Splintered
by Monique de Leeuw
Perspective: Malus Floribunda at Cussonia Court (physically removed)
Get directions: 37°47’51.3″S 144°57’38.1″E
I was thrust into the ground 60 years ago, planted within a pitiful circle of dirt in Cussonia Court. Surrounding me on all sides was concrete, entombed at birth. To grow naturally is unattractive, and so I was wrought into shape as a young tree, italicized with a sideways slant. As I grew, I searched for something beyond the concrete expanse, somewhere to finally breathe. Roots twisted and gnarled their way through the hypoxic earth, but upon rupturing through the cobble and probing the surface they were met with chainsaws. Nature and infrastructure in constant conflict, at war. Planted as an ornament, there was no regard for the fact that I was a living, growing thing.
As a mature tree, I was sentinel of the Court. Each spring, I unfurled my paper-thin petals, a cascade of almost preternatural fuchsia. The sight was captured thousands of times, nearly identical photographs proliferating in low resolution. What was the point of these pictures? Was it a way to preserve the moment so they could appreciate it later, when they had the time? During my short bloom, few even broke their stride to gaze at me unmediated by lens or screen. As the years passed, fewer bees greeted my waiting flowers, and my fruit was sterile.
After a life sentence in my concrete prison, my fate was decided by the only aspect of nature that was familiar to me. Physics determined that the wind screaming through Old Quad on that night was enough to splinter my trunk in half, weakened by decades of
standing tall with a sideways slant.
In my long life, I have never known freedom; from concrete, from secateurs and chainsaws, from the heavy smog that still hangs thick around the city. All this constriction and domination so I could exist as an ornament that few even registered in their peripheral? To me, it seems that the people of this University utterly dominate the elements of the natural world and its resources. My suffering is, of course, only abstract, but it’s not hard to imagine that this arrogance over nature has an influence on the way people treat the world around them. I saw it in the way the groundskeepers battled ceaselessly against weeds and snails, the ‘wrong’ kinds of life, and I saw it in the way so many students trashed coffee cups and flyers without a thought to the sheer scale of resources required to create them. They fail to see that the domain of humans
and the domain of nature are inextricably linked, and they fail to see the environment as more than a means to serve our needs. If this is the way you interact with the natural world in the everyday, within the confines of the campus, then how am I supposed to believe you when you say you care about the entire planet?
Fancy responding to the removed Malus Floribunda?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Monique de Leeuw is completing her honours this year in community ecology looking at how invasive species impact community stability, and she’s also interested in the philosophy of ecology and biology!
Words from monique
I’m not sure if the history of this particular tree is correct (I used a bit of creative license), although it did fall down recently 🙁
I wanted to use the tree as an example of the ways we view nature, particularly in urban environments, as something that is there to serve us rather than as another living entity that we should be aspiring to live harmoniously with. I don’t literally think the tree suffered, but I hope that writing from an anthropomorphic perspective will help people to consider this tree and the many other aspects of nature that surround us in a different way, and to realise that real environmental action requires a shift in attitude and how we treat our local environment.
FIND OUT MORE
Even though this Malus Floribunda can no longer be found on campus, it is registered on the University of Melbourne’s Urban Forest Map along with all the trees across the Parkville Campus.
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