An Ancient Voice

It was the last fit of Texas winter. The oaks of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, in Austin, had long since shed their waxy, emerald leaves, and their branches clacked in light wind. Phillip Schulze, the arboretum manager, piloted me on his golf cart through the center’s collection of all 53 oak species native to Texas, which boasts the greatest diversity of oak trees in the nation.

“Do this,” he said. “Take a room full of people, ask them to close their eyes and remember an important memory from their childhood. Then say, ‘Raise your hand if there was a tree present.’” We passed Spanish oak and lacey oak, bur oak and Chisos red. There were post oak and chinkapin. Shumard’s. Pin. “You watch,” he continued. “More than half, every time.” Then he tried it another way: “Ask kids, ‘Who likes to climb trees?’ All of them. It’s natural. Humans like trees. There’s a connection.”

Schulze wore a Lone Star State T-shirt overlaid with a chambray work top embroidered with the Wildflower Center logo and a ball cap with a neck cape. He nodded to the families we passed along the arboretum trail. Soon the path widened, opened up, and I got my first clear view of what I’d come to the Wildflower Center to see: the Hall of Texas Heroes.

You’d be forgiven if you imagined a row of stodgy historical photos hung along a dreary hallway. This display is nothing like that. Instead, a large circular clearing is populated by the offspring of some of Texas’ most storied oaks, those centenarian old-timers under whose shade treaties were signed, battles won and lost, romances set aflame. Now their 28 young children—all live oaks, one of Texas’ most enduring and