they came from the sky…

As my recent cold began to fade I began to put away the gar­den pic­ture books and reach for a book that I knew would require a lit­tle more focus and reflec­tion. I’m not that far into it yet, but Peter Coates’s Amer­i­can Per­cep­tions of Immi­grant and Inva­sive Species: Strangers on the Land is prov­ing to be a sur­pris­ingly lively read for a book that seems aimed at an aca­d­e­mic audience.

With inter­est­ing his­to­ries of “invad­ing” plants and ani­mals set against his­tor­i­cal debates over human immi­gra­tion, it’s a vol­ume that could be inter­est­ing for many thought­ful gar­den­ers and bird­ers. Here are just a cou­ple pas­sages that touch on some of the issues in the book:

“With­out ques­tion the most deplorable event in the his­tory of Amer­i­can ornithol­ogy,” declared William Daw­son in 1903, “was the intro­duc­tion of the Eng­lish Spar­row.” This may sound absurd to those acquainted with the pas­sen­ger pigeon’s fate. Yet Daw­son insisted that the noto­ri­ous extinc­tions of the pigeon and the great auk … were mere “tri­fles” com­pared to the fright­ful reper­cus­sions for var­i­ous small native birds of the “inva­sion of that wretched for­eigner.” A dra­matic remark of this sort from a cen­tury ago serves as a wel­come cor­rec­tive to the unre­flec­tive tone of cur­rent lit­er­a­ture on bioin­va­sion, which fre­quently inti­mates that today’s level of con­cern in unmatched.

Those who speak of eco­log­i­cal nativism … give the impres­sion that antipa­thy toward exotic species and the simul­ta­ne­ous cham­pi­oning of native biota have been par­tic­u­larly robust in the United States. This view usu­ally emerges by default: com­men­ta­tors sim­ply neglect to reflect on other national expe­ri­ences. [Mark] Sagoff, [in “What’s Wrong with Exotic Species?”] though, directly com­pares Amer­i­can intol­er­ance with a more relaxed Euro­pean “cos­mopoli­tanism” that “tol­er­ates porous bor­ders” for immi­grant flora and fauna. He sees this as a reflec­tion of dif­fer­ent New and Old World con­cep­tions of nature. Whereas Amer­i­cans are ded­i­cated to the “idea of pris­tine nature,” as enshrined in the related con­cepts of wilder­ness and indige­nous species (native plants and ani­mals, by impli­ca­tion, being biotic cit­i­zens of a ter­res­trial Eden), these notions, he claims, lack cul­tural, spir­i­tual, and his­tor­i­cal mean­ing for Euro­peans, who pre­fer their nature to be a blend of the non­hu­man and the cul­tural. The alien organ­isms Euro­peans worry about and are keen to exclude from their coun­try­side and farms, he explains, are genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops (mostly born in the United States).

November 09 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape • quotes • rambles | Tags: • • • • • | 3 Comments »

critter problems

The last of the toma­toes were start­ing to looked snacked on. And then there was this bla­tantly half-eaten apple lean­ing over the fence from the neighbor’s.

The fruits and veg­gies in my yard can go weeks with no com­pe­ti­tion from the local fauna. And then all of a sud­den things start to go miss­ing: that apri­cot that I’ve been eying for weeks, or the tomato that’s just start­ing to show color.

If there are lots of spoils to go around it’s not a big deal. But if we’re talk­ing about that last tomato of the sea­son, or the fall’s first leaves of kale, then I get very concerned.

The cur­rent crit­ter prob­lem: pos­sums (or “opos­sums,” take your pick on what you want to call them). These lit­tle beasts keep vam­pire hours, appear­ing after sun­set, and dis­ap­pear­ing before the full moon sets. They have no prob­lem get­ting high into trees or climb­ing over tall fences.

One recent night I was in the yard as the neigh­bors were talk­ing. Then they got all quiet, like they were inter­rupted by some­thing astonishing.

“Oh good. It’s going over to their yard,” some­one said. And by “their,” they were of course mean­ing “my.” And I’m sure they had just expe­ri­enced a pos­sum sighting.

I have yet to see one this year, though I’ve seen the dam­age. [Cue the space-alien music…] They’re out there. Some­where. Watch­ing. Wait­ing. Ready to invade.

Maybe that’s why I just put on my stack of books to read Peter Coates’s Amer­i­can Per­cep­tions of Immi­grant and Inva­sive Species : Strangers on the Land, a book from 2006. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but there are dis­cus­sions of invad­ing ani­mals like Eng­lish spar­rows and Euro­pean star­lings, and intro­duced plants like euca­lyp­tus and Japan­ese cherry trees. And these out­siders are related to Amer­i­can notions sur­round­ing immi­gra­tion, xeno­pho­bic ten­den­cies, and the Amer­i­can con­cern over attacks from outer space.

Perus­ing the index I’ve just noticed that there’s no men­tion of my imme­di­ate prob­lem, the Vir­ginia pos­sum, an ani­mal that was intro­duced to the West dur­ing the 1930s, per­haps as a poten­tial food source dur­ing the Depres­sion. Too bad.

I’m con­vinced that this lit­tle mar­su­pial that’s laughed at in an unend­ing sup­ply of jokes about slow-moving roadkill-victims is actu­ally a crea­ture of some secret higher intel­li­gence with immense pow­ers. It clearly has it fig­ured out how to con­trol my mind. How else can you explain my work­ing long hours, plant­ing and tend­ing my gar­den, just to keep the local pos­sum pop­u­la­tion sup­plied with a deli­cious bounty of fresh produce?

Be very afraid.

October 04 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • rambles | Tags: • • • • | 1 Comment »

yellowstone “wild” flowers

There were a num­ber of spring flow­ers doing their thing at Yel­low­stone a cou­ple weeks ago. I saw a patch of bright yel­low and took this photo:
escaped dandelions

Yes, dan­de­lions. They were all over. I talked to a ranger nearby who said that the park has a big prob­lem with inva­sive species. He wasn’t a botan­i­cal expert, he said, but he thought there was a true wild dan­de­lion, as well as the gar­den ver­sion. Unfor­tu­nately, this to me looks like the gar­den ver­sion. They were all over the park, as well as all over Idaho on the way there.

June 12 2008 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: • • • | No Comments »

the danger of houseplants

Con­fes­sion time. I have this fix­a­tion on Antarctica.

Most peo­ple who go to spas and do time in hotels with pool bars don’t under­stand it. But, as with all other per­fectly hon­or­able fetishes, it’s sur­pris­ing and reas­sur­ing the num­ber of peo­ple I run into who actu­ally get it.

Some­time in the mid 1990s I was seri­ously plan­ning a trip there, though it’s a trip that I still haven’t taken. I was trawl­ing around what was then the inter­net, doing some ran­dom research, when I came across some memos from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion con­cern­ing house­plants in Antarc­tica that at the time I found a lit­tle bizarre:

In line with require­ments of the Antarc­tic Con­ser­va­tion Act
[Sec­tion 4. Pro­hib­ited Acts (a) ©], and its reg­u­la­tions
[Sub­part B, Sec­tion 670.4 (f)], the Senior U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive,
Antarc­tica issued a direc­tive remind­ing U.S. Antarc­tic Pro­gram
par­tic­i­pants of pro­hi­bi­tions against main­te­nance of house­hold
plants at U.S. Antarc­tic Pro­gram (USAP) sta­tions and facil­i­ties.
That direc­tive is attached to this Envi­ron­men­tal Action
Memorandum.

To fur­ther imple­ment the direc­tive, this Envi­ron­men­tal Action
Mem­o­ran­dum details approved meth­ods for dis­po­si­tion of any
house­hold plants (and asso­ci­ated mate­ri­als) that cur­rently may be
at USAP sta­tions or facilities.

Dis­po­si­tion of House­hold Plants

Any house­hold plants, asso­ci­ated growth media (e.g., soil), and
asso­ci­ated growth con­tain­ers cur­rently at any USAP sta­tion or
facil­ity shall be turned over imme­di­ately to the NSF
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (or designee). Such plants and growth media shall
be incin­er­ated in a suit­able metal waste col­lec­tion bar­rel (non–
plas­tic growth con­tain­ers shall be incin­er­ated at the same time).
The resul­tant ash and debris shall be ret­ro­graded from Antarc­tica
fol­low­ing approved pro­ce­dures. No plas­tic growth con­tain­ers
shall be incin­er­ated (these shall be com­pacted and placed in a
suit­able metal waste col­lec­tion bar­rel for sub­se­quent retrograde

from Antarc­tica). Spe­cial han­dling or approvals may be required
for the ret­ro­grade of these soil “con­t­a­m­i­nated” plas­tic growth
containers.

Sid­ney Draggan

Back then I thought it was ridicu­lous that any­one would be wor­ried about creep­ing char­lies, spi­der­plants, philo­den­drons and dif­f­en­bachias tak­ing over the pack ice. Even today it does seem to lean a bit towards the over­pro­tec­tion­ist direc­tion, but not by much. Cau­tion is always good with frag­ile ecosys­tems like Antarc­tica. Even if the main house­plants wouldn’t become weeds and take over the con­ti­nent, who knows what dam­ag­ing viruses and other pathogens could be stow­aways in pot­ting soil, pathogens that might threaten the few plants that live there today.

Way back when, Antarc­tica wasn’t posi­tioned at the South Pole, and it was warm enough to host many plants, includ­ing forests of Antarc­tic beech trees. In this day and age of global warm­ing, who knows how long it’d be before pen­guins would end up hav­ing to roost in fields of someone’s escaped African violets?

May 20 2008 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • • • | 1 Comment »