An Ode to Nature: The Legacy of Donald Culross Peattie

June 21, 1898: The American botanist, naturalist, and author Donald Culross Peattie.

Donald would become one of America's most beloved nature writers.

With lyrical prose that captivated readers of all ages, Donald Peattie had a unique ability to make the complexities of botany accessible to even the most casual observer. His works, such as Trees You Want to Know, introduced countless people to the wonders of the natural world.

In his book American Heartwood, Donald wrote,

“Wood, if you stop to think of it, has been man’s best friend in the world.

It held him in his cradle, went to war as the gunstock in his hand, was the frame of the bed he came to rejoicing, the log upon his hearth when he was cold, and will make him his last long home.

It was the murmuring bough above his childhood play, and the roof over the first house he called his own. It is the page he is reading at this moment; it is the forest where he seeks sanctuary from a stony world.”

His book Flowering Earth was written for laypeople. It explains concepts like chlorophyll and protoplasm and specimens like algae and seaweed.

The Hartford Times said this about Peattie's Flowering Earth:

"Peattie makes the story of botany and its pursuit as fascinating to the reader as it is to him, and the reading of it a delight."

Over time, Donald began to focus on trees. His popular books on North American trees include Trees You Want to Know (1934), The Road of a Naturalist (1941), American Heartwood (1949), A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America (1950), and A Natural History of Western Trees (1953).

Donald's writing voice is friendly and lyrical. He wrote,

"I have often started off on a walk in the state called mad-mad in the sense of sore-headed, or mad with tedium or confusion; I have set forth dull, null and even thoroughly discouraged. But I never came back in such a frame of mind, and I never met a human being whose humor was not the better for a walk."

He wrote,

"All the great naturalists have been habitual walkers; for no laboratory, no book, car, train or plane takes the place of honest footwork for this calling, be it amateur's or professional's."