Children's book writer and illustrator Tasha Tudor (Books by this author) once said,   It's exciting to see things coming up again, plants that you've had for 20 or 30 years. It's like seeing an old friend. This made me think of the old saying;   Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.   Perennials are old friends. Gold friends. They are the best kind of garden friends.   They may not be as flashy or exciting as the gardener's silver friends; annuals.   But, they have staying power. Peony, daylily, hosta, iris, baptisia, catmint; these are just a handful of some of the longest lived perennials.     Brevities   #OTD Today is Earth day - a celebration that started in 1970.   Next year will be the 50th anniversary.      #OTD It's the birthday of August Wilhelm Eichler, (born April 22, 1839, Neukirchen, Hesse, Ger.—died March 2, 1887, Berlin).    Eichler was a German botanist and he developed one of the first widely used natural systems of plant classification. Most importantly, it was the first classification system based on evolution. In addition, Eichler divided the plant kingdom into non-floral plants and floral plants.    Eichler spent many years of his life working tirelessly as a private assistant to the naturalist Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martinus. Martinus had traveled to Brazil and collected over 20,000 specimens. He spent the final three decades of his life documenting his findings in a book called Flora Brasiliensiswhich Eichler helped edit. Generally speaking, a Flora is a book describing all plants from a set geographic area. When Martinus died in 1868, Eichler carried on the work of Flora Brasiliensisunassisted. It was a labor of love. After Eichler died, botanist Ignatius Urban continued on with the project until its completion. Today, Wilhelm Eichler Strasse (Street) in Dresden is named in his honor.   Wilhelm Eichler who said, "The felling of the first tree is the beginning of human civilization. The felling of the last is his end."   #OTD On this day in 1958 Gloria Galeano was born.     Known as "The Queen of the Palms," Galeano was a Colombian botanistand agronomistand she devoted her entire career to studying and classifying the palm family. Apassionate teacher and researcher at the National University of Colombia, She classified more than 260 species of Palm in 45 wild genera.    It's difficult to imagine, but at the beginning of the 1980s, Colombian palm taxonomy was almost non-existent. Thus, Galeano worked in concert with her partner Rodrigo Bernal to resolve this issue. After decades of fieldwork, they published their groundbreaking work Palmas de Colombia Field Guide; the most exhaustive Flora of Colombian Palms.    Galeano never tired in her devotion to the subject of Palms, she was the author or co-author of some seventeen books, fifteen book chapters, sixty-eight scientific articles and ten electronic works, mostly on the palm as highlighted by the Institute of Natural Sciences. When Gloria Galeano first saw pictures of the newly discovered Sabinaria magnifica palm (named for her daughter, Sabina with Rodrigo Bernal), she described it as "the most beautiful of all Colombian palms." She was remembered for telling her students, "any project in which we would get involved, should be thrilling and make our blood boil"   Galeano was well aware of the harvest impacts of Colombian plants and Neotropical palms, and she was a leading voice for conservation efforts for Columbian palms. In June of 2015, Galeano co-organized the World Palm Symposium. At the event, Galeano revealed that less than four percent of tropical dry forest remains in the Colombia Caribbean region. Galeano died in 2016. Today, her legacy lives on in the plans for the conservation and sustainable use of the native wax palm.   Unearthed Words #OTD in 1775, William Bartram left Charleston, South Carolina on horseback to explore the Cherokee Nation near Franklin, North Carolina. In addition to his botanical