Chestnut Hill resident for 10 years, Edward “Ned” Barnard, is one of three collaborators on the new book, “Philadelphia Trees: A Field Guide to the City and the Surrounding Delaware Valley,” (left) just published by Columbia University Press. (Photo by Pauline Gray)[/caption]

By Len Lear

I remember learning in high school Latin class that the Latin word for wood was “sylva” and that our state was called Pennsylvania (Penn’s Woods) because it was lush with trees as far as the eye could see.

And even though Philadelphia now has more than one-and-a-half million residents and probably millions of tons of concrete, we are still blessed to have a profusion of majestic, spectacularly beautiful, soul-stirring trees of all sorts.

And everything you may have ever wanted to know about any of these natural sculptures can be learned from “Philadelphia Trees: A Field Guide to the City and the Surrounding Delaware Valley,” authored by Paul W. Meyer, Catriona Bull Briger and Edward Sibley “Ned” Barnard and just published by Columbia University Press ($19.95).

Barnard, 81, a resident of Chestnut Hill, may just know more about trees than anyone in the U.S., having previously authored “New York City Trees: A Field Guide for the Metropolitan Area” and “Central Park Trees and Landscapes.” He also wrote five children's books for Readers Digest: on fishes, birds, frogs, foxes and butterflies.

“I always enjoyed exploring wild places,” he told us last week. “Later as an editor, I particularly liked editing nature books. While I was a project editor at McGraw-Hill, I headed up production of a 15-volume ecology series — ‘Life of Forests, Life of Rivers and Streams, Life of Prairies and Plains, etc.’ It was a great graduate course in ecology as we had a distinguished board of consultants —people such as Eugene Odum, then known as ‘the father of modern ecology.’"

Barnard graduated cum laude with a BA in English from Harvard in 1958. “In those days everyone got a ‘cum laude’ tacked on if they did any work at all,” he said. “I started pursuing an MS in English at University College London but had to leave when my wife became pregnant with twins.”

Later Ned worked for 17 years at Reader's Digest, first as a senior staff editor and then as managing editor of the General Books division. “While I was there, our sales went from $20 million to nearly $500 million, and sales of many of our books exceeded one million copies; some even topped 20 million copies.”

Since 1963 Barnard has been editing and writing natural history books, except for 13 years when his now-deceased first wife and he were running The Gazebo, a chain of country home furnishing stores in New York City.

For the last 10 years, Barnard and his wife, Pauline Gray, a former long-time resident of Manhattan, have lived in Chestnut Hill because “Pauline decided she wanted to live near her grandchildren in Chestnut Hill. I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea at first because I was deeply involved in finishing up a book on Central Park trees for the Central Park Conservancy.

“However, I managed to finish the Central Park book while living here, and also I entered into an agreement with Paul Meyer to produce a book on Philadelphia trees. While producing this book with an indispensible partner, my daughter-in-law Catriona Briger, I have become very fond of Philadelphia.

“It is really a small town in which everyone interested in botanical matters very quickly gets to know everyone else with similar interests. It is also the town where my mother's family has always lived. In fact, she was a student at Germantown Friends beginning more than a century ago.” (Ned has four children of his own: Abigail, Jonathon, Steven and Bonnie.)

Barnard and his collaborators worked on “Philadelphia Trees” for almost six years. It is an easy-to-follow text combined with more than 1000 color photographs, line drawings and detailed maps. Produced in consultation with the Morris Arboretum, the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, this guide contains information about 168 tree species growing along the streets and in the arboreta, parks, preserves and botanical gardens of the city and the surrounding area. It is structured to be used by both beginners and experienced tree lovers.

What is the most common tree in Chestnut Hill? “It depends on what area you're considering. In the Wissahickon, the most common tree species may be the tuliptree, followed closely by the black birch and sycamore. Along the streets, London planes, ginkgos, Callery pears and sawtooth oaks are common.”

What was the hardest thing Barnard ever had to do? “Maybe the hardest period in my life was when I was struggling to stay calm and hopeful when my first wife was slowly dying of breast cancer, and I was nursing her over a five-year period during which our business was failing, and bankruptcy was a real possibility.”

“Philadelphia Trees” is now available at Morris Arboretum’s Shop for $19.95 (members get 10% off), at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon.

Who are your own favorite writers and why?

I taught English in a private preparatory school and made all my students read 19th century English and American authors. So, of course, I do love Dickens, Thackeray, and Austen. I also am fond the American transcendentalists, particularly Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. As for modern writers, I tend towards nonfiction and nature writers such as E. O. Wilson, Michael Pollen, and Andrea Wulf. I'm also obsessed with World War II and read history of the period by Shirer and Beevor as wells as novelists such as Furst, and Doerr.

And last but not least, I love popular books on cosmology and particle physics such as those by our own Gino Segré and by Brian Greene. I subscribe to "Symmetry," the email magazine on cosmology, particle physics, which reports on work going on at  CERN's LHC near Geneva. Now is the golden age of cosmology and particle physics, and I hope I live long enough to find out what the heck dark matter and dark energy are. Also the discoveries we are making about extra terrestrial planets are amazing. And what about possible life in the ice-locked seas on the moons of the gas giants? It's all tremendously exciting.

What is the best advice you ever received?

It's advice that I'm getting all the time from my wife: live day by day, enjoy the tremendous gifts I have been given, try to help people along the way, and, most of all, be present with my family.

What is your greatest regret, if any?

I know I should regret that I haven't worked harder and accomplished more, but I feel so damn lucky every day just to be alive that I don't dwell much on regrets.

Which talent that you do not have would you most like to have?

I would like to be a much better writer and thinker.

Why?

Maybe my royalties would be a hell of a lot bigger!

What do you like to do in your spare time?

 Well, it has been researching, writing, reading, spending time with kids, bicycle riding (my oldest son, my son-in-law, and I took a bicycle trip from Vienna to Budapest last fall), and walking in nature. Now that Philadelphia Trees is finished, I'm trying to figure out what comes next. Maybe another book, perhaps titled Philadelphia Nature? I'll just have to see how my brain and health hold up.