Mo Ganji: Franklin Tree | Franklinie | Franklinia alatamaha | No. 079/250 from work group 8/99

Franklin Tree | Franklinie | Franklinia alatamaha

Mo Ganji’s single line engages the Franklin tree — a small deciduous flowering tree once native to riverbanks of the southeastern United States — through a gesture of radical reduction. The continuous line offers a quiet suggestion of form, enough to evoke a living presence without anchoring it to botanical detail. In this restraint, the drawing allows essence to emerge before the certainty of classification or use takes hold.

Franklinia alatamaha is listed as Extinct in the Wild (EW) on the IUCN Red List. The species was last observed in its natural habitat along the Altamaha River in Georgia in the early 19th century. Today, it survives only in cultivation, descended from seeds collected before its disappearance from the wild.

The precise causes of extinction in nature remain uncertain, but likely contributors include habitat loss, changes in river dynamics, disease and soil disturbance. Despite its successful cultivation in gardens and arboreta worldwide, no wild populations exist, and reintroduction has proven difficult due to unknown ecological requirements and historical habitat alteration.

Ganji’s single line allows the tree to be encountered beyond function, rarity or botanical status. It invites reflection on absence as a form of presence, and on how human assumptions of mastery over nature often overlook the fragile dependencies that sustain living systems — reminding us that even what we preserve can be lost from the world it once belonged to.