Trees and Grass

Near Santa Cruz, California, Circa 2018.

I like simple things. I deal with more complexity in my technical career than many, and it occurred to me that despite the intricacy and diverse nature of the various physical, software, and process components there is one thing I have got to be grateful for; they’ve kept the vernacular simple.

I have joked with children in my family that I prefer a simple approach to the natural world. Two categories of plants; trees and grass. In that microcosm, all fruits and vegetables grow on trees; and if you tell me that grapes grow on a vine I will tell you that the plant resembles a tree. Anything with four legs is a type of cat, dog, or cow; a giraffe is a cow with a long neck, and a camel is a cow with humps. I could go on, but you probably get my simplistic point. I try to keep it from getting too far-fetch, then again, a flamingo, ostrich, or emu could be considered a bird giraffe if you follow the logic.

Some flowers look like their name, but the majority don’t. A sunflower kind of looks like the sun and a bottle brush does indeed look like it could clean a bottle. I don’t know exactly how many varieties of flowers there are, but the only thing most of them actually look like is what they are called, rose, carnation, petunia, hibiscus, orchid, or some sub-classification.  And I get them wrong all the time. Simple is a red flower or a red flower that smells nice.

I never took zoology or botany, and while I admit to quickly looking up the taxonomy and mnemonics, the hierarchy is more absurd than the simplistic approach that I suggested earlier. Bottlebrush is a hell of a lot easier than Plantae, Tracheobionta, Spermatophyta, Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida Dicotyledons, Rosidae, Myrtales, Myrtaceae, Callistemon, the majority of which Microsoft Word doesn’t think is spelled correctly!

I have heard that you can identify a dogwood tree by the bark, that a palm tree should fit in your hand, and that an acorn is nothing more than an oak tree in a nutshell. If you’ve seen a picture of a young George Washington cutting down a tree with cherries on it, it is likely a double myth since cherry wood trees are common in Virginia while the trees that have fruit on them don’t grow there or anywhere nearby. Fooled me too, the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC each year has nothing to do with the fruit that is absent from the trees and flowers that are being celebrated.

Back to simplicity – and technology. I am grateful that scientists haven’t felt the need to go down the taxonomy path for electronics. A computer is either a desktop, notebook, or tablet these days. A television is referred to as a television or TV whether it has tubes, plasma, or LCD. While there once were a bunch of different types of cell phones they’ve pretty much converged down to something called a smartphone, All of them are referred to as screens. So perhaps the idea that plants could be reduced to trees and grass isn’t all that far-fetched!