When Amy Stewart began researching her latest book, The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession, she was ready for some plant-nerd indulgence.
But as she delved deeper into the minds and motivations of people who collect trees the way other people collect coins or baseball cards, she discovered an unexpected thread in the story.
“I thought I'd write a book about tree enthusiasts, talking passionately about the particular trees that interest them, and that was going to be the book,” Stewart said. “But I was surprised to find that there's another, really deeper reason why people collect trees.”
For many people, it's not just the urge to acquire new things. Trees have a deeper meaning.
For Korean-American Vivian Kaye, older members of her Korean family experienced famine and other hardships during the Korean War.
Kaye grows 50 persimmon trees on a quarter-acre plot in San Jose.
In Buddhist culture, persimmons are a symbol of transformation, but they were also a special sweet treat for her kin and a wonderful treat during difficult times.
She sends boxes of fruit to elderly relatives as a token of her affection.
“She says this is a way for her to stay connected to them. It's hard sometimes to maintain any kind of connection between generations. I thought that was profound and beautiful,” Stewart said.
She also profiles a man in India who planted a tree in memory of his late daughter, and then came up with the idea to get everyone in his village to plant a tree every time a girl is born.
“He turned it into a project that really reminded everyone of the value of girls in a culture where girls are undervalued,” Stewart said. “And now there's this forest, and a bunch of trees planted, honoring these girls and getting the girls to respect the trees.”
She also interviews Joe Hamilton, who is cultivating and harvesting pine trees on the last of the South Carolina land inherited from his former slave great-grandfather, creating a source of income for the next generation of the Hamilton family.
As Stewart spoke at length with collectors from around the world, many of them shared very personal stories.
There was a woman who desperately wanted a child but was unable to conceive.
“She was carrying all this pain. She wanted to be a mother but she couldn't. The trees filled a hole in her life,” Stewart says. “She wanted to bring a new maple tree into the world, in part so she could name the tree. She said, 'I never got to name my kids, so I wish I could name a tree.' That's so beautiful and so meaningful.”
The idea for the book came about 10 years ago, when at a book launch event, I met a man who described himself as a tree collector.
“I thought it was weird collecting that,” she recalled. “The trees are really big and hard to move. How on earth are you going to do that?”
Stewart, who once lived in Humboldt County but now lives in Portland and whose parents live in Santa Rosa, is drawn to unusual garden-related subject matter and has made it into a bestseller.
Her book, “Wicked Plants,” published in 2009, became a national touring exhibit that, in her words, “terrorized kids in science museums across the country for more than a decade.”
Her book, The Drunken Botanist, covers the plants that make the best mixed drinks and has even inspired the names of several bars around the world.
And “Wicked Bugs” explores the cruel supernatural powers of destructive insects, from traffic-blocking millipedes to library-devouring “bookworms.”
Stewart, who is also an artist, got the idea to research tree collectors in books a few years ago when he sold a painting of a palm tree to a man in Boise, Idaho. When he was packaging the painting for shipping, he included a note indicating where the tree was in San Diego.
“He wrote back and said, 'We know this place. My husband collects palm trees, but we live in Boise, and in Boise the palm trees don't survive the winter, so we have to wrap them in tinfoil blankets and Christmas tree lights in the winter to keep them alive. Our backyard looks like an amateur sci-fi movie.' And I thought, 'Okay, that's crazy. I have to write this book.' And then people started showing up.”
The couple are among the “zone deniers” who push the boundaries of their climate to grow what they love.
Stewart also writes about a man in New Jersey who is trying to grow the state trees of all 50 states, which is no small feat in the cold mid-Atlantic states.
