During my first year in college, Dr. Lane, my biology professor during the second semester in the spring of 1971 told his class, myself included, “In this class you will learn how to make $1,000,000.  In fact, I’m going to teach you several ways to make $1,000,000.”  Indeed, he did exactly that.  He taught us a variety of ways to grow plants and make them all multiply and sell them, ultimately, for $1,000,000.

But first, let me show you the $1,000,000 plant I found and tell you how that plant made me one million dollars richer.  In my third year of college, in the spring, Dr. Smith, my plant taxonomy professor, told us to make a plant collection.  “You will be lucky to find a county record plant on campus,” he told us.  “Washington County has been studied by many people over many years.  You would also be lucky to find a state record plant.” Of course, being the kind of person I am I immediately decided to try to find a plant new to the state of Arkansas and new to Washington county on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville.  I didn't own a car to drive anywhere and we had no train service to take me elsewhere.  I had no money to get a bus ticket either!

Indeed, in 1973, while working on that plant collection Dr. Smith required us to make I found my $1,000,000 plant, and while I was at it, my first wife, Gail, I also found in the class.  If you want to hear more about that, join my free English lessons on Skype later when we get to that part of my story.  I am Headsedge on Skype.  Now, let me show you that plant.

How could this tiny plant be worth one million dollars to me?  At that time, in 1973, I was interested in zoology.  That one class would change my life forever just like one day of camping and bird watching in Florida, in 1966, also change my life forever.  In Florida, I became a bird watcher.  In 1973, the seeds were planted that would later turn me into a botanist.  I was already becoming an ecologist.  Indeed, as my wife Sheila just reminded me, it also turned me into a Sedgehead.  But that’s another story.  See my autobiography, Windsong, for details.

If you look carefully at this type of bed straw, known to scientists as Cruciata pedemontanum, you can see very tiny flowers at the base of the leaves.  The flowers are almost white.  How did this tiny plant earn me $1,000,000?  I went to college because I was interested in birds and ecology.  I was fortunate to work with a world famous avian ecologist.  But in the late 1980s I wanted to make myself a better ecologist and I return to college to study botany.  I’d neglected to tell you a key important point.  In 1973 this tiny plant was known as Galium pedemontanum.  I found it new to the state of Arkansas on the University of Arkansas campus.  Indeed, in 1990, I would find in other plant new to the state of Arkansas, Silene pallidum, not only on campus that if the back door of the building where Dr. Smith worked as my professor when I worked on my master’s degree in botany outside the building that held the University of Arkansas herbarium.

I still not told you why this is $1,000,000 plant.  The answer is easy.  My teachers and parents had told me to study what I was interested in when I went to college.  See my recent blog on that topic.  I followed their advice and in 1991 became a botanist and ecologist for the United States Forest Service.  From 1991 to 2008 I earned approximately one million dollars.  In fact, without Dr. Lane, Dr. Smith, and Galium pedemontanum I might have never earned $1,000,000.  This plant stimulated my interest.  My interest led me to a good paying job where, over 17 years, I earned that million.  I might have ended with some lesser job that paid me less money.  As it was I spent the last five years of my government career in a Forest Service regional office as a writer and editor which generated my career in retirement.  I’m not really retired yet.  I still work fulltime including the writing of this blog.

Here are a few other plants that are currently belonging in Arkansas.