Michael Frome

Born in 1920: author, conservationist, lecturer.

Thus we do now enter the realm of the National Forests, which are as old as the oldest history and as new and exciting and meaningful as the most creative work of architecture, and perhaps not much more understood than the most current work of art. Whose Woods These Are, 1962.

In turning toward the light, as a tree must do to grow, the forest creature rises upward; generally it has no other direction to follow. But a tree growing in the open has light on all sides, and acquires girth instead of height by extending lower limbs from the trunk. Wonderful for shade, but as the forester would say, it is too limby and knotty for timber. Ibid.

The oldest tree family is the conifer, which grew abundantly over the earth in the Jurassic Age, 175,000,000 years ago, and which retains a simple floral structure. Ibid.

The largest tree family in the United States, the deciduous, also known as hardwood or broadleaf, include oaks, maples, sycamores, elms, all told about 650 species. Ibid.

Theodore Roosevelt is the figure most remembered of the conservation crusade early in this century, as he should be. Throughout this period, however, a singular individual in American history, Gifford Pinchot by name, stood at his right. He was the first native-born, trained forester. There was none before him. Ibid.