Before the semester moves into full swing, I took the chance to check out the Open Orchard on Governors Island (a place I confess I'd not been before) and the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library. The orchard is the brainchild of sculptor Sam Van Aken, who has for several years been grafting "Trees of 40 fruit," bringing together on one stem huge varieties of stonefruits. For Governors Island he's supervising an "orchard" of fifty trees which represent two hundred varieties of native and imported apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries and apples.
I write about grafting in my book but my experience with grafting has been all books (and videos). This was a chance to see grafting in person, raised to the level of public art. It confused me in all the right ways. "In person" - how many persons is it when a tree sports branches of such different provenance? Was this a wonder or a horror?
Grafting has been the way fruit has been grown for millennia; the Encyclopédie reported it was known as le triomphe de l'art sur la nature. Aken's Governors Island trees preserve species (and share fruit) from varieties long forgotten or abandoned by agriculture, and the human worlds, tracing from far and near, which cherished them.
It's late in the year, so I spotted only two fruits (neither ripe yet), but at other times these trees will sport many colors of flowers, and many shapes and sizes of fruit. How ... bizarre. And yet, seeing these with the southern tip of Manhattan in the distance, it was impossible not to see them as representing the American experiment. Better than melting pot, better than salad bowl. I wasn't expecting that but was quite moved. 
The NYPL's Picture Collection is something else again, files of images clipped from books and magazines going back over a century (they started in 1915), organized by subject. I'd sent an inquiry indicating my interest in trees but wasn't prepared for the shelves of files, sorted by tree species. There's a generic Trees file (one of three, the others stored in another room), too - coming right after the fat file on Treehouses! 
There may or may not be bibliographical information available for the images, but the point is to encounter them as images, indeed as part of a windfall of pictures - the Picture Collection is beloved or artists, designers and others in search of inspiration. Quite different from, or perhaps a different kind of, research! And what fun! I leafed through the first of the generic Tree files as well as the two on Trees - Oaks. Educational texts and advertising, photography and art, wall papers and even butter molds... Will be back for more. 
