Acer Giganticus

Recent discoveries during an excavation at 10th Avenue and Maple Street on Vancouver’s west side, revealed some remarkable petrified remains of ten giant seedpods from an ancient tree. Forensic reviews of both the DNA and remnant cellular structure of these leviathan wonders have confirmed what botanists have been speculating upon for many decades — that the mythical Acer Gigantis did, in fact, exist.

Scientists from the around the globe have gathered to review these wondrous seeds, leading one ethnobotanical historian from Norway to say, “we are over the moon…this is possibly the most important natural discovery of modern period …just look at the lobes…these point to a tree which was perhaps 150 meters high, with a trunk measuring over 8 meters in circumference…its origins pre-date the mid Paleozoic period…possibly dating back 500 million years! ”

In a city known for its mythologies of nature, the act of enlarging something is akin to constructing a longing for a history unreachable. In films such as “Jurassic Park” and “Avatar” or in fairy tales such as “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Alice in Wonderland”, the device of scale shift allows the reader to enter a state of creative suspension. In our case, the seeds are meant to be both recognizable and funny. Yet at another level, they speak to the constant state of nostalgia we all feel for a time on earth when nature was unbridled and untamed.

The fact that a daycare is part of the project makes an important connection to the seedlings given that the children are at a germination stage in their lives. We want to place one of the seedpods in the daycare garden as a place for story telling or just plain fun.

“I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.” — Joni Mitchell