Spotted Russian Knapsack Weed
Sep. 19th, 2024 02:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisem Back when I went to the University of Minnesota, I was wandering around in a huge confusing new world. The year I started, there were fifty-five thousand students enrolled. Minneapolis and St. Paul seemed utterly vast. The town I came from had one thousand three hundred and seventy eight inhabitants, and I turned seventeen the week before classes started. It was, as they say, a lot.
In all the bewildering chaos, there were a few particularly bright spots, and one of those was how I found the only thing I was good at drawing. I don't remember why I wound up taking "Morphology and Identification of Crops and Weeds" from Dr. Strand, but it was one of the best things. THe class was famous insofar as even people who took it figuring it was an easy class wound up learning an awful lot. And Dr. Strand was a joy to be around.
Plants turned out to be the thing I could draw. Specifically, botanical illustration, the parts and structures of plants. It was a great comfort to be able to draw something, as my artistic efforts hadn't been well received up to that point. (Later for those stories, maybe.) There was a project I was looking at doing, drawing for Dr. Strand, but it never happened, alas.
Eventually when Juan and I got together, he was taking a crops and weeds class -- it was taught by someone else then, as Dr. Strand had passed away -- and he had me drill him on weed identification along the railroad right of way that separated our neighborhood from the nearest grocery store. The fictitious weed he invented for whenever he didn't know the answer was Spotted Russian Knapsack Weed.
The University of Minnesota has a herbarium named after Dr. Strand. Someday maybe I'll get over there and see it.
In all the bewildering chaos, there were a few particularly bright spots, and one of those was how I found the only thing I was good at drawing. I don't remember why I wound up taking "Morphology and Identification of Crops and Weeds" from Dr. Strand, but it was one of the best things. THe class was famous insofar as even people who took it figuring it was an easy class wound up learning an awful lot. And Dr. Strand was a joy to be around.
Plants turned out to be the thing I could draw. Specifically, botanical illustration, the parts and structures of plants. It was a great comfort to be able to draw something, as my artistic efforts hadn't been well received up to that point. (Later for those stories, maybe.) There was a project I was looking at doing, drawing for Dr. Strand, but it never happened, alas.
Eventually when Juan and I got together, he was taking a crops and weeds class -- it was taught by someone else then, as Dr. Strand had passed away -- and he had me drill him on weed identification along the railroad right of way that separated our neighborhood from the nearest grocery store. The fictitious weed he invented for whenever he didn't know the answer was Spotted Russian Knapsack Weed.
The University of Minnesota has a herbarium named after Dr. Strand. Someday maybe I'll get over there and see it.
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Date: 2024-09-19 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-20 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 10:27 am (UTC)I like that. It sounds like it should be illustrated by Jim Flora.
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Date: 2024-09-19 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 08:42 pm (UTC)Very locally in my yard, I think the equivalent would be Creeping Virginia's Beard.
P.
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Date: 2024-09-20 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-21 02:49 am (UTC)I have a hard time even imagining a school of 55,000 students.