Native Species

Native Species Laura Dennis (bio) As I scroll through my Facebook feed, I smile to see a photo collage captioned "first redbuds of the year." Just then, the suffocating scent of honeysuckle drifts in through an open window, reminding me that peak redbud season has long since passed. I look at the post again. It dates from just two days ago, May 9, with photos taken May 5 at Stony Brook State Park. This perplexes me. I grew up not far from that park and I have spent a lot of time in that part of New York State. I search my memory for the trees of my childhood. I find maple, oak, hickory, any number of evergreens. I linger over the English walnut in whose branches I used to sit and read. As I dig deeper down, I find other species including dogwood in the gullies that surround our farm. I have often noticed the two species—dogwood and redbud—together on my Kentucky road. If my memory holds any redbuds, I should find them here, but I don't. What would be worse, to have missed them or to have forgotten? I find both possibilities disquieting. If I have misremembered something as flashy as a redbud, what else have I failed to see? I remember my first spring in Kentucky more than 20 years ago, how happy people were to see the redbuds bloom. Although I'm embarrassed to admit it now, I did not realize which trees they were. I saw sprays of pink, green, and red along the winding road from my house to town and assumed, given the name, that the red mist belonged to the redbuds. I secretly wondered what the big deal was. Anyone could see the pink flowers put on a much bigger show. My error was soon corrected, and now, when the first flowers come, I obsess over getting the perfect photo of a single blossoming branch, the color popping against the still-dormant gray of the surrounding trees. Perhaps this is my own take on the Indigenous tradition of selecting a redbud branch to help chase out winter, though rather than cut one, I try to capture it using the tiny lens in my phone. The Facebook collage catches the color so perfectly that I briefly suspect it of being a phantasmagoric production from one of those [End Page 136] chatbots that, like an invasive species, have mushroomed everywhere. When I study the images more closely, however, I am convinced the photographer simply has a better camera. I am envious. Envious and unsettled by the things I do not know. ________ Some people would have let the matter go. I am not one of those people. I have to know where redbuds actually belong, though if pressed, I am not sure I could tell you what I mean by that. The Arbor Day Foundation explains that redbuds grow in zones 4 to 9, roughly from northern New York and New England to Texas, that they were named Oklahoma's state tree in 1937, and that George Washington mentioned them in his diaries. Wikipedia tells me the tree's Latin name, Cercis Canadensis, and includes a map entitled "Natural range of the eastern redbud," which shows said range ending in Pennsylvania. I want to shout gotcha before remembering I am on Wikipedia. More research will be required. The map, I soon learn, is valid, having been created in 1976 by an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service named Elbert L. Little, Jr. Further investigation turns up an article from Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, also from 1976, which essentially corroborates this range. We are, however, in 2023, and most of the other maps I find, including a 2014 map in the USDA's Plant Database, show Eastern redbuds from Canada to Florida and everywhere in between. They can be found in the understory of many forests, alongside roads, and in private yards and gardens. Between climate change and the human tendency to collect beautiful things—Presidents Washington and Jefferson both mention transplanting them—it is not difficult to imagine the trees exceeding their original range. I do...

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