At 10:30 a.m. on the Fri. morning following Theta Date Night, it was not yet clear whether I would make it to the third (and my first) session of E&EB 145, Plants and People. The science course, offered for the first time this year, was slated for 11 a.m. at the Marsh Botanical Gardens. This was a 25-minute brisk walk away from my bedroom floor, where I was nursing something I might have pulled in my thigh.
I arrived a minute late; sweaty, concerned, and invigorated from my hike. Upon entering the greenhouse, my feelings were both dampened and lightened: dampened, because of the humidity control; and lightened, because the room was filled with a collection of ripe Plants and eager People, many of whom were wearing fun pants.
The 30 students lucky enough to be chosen from the 93 applicants (plus me, an interloper who admittedly doesn’t even go here) would be split into groups. Half were to stay with Professor Linda Puth in this back room, and half were to go with Eric Larson, the manager of the Botanical Gardens. Larson appeared behind me, wearing a newsboy cap and holding a child-sized branch.
The class period was a blur of fantastical plant names—“Dreamsicle Sundew,” “Cobra Lily,” “Miracle Fruit, “River She-Oak” (I identified with all of them)—and moments that I’m confident are permanently snared in the mental flytraps of all those in attendance. Standing by a shrub, Puth revealed that wasps live inside figs—sometimes so many at a time that fights break out between residents. Female wasps can leave, pausing on different fig fruits to implant their eggs within, but males stay in place, living their lives between cellulosic wallpapers before traveling into one’s stomach, often via Newton. And in the carnivorous plants room, we watched as Larson stroked a Venus Flytrap with the tip of his pen. It was, we were told, a bit “sleepy,” and wasn’t tempted to snap shut on its potential prey.
Josh Feinzig, CC ’16, was the class’s obvious rising star. An EP&E major and an Opinion editor for this publication, Feinzig made his first power play in the desert room, when Larson asked the group why they thought the two cacti he pointed out had long, thick, blond hair. “To absorb the mist,” said Feinzig. Later, he was the first to answer a question Professor Puth posed to the class, clearly referencing the previous session’s lecture. “What are the plant growth forms?” she asked. We were silent for a moment too long before Feinzig stepped forward and said, “Tree.”
It was Feinzig, too, who later called the class’s attention to a momentarily confusing revelation: “So palm trees aren’t trees?” he asked. They aren’t, Puth explained, because they don’t have a woody central stalk—instead, they are big forbs, as are ferns and geraniums.
When the class officially ended, students stuck around to look more closely at the specimens, and to ask Puth lingering questions on leaf patterns and trunk structures. Puth has been at Yale for over 10 years, teaching Conservation Biology and Field Ecology, while simultaneously doing her own research. “She’s like Professor Sprout,” said Feinzig, who likened the class to the Herbology courses offered at Hogwarts. “I’m just waiting for something crazy to pop out. I’m like, on my toes the entire class.” He used the Venus Flytrap, whose cameo was Feinzig’s favorite part of the recent field trip, as an indicator of future experiences. “Even though it didn’t really close its mouth the fact that they tried to get it to close its mouth got me really excited for the rest of the semester.”
Puth seemed a bit taken aback at the overwhelming demand for Plants and People. When she realized that the final applicant pool more than tripled her class’s capacity, she and one of her TAs, Maddy, devised a plan to choose most of their students by lottery, after first plucking those whose academic paths fit best with the class’s content and structure. The three weekly meetings, typically including one field trip, will cover plant-people relationships from biological, historical, anthropological, and artistic perspectives. Feinzig’s application dovetailed with that of classmate William Hall, MC ’15. They both focused on their curiosity regarding the possible sentience of plants, specifically in terms of locating moral value in plant life. Other admits included a passionate cook, who was interested in the prior lives of his ingredients, and a designer of t-shirts, who displays his art on organic cotton.
One sophomore History of Art major and another editor of this publication, Jacob Stein, DC ’17, was bitter from his ultimate rejection from the class. A previous semester’s coursework on decorative arts had piqued his interest in the flax plant; Stein wished to continue exploring its cultural role. “It really factors into the gender roles and labor structure of societies that produce linen garments,” Stein said. “It’s this really fibrous plant that requires a number of different, very specified processes, and tools for these processes, that change who and how the labor of creating linen is structured. So there’s some genuine plant-people interaction that I’d encountered in the past and wanted to maybe take the next step, and see why flax is so fibrous, and how that makes the resultant fabric so particularly well-suited for hot climates.” This reasoning was not enough to get Stein a spot.
“I was certainly disappointed,” said Stein. “I did make it into the lottery, so I wasn’t one of those people they weeded out, so to speak. It was just the result of chance, which doesn’t make me feel too bad. If others in the class hadn’t been so proud of—you can’t even call it an achievement; their luck—then maybe I’d have more positive feelings.”
I left the class feeling conflicted. I was happy, because I had just spent 50 minutes learning about plants in one of the most fun academic environments I’d ever breathed in; but also sad, because I wouldn’t be able to spend this semester taking a Science credit that includes a visit to the Yale University Art Gallery. It was when I’d made it halfway to my other favorite terrarium (the eating room in Book Trader Café, where I was, incidentally, headed to meet someone on the class’s waitlist) that I found what must have been, if anything, a sign from God. A small cloth leaf had inexplicably planted itself inside my coat pocket. From this I took two things: 1) I should spend more time with plants, and 2) everyone should write to Tom Near, the E&EB DUS, so the department holds Plants and People again next year. (He can be reached at thomas.near@yale.edu.)
In the meantime, said Stein, “Those who did—by pure chance—get into Plants and People need to check their privilege.”