niedecker.
30 Robin Wall Kimmerer. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 15.
31 Jane Bennett. 2010. Preface. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press.
32 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press.
33 http://lithub.com/there-is-no-market-driven-solution-to-our-climate-catastrophe/.
34 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press. 151.
35 Jean-Francois Lyotard. “Scapeland.” In: The Lyotard Reader.
36 Yedda Morrison. “Generosity as Method: An Interview with Myung Mi Kim.” http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kim/generosity.html.
37 Fred Hageneder. 2005. The Meaning of Trees. Chronicle Books.
38 Bruno Latour. 2009. “Will Non-Humans Be Saved?” J Royal Anthropological Institute 15:470.
39 Agnes Martin. Writings. Kunstmuseum Winterthur/Edition Cantz. 141.
40 Gerhard Richter. Notes (1985). In: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writing 1962–1993.
41 Lyn Hejinian. "The Person and Description." The Language of Inquiry. 207.
42 UC Bee 32:2.
43 Wallace Stevens. 1954. “Anecdote of a Jar.” Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.
44 King James Bible. Genesis 1:28.
45 Steven Connor. “Topologies: Michel Serres and the Shapes of Thought.” In: Jeffrey Kastner (ed.). Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
46 Forrest Gander. “The Future of the Past: the Carboniferous and Ecopoetics.” The Free Library, http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+future+of+the+past%3A+the+carboniferous+%26+ecopoetics.-a0272616966.
47 Jonathan Skinner. 2013. In: Angela Hume. “Imagining Ecopoetics: An Interview with Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Evelyn Riley, and Jonathan Skinner.” Isle, Oxford Journals. 760.
48 Angela Hume. 2013. “Imagining Ecopoetics: An Interview with Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Evelyn Riley, and Jonathan Skinner.” Isle, Oxford Journals.
49 Gerard Manley Hopkins. “The Windhover.”
50 Agnes Martin. Writings. 138.
51 Fanny Howe. Interview with Patricia Vigderman. “The Poetics of Stillness.” Kenyon Review.
52 J. B. Jackson. “The Past and Future Park.” In: Arcadia Revisited: The Place of Landscape. 14.
53 Victoria Vesna. “Mind and Body Shifting: From Networks to Nanosystems.” In: Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
54 E. F. Schumacher. 1973. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Hartley and Marks Publishers. 61.
55 Doreen Massey. “Some Times of Space.” In: Amelia Groom (ed.). Time: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
56 Henry David Thoreau. 1854. “Economy.” Walden.
57 Franz Kafka. 2015. Aphorisms. Translated by W. & E. Muir and Michael Hofmann. Schocken Books.
58 Deane Juhan. Job’s Body. 152.
59 Joseph Kosuth. 2012. “The Play of the Unsayable.” Leo Castelli. 20.
60 Alva Noë. Varieties of Presence. Harvard University Press. 13.
61 Norman Fischer. Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language and Religion. 322.
62 The Safe and Effective Use of Pesticides, 3rd ed. UC ANR Pub 3324.
63 Wendy Steiner, from “Proem,” Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art.
64 Samuel Beckett. 1983. Worstward Ho. John Calder. 7.
65 Hans Haacke. “Systems Aesthetics: Conversation with Jeanne Siegel.” In: Jeffrey Kastner (ed.). Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
66 Ruth Sacks. http://artthrob.co.za/06oct/images/sacks09a.jpg.
67 Barbara Guest. 2003. “Shifting Persona.” Forces of Imagination. Kelsey Street Press.
68 Elena Filipovic. “This Is Tomorrow (and Other Modernist Myths).” In: Filipovic (ed.). Anachronism.
69 The Essential Haiku. Edited and translated by Robert Hass. 233.
70 Doreen Massey. “Some Times of Space.” In: Amelia Groom (ed.). Time: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
71 Lewis Carroll. Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.
72 Elaine Scarry. 1999. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press. 114.
73 Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1969. On Certainty. Harper Torchbooks. 66e.
74 Lewis Hyde. 1979. The Gift. New York: Vintage Books. 143.
75 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press.
76 Bruno Latour. “Will Non-Humans Be Saved?” J Royal Anthropological Institute 15:459–75.
77 Rebecca Solnit. “Landscape.” In: Pirkle Jones: California Photographs.
78 UC Bee 32:2.
79 Michel Foucault. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf. 6.
80 Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore. 1967. The Medium Is the Massage.
81 Martin Heidegger. Quoted in Anne Whiston Spirn. 1998. The Language of Landscape. Yale University Press. 16
82 Paul Mason. “There is No Market-Driven Solution to our Climate Catastrophe.” http://lithub.com/there-is-no-market-driven-solution-to-our-climate-catastrophe/.
83 Coined on poets’ walk.
84 Ibid.
85 William Carlos Williams. Spring and All. New York: New Directions. 35.
86 a rawlings. GIBBER. http://arawlings.is/gibber/about.php.
87 Søren Kierkegaard. The Present Age. Harper Torch Books. 77.
88 Ernst Bloch. Atheism in Christianity. New York: Verso. 72.
89 Peter Wohlleben. New York Times 1.29.16.
90 Andrew Joron. 2007. The Cry at Zero. Counterpath Press. 7.
91 Robert Bringhurst. 2004. The Solid Form of Language Gaspereau.
92 Robin Wall Kimmerer. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
93 a rawlings. GIBBER. www.gibber.com.
94 Sawako Nakayasu. The Ants. Los Angeles: Les Figues Press. 45.
95 Londa Schiebinger, Claudia Swan (eds.). Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. 16.
96 Inger Christensen. 2013. “Paradise.” Translated by Susanna Nied. Denver Quarterly 48:1.
97 Victoria Vesna. “Mind and Body Shifting: From Networks to Nanosystems.” In: Jeffrey Kastner (ed.). Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
98 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press. 153.
99 John Berger. 1992. “Why Look at Animals.” In: About Looking. Vintage.
100 Norman Fischer. “Climate Talk 5” podcast, Everyday Zen website, April 29, 2015.
101 Jeffrey Kastner. “Introduction.” Nature: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
102 Giorgio Agamben. 2007. Profanations. Zone Books. 76.
103 Franz Kafka. Aphorisms. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir and Michael Hofmann. 16.
104 Peter Macneilage. 2008. The Origin of Speech. Oxford.
105 Adam Wolf. “Altitudinal shifts of the native and introduced flora of California in the context of 20th-century warming.” Global Ecology and Biogeography. doi: 10.1111/geb.12423.
106 Malcolm Margolin. The Ohlone Way. Heyday Books. 42.
107 Yedda Morrison. “Generosity as Method: An Interview with Myung Mi Kim.” http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kim/generosity.html.
108 e.e. cummings. “somewhere i have never travelled.”
109 Richard Hoggart. Preface. In: Arcadia Revisited: The Place of Landscape. 21.
110 Ann Hamilton. Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century).
111 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press.
112 Corrina Gould. In: “Berkeley (Huchiun) votes for UNDRIP supporting Ohlone rights in Berkeley.” Ohlone tumblr.
113 Inger Christensen. It. Translated by Susanna Nied. New York: New Directions. 85.
114 Hegel. Quoted in Ernst Bloch. Atheism in Christianity. Brooklyn: Verso Press. 68.
115 Rebecca Solnit. 2005. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Penguin. 7.
116 Nicholas Ostler. 2005. Empires of the Word. Harper Collins. 12.
117 Susan Stewart. 1993. On Longing. Duke University Press.
118 UC Bee 32:7.
119 Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar. Place. 176.
120 Robert Smithson. “Four Conversations between Dennis Wheeler and Robert Smithson.” In: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings.
121 Grant Hildebrand. Origins of Architectural Pleasure. 6.
122 Susan Howe. The Birth-Mark. Talisman Interview with Edward Foster. 126.
123 Yedda Morrison. “Generosity as Method: An Interview with Myung Mi Kim.” http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kim/generosity.html.
124 Ben Lerner. The Hatred of Poetry. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 38.
125 Harryette Mullen. Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary. Graywolf Press. x.
126 Ludwig Wittgenstein. On Certainty. New York City: Harper Torch Books. 11e.
127 Dogen. Shobogenzo. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Honolulu, Hawaii. 17.
128 Lewis Hyde. 1979. The Gift. New York: Vintage Books. 146.
129 Giorgio Agamben. 2007. Profanations. Zone Books. 77.
130 Peter Macneilage. 2008. The Origin of Speech. Oxford.
131 Bruno Latour. We Have Never Been Modern.
132 Jacques Derrida. “The Sans of Pure Cut.” In: D. Beech (ed). Beauty. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press. 88.
133 George Berkeley. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
134 Andrew Joron. 2007. The Cry at Zero. Counterpath Press. 17.
135 UC Bee 32:7.
136 Shakespeare. Antony and Cleopatra. Quoted in Anne Whiston Spirn. 1998. The Language of Landscape. Yale University Press.
137 Robert Bringhurst. The Solid Form of Language. 14.
138 Amanda Ackerman. 2015. The Book of Feral Flora. Les Figues Press.
139 Henri Bergson. The Creative Mind.
140 Bruno Latour. We Have Never Been Modern.
141 Bruno Latour. “Will Non-Humans Be Saved?” J Royal Anthropological Institute 15:465.
142 Giorgio Agamben. 2007. Profanations. Zone Books.
143 James Lovelock. “Geophysiology: The Science of Gaia.” In: Systems. Edward A. Shanken (ed.). Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press. 192.
144 Taylor P, Card G, House J, et al. 2006. "High-speed pollen release in the white mulberry tree, Morus alba L". Sexual Plant Reproduction 19(1):19–24.
145 Elaine Scarry. 1999. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press. 3.
146 From an interview in the Swedish press, translated by Denise Newman.
147 Robert Smithson. “Four Conversations between Dennis Wheeler and Robert Smithson (1969–1970).” In: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings.
148 a rawlings. GIBBER. http://arawlings.is/gibber/about.php.
149 Elaine Scarry. 1999. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press. 34.
150 The Essential Haiku. Edited by Robert Hass. 233.
151 John Berger. 1992. “Why Look at Animals.” In: About Looking. Vintage.
152 Sri Aurobindo. 1939. The Life Divine. Pondicherry: Ashram Press. 94.
153 Fred Hageneder. 2005. The Meaning of Trees. Chronicle Books.
154 David Chadwick. cuke.com.
155 Ezra Pound “Alba.”
156 Francesco Bonami. 2005. Universal Experience. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 24.
157 J. Krishnamurti. 1996. Total Freedom. HarperSanFrancisco.
158 Joseph Brackett. “Simple Gifts.”
159 Bruno Latour. “Will Non-Humans Be Saved?” J Royal Anthropological Institute 15:463.
160 Paul Valery. Rhumbs. 211.
161 Peter Macneilage. 2008. The Origin of Speech. Oxford. 155.
162 Barbara Tomash. 2015. Arboreal. Berkeley: Apogee Press. 31.
163 Agnes Martin. Agnes Martin: Writings. 32.
164 Elizabeth Grosz. Becomings: Explorations in Time Memory and Futures. Cornell University Press.
165 Anne Whiston Spirn. 1998. The Language of Landscape. Yale University Press. 37.
166 Botanic Garden Conservation International. www.bgci.org/policy/1521/.
167 Denise Newman, Hazel White. “When Language Meets an Ecosystem.” World Literature Today Nov. 2015, online.
168 UC Bee 32:6.
169 Agnes Martin. Agnes Martin: Writings.
170 Jean-Francois Lyotard. “Scapeland.” In: The Lyotard Reader.
171 Walter Benjamin. Quoted in Giorgio Agamben. The Man Without Content. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 104.
172 Bernd Herzogenrath. 2011. Time and History in Deleuze and Serres. A&C Black.
173 Adrian Heathfield. 2009. Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh. MIT Press.
174 Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. 2013. Hello, the Roses. New York: New Directions. 51.
175 Sarah Rosenthal. 2016. Lizard. Chax Press. 32.
176 Doreen Massey. “Some Times of Space.” In: Amelia Groom (ed.). Time: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
177 Nato Thompson. “Contractions of Time: On Social Practice from a Temporal Perspective.” e-flux journal 20 (e-flux.com).
178 Bruno Latour. We Have Never Been Modern. 75–6.
179 Sarah Perez. TechCrunch 7.13.16.
180 ediblewildfood.com.
181 Marina Abramovic. “When Time Becomes Form.” In: Amelia Groom (ed.). Time: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press.
182 UC Bee 32:2.
183 Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. 2013. Hello, the Roses. New York: New Directions. 20.
184 Jacques Derrida. “The Sans of Pure Cut.” In: D. Beech (ed). Beauty: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press. 87.
185 Karl Marx. Grundrisse. 539.
186 Gaston Bachelard. Introduction. In: Edith Farrell (trans.). Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter.
187 Anne Whiston Spirn. The Language of Landscape. Yale University Press. 16–7.
188 Grant Hildebrand. The Origins of Architectural Pleasure. 173.
189 Jane Bennett. Preface. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.
190 Amanda Ackerman. 2015. The Book of Feral Flora. Les Figues Press.
191 Walter de Maria. “On the Importance of Natural Disasters.”
192 Francesco Bonami. 2005. Universal Experience. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 26.
193 Taryn Simon. “Paperwork and the Will of the Capital.” Gagosian Gallery 2.24.16.
194 Robert Hass. “Meditation at Lagunitas.” Praise. 4.
195 C. D. Wright. The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures . . . Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press. 3.
196 R. Buckminster Fuller. 1969. “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” In: Edward A. Shanken (ed.). Systems: Documents of Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press. 190.