WILD THINGS: A little exercise and a lot of botany

An interrupted fern, with spore-bearing interruptions in some of the fronds. ED KANZE PHOTOS

By ED KANZE

When I lead nature walks, which I’ve been doing for more than 40 years, I find myself reflecting back on mentors — the knowledgeable and patient people who helped get me started. And when I think of those people, I turn especially to a group of mostly silver-haired women who used to let me tag along on  Monday forays in Westchester and Fairfield counties.

Outsiders tended to refer to them as the Monday Walkers. Inside the group, the name, uttered with a smile, a chuckle, and a slight roll of the eyes, was “ALFASACs.” The name was bestowed by a husband who came along on one occasion and declared his wife and her friends much too pokey and insufficiently interested in exercise. He dubbed them the “Audubon Ladies Fresh Air and Standing Around Club.” The banner was carried proudly thereafter, and members called themselves ALFASACs.

The group was founded circa 1970 by my dear old friend Kaye Anderson. The Saw Mill River Audubon Society in northern Westchester employed Kaye to offer school programs and oversee the management of small but exquisite nature sanctuaries. Early on, a housewife who had shipped her last child off to college, Virginia “Ginnie” Weinland, joined Kaye in recruiting and leading. Both were formidable botanists, largely self-taught. They remained close friends of each other — and mine —  until the end of their lives.

This was informally a women’s group, but well-behaved men, I found, were always welcome. Kaye, Ginnie, and crew enjoyed the company of young men, I think, because we deferred to the superior wisdom of our elders (or at least these particular elders) and were hungry for learning. The occasional gray-haired husband who showed up, by contrast, tended to poke fun. 

The ALFASACs covered little ground geographically on any given Monday, although over the course of a year, they visited nature sanctuaries far and wide. However, they covered an enormous amount of ground thematically. No living thing or subject escaped their interest. Botany loomed front and center, but fungi, mammals, birds, snakes, turtles, frogs, salamanders, insects and spiders all got plenty of attention. The first time I walked with them, I was astonished that after an hour and a half, we had hardly traveled 100 feet.

A cinnamon fern's "hairy armpits.

Oh, we had great fun, no matter the weather, and I always came home having learned a ton. I was just beginning then to identify ferns, and these savvy gals knew all the tricks. One that comes to mind is a way to differentiate the cinnamon and interrupted ferns. These tall, handsome plants are easily told apart when bearing conspicuous reproductive structures, but not all of them are thus engaged. When all you’ve got to go on is a frond, they can be vexing. Well, here’s the trick they taught me: where the leafy sub-fronds, called pinnae, depart from the main central stem, cinnamon fern sports tufts of fuzz while interrupted fern does not. Simple as that! But how to remember such an arcane fact? “Cinnammon fern,” one of the women told me, “has hairy armpits.” I’ve found that trick of memory impossible to forget. 

Over the years the members of the group changed. Kaye died in 1988, and the group marched on, cherishing her memory. Ginnie kept going another decade and then some, eventually hanging up her ALFASAC hat to move to a retirement home in Massachusetts. She lived to be 102, I think, and we kept in touch until nearly her last day. One early member I recall with enormous fondness is Irene Pokowitz, a merry widow from Croton who combined grave heart problems with one of the sunniest dispositions I’ve ever encountered. Among the women I think of as newer members was Carol Gracie, who worked in the education department of the New York Botanical Garden. Carol was a leader of the group for 20 years or more. 

Although I’ve lost contact, I like to think the ALFASACs are still out in the woods on Mondays, still reveling in nature and in new faces. If any current member of the crew sees this column, please drop a line to the newspaper and let us know.