The Time I Flunked the Tree Test

Tap into the hidden power of noticing

Mar 07, 2024

I pride myself on being aware of the natural environment around me, so my ears perked up when I heard the instructor say, "Dogwood bark is so unique there are no other trees like it."

"Whaaa?" Six Flowering dogwoods, one of them a mature elegant tree I've named Elle, are close to my house. I see three from my kitchen windows daily. Yet I've never noticed the distinctive bark that looks like alligator skin.

Bark of Flowering dogwood, *Cornus florida*.

I knew I had a lot to learn — and relearn — when I stumbled on the winter tree ID classes from the county extension service. But I didn't think my tree knowledge was that spotty on trees I can name. Ouch.

Noticing is the hidden unlock

Noticing is the first step in opening your Nature awareness, peeling back the unknown layer-by-layer. Noticing colors, shapes, details, scents, movement.

Many of the people in the tree ID class are master gardeners who have developed their Nature awareness and want to add to their knowledge base of the natural world. Others are newbies who either just moved to the mountains or have lived here for awhile and figure it's time to learn more about the extensive forests that surround them.

Me, I'm picking up where I left a career pivot more than 20 years ago when I thought I was going to leave journalism and become a professional gardener and garden designer. After whetting my gardening appetite with a Master Gardener certification, I took the first tree ID class at a community college landscape horticulture program.

I barely passed that first tree ID class, the most humbling educational experience of my life.

Share Essential Nature

March in Michigan means no leaves

The mid-term and final exams were outside at large public campuses that had all of the 200 species we were learning. The instructor handed each of us a clipboard with several pieces of paper with blank lines.

He pointed to a tree and yelled out, "Specimen No. 1: Latin name!" He pointed to another and yelled, "Specimen No. 2: Common name!" Over and over.

I remember the mid-term like it was yesterday: March 12, temperature hovering around freezing, gray, dreary and threatening snow. My driving gloves were too thin and my hands quickly went so numb I could barely hold the pen. Worse, despite studying the best I knew how, including driving a couple hours to a university experimental forest to see the plants in the bark rather than in a book, I was hopelessly lost.

Recognizing the patterns all around us

Always a top student, what I didn't realize then is that plant ID is a different type of learning — pattern recognition.

Unlike the concept-and-fact based book learning I excelled at, this type of learning requires recognizing different elements and then remembering these elements in groups to arrive at a specific plant. Elements like the habit (shape) of the tree, branching pattern (opposite or alternate), type of bark, etc.

And of course, the Latin name. I had filled several stenographer's notebooks writing the Latin names at least a dozen times each but that was useless when I didn't know what I was looking at.

Out in the field that miserable morning I was clueless. I didn't know how to begin to ID these plants. Realizing how lost I was my brain went as numb as my hands and I grabbed at whatever plant name popped into my head. Most were wrong.

I scored lower than 50%, possibly the only exam I've ever flunked.

When does it click?

In class the next week after we got our grades I caught up with the professor in the hall during a break.

"When does it click?" I demanded. He looked at me strangely. "I feel like I've opened up an anti-gravity room in my head and keep shoving in all these facts. Once in a while a few connect and and a light goes on with the plant name." Embarrassed, I felt I had to justify my failing grade.

"I graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa," I told him. "I'm great at taking tests. I don't flunk tests."

He nodded. "We say at Michigan State University that you take your first plant ID class to learn how to take a plant ID class. Here's what will happen," he said. "You'll be driving down the road this spring, look up, see a tree in bloom and a little voice in your right ear will whisper the Latin name."

Tulip trees for the win

I laughed, but damn if he wasn't right. I looked up that spring to see a Tulip tree blooming overhead and heard "Liriodendron tulipifera" in my right ear.

Now that I'm no longer stuck in an urban environment and surrounded by thousands of trees, I feel guilty I don't know my dear neighbors that well. I want to know them more closely with all my senses, with all their quirks and oddities.

Last week our instructor handed us twigs she cut from a bush and told us to scratch the bark and sniff: "Oriental Spice Bush," she declared.

Sight and smell are the first opportunities to notice

Connecting what you see to a fact, name or label is usually the next step.

Dogwoods, for example, have gracefully shaped horizontal limbs and glorious, long-lasting white flowers in the spring. Because of that the dogwood is considered the most sacred tree in the North Carolina forest for many forest lovers.

A deeper level of Nature awareness moves beyond sight and smell to noticing a tree's energy, or the presence an elder tree may command in the forest and how it may — literally — affect the air around it. The essence of forest bathing is to fully open our senses so we can bathe in the calming presence and the dozens of healthful compounds in forest air.

The opportunity to connect is always everywhere

Here's the thing most people miss: That deeper awareness can happen anywhere you live in the world, city or country. It's not about how much natural space you have access to; it's how you approach that space.

It's about opening your awareness beyond "There's a tree. There's a shrub. Green stuff." Instead it's "Hey, the buds and twigs on that tree are red. Huh? ''

It doesn't matter if your first noticing is limited to a couple of houseplants on a windowsill, a few pots on a porch or balcony, or the ornamental trees and bulbs in the shopping center parking lot islands.

Deepening awareness is about paying more attention, noticing there are more living things in-between — and despite — the concrete and buildings. As those doors of awareness continue to open wider and wider, you'll find yourself noticing more and more of previously unnoticed Nature hiding in plain sight in concrete cracks, side yards and high-rise balconies.

Eventually you'll realize there is no place where Nature is not present.

More noticing allows in more Nature

You'll find yourself noticing Nature everywhere and suddenly, every scene will reverse.

Nature will become more clear and more vibrant than everything around it and everything else will recede. Rather than Nature hiding in the negative spaces between our man-made world, Nature will shift into the foreground and the man-made spaces will fade into the background.

It's not about having more Nature. It's about more noticing of the Nature that's there.

Here's the fascinating noticing feedback loop:

From noticing flows curiosity
From curiosity flows appreciation and recognition
Appreciation and recognition flow into a desire for more connection
More connection flows into a relationship
A relationship leads to honor, respect and care
The more honor, respect and care, the more we notice

Newsflash: We develop relationships with our non-human kin the same way we develop relationships with other humans because we are all part of Nature.

Try this at home

Because once you've taken the time — a few moments, in reality — to stop and notice a maple's red buds and twigs in the spring and become a sliver more curious, you've started to push open the doors of your awareness. Now you can't not notice that tree in the parking lot island.

Now you're connected to Nature. And nothing other than your awareness has changed. There isn't suddenly more Nature, but you have more awareness of what Nature is there.

Me, I'm learning trees backwards this time around and starting with more noticing. On a walk the other day I noticed several characteristics of a specific pine over and over, then came in and checked the book. The Eastern White Pine and I are now buddies on a first-name basis.

Give it a try. Notice what's there and see where it takes you. One layer at a time.

Now, go have a wander!

P.S. If you’d like some help getting off your phone so you have the clear headspace to wander and notice, consider my quick guide Phone Rebel: Fix Your Phone to Suck Less Time.