Category Archives: Plants

Divide and Diminish, or Preserve and Survive?

Olivia Judson writes about Divide and Diminish:

A different process goes on when an island forms by splintering. Here, the ecosystem is pre-existing: the island is created with a set of residents already in place. But it is now too small to support them all.
What happens next is a kind of unraveling, a fraying, a disassembling such that the ecosystem becomes simpler, so as to fit the space that is now available. On those recently-created islands of Indonesia, for example, the smallest islands are home to many fewer species than the largest islands. And, as you’d expect, you don’t find big animals on the smallest islands either.
When we humans burn tracts of forest, or make islands in some similar way, the immediate impacts depend on a suite of factors, including how many islands there are, how big they are, and how close they are together. It also matters what is between them. Fields may be more hospitable to wildlife than roads or water; under some circumstances, life forms may be able to flit from one fragment to another, and the “island” nature of the fragments will be reduced. Perhaps we can use such patterns to shape how we use land, to try and minimize the impact we have.
Perhaps.

She’s not talking about prescribed forest burns, which are actually necessary for longleaf pine forest ecology. She’s talking about burns that destroy forests.

The once-mighty longleaf pine ecology that spread from eastern Virginia to east Texas now only exists in tiny islands separated by cities, fields, and roads. Maybe we should preserve the few patches that are left. This isn’t just about plants and animals, you know, it’s also about flood control, food supply, and living conditions.

Half a century ago we overused pesticides, in particular DDT, which caused birds’ eggs to become too fragile. Bald eagles vanished from many places. But sometimes they come back, when we stop poisoning them and instead save some habitat.

The eagle pictured was just sitting beside the road as we drove by. There are more in nearby counties. Picture by Gretchen Quarterman, 23 March 2010.

Seedlings of One Longleaf

The red flags mark more than 120 seedlings sprouting from this one longleaf:

Here’s what they look like just after they come up:

It’s a pretty big tree: Continue reading →

Red Buds

Spring is coming:

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 February 2010.

Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.
…After the war-fires of three months,
One message from home is worth a ton of gold.
…I stroke my white hair. It has grown too thin
To hold the hairpins any more.
—A Spring View, Tu Fu (c. 750), trans. Witter Bynner

Sprouting Longleaf

Thousands of these all over the woods:

Many people think it takes fire to make longleaf produce seeds. These pictured seedlings came from a tree that hasn’t had fire near it for more than ten years. So why so many seedlings this year? Continue reading →

Bolting Longleaf

No amount of cold weather seems to stop the longleaf once they start bolting upwards:

This one has a branch already.

Picture by Gretchen Quarterman, 7 Feb 2010, Lowndes County, Georgia.

Frost

Frost on gallberries:

Picture by Gretchen Quarterman, 8 Feb 2010, Lowndes County, Georgia.

Mutant Pigweed vs. Glysophate-Resistant Corn, Soybeans, and Cotton

It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything that affects that particular variety. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:

The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.
The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.
Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

Here’s the good news: Continue reading →