Ironically Speaking

This appeared Aug. 13, 2006

Not that I am what anyone would reasonably call a combative person, but I do find myself occasionally berating random people over their incorrect word usage. "Irony" versus "coincidence," for example.

Irony, I explain in as kind a voice as I can muster, is when the firehouse burns down. Coincidence -- the remarkable occurrence of events -- is, well ...

Let me tell you a story.

Recently, a neighbor stopped by on her way up the street to politely inform me that I was a born fool if I ever thought the judges would give me the commissionership, but that in her opinion, not all of what I'd written over the months was complete rubbish.

She especially liked the homage I paid to the dawn redwood that stands across the street from our homes, and pointed me to Sebastian Koh, a retired math professor from West Chester University, who had a connection to the tree.

Koh, a soft-spoken and kindly fellow, explained in a telephone conversation that the dawn redwood, or metasequoia, had been discovered in China back in the 1940s by an expeditionary team sent to search for uncatalogued species of trees by his father, Shau Tong Koh, who, at the time, was head of the Department of Reforestation in the country's forestry ministry.

Let me tell you that the metasequoia is a wonderful, unique species of giant trees that, unlike its cousins in the redwood family, is deciduous. Its bright green leaves turn a reddish brown in the fall and shed to the ground. In China, whole valleys of the tree grow wild.

The species was the subject of some controversy in China, since both the elder Koh's crew, led by Zhang Wang, and a professor at Central University, Toh Kan, claimed credit for its discovery. But that debate was long over when the younger Koh arrived at the campus of the then- West Chester State College in 1970.

In his first days here, discussing his life and family and interest in horticulture, he learned that a previous mathematics scholar at the school, Robert Anderson, had had similar interests and had imported a number of species of exotic plants for his home across from the school's main campus. Touring those grounds later, he was disappointed that many of the plants had died from neglect.

But then, he said, came a surprise.

"I spotted this huge metasequoia, one of the first to be imported (to the U.S.), judging by its size," growing on amid the horticultural ruins, he said. He soon noticed others around the area, and showed them to his father when the elderly man came to visit West Chester. "He was very pleased," Koh said.

Today, Koh has three dawn redwoods - or water spruces as they are known in his native country - in his backyard in Downingtown. The first one he planted there in 1972 has grown to a height of more than 70 feet.

Judging by the fossil record, Koh told me, the dawn redwood once spread across the northern hemisphere. "In a way, they are recovering now from their former distribution," he said.

So that's it. I like the thought of someone "discovering" a tree that had grown for epochs, and then having someone else later "discover" that "discovery" half a world a way. So I am certain that the story of the dawn redwood will come up in my next conversation with the neighbor who pointed me to Sebastain Koh.

Her name? That would be Dawn L'Heureux.

And that's what I call a coincidence.