Spring 2018: Landscapes of Trees

A Publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies A Journal of Place Volume xııı | Number ıı | Spring 2018 Essays: Landscapes of Trees: Symbolic Totems, Design Features, and Commercial Commodities 3 Avi Sharon: The Oak and the Olive: Oracle and Covenant John Elder: George Perkins Marsh’s Family Trees Laurie Olin: Trees and the Getty: An Appreciation Thomas K. Slayton: Sweet Labor: Maple-Syrup Making in Vermont Joe R. McBride: The Eastern Forest: From Commerce to Conservation Ken Chaya: Central Park’s Trees: Personal Friends and Sentient Beings Book Review 21 Reuben M. Rainey: A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial By James Reston Jr. 2018 Book and Grant Awards 23 Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor f all forms of cally with particular gods. important as those offered on the global as well as the the horticultural require- vegetation, it His focus here is upon the by Rachel Carson a hundred local scale will the stands ments and aesthetic pos- is the tree that olive tree, given by Athena years later. of maple that define New sibilities of the West Coast has engaged the to her namesake city, and Ken Chaya, who has cre- England survive. region. human imagi- on the pilgrimage shrine at ated a map depicting every Trees are naturally the As always, and particu- Onation the most in terms Dodona, where the proph- individual tree in Central province of landscape archi- larly now when the celebra- of cosmic significance and ecies of a famous oracle Park, brings to his essay the tects such as Laurie Olin. tion and protection of place symbolism. The Tree of Life emanate from a venerable perspective of an ardent nat- His essay provides a fasci- is more important than ever, has played an important role Valonia oak tree. uralist. His writing offers nating history of the design the Foundation for Land- in philosophy, religion, and In pragmatic terms trees more than a taxonomic of the J. Paul Getty Center in scape Studies needs your myth. It is an emblematic are commodities – firewood, description of various spe- Los Angeles. He makes the support. We will continue pillar of many of the world’s timber, construction mate- cies. Going beyond simple point that, while mid-twen- to honor your faith in this faiths, including Hindu- rial, furniture, and other identification by leaf shape tieth-century modernists organization with our ongo- ism, Buddhism, Islam, and useful products. Moreover, and bark texture, he shares in the field veered toward ing publication of Site/Lines Christianity, to name some the removal of large swaths his deep knowledge of the hardscapes, they neverthe- in its current paper format; of the more prominent. of ancient forest was deemed lives of trees and their sea- less understood how trees the awarding of grants and Both it and its twin, the a prerequisite of agricul- sonal habits as he takes the could be used in architec- book prizes to promote the Tree of the Knowledge of ture as European settlers reader on an imaginary walk tural ways to shape and growth of our field of study; Good and Evil, encapsulate appropriated wholesale the with him in the park. Like modulate space for sculp- and the highlighting on the Genesis creation story resources of the American Elder, Chaya encourages us tural effects. In particular, our website of those who are and therefore figure promi- continent. All such transfor- to see trees as friends, living he speaks of how Dan Kiley, furthering our mission “to nently in the iconography mation of the landscape has beings who reciprocate the as the preliminary designer promote an active under- of Judeo-Christian art and inevitably had severe envi- care of those who cherish of the landscape at the Getty, standing of the meaning of literature. The Tree of Life ronmental consequences. and nurture them. created a forest of native live place in human life.” Please also becomes a diagram- In this issue of Site/Lines Tom Slayton, who oaks, which Olin charac- join this effort by sending us matic portrayal of Charles Joe McBride chronicles lives in Vermont, writes terizes as “a truly brilliant your contribution today. Darwin’s phylogenetic the stages of deforesta- about sugaring – the design gesture with historic discoveries. For histori- tion in the northeastern harvesting of the sap of and environmental logic With good green wishes, cal genealogists the Tree United States and explains maple trees – as an act on his side.” Not surpris- of Life provides a common how it prompted the rise of of husbandry as much as ingly, the Getty project was means of depicting ancestral conservation. John Elder a commercial operation. fraught with institutional descent. expands the subject with Today maples are threat- politics and competing As classicist Avi Sharon his essay on the life and ened by climate change. design intentions. Ulti- Elizabeth Barlow Rogers writes in this issue of Site/ observation-based theories Only if we care for our mately Olin himself was President Lines, in pantheistic Greek of George Perkins Marsh, trees carefully and wisely commissioned to bring the culture, certain tree species the nineteenth-century landscape design to comple- are associated symboli- diplomat and author of Man tion in 1997, a process that and Nature, whose environ- encouraged him to explore mental insights were as On the Cover: Cluster of willows on the shoreline of the Lake in Central Park. Acrylic painting, copyright © 2018 Ken Chaya. 2 Landscapes of Trees: Symbolic Totems, Design Features, and Commercial Commodities The Oak and the Olive: Oracle and Covenant Indeed, it is thought that Dodona was rees may stand quietly, often unremarkable in their originally the site of a chthonian cult, over- landscapes, but they have a defining influence on seen by a Great Mother goddess, who through our understanding of place. In the United States, Mycenaean migrations was overtaken in time the redwood and sequoia evoke the northern by father Zeus. At some point this female California coast as much as the tall cereus cactus deity was rechristened Dione, becoming Tsignals the American southwest or the palm south Florida. a Titan and the consort of the Olympian They are a kind of shorthand for the place itself. sky god. Meanwhile the son of Cronus was Then there are particular trees that serve as loci for civic himself revered at Dodona as Naios, or the or commercial gatherings. One example is Boston’s Liberty Zeus who “dwells” there. The divine couple Tree, a broad elm (Ulmus americana) under which early appeared side by side on local coinage and patriots congregated to protest the Stamp Act in 1765. Others were appealed to jointly in questions submit- take on the role of an axis mundi – a human link to the ted on tablets of bronze by those importuning divine – like the sacred fig, Ficus religiosa, under which Sid- the oracle. One of these, according to Homer, dhartha Gautama became the enlightened Buddha. Ancient was Odysseus: he requested to know whether, Greece, where rough bark gave way to fluted marble, offers on his return to Ithaca, he should appear fertile ground for a discussion of such natural temples. openly or in disguise. In northwest Greece, amid a spring-filled valley, stands But the tree is the thing, planted sixteen Dodona, the oldest of the Greek oracles. The sanctuary, one hundred feet above sea level on the eastern of the most important in Greece, dates to at least the middle flanks of Mount Tomaros, overlooking the bronze age – roughly four thousand years ago – and func- valley. The oak was the oracle’s source, but tioned well into the third century CE. But long before any its message had to be translated by the resident priestesses, Greek) of the divine gift. Any The divine oak at Dodona in its buildings graced the spot (including a theater comparable in three in number, known as peleiades (doves). Their job, as trees propagated from this walled precinct, where dove-priest- size and grandeur to that of Epidauros), its defining feature they perched beneath the tree, was to interpret and render archetype (the offshoots were esses interpret the voice of Zeus. was the source of the oracle itself – a single Valonia oak (oak is the divine response coded in its rustling leaves and in the referred to as memoriamenai) “drus” in Greek, cognate with “dryad,” and “druid”), sacred to circle of vibrating copper cauldrons set on tripods around its shared its sacred status; in the sixth century BCE the Athe- the presiding deity. perimeter. Together these created a sacred enclosure of rever- nian legislator Solon made any damage done to them punish- Hesiod calls Dodona “the seat of the Pelasgians,” the earli- berating sound emanating from the “many-tongued” oak. able by law. est known inhabitants of Greece, indigenous ancestors to Why the oak? The king of trees was a natural enough link The olive was emblematic of the city: imprinted on its the first Hellenes. Aristotle in his Meteorology declares it one to the king of the gods. Among the longest-lived species, it is coinage, used as wreaths on the heads of Panathenaic victors, of Greece’s ancient places, the site of the Hellenic flood tale, tall enough to receive the touch of Zeus’s lightning bolt – and and exported, in its liquid form, via ceramic pithoi, or jars, where Deucalion, the Greek Noah, survived the deluge and strong enough to survive it. Its hard wood, and the heat that throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. From the origi- restarted the human race. A tribal people called Selloi lived could be generated from it, were also key attributes.

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