China Berry Trees

That's what I have always called them, those amazingly graceful symmetrical leafy green mid sized trees with the orange ornamental berries hanging down all around. I doubt china berry is its official name, but I will soon find out. Roberts Wesleyan College has a number of "tree walks" that they host each fall, and Kiel is required to take one. I never know in advance when they are offered, but I would love to tag along. One of these days I will do just that. In the meantime, Kiel has promised to get me the map numbering all the trees on campus and the code that tells what they are. I am excited to see it as I would love to know if my upsidedown tree is really an aspen, and what the types of the various pine trees actually are, not to mention what my china berry tree really is called.



I started calling them that because I had heard the term, and because the clusters of bright orange berries that hang abundantly in the fall remind me vaguely of those Japanese lantern plants. I suppose that's not the official name of those cool little plants either with their orange, oddly shaped pods (can you tell that Biology was never my strong suit?) Really, I should pay more attention to these things. How does it look for a librarian to be calling things by the wrong name?



Still, there is something vaguely romantic about saying that you are having lunch underneath the china berry tree. It hints of some hidden away place tucked far from the hectic pace of everyday life, a place where time has no meaning and all the people are calm and pleasant, a place where tea is served in delicate china cups while flute music wafts through the air. Can you picture it? A scene painted in those wispy gestures of brush strokes on a bamboo wall hanging?



Underneath the china berry tree, where everyone is healthy and happy and the mists cover the purple mountains and nature stretches tamely as far as the eye can see. A welcome contrast from the blacktop, concrete, and brick world that composes our daily landscape. I sometimes wander upstairs in the library to the windows gazing out across campus, on the pretext of checking to make sure everything is as it should be, just to be able to see the graceful china berry tree outside our building.

Its not a huge tree, sort of adolescent sized and without the bowing branches of a more mature tree. I wonder if china berry trees have an affinity for libraries, because there is also one in front of the old library building, the now re-purposed Hastings Center for Education. The one there is more of a young adult size. The best china berry tree I have seen lives along Westside Drive in the front yard of a cape cod that I pass whenever I walk from the library to the church (especially true on Thursday nights). Now there is a matronly tree with sweeping boughs that brush the ground and cleanse the environment with every breeze, nourishing the local fauna and providing ammunition for foot stomping fun.

When I discover the true name for my happy fall trees, I will let you know. But I'm pretty sure the real name can't hold a candle to my nickname.