An Iowa Garden

The weather today turned cold and misty, so many of the small early bloomers called it a day and folded up their flowers, but the hepaticas (liverworts) were quite nonchalant about the chilliness. This sunny little flower belongs to Hepatica nobilis, the common hepatica of Europe. The taxonomists have been having a field day changing the classifications of the members of this genus... I good naturedly went along with the last shakeup, but now they've gone too far. We used to have a nice group of species: H. acutiloba, the sharp-lobed hepatica, and H. americana, the round-lobed hepatica, both native to this country. Then Europe had H. nobilis, and Asia had H. asiatica var. japonica; a fine system, understandable to all. Well, then japonica was moved into nobilis as Hepatica nobilis var. japonica... suspect to my mind, but being a good sport, I went along with it. Now I find they are also shoving acutiloba and americana into nobilis, as var. acuta and obtusa, respectively. These taxonomists must think plant labels grow on trees.
The people who work in this field are a different breed... very focused. Tom is a botany major at the U. of Iowa here in Iowa City; I met him because he compiled the plant community manual for the woodland nature preserve that I've been volunteer-managing. He loves mosses, and took me off down a trail in the woods to show me a rare club moss. Now, he's been accepted in the graduate botany dept. at Berkeley. I lived in Berkeley in the early 70's when I was doing my internal medicine residency; I lived two blocks off of Telegraph Avenue, and had hair down over my shoulders and an attitude. Internal medicine may have been my specialty, but partying and having fun were at least my sub-specialties. When I heard that Tom was moving to Berkeley, I excitedly started telling him I'd fill him in on all my old haunts and all the great places to hear music and dance and party. This offer didn't seem to cause even a stir of excitement in him... then I realized; this is a fellow who is planning a lifetime career around the taxonomy of mosses... sigh... my old apartment with the black walls covered with rock record album covers probably isn't there anymore to rent, anyway.