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2145 Redefining Americathey stand side by side with their perfect counterpart, New England Asters. Not the pale domesticates of the perennial border, the weak sauce of lavender or sky blue, but full-on royal purple that would make a violet shrink. The daisylike fringe of purple petals surrounds a disc as bright as the sun at high noon, a golden-orange pool, just a tantalizing shade darker than the surrounding goldenrod. Alone, each is a botanical superlative. Together, the visual effect is stunning. Purple and gold, the heraldic colors of the king and queen of the meadow, a regal procession in complementary colors. I just wanted to know why.Why do they stand beside each other when they could grow alone? Why this particular pair? There are plenty of pinks and whites and blues dotting the fields, so is it only happenstance that the magnificence of purple and gold end up side by side? Einstein himself said that %u201cGod doesn%u2019t play dice with the universe.%u201d What is the source of this pattern? Why is the world so beautiful? It could so easily be otherwise: flowers could be ugly to us and still fulfill their own purpose. But they%u2019re not. It seemed like a good question to me.But my adviser said, %u201cIt%u2019s not science,%u201d not what botany was about. I wanted to know why certain stems bent easily for baskets and some would break, why the biggest berries grew in the shade and why they made us medicines, which plants are edible, why those little pink orchids only grow under pines. %u201cNot science,%u201d he said, and he ought to know, sitting in his laboratory, a learned professor of botany. %u201cAnd if you want to study beauty, you should go to art school.%u201d He reminded me of my deliberations over choosing a college, when I had vacillated between training as a botanist or as a poet. Since everyone told me I couldn%u2019t do both, I%u2019d chosen plants. He told me that science was not about beauty, not about the embrace between plants and humans.I had no rejoinder; I had made a mistake. There was no fight in me, only embarrassment at my error. I did not have the words for resistance. He signed me up for my classes and I was dismissed to go get my photo taken for registration. I didn%u2019t think about it at the time, but it was happening all over again, an echo of my grandfather%u2019s first day at school, when he was ordered 10schnuddel/Getty Images This photograph captures asters and goldenrod grown together as part of an effort to restore native plants to the wetlands around Indianapolis, IN.Where else have you seen variations of this color combination? How does Kimmerer%u2019s vivid description of these flowers challenge the advice she was given that she had to choose between training as a scientist and a poet?Why does Kimmerer compare her first experiences as a college student to those of her grandfather at school?22Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.