Seeds of Hope

by Jane Goodall

  I was in New York on that terrible day, traveling with my friend and JGI colleague Mary Lewis. We were staying in mid-Manhattan at the Roger Smith Hotel. First came the confused reporting from the television screen. Then another colleague arrived, white and shaken. She had been on the very last plane to land before the airport closed, and she actually saw, from the taxi, the plane crashing into the second tower.

  Disbelief. Fear. Confusion. And then the city went gradually silent until all we could hear was the sound of police-car sirens and the wailing of ambulances. People disappeared from the streets. It was a ghost town, unreal. There were times when I felt I was living in a dream.

  It was eight days before there was a plane on which we could leave. Eight days during which the city remained quiet and fear gave way to grief, anguish—and eventually, as the facts emerged, anger. Mary and I met with our Arab and Muslim friends, desperate to try to help them face the terrible backlash that we predicted would be directed against hundreds of innocent people. And all the while we could see the haze over what had been the Trade Center, and we could smell death.

  Ironically, when Mary and I finally left, we were flying to Portland, Oregon, where I had to give a talk to a boys’ secondary school, a talk entitled “Reason for Hope.” It was, without doubt, the hardest lecture I have ever had to give. For where was hope at that time? Only when I was actually talking, looking out over all the young, bewildered faces, could I find the things to say, drawing on the terrible events of history, how they had passed, how we humans always find reserves of strength and courage to overcome that which fate throws our way.

  Just over ten years after 9/11, on a cool, sunny April morning in 2012, I went to meet “Survivor,” a Callery pear tree, and the three people who had most to do with her survival: Bram Gunther, Ron Vega, and Richie Cabo. We met outside the new 9/11 Memorial at what was once known as Ground Zero, and went through the tight security together. I could hardly believe that, finally, I was going to meet this incredible tree.

  In the 1970s she had been placed in a planter near Building 5 of the World Trade Center, and each year her delicate white blossoms had brought a touch of spring into a world of concrete. In 2001, after the 9/11 attack, this tree, like all the other trees that had been planted there, disappeared beneath the fallen towers.

  But amazingly, in October, a cleanup worker found her, smashed and pinned between blocks of cement. The discovery was reported to Bram Gunther, who was then deputy director of forestry for the NYC Parks Department, and when he arrived, he initially thought the tree was unsalvageable. She had been decapitated and the eight feet of trunk that remained were charred black, the roots were broken, and there was only one living branch.

  Bram told me how, as he looked at the stricken tree, he was skeptical at first, but ultimately the cleanup workers persuaded him to give the tree a chance. And so he ordered that she be sent off to the Parks Department’s nursery in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

  Ron Vega, now the director of design for the 9/11 Memorial site, was a cleanup worker back then. He smiled as he thought back to that time. “A lot of people thought it was a wasted effort to try to rescue her,” he recalled. “So she was taken out of the site almost clandestinely—under the cover of night.”

  As we walked toward this special tree, on that special April day, I felt as much in awe as if I were going to meet one of the great spiritual leaders or shamans.

  She is not spectacular to look at—not until you realize what she has been through and understand the miracle of her survival. We stood together outside the protective railing. We reached out to gently touch the ends of her branches. Many of us, perhaps all, had tears in our eyes—my own eyes were too blurred to be sure.

  Richie Cabo, the nursery manager, who became one of Survivor’s principal caregivers, told me that when he first saw the decapitated tree, he did not think anything could save her. But once the dead, burned tissues had been cut away and her trimmed roots deeply planted in good, rich soil, Survivor proved him wrong.

  “In time,” said Richie, “she took care of herself. We like to say she got tough from being in the Bronx!” But in the beginning, with all the fertilizing and pruning, it was hard work. And during this time all the staff became very attached to Survivor, for she symbolized endurance and resilience. In particular a special bond grew up between the tree and Richie. “She became dear to me,” he said.

  In the spring of 2010 disaster struck Survivor again. Richie told me how he got news that the tree had been ripped out of the ground by the terrible storm that was raging outside. He rushed there at once with his three young children. They found the roots completely exposed, and he and the children and the other nursery staff worked together to try to rescue her.

  At first they only partially lifted the tree, packing her in compost and mulch so as not to break the roots. For a long while they gently sprayed her with water to minimize the shock, hoping she’d make it. A few weeks later they set to work to get Survivor completely upright.

  “Survivor,” a Callery pear, was the only tree at the World Trade Center plaza to survive 9/11. Horticulturist Richie Cabo (right) helped nurse the decapitated and mutilated tree back to health, and Ron Vega (left) made sure she had a place of honor back on the plaza of the 9/11 Memorial site in New York City. (CREDIT: MARK MAGLIO)

  “It was not a simple operation,” Richie told me. “She was thirty feet tall, and it took a heavy-duty boom truck to do the job.”

  But, yet again, Survivor survived.

  It wasn’t until six years after Ron Vega had witnessed the mangled tree being rescued from the wreckage that he heard that Survivor was still alive. Immediately he became passionate to bring her back and incorporate her into the design—and with his new position he was able to make it happen. Finally the day arrived, the day when Survivor finally came home. She was planted near the footprint of the South Tower.

  It was an emotional ceremony for her planting. One of those taking part was Keating Crown, who had escaped from the seventy-eighth floor down the last usable stairwell of one of the towers. He said, in his remarks, that the survival of the tree was symbolic of the endurance of the human spirit.

  There was a lot expressed that day. “For my personal accomplishments,” Ron said, “today is it. I could crawl into this little bed and die right there. That’s it. I’m done… To give this tree a chance to be part of this memorial, c’mon, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

  As Survivor stood proudly upright in her new home, a reporter said to Richie, “This must be an extra-special day for you, considering it’s the ten-year anniversary of the day you were shot.”

  Before he started working at the Bronx nursery in the spring of 2001, Richie had been a corrections officer at Green Haven, a maximum-security prison in New York. He had left the job after nearly dying from a terrible gunshot wound in the stomach, inflicted not at the prison but out on the streets when he tried to stop a robbery in progress.

  Until the reporter pointed it out, Richie hadn’t even realized the date was the same, and then, he told me, he couldn’t even speak for a moment. “I could hardly even breathe,” he said. And he thought it was probably more than a coincidence that the tree would go home on that special day. “We are both survivors,” he said. “We healed together. And somehow it seemed only fitting.”

  “Survivor” before (above) and after (next page). The first picture was taken just after the terrorist attacks. The next one was taken ten years later. She is a testament to the resilience of nature and the ability of humans to help if they will only understand how important it is. (CREDIT: MICHAEL BROWNE)

  While overseeing the design, Ron had made sure that the tree was planted in such a way that the traumatized side faces the public. One of the branches was low-hanging, and Ron said ordinarily they would have removed it, but instead they simply raised it slightly with a support cable so that people wouldn’t bump into it. “It took ten years for her to grow that branch, so there i
s no way we would lop it off.” He stroked the branch lovingly as he spoke.

  (CREDIT: PHOTO BY AMY DREHER, COURTESY 9/11 MEMORIAL)

  Some people, Ron told us, weren’t pleased to have the tree back, saying that she “spoiled” the symmetry of the landscaping, as she is a different species from the other nearby trees. Indeed, she is different. For one thing she is much older, and wiser. And on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, when the memorial site was opened to survivors and family members, very many of them tied blue ribbons onto Survivor’s branches.

  One last memory. Survivor should have been in full bloom in April when I met her. But, like so many trees in this time of climate change, she had flowered about two weeks early. Just before we left, as I walked around this brave tree one last time, I suddenly saw a tiny cluster of white flowers. Just three of them. Somehow it was like a message symbolizing, for me, the power of the life force that had enabled Survivor to be brought back into the world.

  It reminds me of the ancient Miharu Takizakura cherry tree near Fukushima, in Japan, said to be one thousand years old. That tree has survived many wars, many storms and hard winters, and she is much loved. Once, after a heavy snowfall bowed her branches to the ground, the local people saved her by freeing the branches of snow and then supporting them with stakes. This tree survived the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami as well as the Fukushima nuclear power plant explosion.

  And when she flowered the next spring, a delegation from the town, including children, took some of her seeds to Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, in gratitude for British aid after the disasters. That gift not only demonstrated their high regard for that so-special tree but also ensures that her lineage will survive long into the future.

  From my “Nature Notebook.” When I was around twelve years old I often picked wildflowers during my walks with my dog, Rusty. I would take them home and paint them—not for a school assignment, just for the love of it. Pictured are the common mallow (purple) and gorse (yellow) flowers. (CREDIT: JANE GOODALL)

  Roots have always intrigued me. This mangrove swamp in Abu Dhabi shows the aerial roots rising up above the water, enabling the trees to “breathe.” (CREDIT: © XAVIER EICHAKER)

  A female Welwitschia mirabilis in Namibia standing about as high as a man, and estimated to be about 1,500 years old. I have never seen one in its home in the Namib Desert, but I have seen young ones growing in botanical gardens. (CREDIT: THOMAS SCHOCH)

  The carnivorous plants have devised many ingenious ways of capturing their prey. The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) fascinated me when I was a child—and it still does today! This plant is growing in the Leiden Botanical Garden. (CREDIT: ROGIER VAN VUGT)

  The corpse flower (Rafflesia arnoldii) of Sumatra has the largest single bloom in the world. It can measure a yard across, weigh up to twenty-four pounds, and carry a distinct smell of rotting flesh—thus, its somewhat sinister name. This one is at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. (CREDIT: U.S. BOTANIC GARDEN)

  Children seem especially enchanted by the kingdom of the plants. Two-year-old Isaac grew this narcissus from a bulb at preschool—and he just discovered that it had burst into flower. The photo, capturing his feeling of wonder and amazement, brings back vivid memories of my own childhood experiences of nature’s miracles. (CREDIT: HOWARD BERNSTEIN)

  “Old Tjikko,” a Norway spruce growing on Fulufjället Mountain in Sweden, is the oldest known individual clonal tree. Its trunk may be no more than 600 years old, but its root system was carbon-dated and is estimated to have lived for over 9,550 years. For thousands of years it survived in the harsh climate as a stunted shrub, but warmer weather during the past century has enabled it to grow into a sixteen-foot tree. (CREDIT: KARL BRODOWSKY)

  The ancient bristlecone pine forest high in eastern California’s White Mountains. I am awe inspired when I look at these tree beings. A researcher cut one of them down, just so he could date it. It was a terrible, wicked thing to do—that tree was over 6,000 years old. How many more years might it have lived? (CREDIT: ROBIN KOBALY)

  During a visit to Nepal I took part in a symbolic wedding between two trees. This is the “bride,” known as Peepal, decked out in her finery of silk ribbons. The Hindi priest and his five acolytes chanted throughout the service. The “groom” was planted eight yards away by my friend Peter Dalglish. The ceremony is intended to bring good fortune to the house he is building nearby. (CREDIT: MANOJ GAUTAM)

  Morning mist gives an air of enchantment to the redwoods and rhododendrons in Redwood National Park in California. (CREDIT: ©THOMAS D. MANGELSEN/ WWW.MANGELSEN.COM)

  The original type specimen of the now familiar Douglas fir, collected long ago in North America by the intrepid plant hunter David Douglas and stored in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. (CREDIT: © COPYRIGHT THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW)

  Wolfgang Stuppy, seed morphologist for Kew, offered me these amazing seed photos for this book. (CREDIT: WOLFGANG STUPPY © COPYRIGHT THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW)

  Lamourouxia viscose.

  Cochlospermum orinocense.

  Ravenala madagascariensis.

  Trapa bicornis.

  I was awestruck when I saw this “Seed Cathedral” at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, designed in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Millennium Seed Bank. Nicknamed “The Dandelion” by the Chinese, it was made of 60,000 transparent fiber-optic rods. At the end of each rod one or more seeds provided by the Kunming Institute of Botany were implanted. (CREDIT: WOLFGANG STUPPY © COPYRIGHT THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW)

  A hybrid orchid created and named for me by the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Spathoglottis Jane Goodall. What an honor! (CREDIT: BENG CHIAK TAN)

  Simon Wellinga successfully cross-pollinated the two “rotten meat orchids” (Bulbophyllum echinolabium) in his collection. He grew many orchids and shared them with other breeders. Soon the market was so flooded with them that collectors were no longer motivated to steal the last few growing in the wild. (CREDIT: ROGIER VAN VUGT)

  There are only a few groves of this beautiful ground orchid Eulophia guineensis growing wild in Gombe National Park. (CREDIT: JANE GOODALL)

  The monkey orchid (Dracula gigas) is found in the high-altitude cloud forests of southeast Ecuador and Colombia. As soon as I saw a photo of this amazing flower I knew I had to include it in this book. I can only imagine what it would be like to suddenly come upon all these primate faces in the misty forest. (CREDIT: SCOTT P. MOORE)

  A recent picture of The Birches garden in winter. I love the way snow creates a whole new magical landscape. (CREDIT: JANE GOODALL)

  I love roses and was especially thrilled by the Jane Goodall Rose, created by the “rose poet” Christian Hanak and Guillaume Didier. When fully mature the inmost petals acquire a deep orangey color. The scent is glorious. How incredible that, wherever it grows, it will bear my name. (CREDIT: JEROEN HAIJTINK)

  BEFORE: A new environmentally friendly gardening movement is under way in many developed countries. Gombe videographer Bill Wallauer and his wife, Kristin, transformed their backyard into a native plant habitat for bees, birds, and other wildlife. Just about the only thing that remained the same is the garden shed in the left corner. (CREDIT: WILLIAM R. WALLAUER)

  AFTER: A new environmentally friendly gardening movement is under way in many developed countries. Gombe videographer Bill Wallauer and his wife, Kristin, transformed their backyard into a native plant habitat for bees, birds, and other wildlife. Just about the only thing that remained the same is the garden shed in the left corner. (CREDIT: WILLIAM R. WALLAUER)

  I recently met with some of the traditional healers of the Waha tribe near Gombe. Mzee Mikidadi showed me where he now grows many medicinal plants behind his house, as it’s becoming harder to find them in the wild. He purposefully grew this ntuligwa tree (Flacourtia indica) on a termite mound because he believes it makes the medicine from the
leaves more effective. (CREDIT: © THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE – TANZANIA / BY DR. D. ANTHONY COLLINS)

  In many Latin American countries, the leaves of the coca plant (Erythroxylum coca) are considered to have practical as well as spiritual value. A friend of mine took this picture of a Bolivian shaman (center) who is preparing to toss a bundle of coca leaves onto the cloth. He will then “read” the leaves to determine the success of an archaeological dig that is about to begin. (CREDIT: CHRISTIN M. JONES)

  Amazingly, all 1,000 varieties of potato are descended from a single wild ancestor that grew in Peru and Bolivia. Potatoes were a staple food during my wartime childhood, and they still represent an important food in many parts of the world. (CREDIT: © INTERNATIONAL POTATO CENTER)

  Fortunately, we can buy tea that has not been grown on an environmentally destructive, heavily sprayed monoculture plantation. This woman is harvesting tea from an ancient tea forest in China where no toxic chemicals, clear-cutting, or even weeding is permitted. Many of these trees are over 500 years old. (CREDIT: JOSHUA KAISER)