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Permaculture Lessons, part two: Disabled Permaculture

This is a guest post by Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales (see contact info below).

Hello! I made a guest post on Awkward Botany in March, introducing myself and my spouse, and talking a little about my life with permaculture. Permaculture is a way I learn about plants, love the earth, grow delicious foods, and connect with others. Permaculture has a community aspect, and respect for all beings is part of that. Permaculture is a great idea for disabled people.

Being disabled is a lot of work, and butting up against ableism all around is part of that. A default assumption many have, including many permaculture teachers, is that people are full of abundant energy and can live our values if we choose to. But being disabled means that what we want to do often isn’t the same as what we can accomplish. Disabled permaculture is a great take on permaculture that Ming and I have been doing together for 11 years of friendship and partnership.

Disabled permaculture is a valuable concept that many people can benefit from and customize to their own needs. Throughout this essay, I’ll mention many ways it helps me and Ming live a beautiful interdependent life.

how we’re disabled

My spouse Ming and I are both disabled. He has narcolepsy, so he falls asleep at unwanted times, doesn’t get restful sleep, and many aspects of life are impacted by his low energy and lack of wakeful cognition. Narcolepsy can contribute to struggles with memory, language, and reality comprehension. Ming also has a diagnosis of OCD.

Ming endures heartache trying to get his medical needs met, since a medication he uses for wakefulness is a controlled substance. The drug war plus health insurance nonsense means he has to jump through more hoops than anyone should need to, let alone a disabled person.

As for me, I have psychiatric diagnoses and hear voices, along with social differences and sensory sensitivities. Some terms that might apply to me are anxious and autistic. I like “crazy” as a reclaimed term, like queer and fat, which also apply. I have a schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type diagnosis. I was sedated on a bipolar cocktail for around 11 years.

how permaculture suits us

Permaculture is a helpful design system for disabled people such as ourselves. We have limited energy and fluctuating capabilities. Sometimes we’re not up for much. Permaculture is helpful as a realistic, forgiving, less energy intensive way of growing plants and doing community.

Permaculture is about working with the land forms and nature’s rhythms, not fighting against them. It’s observantly respectful to Mother Earth and one another.

A goal is to create food forests that are self-sustaining. We permaculturists like to take a long view, start small, design for resilience, and rest in hammocks. We create closed loop systems. It’s fun to consider the weaknesses of our systems’ interdependence and arrange backups for our backups, with layers of redundancy. Problems are seen as opportunities. We have a thing for hugelkultur. We enjoy rich diversity, especially at the edges.

image credit: wikimedia commons

Permaculturists love nourishing the land, with compost, generous mulching, water catchment in swales, and other ways of making the land more rich than the scraggly vacant lots and neglected yard space we arrived to. We like doing land justice, so inviting people in, opposing food deserts by sharing our bounty, organizing community gardens, and working together with locals.

We prefer collaboration over gentrification. Smiling, we get a lot of joy out of seed bombs, guerilla gardening wild areas, and having a lemonade party, when life gives us lemons and we make lemonade.

I’ve enjoyed gleaning fruit to share with Food Not Bombs, harvesting olives with neighbors, and lots of sheet mulching with discarded cardboard to unmake lawns. Permaculture has helped me by giving me a framework for the regenerative, earth-nourishing impulses that stirred within me already.

community and energy

If all of this sounds fun, that’s because it is. Why is permaculture especially good for people who are disabled?

Inviting people in and nourishing community means more people care about our garden, and are willing to step in when Ming and I are less out and about. Thank you to the kind community members who see what needs doing and are empowered to contribute to the thriving of garden life.

Also, permaculture is less energy intensive than other ways of growing plants. Long term solution is a relief. Food forests are like Eden. Creating and tending food forests means there can be a bit by bit accumulation of plants that work well together.

It’s not a stressful, all-at-once venture. There’s not the once or twice annual “rip everything out and start over” that I’ve seen other gardeners do. It feels relaxed and cumulative, good for a disabled pace.

When we have the energy and the weather is cooperative, we evaluate how the garden overall is doing. Do we have room for more herbs? Are enough flowers blooming to attract pollinators and keep them happy? What foods do we want to eat more of, in the next few months? Should we put sunflowers somewhere different this time? It’s unrushed, experimental, fun, and slow.

tree collards for disabled permaculture

The tree collards I mentioned last post are easier to grow than regular collards and kale. Let me tell you about these delicious leafy brassicas as a disabled permaculture example. Tree collards give tasty greens perennially, for years. We get a lot of delicious food from them!

Tree collards are easy to propagate. No need to buy or save seeds, then tend tender seedlings. Just break off a branch, stick it in the garden ground, make sure it stays moist for a few weeks, and hope for the best. It may root and start growing soon.

The tree collards we have are purple with the green. They’re gorgeous and can get lush in the winter. They’re tasty by themselves, sautéed with garlic, added to beans. We had some on our Passover Seder plate recently. When I cook rice, I might add a few tree collard leaves at the end to steam and greenly compliment my carbs.

When I make pesto, I throw in a few leaves of tree collard with the basil. When Ming is gardening, he often munches a few leaves. I smell them, pungent on his breath, when he returns indoors and kisses me.

It’s fun to give cuttings to friends and share the bounty. We talk about perennial vs annual and biennial. We talk about permaculture as an important guiding force in our disabled family. Even if the cuttings die, ideas and love were propagated. By sharing our values, we’ve inviting them into our life.

I like watching tree collards age, lean over, flower, die back, surge forth, reach for the sun. We keep them in our permaculture zone 1, right by our front door, as they are our darlings. They’re available to us all the time.

inevitable

Many people are disabled one way or another, and many people will become disabled, if lucky enough to live into old age. Disabled permaculture is a way most anyone can garden. The investment can be small and gradual.

Some people think of gardening as expensive, requiring tools and the building of raised beds, remaking the garden seasonally, and the accumulation of books and arcane knowledge. But permaculture is humble, less expensive, and becomes an intuitive part of life.

Our garden is not a separate thing that we can choose to do or not do, this spring. It’s always happening, like the other aspects of our creativity, our health, our family, and the cycles of nature.

Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales is a queer trikewitch who enjoys zines, ecstatic dance, and radical mental health. Find her at listening to the noise until it makes sense.

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Permaculture Lessons, part one

This is a guest post by Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales (see contact info below).

Hello, I’m Laura-Marie. I love plants, permaculture, and learning what grows wherever I find myself. This guest post is about the permaculture lessons I’ve learned gardening with my spouse Ming. Ming is a kind, brilliant person who enjoys interdependence, being a street medic, and helping our garden grow. He’s a long-time permaculturist with two permaculture design certificates.

I’ve studied permaculture for ten years. I enjoy it for many reasons: responsibility and interdependence of organisms, long view, appreciation of small. Thinking a lot about water storage, microclimates, and what makes sense for a particular place. That “you don’t have too many snails–you have too few ducks” mentality. Anything you have too much of to use can be pollution, even something usually considered good.

origins

Ming and I are both from California. We moved to this Las Vegas desert from Sacramento, which is at the north part of the Central Valley and inland from the Bay Area. I love Sacramento for its diversity of humans, plentiful parks, and proximity to many other wonderful places. Ming likes that it’s compact, but not too dense. Things are close together and easy to get to, but not overly scrunched up and piled on each other. 

Sacramento gets hot in the summers but cools off at night with a breeze from The Delta. There are rivers, a wet feel, many trees. We liked helping with Food Not Bombs and being part of the peace community there.

When Ming and I gardened in Sacramento, our relationship grew and changed as our plants grew. At Fremont Community Garden, I turned compost for the first time. I ate the most delicious Asian pears I’ve ever tasted and learned what espalier pruning is, for easy reach of fruits. 

I learned how to be a good garden neighbor. The man who grew long beans in the plot next to ours went on vacation and asked us to water his plot. Our reward was harvesting from his garden. I never knew green beans could grow like that, and so delicious.

In that climate and soil, the oregano we had in our herb spiral went wild, like mint does some places. It turned into a delicious weed, and we would harvest whole trays of oregano to deliver to a local restaurant in exchange for cookies and drinks. It was informative to watch the oregano choke out the tarragon, as the herb spiral spiraled out of control.

Our lavender bush got bigger and bigger–I liked my fragrant attempts to divide it, as I learned how to use a shovel. I enjoyed our basil forest, pinching its flowers, and seeing basil wood for the first time.

tree collards

Tree collards are a quintessential permaculture plant. People who want food forests do well to grow this charming perennial brassica. Ming and I grew lush, gorgeous tree collards in Sacramento. They are so productive and delicious to eat. I loved to make curried greens with beans, and I added ripped up tree collard leaves to a stir fry or any veg dish for more deliciousness. Yes, I adored those pretty leaves, whether they were green or purple.  

Our biggest, first tree collard we called Sideshow Bob. Its leaves floofed up like the hair of Sideshow Bob on the cartoon tv show The Simpsons. Sideshow Bob got infested with Harlequin bugs, and I learned how to save a tree collard from Harlequin bug infestation. Squishing around 300 Harlequin bugs between my gloved fingers and putting their bug bodies into a bucket of soapy water was a thought-provoking scene of carnage.  

What am I willing to do, to defend my favorite plant and meal ingredient? I considered what must die to keep my own body alive, what’s worth it. I miss those cute orange gardening gloves that I would never look at the same way again.

Sideshow Bob tipped over, and Ming found ways to support its “trunk” as it grew diagonally. It was fun to watch Sideshow Bob’s adjustment to sideways life, and we liked to give cuttings away.

Tree collards are easy to propagate, so we had several tree collard plants in our garden after some time. We brought one to my mom’s house and planted it at the edge of her garden. She lived in a different part of California, further south near the coast. Her tree collard flourished there. Every time we visited my mom, I felt excited to see how the tree collard had grown.

sharing

For a while we had two gardens. We had our plot at Fremont Community Garden, but we also lived in an apartment complex with shared beds.There were four beds when we got there, and then two more were added.  

We learned about sharing garden space with friends, including emotions, not wanting to encroach on someone else’s space, challenges of communication and expectations. I had a clump of rainbow chard that I loved to eat and watch grow. It got infested with aphids, but I was hoping to win that battle.  After some time, a well-meaning neighbor ripped it out, and I cried.

We learned how much space is the right amount, and which plants we like to eat grow well in Sacramento.  Tomatoes do well there.  I learned a permaculture lesson about the wave of energy: how having a high yield might not correspond to having enough energy to harvest it.  

One summer, so many cherry tomatoes grew that we couldn’t harvest them fast enough. Big changes were happening in the lives of everyone who lived in that apartment building, when the tomato plants were covered in hundreds of fruits. It was sad, not to have the capacity to share surplus with people in need.

There’s a mushroom farm in Sacramento that gave away spent substrate, which intrigued us.  We decided to try using substrate as mulch. “It could take nutrients from the soil, since it’s just sawdust.  Maybe this is a silly idea,” we wondered.  But we opened the bags and spread the sawdust on our garden beds, curious,

Then there was a rainy couple weeks in the winter, and we found ourselves with more oyster mushrooms than we could eat. They fruited out like mad. That felt magical and was a tasty experiment in trying something out just to see what happens.

promise

In future guest posts, I’d like to tell you what I’ve learned doing permaculture in the desert, and how doing permaculture as a disabled person is a great idea. Please let this post serve as an introduction to how my spouse Ming and I see plants and enjoy garden life.  

We enjoy new experiences, and we have a slow, grateful pace of loving the land. We love plants as food and sibling organisms on this beautiful earth.

Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales is a queer permaculturist trikewitch who enjoys zines, ecstatic dance, and radical mental health. Find her at https://www.listeningtothenoiseuntilitmakessense.com.

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Introducing Herbology Hunt

This is a guest post by Jane Wilson.

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Many people are “plant blind”. They walk through areas of fantastic wildlife or just down their street without noticing what grows there. Even plants growing in the gutter have an interesting backstory.

The term “Plant Blindness” was first put forth by Wandersee and Schlusser in 1998. Without an appreciation of plants in the ecosystem, people will be less likely to support plant research and conservation.

Herbology Hunt was born out of a love of plants and wild places and a determination to get kids outdoors and really looking at their environment. One of the founders started Wildflower Hour on Twitter – a place for people to share photos of wildflowers found in Britain and Ireland – and from this was stemmed a children’s version, which became Herbology Hunt. The Herbology Hunt team put together spotter sheets for each month of the year. Each sheet includes five plants that can be found throughout the month. They were made available as a free download, so schools and individuals can print them for use on a plant hunt.

By the end of 2018, we had created a year’s worth of spotter sheets. We are now looking to promote their use throughout Great Britain. Eventually we want to reward children who find 50 of the plants with a free T-shirt, and we will be looking for sponsors to support this. We have been supported by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and the Wild Flower Society who have made the monthly spotter sheets available. They can be downloaded here or here.

Herbology Hunt Spotter Sheet for January

The Wild Flower Society has a great offer for Juniors interested in plants – it costs £3 to join and you get a diary to record your finds.

Going outdoors and noticing wildlife has been shown in some scientific studies to improve cardio-vascular health and mental health. A herbology hunt must surely be a good thing to do with children to help them get into a better lifestyle that will benefit their future health. We hope that many families and schools will use our spotter sheets as a way to help children become more passionate about the environment and enjoy the benefits of being outdoors.

Check out the Wildflower Hour website for more information about Herbology Hunt, along with instructions on how to get involved in #wildflowerhour, plus links to social media accounts and the Wild Flower (Half) Hour podcast.

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Also: Check out Jane Wilson’s website – Practical Science Teaching – for more botany-themed educational activities.

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The Dragon of Yankee Fork: Grave Markers

This is a guest post by Martha Dalke Hindman. It is an excerpt from her upcoming book, The Dragon of Yankee Fork. This is the second of three posts. See also: Devil’s Washbasins.

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Grave Markers preserve for the Ages, records etched in stone.
The Firefighters Circle, Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Idaho.
57 of the 94 men, who perished fighting the Great Fire of 1910
Rest together in this Sacred Space.

Sentinels towering in the late afternoon Sun,
Old growth Western Red Cedar trees,
Their fragrant, graceful boughs swaying in the breeze
Watch over the square, Red Granite stones.

western redcedar (Thuja plicata)

On a warm and breezy Wednesday afternoon in 2005, peaceful and quiet when Kaye and I visited Woodlawn Cemetery in St. Maries, Idaho. The Firefighters Circle, a tribute to the men who died fighting the Great Fire of 1910. Here, together they rest forever.

“Look carefully at the Grave Markers, Kaye.”

“Do you see the names of each firefighter and the place where he perished; Big Creek, Storm Creek, Defaut Gulch, Swamp Creek and Wallace?”

The men were buried where they had fallen. In 1912, the United States Forest Service hired an undertaking company to exhume the bodies and bring them here to Woodlawn Cemetery, to be identified by family members. The bodies identified by family members are buried in several cities in Idaho and five other states beyond Idaho’s borders. The firefighters with no family members to identify them were first generation immigrant men from Europe. Those are the fifty-seven men buried in a “circle within a circle”, facing each other, creating their own “family” here in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Firefighters’ Circle at Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Idaho in 2005

My daughter stopped for a moment, tears in her eyes. Her gaze met mine.

“Why the tears, Sweetie?” I asked.

I realized from her expression she was remembering her father’s graveside service in May, 1994. I put my arms around her and held her close. She was missing her Dad, just as much as the families of those firefighters resting together at Woodlawn Cemetery, were missing their loved ones.

The Firefighters Circle at Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Idaho was rededicated, August 20, 2010, with parades, speeches and an ongoing commitment by the men and women who help protect Idaho’s natural woodlands.

Firefighters’ Circle at Woodlawn Cemetery, St. Maries, Idaho in 2015 (via wikimedia commons)

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Poetry, personal stories, images, journal entries, recipes for Springerle, Cinnamon Rolls, Fried Cakes, “a little bit of science thrown in for good measure,” print and online resources, all define “The Dragon of Yankee Fork,” an Idaho Alphabet from A to Z. It all began on a long piece of cream colored shelf paper!

Martha Dalke Hindman’s outdoor classroom was the travel adventures she shared with her father around the State of Idaho. From dusty roads, fishing expeditions, and a keen sense of observation, learning about Idaho’s heritage gave Ms. Hindman her voice in poetry and personal short stories. She may be reached at martha20022 [at] gmail [dot] com.

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The Dragon of Yankee Fork: Devil’s Washbasins

This is a guest post by Martha Dalke Hindman. It is an excerpt from her upcoming book, The Dragon of Yankee Fork. 

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July through September, river water is low, cold, clear.
Four huge, round washbasins appear in an ageless,
Rectangular, horizontal piece of white granite rock.
“Devil’s Washbasins,” at Selway Falls.

Cousin to the domestic Raspberry,
Thimbleberries grow along the river bank.
White blossoms, no thorns, broad indented leaves,
Red berries, a bit of sugar, delectable desert.

thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus)

Long shadows on the dusty, winding road, from Race Creek to Selway Falls, made driving a challenge. Kaye and I stopped at Selway Falls to rest and look into “The Devil’s Washbasins.” Although the Falls are not particularly high, only 25 feet, the sound of the water cascading over timeless, granite boulders, into the river below, creates a world unto itself.

A cream colored car with Oregon license plates slowed to a stop. A man and woman stepped out. I smiled and asked if I could be of assistance.

“Can you tell us WHERE Selway Falls is,” the gentleman asked. “There is no marker.”

“Selway Falls is right here,” I explained. “Do you hear the rushing, tumbling water?”

“But, but! That is just a pile of rocks!!” The gentleman exclaimed. “We expected to see falls like Multnomah Falls near Portland, Oregon.”

“I am sorry you are so disappointed.” I said. I explained that waterfalls the height and size of Multnomah are not found in this particular part of the country. “If you care to stop at Fenn Ranger Station, I am sure the ranger on duty can give you more detailed information about the falls. You will see a large sign reading, ‘Fenn Ranger Station, Nez Perce National Forest’, as you return to the blacktop portion of the road.”

Thoroughly disillusioned and disgusted, the couple returned to their car and drove away in a cloud of dust!

“Devil’s Washbasins” is this author’s name for four giant bowls in white Granite rock at the bottom of Selway Falls on the Selway River, Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest. The bowls created by centuries of water, can only be observed when the river water is low, usually after the 4th of July and until snow covers the forest. Observe the calm pool at the top of the falls. Enjoy the water’s music and beauty. Help to preserve its Integrity.

“Selway Falls technically is not a falls. It is called a ‘cataract.’ This occurred when the North side of the mountain slid into the river. The flow of the water found ways to continue its journey to the sea. Small pools formed, the water moved around boulders 30 feet in diameter, as well as over and under downed trees, submerged logs, smaller rocks and debris. The water level fluctuates from 23 feet to 32 feet, dependent upon the winter’s snowpack in the mountains and the spring run off.“ [Columbia River Fisheries Development Program, February 1, 1967, STATE OF IDAHO, Fish and Game Department, John R. Woodworth, Director. Pages not numbered.]

A FOREST CHASM

I looked into the Chasm

Of Selway Falls

Late one Summer afternoon.

Four irregular washbasins

In one piece of Granite

Basked In the Summer Sun

Waiting for—

The Seasons to change

Fall, Winter, Spring.

Who comes to drink

From these four washbasins?

Only the River

And the forest

Animals know.

We humans can

Only Imagine!

Resources:

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Poetry, personal stories, images, journal entries, recipes for Springerle, Cinnamon Rolls, Fried Cakes, “a little bit of science thrown in for good measure,” print and online resources, all define “The Dragon of Yankee Fork,” an Idaho Alphabet from A to Z. It all began on a long piece of cream colored shelf paper!

Martha Dalke Hindman’s outdoor classroom was the travel adventures she shared with her father around the State of Idaho. From dusty roads, fishing expeditions, and a keen sense of observation, learning about Idaho’s Heritage gave Ms. Hindman her voice in poetry and personal short stories. She may be reached at martha20022 [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Phylogenetic Arts and Crafts

This is a guest post by Rachel Rodman.

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The foods we eat – namely fruits, vegetables, and grains – are all products of their own evolutionary stories. Some of the most well-known chapters in these stories are the most recent ones – dramatic changes in size and shape mediated by human selection.

One especially striking example is that of Brassica oleracea –the source of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, and cabbage. Each of these diverse vegetables belongs to the same species, and each is the product of a different kind of selection, exerted on different descendants of a common ancestor.

Corn is another famous chapter. The derivation of corn – with its thick cobs and juicy kernels developed from the ancestral grain teosinte, which it barely resembles – has been described as “arguably man’s first, and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering.”

But these, again, are recent chapters. Relatively. They unfolded over the course of consecutive human lifetimes –hundreds of years or thousands at the outset (sometimes much less). They are the final flourishes (for the moment) on a much older story — a story that significantly precedes agriculture as well as humans.

It is this older story that lies at the heart of truly deep differences, like those at play in the idiom “apples and oranges.” The contrast between these two fruits can be mapped according to many measures: taste, smell, texture, visual appearance, and so on. When used colloquially, the phrase serves as a proxy for unmanageable difference — to describe categories that differ along so many axes that they can no longer be meaningfully compared.

However, in evolutionary terms, the difference between apples and oranges is not ineffable. It is not a folksy aphorism or a Zen puzzle at which to throw up one’s hands. To the contrary, it can be temporalized and quantified; or at least estimated. In fact, in evolutionary terms, that difference comes down to about 100 million years. That is, at least, the date (give or take) when the last common ancestor of apples and oranges lived — a flowering plant from the mid-Cretaceous.

The best way to represent these deep stories is with a diagram called a phylogenetic tree. In a phylogenetic tree, each species is assigned its own line, and each of these lines is called a branch. Points at which two branches intersect represent the common ancestor of the species assigned to these branches.

Phylogenetic trees can serve many purposes. Their classical function is to communicate a hypothesis – a pattern of familial relationships supported by a particular set of data based on DNA sequence, fossils, or the physical characteristics of living organisms.

But here are two alternate reasons to build trees:

  • To inspire wonder
  • Or (my favorite) just because

To reflect these additional motivations – this conviction that trees are for everyone and for all occasions and that an evolutionary tree belongs on every street corner – when I build trees, I often avail myself of a range of non-traditional materials. I’ve written previously about creating edible trees using cake frosting and fruit, as well as building trees out of state symbols and popular songs. Now here are two additional building materials, which are arguably even more fun.

First: Stickers. This one is titled: “Like Apples and Oranges…and Bananas.”

Bananas split ways with the common ancestor of apples and oranges about 150 million years ago, 50 million years before the split between apples and oranges. On this tree, these relationships are represented like so: the banana branch diverges from the apple branch at a deeper position on the trunk, and the orange branch diverges from the apple branch at a shallower position. 

All of the data required to build this tree  (and essentially any tree) is available at TimeTree.org. On TimeTree, select “Get Divergence Time For a Pair of Taxa” at the top of the page. This is where one can obtain a divergence time estimate for most pairs of species. The divergence time is an approximate date, millions of years ago, at which the organisms’ last common ancestors may have lived. For more heavy duty assistance, there is the “Load a List of Species” option at the bottom of the page. Here, one can upload a list of species names (.txt), and TimeTree will generate a complete tree – a schematic that can serve as a guide in patterning one’s own phylogenetic artwork.

Here, by way of additional illustration, are three more sticker trees, equally charming and equally mouthwatering:

Carrot, watermelon, broccoli, strawberry, and pear.

Onion, asparagus, tomato, cucumber, and cherry.

Raspberry, apricot, pea, grape, and green pepper.

Sticker trees are festive takes on traditional trees. They are brighter, livelier, and more lovely. But, like traditional trees, they are also 2D, restricted to a flat sheet of paper. To extend one’s phylogenetic art projects into three dimensions, one must modify the choice of materials. There are many options. The following 3D tree, for example, employs 13 pieces of plastic toy food, the accouterments of a typical play kitchen. Segments of yarn serve as branches.

Trees like these, made of stickers or toys, constitute playful takes on deep questions. In pencil and yarn, they sketch a network of primeval relationships. They tell the history of our foods, a narrative whose origins profoundly precede us, as well as our intention to selectively breed them. To the Way-Before, to the Way-Way-Way-Before, these projects give shape and color. If and where they succeed, it is because they manage to do two things at once: To communicate a vast biological saga extending across many millions of years, and to be completely cute. Perhaps best of all – and let it not go unmentioned – anyone can make them.

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Bio: Rachel Rodman has a Ph.D. in Arabidopsis genetics and presently aspires to recast all of art, literature, and popular culture in the form of a phylogenetic tree.

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The Creeping Charlies and Common Name Confusion

This is a guest post by John Tuttle.

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Most of us know creeping charlie as the all-too-often irritating weed which takes over our grassy lawns. This evergreen plant’s life cycle is year round. The garden-invading variety which sprouts little bluish-purple flowers has been given the title Glechoma hederacea (or sometimes Nepeta glechoma) via binomial nomenclature and is a member of the mint family, Lamiaceae. Additional common names for this creeping charlie include ground ivy, catsfoot, and field balm.

Travelers from Europe took the plant with them, distributing it throughout other parts of the globe, and it is now deemed an aggressive, invasive weed in various areas in North America. It has crenate leaves, and its size varies depending on its living conditions. It has two methods of reproduction. The first is made possible by offshoots called stolons (or runners), stems with the special function of generating roots and transforming into more plants. Thus, you will often find not an individual creeping charlie plant, but a whole patch, all of them connected via the runners. The other self-distribution method is simple: seeds.

creeping charlie (Glechoma hederacea) via John Tuttle

The creeper is edible, and if you were in a spot where you didn’t know when your next meal would be, this type of creeping charlie would probably be a welcome source of energy. Wild food educator, Karen Stephenson, suggests its use in simple dishes such as soups and omelets, but that’s probably for those who are cooking at home and not trying to fend for their lives in some forest. Starving in the woods is a bit of an extreme, but it has happened. Glechoma hederacea has also been used for making tea. It contains minerals like copper and iron, as well as a significant amount of vitamin C.

The weed also has a number of possible health benefits such as being a diuretic, anti-inflammatory, and antiviral. However, other researchers have cautioned people to be leery of consuming it as it has been known to be fatal to equines and bovines. It contains chemicals that can discomfit the gastrointestinal tract. It is further suggested that during pregnancy women should not intake any amount of any type of creeping charlie.

Up to this point you may have found the terms I’ve used, such as “this type of creeping charlie,” to be a little odd. In fact, the term creeping charlie does not refer to only a single species of creeper. It’s actually used for several.

Another plant hailed as “creeping charlie” is Pilea nummulariifolia of the family Urticaceae, a grouping otherwise known as the nettles. Pilea is the name of the genus of creeping plants; the artillery plant is also classified under this genus. Pilea nummularifolia is also known as Swedish ivy and is often grown as a houseplant. It is native to the West Indies and parts of South America. This viney plant flourishes when supplied with an ample amount of water.

creeping charlie (Pilea nummularifolia) via eol.org

Yet another plant commonly referred to as creeping charlie is Micromeria brownei, synonymously referred to as Clinopodium brownei. It is also used in some teas, but as mentioned above, pregnant women in particular should steer away from consuming it. Apart from the term creeping charlie, a few more common names for this plant include Browne’s savory and mint charlie. Like Glechoma hederacea, Browne’s savory is considered a mint. It produces flowers that are white with hints of purple on the petals and in the throat. This species is quite common in the state of Florida and in parts of Central America; although plants in this genus grow around the world.

Like Pilea nummularifolia, this species loves a good source of water. Its thirst for moisture is so strong, that it can actually adapt itself to an aquatic lifestyle, that is, one which occurs in water and not in dry soil. Many aquarists, people who enjoy keeping aquatic life, love this plant. It can also be trimmed with practically no damage to the plant. It is extremely durable and quite capable of adapting to different circumstances. For instance, Micromeria brownei can be situated midground inside a fish tank. The creeping charlie is perfectly at home totally submerged under water. If a plant floats to the surface then it should typically produce flowers. This adds a new dimension to some of the generic aquatic flora which is often used in many tank displays.

creeping charlie (Micromeria brownei syn. Clinopodium brownei) via wikimedia commons

There you have it. Three different types of plants that have different uses and dangers, and they are all called creeping charlie. Be advised when you’re talking about true creeping charlie – Glechoma hederacea: the invasive weed with the purple flower – that you remember to specify, because “creeping charlie” could mean one plant to you and some plant from an entirely different family to another.

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John Tuttle is a Catholic guy with a passion for the media and creativity. Everything about science and health interests him. He’s a writer for publications such as ZME Science and Towards Data Science. John has started his own blog as well called Of Intellect and Interest. He’s also a published ebook author and the 1st place winner of the youth category of the 2017 Skeena Wild Film Fest. You can follow him on Facebook here, and he can be reached anytime at jptuttleb9@gmail.com.

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Moving Your Ecosystem Forward – An Arborist’s Application of Ecological Principles in the Urban Landscape

This is a guest post by Jeremiah Sandler.

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Ecosystems are everywhere – interconnected and interdependent systems of biology, climate, ecology, and geography. The inside of your house is an ecosystem with its own micro-climate, life (including but not limited to you), and topography. Everywhere you go, you’re in some kind of ecosystem.

The same is more obviously true about your landscape. In my area of the U.S. (southeast Michigan), forests and wetlands are often removed to build suburbs. Both the appropriate soil and ecologically relevant plants are removed from the site. After construction, these areas are re-planted with genetically inadequate plants in poor soil. The ecosystem is modified at a rate faster than most organisms can adapt. Landscape designs common in the suburbs are inadequate in maintaining biodiversity and healthy, natural ecosystems.

In some lucky areas, there are communities doing their best to maintain a strong and natural forest canopy. Leaving secondary forests relatively untouched during construction should be the standard when developing areas for humans.

Ecosystems evolve and change, and one can argue that human-caused mass deforestation is simply another driver of ecosystem evolution. While this may be true, it is a driver that influences the ecosystem at a much greater magnitude than other factors. It just so happens to be mitigable or avoidable altogether.

What can cause an ecosystem to change?

Let’s use the trees in a natural forest ecosystem as an example. Disturbances in any ecosystem drive biological adaptation and behavioral changes in the organisms within it. Disturbances such as fire, wind events, floods, drought, and pathogens alter the forest canopy. Fire may kill smaller trees and wind events can blow trees over. Such disturbances open the canopy and allow dormant seeds to germinate in the new sunlight, which gives additional genetic material a shot in the world.

Ecological disturbance is vital to plants, animals, and microbes because it keeps their genetic material up-to-date with evolving pathogens and changing environments. Up-to-date trees need less work. They are more prepared for their environment and its diseases, as evidenced by their parents successfully reproducing.

We can’t control all ecological disturbances, but in the urban environment we do our best to avoid major ones. Understandably, right? We aren’t fond of wildfire, nor do we want flooding anywhere near our homes.

Applied ecosystem principles on the job

Oftentimes in large, human constructed landscapes, only upper and middle canopies exist; sub-canopy layers are missing. This is surprisingly common in forest ecosystems, especially in suburban areas. Forests like this are considered to have a closed canopy.

Closed-canopy forests are naturally occurring and are not necessarily bad. The thick shade cast by the upper canopy is very dense and prevents most understory growth. Over time closed-canopy forests will evolve and change – large trees or limbs come down in the wind, flooding occurs, lightning strikes, or diseases are introduced. Whatever the disturbance, the newly opened canopy once again helps move the ecosystem forward.

Disturbance by pruning

A client of ours lives on a beautiful property in a dry-mesic southern forest (a closed-canopy forest). Due to all the trees on the property, this client sought advice from arborists. The client’s smart choice lead us to an important solution.

Various large species of both white and red oaks dominate the overstory and upper emergent layers of the canopy. The trunks of these towering trees are far apart. Below these titan trees are some slightly shorter oaks, an american beech, and a few hickory species residing in the midstory. About 40 feet below are various types of moss, some stunted sedges, violets, forest grasses – a sparse herbaceous understory. Beyond that there were several patient serviceberries here and there, and a single red maple, about 1.5 inches in diameter and 15 feet tall at most.

Allegheny serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis) – via wikimedia commons

The area has been undisturbed for a long time (it doesn’t even get mowed), and with the presence of oak wilt in southeast Michigan, we steered away from planting anywhere in the root zone, as it poses a risk for oak wilt infection. Sure, we could plant an over-designed landscape to be manicured, but we had other ideas in mind.

Direct application with two solutions

We asked the client how long ago the red maple and serviceberries volunteered themselves into their landscape. Together we traced the germination back to a wind event that knocked a large limb down years ago. The red maple and serviceberries popped up as a result of new sunlight, yet according to the client, these plants hadn’t grown much in height during the last decade or so. Why might this be? A mature plant can close holes in the canopy faster than lower story plants can, so they no longer receive as much light as they once had.

The next time a limb falls, the maple and serviceberries will have another explosive growth spurt. There are also other dormant seeds to germinate every time a disturbance like that occurs. This is an example of another natural phenomenon called forest succession. It is another way forest ecosystems change.

Planting foreign species in place of the native ones takes away important food sources and habitat for surrounding wildlife. So rather than planting cultivar clones and ecologically useless plants – plants that don’t support other lifeforms – into the existing ecosystem, we proposed we could either do strategic crown thinning or just wait for mother nature to do it for them.

Course of action

My associates and I operate on a “less is more” approach. Not touching this ecosystem is our alternative to modifying the canopy. Like a human patient undergoing surgery, cutting open any organism exposes it to infection. In time, either a natural disturbance will come through to modify the canopy, or the trees will naturally shed lower limbs on their own – a process called cladoptosis.

Strategic branch removal will open up the canopy, allowing more sunlight to the ground below, while keeping the trees looking true to their natural form. The climbing team would be using a type of pruning called refracturing. The openings will simulate a wind event disturbance. As a result, the plants that germinate will be the most competitive, hardy, resistant, and genetically up-to-date plants. This truly is “right plant, right place,” provided no invasive buckthorns pop up.

If the customer does want to go forward with disturbance-by-pruning, the proposal is to open the canopy during winter, as most of the canopy are oak trees. The risk of infecting these trees is reduced significantly by pruning in the winter when the vectors for oak wilt are dormant.

The canopy holes would be placed where the homeowner wants more trees. One benefit of pruning the trees is that disturbance is controlled, rather than a wind disturbance causing a chaotic breakage into the house, for example.

Observation would begin early the following spring. We will watch for germination; it’s expected that the plants that do germinate won’t survive the competition.

What’s important about any of this?

The arborist-homeowner relationship highlighted above is an exemplar of proper arboriculture. We offered expertise along with our services. The exchange saved the homeowner hundreds of upfront costs from the installation of a landscape, as well as future maintenance costs.

Assuming it isn’t under human-induced stress, no forest needs human intervention. In this project, we would want to see natural phenomena form the landscape in this client’s yard. It is our preference to leave the current closed-canopy forest alone.

The benefits of using naturally occurring trees are plentiful. In general, up-to-date trees are more prepared for your ecosystem and support the wildlife that co-evolved with them. An ever-increasingly displaced wildlife population will happily occupy new habitat; they’re here too, after all.

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Jeremiah Sandler lives in southeast Michigan, has a degree in horticultural sciences, and is an ISA certified arborist. Follow him on Instagram: @jeremiahsandler

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Charles Darwin and the Phylogeny of State Flowers and State Trees

This is a guest post by Rachel Rodman. Photos by Daniel Murphy.

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Every U.S. state has its own set of symbols: an official flower, an official tree, and an official bird. Collectively, these organisms form the stuff of trivia and are traditionally presented in the form of a list.

But, lists…well. As charming as lists can sometimes be, lists are rarely very satisfying.

So I decided to try something different.

I am not, of course, the first person to be unhappy with the eclectic, disordered nature of many biological assemblages. In the 18th century, Linnaeus developed a classification system in order to make sense of that untidiness. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, and so on.

In the 19th century, Darwin set biodiversity into an even more satisfying intellectual framework, outlining a model that linked organisms via descent from a series of common ancestors. And, as early as 1837, he experimented with a tree-like structure, in order to diagram these relationships.

Following Darwin’s lead, I’ve worked to reframe the state flowers and state trees in terms of their evolutionary history (*see the methods section below). And today, in honor of Darwin’s 209th birthday, I am delighted to present the results to you.

Let’s start with the state flowers.

In this tree, Maine’s “white pine cone and tassel” forms the outgroup. Among all the state “flowers,” it is the only gymnosperm—and therefore, in fact, not actually a flower.

Notice, also, that the number of branches in this tree is 39—not 50. Most of this stems from the untidy fact that there is no requirement for each state to select a unique flower. Nebraska and Kentucky, for example, share the goldenrod; North Carolina and Virginia share the dogwood.

With the branch labeled “Rose,” I’ve compressed the tree further. The state flowers of Georgia, Iowa, North Dakota, New York, and Oklahoma are all roses of various sorts; with my data set (*see methods below), however, I was unable to disentangle them. So I kept all five grouped.

This is a rich tree with many intriguing juxtapositions. Several clades, in particular, link geographical regions that are not normally regarded as having a connection. Texas’ bluebonnet, for example, forms a clade with Vermont’s red clover. So, similarly, do New Hampshire’s purple lilac and Wyoming’s Indian paintbrush.

Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) – the state flower of Texas

The second tree—the tree of state trees—is similarly rewarding. This tree is evenly divided between angiosperms (19 species) and gymnosperms (17 species).

Iowa’s state tree is simply the “oak”—no particular species was singled out. To indicate Iowa’s selection, I set “IA” next to the node representing the common ancestor of the three particular oak species: white oak, red oak, and live oak, which were selected as symbols by other states.

Arkansas’ and North Carolina’s state tree, similarly, is the “pine,”—no particular species specified. I’ve indicated their choice in just the same way, setting “AR” and “NC” next to the node representing the common ancestor of the eight particular pine species chosen to represent other states.

In this tree of trees, as with the tree of flowers, several clades link geographical regions that are not usually linked—at least not politically. Consider, for example, the pairing of New Hampshire’s white birch with Texas’ tree, the pecan.

Another phylogenetic pairing also intrigued me: Pennsylvania’s eastern hemlock and Washington’s western hemlock. It evokes, I think, a pleasing coast-to-coast symmetry: two states, linked via an east-west cross-country bridge, over a distance of 2,500 miles

The corky bark of bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa). Oak is the state tree of Iowa.

In this post, I’ve presented the U.S. state flowers and U.S. state trees in evolutionary framework. The point in doing that was not to denigrate any of the small, human stories that lie behind these symbols—all of the various economic, historical, and legislative vagaries, which led each state to select these particular plants to represent them. (Even more importantly, I have no wish to downplay the interesting nature of any of the environmental factors that led particular plants to flourish and predominate in some states and not others.)

The point, instead, was to suggest that these stories can coexist and be simultaneously appreciated alongside a much larger one: the many million year story of plant evolution.

With Darwin’s big idea—descent with modification—the eclectic gains depth and meaning. And trivia become a story—a grand story, which can be traced back, divergence point by divergence point: rosids from asterids (~120 mya); eudicots from monocots (~160 mya); angiosperms from gymnosperms (~300 mya), and so on and so on.

So today, on Darwin’s 209th, here, I hope, is one of the takeaways:

An evolutionary framework really does make everything—absolutely everything: U.S. state symbols included—more fun, more colorful, more momentous, and more intellectually satisfying.

Thanks, Darwin.

*Methods:

To build these two trees, I relied on a data set from TimeTree.org, a website maintained by a team at Temple University. At the “Load a List of Species” option at the bottom of the page, I uploaded two lists of species in .txt format; each time, TimeTree generated a phylogenetic tree, which served as a preliminary outline.

Later, once I’d refined my outlines, I used the “Get Divergence Time For a Pair of Taxa” feature at the top of the page in order to search for divergence time estimates. As I reconstructed my trees in LibreOffice, I used these estimates to make my branch lengths proportional.

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Rachel Rodman has a Ph.D. in Arabidopsis genetics and presently aspires to recontextualize all of history, literature, and popular culture in the form of a phylogenetic tree. Won’t you help her?

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Dischidia and Its Self-contained Watering System

This is a guest post by Jeremiah Sandler.

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I was doing some sunday reading in a plant biology textbook, a section about leaves. It was highlighting leaf-specific adaptations and other cool leaf specializations. I came across a paragraph about a “flower-pot” leaf, and my mind was so blown after reading it I had to literally stand up.

It reads:

Some leaves of the Dischidia [genus], an epiphyte from Australasia, develop into urnlike pouches that become the home of ant colonies. The ants carry in soil and add nitrogeneous wastes, while moisture collects in the leaves through condensation of the water vapor coming from the mesophyll through stomata. This creates a good growing medium for roots, which develop adventitiously from the same node as the leaf and grow down into the soil contained in the urnlike pouch. In other words, this extraordinary plant not only reproduces itself by conventional means but also, with the aid of ants, provides its own fertilized growing medium and flower pots and then produces special roots, which “exploit” the situation.

Naturally I had to look up images of this plant because that’s amazing.

Illustration of Dischidia major (image credit: wikimedia commons)

Dischidia major – cross section of “flower-pot” leaf (photo credit: eol.org)

Dischidia vidalii– cross section of “flower-pot” leaf (photo credit: eol.org)

In shorter words, the plant grows modified leaves that form a little cavity, within which ants live. The ants incidentally carry soil into the cavity, while fertilizing that soil with their waste. The stomata are located on the insides of these cavities, which expel water from the leaves, where it then waters the soil that is located inside the leaves. Not to mention, the outside of those cavities are photosynthesizing all the while.

So, with the help of ants, an epiphytic Dischidia has evolved leaves to bring the soil to itself up in the trees, where it fertilizes and waters itself? SAY WHAT?! That is so damn cool.


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