In memoriam: Pentti Alanko

Dear Reader,

I lost an old friend at the beginning of this month. He must have been around 90 years of age and eventually succumbed to a cancer. Pentti Alanko and I had a common interest in plants of all sorts: the difference was that he was a real botanist whereas I’m a mere dilettante. We studied together in Viikki back in the 70’s and 80’s, worked jointly on several projects, and later took botanically-inspired holidays together in Greece. Except for his last few days in hospital, he lived at home. He had been a widower for the last eight years.

Pentti was a brilliant botanist but rather eccentric, as are many highly gifted people. You may remember I last wrote about regional differences in how different ethnic groups pronounced their consonants. I mentioned that people from Ostrobothnia, Pohjanmaa, often had difficulties with pronouncing the consonants ’d’ and ’r’. Pentti it was whom I had in mind as someone who spoke of ’rororenrons’ (for rhododendrons). Actually, though he grew up in Pohjanmaa, his ancestors hailed from Karelia. He also took German, English and Swedish – and some Russian – in his stride.

Pentti also had his own characteristic sense of humour, or manner of expressing himself. I vividly remember an exchange I heard one morning on one of our walks on Rhodos – or Rhodes, if you insist on anglicising the name of this island (I thought Rhodes was the bloke who wanted to colonise half of Africa, wasn’t he?). Us? Pentti and his wife, Anja, me and my wife, Ritva, and I think this time their daughter, Minna, was with us. Pentti did something or other that aggravated Anja – I think he did this very often – and Anja started a verbal tirade. Pentti continued botanising, quite unperturbed. Water off a duck’s back, apparently.

At this stage, I must diverge to do justice to Anja. She was of a romantic turn of mind, and felt a deep nostalgia for the lost Finnish ideal of Karelia. I first met her in the university library where she worked as a librarian. I thought at first she had a rather stern manner, but when we started chatting we soon hit it off and became friends, She had a love for the world of plants, which must have accounted for her affinity for Pentti. Otherwise, these two had almost opposite temperaments: Anja with her romantic dreams of an idyllic but lost Arcady in Karelia, and Pentti with the approach of a scientifically trained, no-nonsense botanist-cum-taxonomist. Well, don’t they say that opposites attract? Up to a point, perhaps, but there are limits. Pentti must sometimes have been an infuriating person to live with, as likely as not bent over, muttering something to himself over some insignificant plant growing on a patch of wasteland – when Anja thought he should have been helping out with making the breakfast or some such mundane task.

A quarter of an hour later, Anja was still banging away at Pentti, hammer and tongs, but she finally ran out of steam and stomped off somewhere. Ritva then turned to Pentti and asked him: ”How do you put up with all that?”. Pentti replied: ”Kaikki tiiliskiveä pienempää, sehän on vain rakkautta!” or ”If it’s anything smaller than a brick, it’s just love!”.

On a later occasion, I think it was on Crete, Pentti, and perhaps I likewise, incited  Ritva’s enraged frustration on one of our walks. Anja was no longer fit enough to be with us, so there were only the three of us. We had a long walk planned out for the day, involving an ascent of about 1500 metres over some 15 km. But over the first few kilometres towards the escarpment we were later to climb, Pentti shambled along at the pace of a dog on the trail of an endless series of intriguing scents, as he spotted one interesting plant after another. The scenery was glorious as we passed through an orchard of blossoming almond trees, but the sun was climbing into the sky fast and the morning was starting to get uncomfortably warm. Finally, Ritva cried out: ”You two can follow whenever you like,” (I was as engrossed in the flora as Pentti) ”but I’m going on by myself – we’re supposed to be in time for that bus at the other end of the walk!”. She stormed off at a furious pace.

We did eventually catch her up, but it was warm work!

Pentti was often called upon as a garden expert and consultant. I remember a phone-in gardening programme on the radio, some 30 years back, when Pentti was asked by one caller: ’What is the best method of pruning a birch tree, and what time of year should I do it?’. Pentti had the very strong view that forest trees should be allowed to grow freely. His reply came promptly: ’Do it with a chain saw, down to the ground. Any time of year you like!’. He once suggested, perhaps half in jest, that leaf rakes should be banned, at least for the next ten years. I wonder what he would have said about those nasty, noisy, petrol-stinking leaf blowers that shatter our nerves every autumn?

Pentti was a great advocate of natural gardening. Anja and Pentti had a lovely and charming wild garden  in Pitäjänmäki where I suspect most of the work of tending Pentti’s plants and keeping some semblance of order was left to Anja. But who am I to criticise? In our own garden we have a similar division of labour: I go around making a mess all over the place, and Ritva comes along behind, clearing up after me as best she can.

 Anja and Pentti were two of the founding members of a society called ’Maatiainen’, dedicated to collecting and conserving landraces of cultivated plants, i.e., traditional varieties of crops like wheat, rye, cabbage, swedes and what-have-you. Such traditional varieties that have stood the test of time are known as landraces, or in Finnish ’Maatiainen’. As well as useful plants, beautiful and ornamental plants are also included. Nowadays the society caters for landraces of domestic animals as well. I was also heavily involved in the initial stages. Pentti continued to write informative and interesting articles for ’Maatiainen’ publications until very recently. He also collaborated with our rose breeding work and took part in a team that criss-crossed Finland identifying a range of lovely ornamentals, including several very hardy and beautiful rose varieties.

Pentti was the author or co-author of several inspiring and popular gardening books.

Pentti Alanko will long be remembered by anyone in Finland with botanical interests, and his friends are already missing his gentle, unassuming nature and quirky humour. May he happily continue his botanical studies in the pastures of Heaven.

Peter Joy