“The periwinkle is blooming but I’m looking here.” Professor Don Pfister said with amusement, redirecting a group of thirty, rain-gear clad participants to look away from the delicate purple-blue flowers to where green lichen had formed between bricks on the side of a building.
His remark concisely captured the spirit of the event, “Learning Harvard’s Plants and Fungi: A campus walk with Prof. Don Pfister” hosted by the Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative within the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) on Tuesday, April 4. As the bright colors spring up from the ground and compete for our attention Pfister, Asa Gray Research Professor of Systematic Botany, wants us to look elsewhere—to the complex and intertwined lives of lichen and the environment that surrounds them.
Pfister began by distributing hand lenses for participants to inspect these organisms up close, instructing the group to hold the lens close to the face as if inspecting a diamond. “Lichen represent a type of symbiosis,” Prof. Pfister explained, “We think of symbiosis in the classic sense as two organisms living together. This covers mutualism, where both organisms get something out of it; parasitic where one organism is harmed and the other benefits; and commensalism where one organism benefits and there is no positive or negative impact on the other. Lichen is a mutualist—a fungus builds a house, and the alga gets a home.”
Under the magnifying lens, the lichen that Pfister directed the group to were just as mesmerizing as the crocuses and daffodils that are beginning to appear to the naked eye, underscoring that what we consider beautiful and worth investigating often changes with a shift in scale and perspective. As Pfister put it, “when we look at the unexpected, we increase vision.”
Scientists have proposed a term for many humans’ inability to identify and appreciate plants and fungi species in their environment – “plant-blindness.” The previous week, the CSWR’s “Plant Consciousness Reading Group” explored theories behind plant-blindness (or what others call “plant awareness disparity”) and critiqued some of its limitations. The group agreed that learning to identify and engage with other species is a skill, one that can be shaped by culture and practice. And that’s exactly what this tour intended to provide.
“I’m interested in learning what plants there are around here to make it feel more like home.” Said one participant, Cam McCartin, a first-year MDiv student who is currently taking a class on Religion and Ecology with Prof. Dan McKanan. Making stops at a Metasequoia (or Dawn Redwood) to learn the history of its discovery in nature after being identified in fossils; a Star Magnolia to feel its velvety bud scales (which one participant described as “pussy willow meets kiwi”), and to touch the spiked fruit of the Sweetgum tree and the fungus that frow on its branches, the afternoon walk was a rich learning and sensorial experience.
Understanding connections between the natural and spiritual worlds has been the object of increased focus at Harvard Divinity School and the Center for the Study of World Religions, which in addition to hosting a popular reading group on Plants (and Fungi) Consciousness, has also launched a new Thinking with Plants & Fungi Speaker Series, and is offering experiential walks and fieldtrips to Harvard students and affiliates, such as the April Yard walk with Prof. Pfister. All of these offerings are part of the broader “Thinking with Plants and Fungi” Initiative that was launched earlier this year with generous support from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.
Upcoming events:
- Planta Sapiens and Human Impatience: Are we patient enough to learn how smart plants are? Thursday, Apr 11, 2024, 2-3:30 pm, on Zoom Talk and conversation with Paco Calvo, cognitive scientist and philosopher of biology, professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab).
- “Church of the Woods” Field Trip, Sunday, April 28th, 2024, Registration by April 14. For HDS students and affiliates. Non-HDS registrations are welcome and will be added to a waiting list. We will travel to the woods of New Hampshire to experience how one of the contemporary spiritual communities, “Church of the Woods,” is rethinking the foundation of sacred space and liturgy in dialogue with the more-than-human world. We will explore how quiet, woodland contemplation helps participants experience community and prayer as beginning in the natural world -- that common source from which we all spring.
DON PFISTER is the Asa Gray Research Professor of Systematic Botany and Curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium, Emeritus. At Harvard he served in many roles including Faculty Dean at Kirkland House, Dean of the Harvard Summer School, Interim Dean of Harvard College and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. His research has focused on the classification and diversity of fungi, history of collections and collectors of biological materials. Prof. Pfister has done field work in many regions around the world, most recently in southern South America. He has taught courses ranging from the biology of fungi to plants used by people to forests and climate change.
-Story by Isabel Fredericks, Administration Assistant, CSWR