Peter A. Marcalus
September 5, 2021
In February 1975, it was the final semester of my senior year attending a boarding school called Northfield Mt. Hermon. The school was located in Mt. Hermon, Massachusetts near the New Hampshire and Vermont boarder. That cold and snowy winter, my parents had sent me a gift box full of fresh Florida oranges and grapefruits to share with my dorm mates.
While eating one of the flavorful, juicy grapefruits, I found a spouted seed. I planted the little seedling in a paper cup and kept it watered and in a sunny window in my dorm room. After graduation that spring, I packed up my belongings along with the little grapefruit seedling and returned to my parent’s home in Wyckoff.
Throughout my college years, the grapefruit seedling mostly stayed in Wyckoff where my mother regularly watered it until I’d come home for holidays and summer breaks to resume caring for the little plant. In my senior college year, the seedling joined me in an off-campus apartment.
With each passing year, the little grapefruit slowly grew and I progressively replanted it into bigger and bigger pots. When I got married, the grapefruit plant moved with me and my bride to our new home in Hawthorne where I continued to nurture the plant. Eventually we saw the little sapling going through what we jokingly called “puberty” as the tree’s dark green trunk got thicker and formed a smooth gray bark.
As the plant got larger and became hardier, it would summer outside in the back yard and then before the first autumn frost, I’d moved it back inside for the winter. After being indoors all winter the sapling always would lose quite a few leaves and look very weak. Then each Mother’s Day, it would go back outside to the spring sunshine, where it would perk back up. After about a month, it would always fill out quite nicely with tender new leaves and branches.
In 1984 my wife and I moved to Oakland. With each passing year the sapling got bigger and I continued to transplant it into even larger pots. Eventually, each autumn before going back inside for the winter, the sapling’s summer growth would have to be trimmed so it could fit through the house doors. The tree’s freshly cut branches and leaves would emit a wonderful citrus odor. While our family grew, the little tree never had blossoms or formed any fruit.
Tending the grapefruit tree became a labor of love and its seasonal care was a ritual. As the tree got heavier, I’d have to recruit friends and family to help me move the tree inside or outside depending on the season. Sometimes during the winter months, the tree’s pot would leak water on the rugs in our home and if not caught quickly, create staining and minor damage. On occasion, my wife would shake her head at my devoted care of the grapefruit tree. One time she even evoked a halfhearted threat to get rid of the tree while I was at work. That threat was jokingly countered by me saying that I’ve had the tree longer we’d been married and the tree would not be the first one to go!
As the tree got too big to go thru the doors of my Oakland home, I moved it to my office which had larger commercial doors and higher ceilings. For several years it was exclusively an indoor “office plant” living inside a multi-story building next to a well-lit window.
When I had a career change, the tree moved with me to the new company. There I was able to move the grapefruit tree into a new office space where again it wintered indoors and then the tree enjoyed being moved outside to a sunny court yard during the spring, summer and early autumn.
So, for 13 years, the tree lived in that new “home” where I continued to nurture its growth until in March 2020 when I retired. Not wanting to leave my tree behind where I knew it would not be properly cared for, I was able to find housing for the grapefruit tree at a local public library. Unfortunately, during the Covid lock down and for many months thereafter, it became evident the tree was being neglected and needed more care otherwise it was soon going to die.
It just so happened that since the early days of the pandemic, my wife and I had become regular visitors to Laurelwood Arboretum. During Covid, the arboretum offered the freedom of outdoor exercise and the safety of social distancing all in a wonderfully landscaped environment, with interesting plants and trees (many of which are identified with tags) as well as thought provoking sculpture positioned in beautiful lawned areas. Knowing my tree was in great need of a new home where people knew how to take care of plants, I asked Laurelwood Arboretum if they would accept my grapefruit tree as a donation. They graciously accepted the tree and in September 2021 for the last time, I recruited friends to help move the tree to the arboretum.
Over the last 46 years since I first discovered that little sprouted seed in that delicious grapefruit, it has lived at a boarding school, a college apartment, three north Jersey homes, two office buildings and in one public library. It’s never produced a citrus fruit or even a single flower. The tree has been transplanted at least a dozen times into ever increasing larger pots, nearly been tossed out by an irate wife for being a carpet wetter and like Jack London’s character Buck from Call Of The Wild, the tree was thought forgotten, mistreated, and almost died.
So that’s the story of my grapefruit tree. I hope it will spend many healthy years at Laurelwood. At times the tree might take a bit of work. It needs weekly watering, occasional fertilizing and trimming as well as seasonally, it needs to be muscled in and out the door. But it will give back great beauty with its glossy deep green leaves, twisting branches seeking sunlight and a wonderful citrus fragrance. And who knows…maybe with continued TLC and someone with a greener thumb than mine, I like to think that tree will reward its new caretaker with the gift of a grapefruit. And wouldn’t it be nice if that grapefruit also contains the magic of a newly spouted seedling.