In the last months of my career as a full-time teacher(1999), the last months of my part-time(2003) casual and volunteer teaching(2005) as well as into the early years of my full retirement from virtually all volunteer work,1 news was reported of the discovery in northeast China of the earliest flowering plants more than 124 MYA. The print and electronic media, first in scholarly journals and the popular press and then on TV,2 told us about what they called the first flower among the world’s flowering plants. Flowering plants are the dominant vegetation on the planet and they include: flowers, trees and many life sustaining crops. The field of study in which this knowledge, this specialized expertise, can be found is called palaeobotany and palaeobotany is a child, one of the multitude of children, of the Enlightenment. Its founding father was Gasper Maria von Sternberg(1761-1838).3 -Ron Price with thanks to 2the journal Science in 27 November 1998, the National Geographic News, 3 May 2002 and SBS TV, 8:30-9:30 p.m. 17 February 2008; as well as 2 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
1 Except for my work with the International Baha’i community
Yes, you can learn all about this
in the world of palaeobotany, or
in a newspaper or on TV—all to
the level of your capacity and
interest. If, as it is often said,
people prefer entertainment to
edification and put a premium
on personality at the expense of
issues, they can get a quick one
TV hit of that first flower and tree
back in the cretaceous period of the
Cainozoic era in their fragmentary
forms: leaves, stems, branches, stems,
trunks, pollen, spores, seeds—all old
ancestors in the long evolutionary story
of flowers going back to dinosaur times.
But now, growing in this new age, a new
flower has begun to bloom compared to
which all other flowers are but thorns;
and, yes, a tree is now growing in the
world of existence: its boughs and its
branches, its stems and its offshoots,
its leaves and its trunk will endure as
long as those most august attributes
and most excellent titles will last,1
attributes and titles of that essence
which the wisdom of the wise and
the learning of the learned can not
comprehend--will never understand.
1 Baha’u’llah, Baha’i Prayers, Wilmette, 1985, p.233.
Ron Price
16 April 2008
