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Sharing love for trees at Cold Spring Harbor Lab

Irene Virag | GARDENING

8:28 AM EDT, October 11, 2008

Liz Watson's book about trees at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab

Liz Watson standing with one of her favorite tree, the Copper Beech. (Newsday / J. Conrad Williams Jr.)

The slender brown-haired woman in sneakers, beige pants and a sleeveless shirt -- fit and toned from her almost-daily walks about the green world she lives in -- stands in the driveway in front of her house and looks at two stately trees reaching into the cloudless sky above the sun-flecked waters of Cold Spring Harbor.

"I love those two scarlet oaks," says Liz Watson. "Something about them speaks to me, especially on a day like today, when there's a hint of autumn in the air."

Liz Watson loves trees -- especially noble trees. Trees that woody plant expert Michael Dirr, who is a professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia, calls trees for the ages. Trees that transcend generations. Trees that inspire us. Trees like the multitude of leafy friends that surround her throughout the grounds of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she has lived for nearly 40 years with her husband, James, the 1962 Nobel laureate who co-discovered the double-helix structure of DNA.

Her preferences are as widespread as tree branches. Exotics like the European larch she sees from her dining room window and the Amur corktree down the road with curved corky limbs that touch the ground and reach back up and down again as if they are the tentacles of a great wooden octopus. And natives -- the sweet gums and the black walnut trees and the tulip trees that the Algonquin Indians once turned into canoes by hollowing out their burned trunks.

She loves everything about trees, from their beauty to their roles as helpers of gardeners and the earth. "Junipers hold a hillside and prevent erosion, which is a real concern here."

She even loves their Latin names. "They're quite descriptive. I insisted that the family name as well as the genus, species and common name, too, go on every plaque here. I want people to admire the trees and learn about them, too. For instance, the spring-flowering fruit trees -- pears, plums, apples -- belong to Rosaceae, the rose family. And pod-forming trees -- black locust, catalpa, mimosa -- are part of the family Fabaceae. That's right -- the bean family. It's fascinating."

All of which prompted her new book, "Grounds for Knowledge," published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. It's all about the famous genetics and cancer research center's trees and buildings, with excellent photos to boot. I don't pretend to have half as much arboreal knowledge as Liz, who is a former president of the Friends of Planting Fields and serves on the stewardship committee of the arboretum in Oyster Bay. But I'm a fellow tree-hugger, and so I asked if she could take me on a tour of the lab's campus, which is actually located in Laurel Hollow, covers 107 acres and includes 150 species of identified trees. The century-old lab is on the National Register of Historic Places, but I'm equally impressed by its new and official alter ego: the Bungtown Botanical Garden.

Liz who has a master's degree in historic preservation and is a trustee of the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities and on the board of the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation was instrumental in the lab's placement on the national register as well as its designation as a botanical garden. Besides, I like the alliteration of Bungtown Botanical Garden. In case you're wondering, the name comes from a small whaling community that flourished along the harbor in the 1800s and was called Bungtown after the plugs used to seal up barrels made in a local factory.

I want to see some of Liz's favorite trees, and she doesn't have to go far, pointing out the Blue Atlas cedar and the Cedar of Lebanon at the end of her driveway. And then she's off to a copper beech with an imposing gnarled trunk not far from the house.

A minute later we're walking down the driveway of a neighbor, Art Brings, the lab's chief facilities officer, checking out the big ginkgo tree that holds court in his yard.

"What do you think?," Art asks. "When will it pop?"

"It's too early." Liz says. "Maybe the first of November."

"People from all over come to see the ginkgo," Art says. "When it changes color, you can see it glowing across the harbor." In one of the photos in Liz's book, the tree's yellow fall splendor utterly lights up the red and russet foliage of the shoreline. The leaves fall to the ground in a golden mantle all at once a day or two later. Talk about noble trees -- its kind, Ginkgoarcerae, existed when dinosaurs roamed the planet.

A misty morning has turned into a lovely day, and the scent of the sea mingles with a touch of cool. Blushes of color bear witness to autumn. And tree follows tree.

"I love it here in the spring," Liz says, "when color goes from zip to wow. But I really love fall -- and not just because of the changing colors. I love all the nuts and seed pods." She shows me a native black walnut, Juglana nigra, laden with nuts encased in chartreuse balls, and offers this tasty tidbit: The late Barbara McClintock, who won a 1983 Nobel Prize for her work in the genetics of corn, used them for brownies. She said they were richer than store-bought English walnuts.

We visit the Pinetum near Route 25A, which contains limber pines and umbrella pines and Alaska cedars and deodar cedars and Norway spruces and Siberian spruces, and even yellow-berried holly trees. And, of course, we stop to admire the horse chestnut by the entrance to the lab that Liz tells me is "emblematic; it's in all the pictures."

And black gums. "Black gum is known by many names Nyssa sylvatica, sour gum, pepperidge, beetlebung. It grows in moist areas and turns the most incredible shade of dark scarlet." And Catalpa trees and gentle Japanese maples and pin oaks and California incense trees and shagbark hickories and hollies and Scholartrees, or Sophora japonica, which blossom in summer with pale yellow flowers. Another member of the Fabaceae family, it has greenish-gold pea pods that linger into winter.

I'm out of space, but I did want to mention a Kobus magnolia that goes back to the days when the lab was a private estate. It's hard to believe the towering wall of green is one tree. In April, Liz says, the magnolia is a mass of white flowers. "Hundreds and hundreds of teeny white flowers -- well, not-so-teeny flowers. It looks like a giant cotton ball. It knocks your socks off." She promises to call me in April when the show begins.

I can hardly wait.

Irene Virag is a Newsday garden columnist.