Let’s honour Arbor Day or inject ourselves with cyanide and inflict a painful death as a preference.

Birdsey Northrop is a name to conjure with. So is Leonard Cockayne. Northrop and Cockayne never met but they had in common passion for trees and particularly the planting of trees. It was Northrop who took the essentially American tradition of Arbor Day globally; Cockayne was the man who introduced it to New Zealand and is “generally recognised as the greatest botanist who has lived, worked, and died in New Zealand.” Implicit, there may be greater botanists than Cockayne, but none fulfilled all three distinctions of having lived, worked and died in New Zealand. I am sure that there are at least a few eminent botanists presently living and working in New Zealand who can’t wait to die here so they can claim Cockayne’s crown.
But what of Arbor Day itself? According to Wikipedia, it was founded officially by Sterling Morton (whom I thought was a Wallabies back) in Nebraska in 1872. The celebration may have its original roots in Judaism in a celebration called Tu B'Shevat. By the 1920s each state in the United States had passed public laws that proclaimed a certain day to be Arbor Day or Arbor and Bird Day observance. The dates differ and were established depending on climate and suitable planting times. As mentioned, the wonderfully and aptly named Birdsey Northrop brought Arbor and Bird Day to the world. As far as observance goes, I personally have not derived much pleasure, much less sensual delight, from observing trees. Birds are a different matter.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, today is Arbor Day of course. In New Zealand anyway. And it’s also Friday and this is Fryday and I have nothing else for Fryday that wouldn’t expose me to an enormous defamation suit from Dr Richard Worth. And what’s Richard worth? Not a lot. So, we’ll settle on trees and if you think that’s boring, I can only apologise, ask for your forgiveness, and suggest you mull over the thought that how vastly more boring would be Birdsey Northrop in the flesh. I have spared you that.


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