WHEN TREES TESTIFY

Reclaiming Black people’s botanical heritage.

Plant biologist Montgomery melds scientific expertise with memoir and family history to reveal the multifaceted connections of trees and plants to the Black American experience. She focuses on seven trees in particular: pecan, sycamore, willow, poplar, oak, mulberry, and apple, each of which—along with the cotton shrub—bears witness to enslavement, emancipation, and a legacy of racism. Growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, Montgomery was surrounded by trees in her neighborhood and in the woods where she and her siblings played. Some connections to trees came from childhood experiences, others from family stories. She discovered that in the segregated South in which her parents grew up, “Black Americans frequently were not allowed to purchase or consume vanilla ice cream—it was considered a ‘pure’ ice cream reserved for white Americans.” To flavor their homemade ice cream, Black people added pecans; butter pecan ice cream was a family favorite. Trees had tragic associations, too: throughout the South, many types were used for whippings and hangings. The connection between poplars and lynchings appears in the popular song “Strange Fruit.” Sycamores, besides being hanging trees, also helped enslaved people to escape: Their girth was large enough to hide a runaway. In fact, Montgomery discovered, part of the Underground Railroad is known as “Sycamore Trail, so named due to the rows of sycamore trees growing on the banks” of a creek in Ohio. Blacks and Indigenous peoples developed sophisticated botanical knowledge, both in plant cultivation and medicinal uses. Leaves of the willow, for example, were made into poultices or infusions for the treatment of aches and swelling; bark extracts for treating dysentery; root infusions as an anti-diarrheal. Botanical knowledge, Montgomery argues persuasively, was intrinsic to Black people’s survival and sustenance before and after emancipation.

A fresh perspective on Black history.