Donald Culross Peattie: Winter Halftones, Feathered Rainbows, and the Kings of Trees

November 16, 2020

Today we remember Donald Culross Peattie, the celebrated American botanist, naturalist, and writer, who died on this day in 1964 at the age of 66. During his lifetime, Peattie was one of the most widely read nature writers in America—his essays, books, and newspaper columns offering readers both scientific understanding and poetic reverence.

Educated at Harvard, Peattie possessed the scholar’s precision and the poet’s heart, blending both seamlessly in prose that still glows with intelligence and sensitivity.

His elder brother, Roderick Peattie, a geographer and essayist himself, described Donald with a mixture of irritation and admiration, writing:

“My young brother Donald was very skinny and quite philosophical.

He took every faith but theosophy.

He had a wonderful memory and a love of beauty, which still marks his life.

Doubtless, he was a genius, but I thought him a pest.”

— Roderick Peattie

Donald’s genius, as his brother put it, resided in the depth of his attention to seasons, trees, birds, and the quiet harmonies of the natural world. He understood nature not as spectacle but as artistry—something composed in subtle gradations rather than grand displays.

His observation of winter captures this perfectly:

Winter is a study in halftones, and one must have an eye for them or go lonely.

— Donald Peattie, An Almanac for Moderns, 1935

Peattie’s phrase has the cool beauty of truth. Winter, he suggests, is not barren but restrained, waiting for an eye sensitive enough to perceive its muted colors. His writing invites us to cultivate such an eye—to find companionship in quiet and refinement in simplicity.

When Peattie turned his gaze to a particular species, his words often combined affection with admiration. Few could equal his gift for description, as in this remark about the rugged splendor of the limber pine:

Limber Pines have a way of growing in dramatic places, taking picturesque attitudes, and getting themselves photographed, written about, and cared for...

— Donald Peattie, American botanist, naturalist, and author

Peattie could never resist the character of a tree—their gestures, their tenacity, their individuality. He mirrored John Muir and Henry Beston in seeing personality in landscape. His essays about trees often read like love letters written to old friends.

But for all his scientific grounding, Peattie also found grandeur in fleeting things—in motion, in light, in color. About the hummingbird, he wrote with wonder:

A hummingbird is a feathered prism, a living rainbow; it captures the very sunlight.

— Donald Peattie, American botanist, naturalist, and author

It’s easy to see why these lines have endured. Peattie’s eye for metaphor turned biology into revelation.

The hummingbird, with its jewel-like shimmer, becomes a symbol of vitality and the relationship between life and light itself.

And then there was his reverence for trees, which permeated everything he wrote. No tree was too ordinary to earn his scrutiny, yet he reserved special praise for the stalwart white oak:

If the Oak is King of Trees, then the White Oak is King of Kings.
— Donald Peattie, American botanist, naturalist, and author

For Peattie, nature was not simply to be studied—it was to be loved, honored, and spoken of with dignity. His writing urged readers to see the natural world as both intellect and blessing, a source of knowledge and moral beauty combined.

In his lifetime, Peattie bridged the gap between botany and literature, revealing that the two are, at heart, one and the same pursuit: an effort to understand what lives and to express, as faithfully as one can, its grace.

On this anniversary of his passing, his words remind us that even in the soft halftones of November, wonder abounds for those who keep their eyes open to the world.