INDIVIDUAL POTENTIAL {Berry}
Some time ago I was with Wes Jackson, wandering among the experimental plots at his home and workplace, the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. We stopped by one plot that has been planted in various densities of population. Wes pointed to a Maximilian sunflower growing alone, apart from the others, and said, ‘There is a plant that has “realized its full potential as an individual.”’ And clearly it had: It had grown very tall; it had put out many long branches heavily laden with blossoms—and the branches had broken off, for they had grown too long and too heavy.
The plant had indeed realized its full potential as an individual, but it had failed as a Maximilian sunflower. We could say that its full potential as an individual was its failure. It had failed because it has lived outside an important part of its definition, which consists both its individuality and its community. A part of its properly realized potential lay in its community, not in itself.
—Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace, ‘Men and Women in Search of Common Ground’
• This beautiful heirloom bloom is the Lemon Queen sunflower. Unfortunately, my sunflowers failed to achieve their ten-feet potential in my little screened garden. •
June 13, 2013