"Like an Eastern Redbud, I have a heart."

“Like an eastern redbud I have a heart.”

Each week during our horticulture class, I introduce the students to a new plant. They then have to memorize how to visually identify the plant, as well as how to spell its Latin, common, and family names. They’ve learned to spell words like Chaenomeles speciosa and Hamamelidaceae. I’m replicating an exact assignment I had in my own undergraduate studies and teaching the same plants I learned and poured over for four years. The only difference is that instead of walking around a botanical garden and visually identifying these plants like I did, my students have to see photos of them on a PowerPoint.

Because they can’t see the plants in person, they’ve come up with ingenious mnemonic ways to remember each plant. Take for example, the Eastern Redbud, or as it’s known in Latin, Cercis canadensis. The Eastern Redbud has heart shaped leaves, an easily identifiable feature that stands out amongst other plants. Hearts = red = Eastern Redbud. Another example, Fothergilla major, or Witch-Alder. The flower blooms of the Witch-Alder look like a cat’s tail, witches are always depicted with cats, cat tails = witches = Witch-Alder.

It's silly, fun, and helps the students better know the world around them. Plus, we’re teaching something new and foreign to a group of students who have historically been uncomfortable in classroom settings and never felt like they have belonged. I remind them that if they can learn Latin, there’s nothing else that they can’t learn.

As the semester wound down, I was running out of ideas for assignments. I resorted to something simple -- write a page on a plant that has changed your life. I truthfully did not know what to expect. A week later, I read through their papers. Not surprisingly, some students wrote of the cocoa and marijuana plants and their adverse effects. Other students wrote of plants their mothers had used in homemade recipes that they missed. One student, an aspiring rapper, wrote at the top of his paper “The Eastern Redbud.”

“The Eastern Redbud?” I thought. That’s strange. I kept reading.

In his paper he wrote: Like an eastern redbud I have a heart.

Then sang my soul. God is using plants to show these 50+ men His goodness. This kid had never seen an Eastern Redbud before my PowerPoint. But that plant with the heart-shaped leaves taught him something about himself.

How great God is.

Have a blessed day.

Spencer