Native Texans (1984)

Alta Neibuhr was the first to say it should have been called A Philosopher Looks at Plants. She provided copies to her herbalists. That's when Brother Lynch wrote to her and said it humanized botany more than he could have dreamed. Dr. Blackstock said it read like a novel. Later an editor at TCU press said she had hoped it would have had more philosophy. The heirs of these folks, if they had any, could refer to various fictions about herbs and subscribe to Human Botany. Croton, equisitum, milkweed, mullein, pennyroyal and horehound appeared in native plant newsletters. It was perilous. The day the ms was typed a stranger at the door, who had read one in the Newsletter and had a book contract with Texas Monthly Press, wanted to know everything about native plants! The ms was enthusiastically greeted by two regional Texas presses and canceled.

Hedeoma was the way I wanted to memorialize Carroll Abbott, for the whole thing was due to him, and Henry Burlage and Alta and others. Saint Coop printed An Introduction from his soft spot for plants: "If you were to take one plant with your immortal soul into the afterlife, then Hedeoma (Hedeoma Drummondii) would meet Amaranth. Medina County is starting a Hedeoma Dude Ranch. Aristophanes wanted thyme planted on his grave, but if you can get yourself planted in some Hill Country field you can have the superior Hedeoma. Albertus Magus claims drowned bees can be revived by the fragrance of the inferior pennyroyal, M. Pulegium, and that if you rub it on the "belly of any beast it shall be with birth." The use of Hedeoma in this way would shortly make so many beekeepers and mothers of us all that we would soon be drowned in milk and honey."

By way of explanation, the sun shining on herbs in jars on a window ledge in Chicago, out of nothing became everything. Within a year of migration to the Texas hill country that fragrance produced a desire to grow herbs, compass the hills in their seasons, at that time well outside Austin, and affected with rock walls, pumpkins, retama, red bud, limestone, sheep, pot studios and screened porches, reading Edith Sitwell in robin migrations and the click of the equinox in hammocks under oleanders, under chinaberries, on roofs, a childhood from the hills of western Pennsylvania made it continuous if episodic.

Out of these herb jars came A Calendar of Poems and its counterpart, Restorations of the Golden Age, but the peaks of roofs were coming over hill tops, so after moving closer to the city, living in Hyde Park, I came one day upon the Experimental Drug and Herb Garden, four acres of herbs and medicinal plants fallen out of favor and cultivation with its proprietor, the College of Pharmacy. Amazed to discover this vestige of pharmacy's past by accident, and after much nay saying about the possibility, for the place was all but closed, Henry Burlage, Dean Emeritus, concocted an encounter with that present Dean to the effect that the place would remain open with himself as the Director; I was the horticulturalist. The joy of this venture lasted three years and involved all sorts of trials and encounters, but when friend Henry took his last trip to the ER the end was in sight. The property was deeded back to the U in trade for a new pharmacy building on campus. All these matters engaged the herb and native plant people, Carroll Abbott among them, who more or less founded the native plant movement in Texas, being an ex-politico, but who subsisted on native plant seeds and bluebonnets with his Texas Wildflower Newsletter. These were the days when Ladybird Johnson was active.

Further access to hill country land, explorations over the Edwards Plateau, visits with Carroll, walking up and down rivers and always growing plants, he had often solicited, hungry editor that he was, articles for the Newsletter. But who ever does what's in their own best interest? So these invitations fell fallow, but even after moving to Dallas to pursue something that would pay the way for a new medical career, they kept coming. Carroll by this time had contracted cancer, which he movingly wrote of in the Newsletter that I still read, but one night I dreamed of him in such a woebegone state, depressed, in the dark, ashen, that I couldn't stand it, and instantly started writing that first piece, Equisitum, followed by Croton and Prickly Poppy and a whole flood. He printed the first two in the last efforts of Newsletter. My whole intent and purpose was to make him laugh. From what he said it worked. So I finished writing this, called it Native Texans (1984) as a joke since these plants are universal.