David Brown that colony of tiger lilies . . . see them? There will be quite a show when they get into bloom. As Bob grew older the delicate petals of his “lovely rare flowers" would gradually assume the role of threatened protagonists in a dramatic geographic and temporal scenario. Now, in his sixties, he points out that the natural vegetation in his botanical zone is on the defensive, beleaguered by modern technical progress, constantly threatened by monster timber and earth-moving machinery, and by poison spray. The arch villains in this scenario are the sales representatives of poison spray companies whose incomes depend on convincing people, especially officials in Salem, that even if their product should happen to wipe out a native plant or two, there's no reason to join the petty hysteria of the environmentalists. These native plants are just weeds after all, which, when left to their own devices, try to spread their messy way onto (what 16 should be) neatly poisoned roadsides. Lesser villains in Bob's vision are certain flourishing non-native plant species which now cover acres and acres of Oregon and Washington. "A few newcomers have made themselves right at home here," Bob says, waving toward a gigantic tangle of himalaya blackberries. “They find our climate to be just what the doctor ordered. We must have a care for the native species or they'll be elbowed out by these immigrants. We crowded out the native Indians; we certainly don't want to see the scenario repeated in the plant kingdom." Bob likes to explain that the North Pacific Coast botanical zone, which extends from about Eureka, California north to Alaska, is either the smallest or the second smallest of the world's 24 botanical provinces (New Zealand might be slightly smaller). He says that there was a time when we could feel more complacent and say “Oh, even if it is a comparatively small botanical area. there's still so much land that there are bound to be holes and crannies here and there where almost anything could escape." But these days we can't be so sanguine about it: “With thousands of bulldozers rumbling about, and with all these poison merchants showing their bright shiny teeth, and treating the officials to banquets and giving them awards and medals for their assiduity in destroying weeds—why some of these valuable species might be lost. And that will be a particularly poignant tragedy, because our botanical zone is rather crucial in the evolutionary process." Crucial in the evolutionary process? “Yes," says Bob, and at this juncture, when he is about to stretch the taffy of one of his ideas to its tensile limit, about to pull its sticky ends into the farthest reaches of time and space. Bob usually stares at a point on the ceiling above his listener's head, and speaks more softly than ever. Yes. There is evidence that this botanical zone is the nexus, the most important connection, between the north and the tropics (or subtropics). When the botanical areas of Europe and Asia are pressed southward by ice sheets, as they are from time to time, why the plants are pressed right up against the Alps and the Himalayas with no refuge, no way to get across. Those east-to-west running mountain ranges form an impenetrable barricade. But here, where the mountains run north-to-south, there's easy refuge right down to California for an escape. Then when the ice sheet recedes another age later, the plants can move north again. Eventually they repopulate the northern hemisphere. The redwoods are a good example. At present they only live south of here, in Northern California. But at one time there were redwoods all over the northern half of the world. Given time, the redwoods will perhaps re-tree the northern continents. So you see, if you wipe out a native plant in Oregon you interrupt a rather significant evolutionary cycle. Bob's family moved back to their home in Valley Vista just in time to experience the economic terrors of the Great Depression. Too broke to pay for outside entertainment, the family spent its evenings in long discussions with a
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