In honor of the approaching Tu B'Shevat holiday, Heritage assistant editor Gail Umeham and I, with our respective spouses Okoronkwo and Nancy, decided to take our grandchildren Amy, 4 1/2, and Shor, 20 months, to visit City Farmers Nursery to learn about trees and other plant life.

Bill Tall, owner of the nursery, grew up at Congregation Beth El back in the Conservative congregation's Clairemont days. Today, he is a member of Temple Beth Sholom in Chula Vista.

He cherishes days like Tu B'Shevat when his passion for growing and his religion come together. His daughter, Rebecca, today a business student at San Diego State University, and his son, Samuel, a Crawford High School student, became b'nai mitzvah with ceremonies right at the nursery, amid the trees, shrubs, farm animals and fish. A similar experience may await daughter Sarah, now a student at Horace Mann Junior High School. Tall also enjoys teaching children about plants, possibly realizing that the adults who accompany the children to

Shor and Ami examine elephant palm

the nursery will hang onto his every word, because they don¹t know much about horticulture either. Tall is a natural teacher.

Do you know why some trees shed their leaves in winter? Tall explained to us that in cold climates the leaves fall on the land above the tree's root system, thereby insulating the roots from freezing. Furthermore, the fallen leaves provide nutrients for the roots, enabling them to force food back up into the plant system.

I'm not sure how much of that either little Amy Lupsha or Shor Masori absorbed. However, while Tall educated the grandparents, he also kept the tykes interested.

At one point, he broke off a piece of sugar cane, stripped it, and instructed Shor to put it in his mouth so he could see how sweet it tasted. Shor chewed and sucked it for the rest of the tour, and only relinquished the cane afterwards when we stopped at Nate's Deli, which the Tall family also operates on the property at 4382 Home Ave. The deli is named for Bill's late father.

For Shor, sugar cane was good, but the deli's chocolate chip cookie, accompanied by a glass of milk, proved even tastier!

During the tour, Amy seemed fascinated by an elephant-foot palm, so named because the bottom of the palm looks like an elephant's foot. "If you ever felt an elephant¹s foot, this is what it would feel like," Tall told Amy. I couldn¹t make up my mind if that were true or just a Tall tale.

As Amy inspected the tree more closely, the nursery man told us elephant-foot palms had been planted as "street trees" in Los Angeles, but "they grew so wide that they grew over the curb and into the street and became a nuisance."

It was apparent to me that Amy has a fondness for animals, whether of the "elephant" palm variety or of the barnyard variety such as the sheep, goats, horse, ducks, turkey, geese, chickens and roosters that the Tall family keeps in an outdoor menagerie. When Shor started to put his fingers through the fence to pet the animals, Amy was quick to protect him from such folly.

Tall told fascinating stories about some of the strategies that Mother Nature employs to ensure that trees are able to reproduce. Fruit, for example, is a device to protect the seed that is maturing inside. When the fruit falls off the tree in the summer, either on its own or with the help
of birds, the fleshy material around the seed rots away. However, the seed still is protected from the ensuing cold climate by a seed coat, or pit.

During the winter, the coat will begin to weaken. Next, in the spring, it will break down sufficiently to permit the seed to come out and germinate.

Another strategy employs insects, Tall said. Caterpillars will defoliate a passion-flower shrub completely, and when there is no food left, they will go into their cocoons. Mother Nature requires the plants to suffer such marauders because later in the cycle, when the passion flowers come out, butterflies will emerge from the cocoons and begin their work of pollinating
the flowers. Of course, pollinating the flowers is essential to the production of seeds.

"The sole reason a plant is on the Earth is to reproduce," Tall instructed. I figure if his parents don't tell him first, Shor and I will have a variant on the birds-and-the-caterpillars conversation some years from now.