NYTimes: An Oliver Sacks Book Becomes An Opera, With Help From Friends
“These are all cycads,” the composer Tobias Picker said, gesturing at a low canopy of fanned-out, pinnate leaves near the entrance of the conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden.
Aryeh Lev Stollman, a doctor and author — and Picker’s husband — pointed at a large, bright red cone of seeds and added: “They look like palm trees, but they’re not. If you really look closely at the leaves, they have these serrated, spiky ends.”
Cycads — nonflowering, unshowy ambassadors of a more mysterious, ancient world — are not the most eye-catching specimens at the garden. Yet they were beloved by the characteristically shy Oliver Sacks, the famed neurologist and writer who had an eye for finding the universal in hyper-specific, often strange case studies.