The Urban Pantheist

Like most invasive species, Japanese knotweed has its moments of beauty.

Like its relative the Japanese beetle, the Oriental beetle is a hated pest of turfgrass. Not so much at our house since we treat our lawn with something between benign neglect and half-hearted maintenance. But people interested in a nice carpet of unbroken grass blades don't like the white C shaped larvae that grow into this beetle. They live in the soil, nibbling on the roots of the grass, killing sections of grass, leaving unsightly dead patches. The grown beetles don't make themselves any more welcome, feeding on roses and other ornamental flowers. Accidentally introduced from Asia, this invasive species is being battled with a natural enemy: a commercially available nematode that preys on the Oriental beetle grub.

I wrote that almost exactly 4 years ago, referring to the insect in this picture:

Looks pretty different but both are Exomala orientalis*. The species varies on a light to dark spectrum between the two extremes shown.



* Very outside, from the east

Yesterday the Urban Nature Walk was guest-hosted by scientist-naturalist Teá Kesting-Handly. She's taking a marine biology course right now, so had a lot of great knowledge fresh on her mind. She led us down to King's Beach, park of the Lynn Shore Reservation.
( Read more... )

This past Saturday I went to Dedham Trail Day. There were tables from local businesses and organizations (free pulled pork and ice cream!) and a friendly atmosphere. But the main reason I went was because my friend dedhamoutdoors was going to lead a nature walk on a newly opened trail!
As I waited for the nature walk to start, I walked along the milkweed looking for creatures. I found several longlegged flies, but they move so quick that the only way to catch one was to get this shot of its shadow from below.

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I am indebted to my friend Ale (pronounced Allie) for suggesting the Cedar Grove Cemetery for our October Urban Nature Walk. It's large, beautiful, and unique. It borders the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester on one side and the Neponset River on the other. It is well-planted with sugar maples and other plants that are aglow with autumn colors (including the Boston ivy shown here).( Read more... )

Over the past month I've become slowly aware of a separation between two communities that should be closely aligned. It's similar to the division between cat-lovers and ecologists, but with its own distinctions.

Wild food foragers are excellent naturalists. The best can tell the difference between many different confusing plant species--the difference between life and death in some cases. They understand ecology--that is, they are aware of seasons and habitats, and know where and when to find their quarry. Their senses are honed by practicality. I love having foragers along on Urban Nature Walks--they are some of the best, most confident naturalists I've met, with a profound respect for nature and an obvious delight for being in the out of doors.

That's why it's so distressing to me that I have detected this separation. The issue is invasive species. Many invasive species are attractive targets for foraging--this makes perfect sense, since the usefulness of a plant is what makes it more likely to be brought to another continent to begin with. Ecologists who dabble in foraging (like myself) tend to tolerate a certain level of useful invasive species. I like that the cities are full of white mulberry, and I relish the Himalayan blackberry that plagues the Pacific Northwest.

But when it comes to species that create monocultures, that reduce biodiversity in the areas that they thrive, I am intolerant. Norway maple, black swallow-wort, Japanese knotweed, and garlic mustard are simply bad news. They are all admirable plants in their own ways--you must at least admire their ability to thrive in the most difficult urban ecosystems. I am able to appreciate them as beautiful plants--just go and read the entry for black swallow-wort from 2006, you'd think I was in love. And many of these are useful to humans in various ways.

But each of these and many others cause ecological damage. Phragmites replaces cattail and blackbird habitat is lost. Japanese knotweed moves in and there are no more frogs on the water's edge. A monarch lays its eggs on a black swallow-wort leaf and the caterpillar starves to death. Garlic mustard moves into the yard and begins exuding fungicide, making it more difficult for mycorhizzae to form.

The foragers cry "eat the invasives!" I'm all for it, make all the garlic mustard pesto and strawberry knotweed pie you want. Please try to harvest it until there is no more left. But eating is not controlling. Proper agriculture and proper wild foraging have one thing in common: you take measures to ensure the plant survives, through replanting or judicious harvesting. I don't think anyone is really worried that they will over-harvest Japanese knotweed until it is extirpated, and it may not even be possible at this time. I just worry that the foragers will stand in the way of sane control measures.

I detected a tone and philosophy regarding invasives in the new book Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness that unsettled me. Author Rebecca Lerner uses scare quotes when referring to "invasive species," "native species," and terms like "noxious" and "harmful." She states that "like people and animals, plants have been migrating around the world and always will," without distinguishing between those "migrations" (now I'm using the scare quotes, but she's talking about the spread of species into new areas, not actual migration which is a to-and-from movement) caused by humans and those which occur for other reasons. A species may move into a new environment because of a weather event, or because of continental drift, but these causes are very very very slow and gradual. In the past 500 years, humans have caused species to move into new areas, sometimes with little effect, sometimes however resulting in sudden extinction of native species. Can we really be so blase about species moving from place to place when some of those events are entirely preventable (in hindsight) and man-made like the mass extinction of birds from Hawaii due to the introduction of cats, mongooses, and mosquitoes?*

Another book (which I confess I have not read) called Invasive Plant Medicine: The Ecological Benefits and Healing Abilities of Invasives is even more troubling to me. The jacket copy offers "Most of the invasive plant species under attack for disruption of local ecosystems in the United States are from Asia, where they play an important role in traditional healing." So what? The issue isn't that the plants are or aren't useful--clearly they are. The issue should be--in terms of, you know, the sustainability of the maximum diversity of living things on earth--are they causing harm to an ecosystem?

It seems that the foraging community's objection to the control of invasive species doesn't derive from the worry that garlic mustard or Japanese barberry are going to disappear. The bigger issue seems to be the use of herbicides. I have no strong opinion on this--I agree that the extensive use of chemicals in the environment has been problematic in the past. I would prefer that the use of pesticides of all kinds be very careful and well thought-out, with lots and lots of environmental impact studies. I know that there are cases where invasive plant species are controlled with herbicides--can the use of herbicides be reduced? Probably. Should that reduction of herbicide use be accomplished by denying the science of harmful invasive species? I've got a problem with that.

*I've read statements by foragers and free-roaming cat advocates saying more or less "humans are the real cause of this problem, after all." I agree, which is why I think it's our responsibility to take firm sane measures to solve it (them).

The first thing I noticed about Los Angeles was the birds! (Actually, the first thing I noticed was the weather--good February temps between 65 and 80 and brightly sunny every day we were there.) This is a western gull: Large size, medium gray wings, pink feet, red spot on the bill. Larus occidentalis. By the way, this is Long Beach, which isn't even really Los Angeles, but it's close.

( more Long Beach )

Alexis on a business call. For some reason we can't get good cell phone reception in our house, so to make or receive important calls we go out in the yard--sometimes I'll hop in the car and drive to CVS and make an errand of it.

( also my dad and I went to Purgatory Cove! )

Rough fleabane Erigeron strigosus

I should caution anyone reading this blog that my plant identifications, how you say, lack rigor. I used a combination of the Peterson's wildflower guide (my mom's 1968 edition) and the Go Botany website to eliminate the more commonly seen annual fleabane E. annuus.

Fleabanes generally bloom earlier than the similarly daisy-like asters. The wonderful name comes from the optimistic notion that the flower can be used to repel fleas. This species is known as prairie fleabane in the western states, and has been introduced into Europe, where it can be invasive.

Common barberry Berberis vulgaris

When we moved to The Dedham House we walked around the big back yard marveling at the many shrubs and perennial plants put there by previous owners. We moved in winter, so the deciduous plants were especially mysterious. One big bush was quite thorny, and threatened to sprawl across more of the yard than we wanted. It seemed simple enough to throw on some work gloves and chop it back to manageable size. This turned out to be much less fun than I anticipated, with lots of thin pointy bits all over the place, and more than a few jabs to my skin.

I did learn in so doing, that the interior of the plant was lurid yellow, and didn't smell great. Later, when I tried to use some of the larger cut branches for firewood, I found that the smell got much much worse. And even later, when the spring leaves came out, the shrub basically returned to it's original size, except maybe taller. It didn't bloom last year, but this year produced the dangling flowers above. Seeing the same flowers across the street made me realize that this was a Barberry shrub.

I won't bore you further with how I determined that it was common barberry and not the more commonly seen (ironic, no?) Japanese barberry. Suffice it to say the way the flowers hang, the number of thorns per cluster, and the edges of the leaves all finally fit, after some agonizing over irregularities. (Okay, fine--the older stems had thorns appearing singly, which is how Japanese barberry is supposed to be, while the new growth has thorns in groups of three, indicating the other species). Also complicating the issue, and I still haven't totally ruled it out, is the fact that there is a known hybrid of the two species out there.

What I do know is that this thing's days are numbered. Both species are invasive, and this particular individual annoys me. How to rip it out is another problem we have yet to solve. If we drag our feet until the fall, red edible berries will appear where the flowers are. While some would admonish us to eat our invasives, in the case of barberry, the birds will also eat the berries, and further the spread of this unwanted plant.