A chestnut tree is a chestnut tree...

Reading 'Prodigal Summer' by Barbara Kingsolver, I'm touched by the moments where a hollowed-out tree, the memory of an extinct species, a moth on a curtain, hold their own significance, without needing to refer to any lofty theme or system or theory or religion...

eg. '...the Walkers had lived well under the sheltering arms of the American chestnut until the slow devastation began to unfold in 1904, the year that brought down the chestnut blight.'

Talking about conserving the ginseng plant in a National Park area: '...she just loved the idea of those little man-shaped roots dancing in their world beneath the soil.  She wanted them to persist forever, not for the sake of impotent men in China or anywhere else, just for the sake of ginseng.'

Kingsolver, B. (2000). Prodigal summer. London: Faber and Faber.