The Last Word On Nothing

I love the prickly, dry ecology of the northern California foothills. I love even it in late summer, when nothing is left of most plants and people but an exhausted, brittle husk. That is when my favorite plant, the California buckeye, or Aesculus californica, comes into its own.  

Unlike me, Aesculus californica knows when to start working and when to stop. Found only in California and a few parts of Oregon, the trees are the first to leaf out in spring. They produce bright green, almost tropical foliage, and fragrant spears of small white flowers.

By August, when temps have reached triple digits and rain is a distant memory, California buckeye stop trying to photosynthesize. Their dark-green leaves turn brown and shrivel, reducing water loss, and allowing the trees to devote all their energy to making big, glossy, mahogany seeds. Encased in silver-gray sheaths, the seeds dangle from bare buckeye branches like figs, or prettier testicles.

Predators like deer do not eat buckeye seeds, because they contain a potent neurotoxin that destroys red blood cells. In the fall, the seed’s sheath splits, allowing the seed to fall to the ground and germinate.

This is my favorite part. A fat, pale worm emerges, the embryonic root, or radicle. It plunges into the soil, sending down a deep taproot wherever the seed has landed, bounced or rolled. The trees thrive in steep canyons, stabilizing the soil, and can live up to 300 years.

Seeing California buckeyes flower, fruit and wither is not my only or the most important reason for sticking around this desiccated valley, but it is an important one. Yesterday, for the first time since last May, it rained. I made a pot of tea and sat on our porch, watching the mist turn into a steady downpour.

Rain splattered through my open windows, but I didn’t close them. I inhaled the valley’s first-rain scent, an earthy mixture of aromatic chemicals called petrichor. As the rain plumped up the moss on our old oak tree, I felt so giddy that I couldn’t concentrate on work.

I’d made it to the first rain of fall, a reason to celebrate, I decided. So I went for a walk, looking for silvery-grey-green pendants, and came back with a shiny brown seed that fit nicely in my palm — my end-of-summer reward.

This post originally ran in March 2014. Although tuberculosis cases are on the decline in the United States, we’re not headed for elimination, at least not this century. There were more than 9,000 cases in 2018, mostly among foreign-born individuals. But the news isn’t all bad: In August, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new TB drug called pretomanid. The drug, which will be delivered as part of a cocktail, can combat drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis.

The outbreak that shook the tiny town of Ninety Six, South Carolina, probably began in the spring of 2012. An elderly janitor at the local elementary school fell ill and began unwittingly spreading the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. By June 2013, more than 50 students were infected and at least ten had developed signs of the disease.

To prevent further spread, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) ordered the janitor to take medication and stay home, but he didn’t. According to an emergency public health order, he left his house without DHEC’s permission and refused to answer some of the department’s many questions. When he did answer, his responses were “evasive, vague and inconsistent.” What happened next probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did: The state arrested the janitor and threw him in a medical detention facility.