Thanks for this! I think there's an element of time here too. We can't see where the "invasives" are headed. But more importantly, it takes time to get to know and understand a landscape.
For sure, time is another element. Here's a story about that from Tao Orion, author of "Beyond the War on Invasive Species," who I interviewed on my old podcast a couple years ago. This is transcribed from that interview:
--
I heard a really interesting story from a woman where she had bought a property in northern California in the early '70s. She wanted to start a farm. It was a forty acre property and there was a ten acre portion in the back that she'd never even really had the chance to visit, she was so busy with the front thirty. When she bought it, it had been a neglected, overgrazed horse pasture covered in Canada Thistle, which is an invasive species, and she was kind of worried about it at the time, but she let it go. She couldn't really deal with it. She said about ten years in, Scotch Broom, which is another invasive species, a nitrogen-fixing shrub, moved in, and eventually all the Canada Thistle was gone. She did nothing. The Scotch Broom was a complete thicket, totally covered the ground. Her local weed board was really worried about this patch. She still didn't do anything.
So, about forty years after she arrived, the Scotch Broom individuals started to die. Each shrub only lives about thirty years, and if the soil is undisturbed underneath them, their seeds are not going to propagate. But underneath the canopy, the soil was dark and rich, with organic matter, and the seedlings of the native forest in her area were germinating. So there was Madrone and Manzanita, Douglasfir, Great Pine, from a diverse array of seeds that were still in the seed bank.
I thought that story was so beautiful, and poignant in a way. She really just let it be in a way that a lot of restoration professionals aren't really willing to do because they're working on a short time frame. A lot of these plants are really just filling a gap in my estimation, to move the ecosystem in another direction.
That almost brings tears to me eyes. I've been thinking a lot about the poet Keats' term, "negative capability," the ability to NOT do something. It's a concept almost foreign to us now.
I watched a documentary recently I think you'll be interested in.
On New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, botanist Hugh Wilson allowed the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy and thus regenerated farmland into native forest.
He says, "if you got an invasive plant and it's sort of infested the landscape, irretrievably in a way, it's worth looking at its good points and maybe you don't have to fight it."
I haven't seen this video, but my co-author on this book project, Nikki Hill, has told me about it because she volunteered for Wilson on a trip to NZ, and got to see his work firsthand. It's definitely an eye-opening story and similar approaches deserve to be tried in other places.
Where is our trust in Nature? Every imbalance is met with balance - just not on our desired timeline - which is why people resort to drastic measures like pesticides, herbicides, etc. We treat Nature as an enemy, our tactics to dominate Her are war-like, this mindset pervades everything “power fanatics” do. Nature is our greatest Ally and Teacher. If only we would sit at Her table to learn…and share Her bountiful gifts.
I 💚 yr coreopsis story! For me it was talking to ladybugs in the garden!
I think our current lack of trust in Nature in relation to the subject of "invasives" comes from our alienation from Nature. Because our lifestyles are no longer about working with Nature on a daily basis, we're not familiar with patterns of response. We see change as anomalous rather than just how Nature works.
I like: "just not on our desired timeline." Yeah exactly. Maybe we can put some blame on Capitalism for this one, since it's so focused on the short-term, and dismisses long-term effects as "externalities."
In San Diego County, where I live, we have a particular problem with invasive grasses. Since the 1950s, almost 60% of our chaparral has been degraded by invasive grass. Elsewhere in California, I’ve seen mile after mile of mountainsides completely converted over to invasive grass.
Yes the mark of disturbance from settler-colonial activity on the landscapes of the US is strong, and in some places catastrophic. I love California (it's where I am now) and I've seen the chaparral and mountainsides you're talking about too. The presence of such grasses is due to cattle grazing, starting with the Spanish in the late 1700s, and from fire suppression, among other causes. For what it's worth I oppose both those things. They are the actions of a civilization based on extraction and suppression, and I would like to see us bring that civilization down with a soft landing, in the most conscientious, consensual way possible.
In the meantime, I don't view the grasses as villains. They happen to be well-adapted to these disturbances so they have thrived there and that's not their fault. They are not themselves malicious. The civilization--our civilization--that made them at home here is malicious AF, and that's my focus. I oppose labeling plants as "invasive" because it shifts the blame from us to them and that's not fair or accurate, nor does it provide a good starting point for future action.
If we would like to see different plant communities in chaparral and mountainsides, we need to address our disturbances there. I would love to see that. I'd like to ban all commercial cattle operations west of the Mississippi for example. And bring back cultural burning practices, and find ways of letting wildfires run their course.
I've spent a little time in San Diego and I know that agriculture has a mark there too, mostly crops of non-native plants. I'm not at all against citrus for example--and the smell of the flowers in the orchards in spring is amazing!--but agriculture as currently practiced takes up an enormous footprint of what was originally native habitat, and employs harmful practices like pesticide use, soil degradation, water draw-down, etc. If we are going to have a conversation about non-native plants, we cannot leave out agricultural plants.
I agree we have a particular problem: the way we live.
Kollibri, Yes! I agree. Invasive species are not bad in and of themselves. I've done a lot of nature walks. When I've done nature walks, I've pointed out invasive plants. I've always said, "This is not a bad plant. it just shouldn't be here."
Cattle grazing west of the Mississippi can be really disruptive. There are few things that look more wrong than seeing cattle grazing in the desert. They can nonetheless serve ecological functions, as I've written about here: https://www.ediblesandiego.com/articles/where-the-green-grass-grows
Fire suppression has caught up with us and is causing a lot of trouble with western forests, but that shouldn't be confused with chaparral. Invasive grasses take over chaparral ecoregions because there is too frequent fires. Chaparral landscapes are burning too frequently now, when they historically burned every 60 to 80 years. Some landscapes have gone even longer, maybe 150 or 160 years without burning.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I look forward to hearing more from you here on Substack.
Paul, I'm glad to hear you're delivering a nuanced message on your nature walks. That makes a big difference because of the types of people you're reaching.
Thanks for the link, I will check it out.
And thanks for the information on chaparral ecology. That's a topic I need to learn more about. I'm following your substack now and look forward to reading your stuff too!
Paul, I was just discussing your comments with my co-author and recalled why I was associating fire suppression with chaparral. It's because I was thinking of *montane* chaparral, like in the Sierra Nevada, specifically around Truckee/Tahoe, where that landscape type, like the surrounding forest, has a frequent fire regime historically. I've spent a lot more time there than the coastal chaparral, so it comes to mind first.
I'd really like to get to know the coastal chaparral better though.
Intriguingly, Arctostaphylos patula in montane chaparral can have a lignotuber that can resprout after fire:
I really appreciate this Kollibri and like the way it is stretching me. My paid work is communications for a local organization that advocates for pollinators through ecological restoration with native planting. Butterflies and moths often need specific native host plants to begin the next generation--Monarchs and Milkweeds being the most well known symbiosis.
I understand all that you write about here--and especially, wholeheartedly agree with the comments about disturbance, chemical -cides, and a focus on just ripping out plants with hatred. I'm also sitting with the dread I feel when I see things like zombie-like Bradford Pear trees popping out before anything else with their white blossoms that smell like rotting flesh and will eventually become stingy dry fruit proliferating in all the disturbed edges. At least Autumn Olive has a nutritious fruit that the birds like. (I'm aware that I'm using harsh language here and examining it because of you!) I also think about the shrinking of the mycorrhizae in woody areas where garlic mustard proliferates and my heart feels squeezed.
On principle I totally agree with what you're saying and hear that it is an attitude shift that we need. It's our fault that ecologies are disrupted, not the plants. My irritation is more with the hubris of people and not with the plants that have found their way into the wastelands we've made and now infiltrate some more delicate areas. In practice, I wonder if an attitude shift is enough to aright the damage we have done? Sitting with it . . . thank you for challenging me!
Advocating for pollinators is such important work in these days of declining insect populations. I also love insects and as a child raised caterpillars in screened-in boxes. The two lepidoptera who showed up every year there (in Omaha, Nebraska) were Cecropia moths and Black Swallowtails. Looking back, I recall that the Cecropia was always on the Pussywillow, a nursery cultivar of some kind, which I now presume was serving in the place of the native Black Willow (Salix nigra) that would have previously been growing along the nearby creek, but was lost when the channel was straightened and the flood plain filled in for flood control. The Black Swallowtail larvae always appeared on the Dill in the garden, which reseeded itself every year. A lot of Swallowtails are famously generalist, being happy with many species in Apiaceae. Here in California, where I am now, they feed on the introduced Fennel that grows on roadsides everywhere, having been planted for erosion control.
At the other end of the spectrum, during the years I spent in the Mojave Desert, I learned about the very specialized relationship between Yucca species (including the venerable Joshua Tree) and their Yucca moth pollinators, who have a complex co-evolved mutualism. It's too much to get into here, but I wrote it up on my "Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country" website here:
Interestingly, as southwestern Yucca plants have been distributed around the country by the nursery trade, the Yucca moths stowed away with them, and it's my understanding that the relationship is now lived out far from their original desert home. Which I think is pretty cool. Like a spouse who follows when their partner gets a new job across the country!
I'm glad you agree about the subject of hatred. It's been sad for me to see an increasing amount of hatred expressed on online native plant forums, which I used to really enjoy as places to share cool photos and get IDs. I stay away from them now for the most part. I just personally think that hatred is a counterproductive force to bring into the picture when trying to help people understand nature.
I haven't taken a deep dive on Garlic Mustard, but of course I run across it a lot it my research. I just went and found this study I'd remembered seeing, where it was found that the antimycorrhizal allelochemical, sinigrin, produced by the plant, declines over time. You might find it interesting.
I couldn't agree more that we need an "attitude shift." That's the goal of the book that my co-author, Nikki Hill, and I are working on. We'd like to see approaches to land-management, restoration, etc., informed more by cooperation than control. We also emphasize that the choices we humans make will always be subjective since our goals are guided by values, and that there's nothing wrong with that. Different choices will be made in different places because they have different goals. In our vegetable gardens, for example, we remove weeds regardless of their geographical place of origin because what we value is food production. In a city, we might advocate against the removal of mature trees regardless of origin, because of their many benefits: shade in increasingly hot summers, carbons sequestration, and their opportunistic utilization by urbanized native wildlife. (And beauty, of course!) To protect a rare ecosystem, we might choose to remove nearby non-native plants, but of course we must also address whatever disturbance led to their establishment and attempt to remedy it.
All of that is to say that place of origin, an (apparently) objective measure, is not always useful as a starting point, given that our goals will always be subjective. Put another way, I would say we need nuanced approaches for nuanced situations, but that the "invasive" narrative goes against that because it totally lacks nuance.
And heck yeah, the hubris has got to go! It is not serving us, or the world, and never has!
Again, I really appreciate your thoughtful response, and your focus on pollinators, and I hope you enjoy future posts.
Btw, I don't know where you're located but I'm assuming east of the Mississippi from the species you mentioned. If so, you might appreciate the work of Zach Elfers, who is working with restoration from the perspective of plants with pre-Columbian human-inflected histories.
Thanks for this! I think there's an element of time here too. We can't see where the "invasives" are headed. But more importantly, it takes time to get to know and understand a landscape.
For sure, time is another element. Here's a story about that from Tao Orion, author of "Beyond the War on Invasive Species," who I interviewed on my old podcast a couple years ago. This is transcribed from that interview:
--
I heard a really interesting story from a woman where she had bought a property in northern California in the early '70s. She wanted to start a farm. It was a forty acre property and there was a ten acre portion in the back that she'd never even really had the chance to visit, she was so busy with the front thirty. When she bought it, it had been a neglected, overgrazed horse pasture covered in Canada Thistle, which is an invasive species, and she was kind of worried about it at the time, but she let it go. She couldn't really deal with it. She said about ten years in, Scotch Broom, which is another invasive species, a nitrogen-fixing shrub, moved in, and eventually all the Canada Thistle was gone. She did nothing. The Scotch Broom was a complete thicket, totally covered the ground. Her local weed board was really worried about this patch. She still didn't do anything.
So, about forty years after she arrived, the Scotch Broom individuals started to die. Each shrub only lives about thirty years, and if the soil is undisturbed underneath them, their seeds are not going to propagate. But underneath the canopy, the soil was dark and rich, with organic matter, and the seedlings of the native forest in her area were germinating. So there was Madrone and Manzanita, Douglasfir, Great Pine, from a diverse array of seeds that were still in the seed bank.
I thought that story was so beautiful, and poignant in a way. She really just let it be in a way that a lot of restoration professionals aren't really willing to do because they're working on a short time frame. A lot of these plants are really just filling a gap in my estimation, to move the ecosystem in another direction.
That almost brings tears to me eyes. I've been thinking a lot about the poet Keats' term, "negative capability," the ability to NOT do something. It's a concept almost foreign to us now.
I watched a documentary recently I think you'll be interested in.
On New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, botanist Hugh Wilson allowed the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy and thus regenerated farmland into native forest.
He says, "if you got an invasive plant and it's sort of infested the landscape, irretrievably in a way, it's worth looking at its good points and maybe you don't have to fight it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZSJKbzyMc
Thanks for the comment, Fotini!
I haven't seen this video, but my co-author on this book project, Nikki Hill, has told me about it because she volunteered for Wilson on a trip to NZ, and got to see his work firsthand. It's definitely an eye-opening story and similar approaches deserve to be tried in other places.
Please, tell Nikki that one of your subscribers envies her for that trip :)
For sure! :)
That was a great film!
Where is our trust in Nature? Every imbalance is met with balance - just not on our desired timeline - which is why people resort to drastic measures like pesticides, herbicides, etc. We treat Nature as an enemy, our tactics to dominate Her are war-like, this mindset pervades everything “power fanatics” do. Nature is our greatest Ally and Teacher. If only we would sit at Her table to learn…and share Her bountiful gifts.
I 💚 yr coreopsis story! For me it was talking to ladybugs in the garden!
Talking to ladybugs -- that's very sweet!
I think our current lack of trust in Nature in relation to the subject of "invasives" comes from our alienation from Nature. Because our lifestyles are no longer about working with Nature on a daily basis, we're not familiar with patterns of response. We see change as anomalous rather than just how Nature works.
I like: "just not on our desired timeline." Yeah exactly. Maybe we can put some blame on Capitalism for this one, since it's so focused on the short-term, and dismisses long-term effects as "externalities."
Thanks for such a thoughtful comment!
In San Diego County, where I live, we have a particular problem with invasive grasses. Since the 1950s, almost 60% of our chaparral has been degraded by invasive grass. Elsewhere in California, I’ve seen mile after mile of mountainsides completely converted over to invasive grass.
Yes the mark of disturbance from settler-colonial activity on the landscapes of the US is strong, and in some places catastrophic. I love California (it's where I am now) and I've seen the chaparral and mountainsides you're talking about too. The presence of such grasses is due to cattle grazing, starting with the Spanish in the late 1700s, and from fire suppression, among other causes. For what it's worth I oppose both those things. They are the actions of a civilization based on extraction and suppression, and I would like to see us bring that civilization down with a soft landing, in the most conscientious, consensual way possible.
In the meantime, I don't view the grasses as villains. They happen to be well-adapted to these disturbances so they have thrived there and that's not their fault. They are not themselves malicious. The civilization--our civilization--that made them at home here is malicious AF, and that's my focus. I oppose labeling plants as "invasive" because it shifts the blame from us to them and that's not fair or accurate, nor does it provide a good starting point for future action.
If we would like to see different plant communities in chaparral and mountainsides, we need to address our disturbances there. I would love to see that. I'd like to ban all commercial cattle operations west of the Mississippi for example. And bring back cultural burning practices, and find ways of letting wildfires run their course.
I've spent a little time in San Diego and I know that agriculture has a mark there too, mostly crops of non-native plants. I'm not at all against citrus for example--and the smell of the flowers in the orchards in spring is amazing!--but agriculture as currently practiced takes up an enormous footprint of what was originally native habitat, and employs harmful practices like pesticide use, soil degradation, water draw-down, etc. If we are going to have a conversation about non-native plants, we cannot leave out agricultural plants.
I agree we have a particular problem: the way we live.
Anyway, thanks for posting!
Kollibri, Yes! I agree. Invasive species are not bad in and of themselves. I've done a lot of nature walks. When I've done nature walks, I've pointed out invasive plants. I've always said, "This is not a bad plant. it just shouldn't be here."
Cattle grazing west of the Mississippi can be really disruptive. There are few things that look more wrong than seeing cattle grazing in the desert. They can nonetheless serve ecological functions, as I've written about here: https://www.ediblesandiego.com/articles/where-the-green-grass-grows
Fire suppression has caught up with us and is causing a lot of trouble with western forests, but that shouldn't be confused with chaparral. Invasive grasses take over chaparral ecoregions because there is too frequent fires. Chaparral landscapes are burning too frequently now, when they historically burned every 60 to 80 years. Some landscapes have gone even longer, maybe 150 or 160 years without burning.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I look forward to hearing more from you here on Substack.
Paul, I'm glad to hear you're delivering a nuanced message on your nature walks. That makes a big difference because of the types of people you're reaching.
Thanks for the link, I will check it out.
And thanks for the information on chaparral ecology. That's a topic I need to learn more about. I'm following your substack now and look forward to reading your stuff too!
Paul, I was just discussing your comments with my co-author and recalled why I was associating fire suppression with chaparral. It's because I was thinking of *montane* chaparral, like in the Sierra Nevada, specifically around Truckee/Tahoe, where that landscape type, like the surrounding forest, has a frequent fire regime historically. I've spent a lot more time there than the coastal chaparral, so it comes to mind first.
I'd really like to get to know the coastal chaparral better though.
Intriguingly, Arctostaphylos patula in montane chaparral can have a lignotuber that can resprout after fire:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/shrub/arcpat/all.html
I really appreciate this Kollibri and like the way it is stretching me. My paid work is communications for a local organization that advocates for pollinators through ecological restoration with native planting. Butterflies and moths often need specific native host plants to begin the next generation--Monarchs and Milkweeds being the most well known symbiosis.
I understand all that you write about here--and especially, wholeheartedly agree with the comments about disturbance, chemical -cides, and a focus on just ripping out plants with hatred. I'm also sitting with the dread I feel when I see things like zombie-like Bradford Pear trees popping out before anything else with their white blossoms that smell like rotting flesh and will eventually become stingy dry fruit proliferating in all the disturbed edges. At least Autumn Olive has a nutritious fruit that the birds like. (I'm aware that I'm using harsh language here and examining it because of you!) I also think about the shrinking of the mycorrhizae in woody areas where garlic mustard proliferates and my heart feels squeezed.
On principle I totally agree with what you're saying and hear that it is an attitude shift that we need. It's our fault that ecologies are disrupted, not the plants. My irritation is more with the hubris of people and not with the plants that have found their way into the wastelands we've made and now infiltrate some more delicate areas. In practice, I wonder if an attitude shift is enough to aright the damage we have done? Sitting with it . . . thank you for challenging me!
Thanks so much for the comment!
Advocating for pollinators is such important work in these days of declining insect populations. I also love insects and as a child raised caterpillars in screened-in boxes. The two lepidoptera who showed up every year there (in Omaha, Nebraska) were Cecropia moths and Black Swallowtails. Looking back, I recall that the Cecropia was always on the Pussywillow, a nursery cultivar of some kind, which I now presume was serving in the place of the native Black Willow (Salix nigra) that would have previously been growing along the nearby creek, but was lost when the channel was straightened and the flood plain filled in for flood control. The Black Swallowtail larvae always appeared on the Dill in the garden, which reseeded itself every year. A lot of Swallowtails are famously generalist, being happy with many species in Apiaceae. Here in California, where I am now, they feed on the introduced Fennel that grows on roadsides everywhere, having been planted for erosion control.
At the other end of the spectrum, during the years I spent in the Mojave Desert, I learned about the very specialized relationship between Yucca species (including the venerable Joshua Tree) and their Yucca moth pollinators, who have a complex co-evolved mutualism. It's too much to get into here, but I wrote it up on my "Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country" website here:
https://wildflowersofjoshuatreecountry.com/plant-entry/joshua-tree-yucca-brevifolia/
Interestingly, as southwestern Yucca plants have been distributed around the country by the nursery trade, the Yucca moths stowed away with them, and it's my understanding that the relationship is now lived out far from their original desert home. Which I think is pretty cool. Like a spouse who follows when their partner gets a new job across the country!
I'm glad you agree about the subject of hatred. It's been sad for me to see an increasing amount of hatred expressed on online native plant forums, which I used to really enjoy as places to share cool photos and get IDs. I stay away from them now for the most part. I just personally think that hatred is a counterproductive force to bring into the picture when trying to help people understand nature.
I haven't taken a deep dive on Garlic Mustard, but of course I run across it a lot it my research. I just went and found this study I'd remembered seeing, where it was found that the antimycorrhizal allelochemical, sinigrin, produced by the plant, declines over time. You might find it interesting.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2435.12685
I couldn't agree more that we need an "attitude shift." That's the goal of the book that my co-author, Nikki Hill, and I are working on. We'd like to see approaches to land-management, restoration, etc., informed more by cooperation than control. We also emphasize that the choices we humans make will always be subjective since our goals are guided by values, and that there's nothing wrong with that. Different choices will be made in different places because they have different goals. In our vegetable gardens, for example, we remove weeds regardless of their geographical place of origin because what we value is food production. In a city, we might advocate against the removal of mature trees regardless of origin, because of their many benefits: shade in increasingly hot summers, carbons sequestration, and their opportunistic utilization by urbanized native wildlife. (And beauty, of course!) To protect a rare ecosystem, we might choose to remove nearby non-native plants, but of course we must also address whatever disturbance led to their establishment and attempt to remedy it.
All of that is to say that place of origin, an (apparently) objective measure, is not always useful as a starting point, given that our goals will always be subjective. Put another way, I would say we need nuanced approaches for nuanced situations, but that the "invasive" narrative goes against that because it totally lacks nuance.
And heck yeah, the hubris has got to go! It is not serving us, or the world, and never has!
Again, I really appreciate your thoughtful response, and your focus on pollinators, and I hope you enjoy future posts.
Btw, I don't know where you're located but I'm assuming east of the Mississippi from the species you mentioned. If so, you might appreciate the work of Zach Elfers, who is working with restoration from the perspective of plants with pre-Columbian human-inflected histories.
https://www.nomadseed.com/
Your narrative is phukt.