Model Plants, Modelling and Memory

In 1995, a cork tree, known as “Corky,” fell in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston under the weight of a group of schoolchildren—unharmed—while posing for a picture. The cork tree was the only tree that was allowed to be climbed in the Arboretum’s history; since the plants are accessions in a living collection, generally they are not to be clambered on. In the three decades that followed Corky’s demise—or rather, it’s deaccessioning—its loss has been felt acutely. In 2024 as part of an augmented-reality exhibition titled “Ghost Trees” commissioned by the Arnold Arboretum, I recreated the tree based on archival photographs into a digital model. Visitors can see the tree in full summer foliage as a way to preserve the social history it represented, albeit as a digital simulacrum. But beyond this, the digital cork tree asks how we are to keep and maintain records of landscapes past; what is the lifetime of a tree, and what is the lifetime of a digital model? The history of collections management software in botanical collections is one marked by local idiosyncrasies and an inability for standardized formats to truly be representative of a living, growing, and dying entity in its collection. In this paper, I will describe my work that deals with designing interactions to engage the public with the memories of lost plants and plant communities, and explore how the standard file format within living collections is a site of contention between standardization, individuality, and permanence.