THE OLD FRIENDSHIP OF BLUEBERRIES AND SWEET FERN:

Malva

In an age that witnessed considerable support for social improvement, public schools often took center stage. By the 1830s, a chorus of reform-minded people began to sing the praises of free, tax-supported schools: Thaddeus Stevens, later a prominent Republican activist in Pennsylvania; Catharine Beecher, advocate of more educational opportunities for women; Caleb Mills, an evangelical minister who later became Indiana's leading common school advocate; and even notable Southerners, who faced the greatest opposition and whose efforts bore the least fruit. Enthusiasm for social improvement through education flourished. Since the turn of the century, countless pamphlets, speeches, reports, petitions, testimonials, newspaper editorials, books, and articles had promoted the importance of education in a republic. A few dozen educational periodicals also popularized the cause of learning by promoting a class-inclusive school system, especially for white children.

In Philadelphia, New York, and other cities, the editors of workingmen's newspaper - the voice of the skilled artisan minority - despaired over the fate of youth as apprenticeships declined and unskilled factory labor increased; they endorsed instituting a common system and eliminating the stigma attached to free schools. "I think that no such thing as charities should be instituted for the instruction of youth," wrote one articulate worker in the Mechanics' Free Press in Philadelphia in 1828. He favored free schools dependent not on "private charities" but "founded and supported by the government itself." One Ohioan added, "Unless the Common Schools can be made to educate the whole people, the poor as well as the rich, they are not worthy of the support of the patriot or the philanthropist." "Give to education... a clear field and fair play," said a recent immigrant in A Treatise on American Popular Education in 1839, "and your poor houses, lazarettos, and hospitals will stand empty, your prisons and penitentiaries will lack inmates, and the whole country will be filled with wise, industrious, and happy inhabitants. Immorality, vice and crime, disease, misery and poverty, will vanish from our regions, and morality, virtue and fidelity, with health, prosperity, and abundance, will make their permanent home among us.”

Born in an age when millennial ideals, such as universal peace and prosperity following Christ's imminent return to earth, influenced wide sectors of the population, the common schools became a useful barometer of the extensive social changes that transformed the nation before the Civil War. Cities, factories, and foreign immigration generated moral panic and social fears among many northern reformers, whose search for solutions to public ills centered on a more expansive public school system. Reflecting the contradictory passions of the reformers, schools not only favored greater access to literacy and academic study but simultaneously downplayed intellectual achievement by elevating the moral aims of instruction. America's ambivalent attitude toward the life of the mind and scholarship thus found expression in the nation's emerging school system, where character development and moral uplift took precedence even as lifeless instruction in academic subjects predominated. Setting a pattern that long endured, reform-minded citizens increasingly assumed that individual welfare and social progress depended on an extensive network of public schools.

william j. reese, america's public schools from the common school to "no child left behind"

How to Describe Plants

Yareta (Azorella compacta) in Bolivia (elevation of 14,000 ft.).

This may look like a moss, but it isnt! This is a broad-leafed plant in the carrot family, Apiaceae.

These plants can grow to bve over 3000 years old. This large specimen may be over 1000 years old.

photographs by Mark Dwyer

Invasive Species and Xenophobia

Invasive species are complicated! People have a lot of feelings about them, positive and negative. Are plants that move "invaders" "colonizing", "immigrants", "citizens"? What does it mean to kill species that are from somewhere else? What if that species legitimately makes a poor neighbor and causes extinctions in other, native species? This complex, culturally-loaded issue is a foundational issue behind a lot of plant conservation and restoration.

This is a juicy and still actively disputed topic! The Guardian recently had a big article on colonialism in Botany, (tbh her views are dated and reductive, imo) and it’s come up again this week, to much hostility (cw: reddit). Yes, my region's native plant restoration came from literal nazis, but also, the impacts of some invasive species are real, not figments of a racist imagination. How do we balance these issues? What does ethical invasive management look like?

Since it’s such a juicy topic, I wanted to offer a few fun readings to share:

The Native Plant Enthusiasm: Ecological Panacea or Xenophobia?, Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, 2004, Arnoldia.

THE CLASSIC 20th century German nazis and native plants paper. Made a huge splash when it came out, and you will still encounter people who paint all native plant stuff with this brush. Summary: yeah the nazis loved their native plants and used them as part of their conquering process. Also, the first prairie plantings ever, located in Chicago, were done by a racist probable-nazi for racist reasons, full stop. I’ll let him speak for himself: “The gardens that I created myself shall… be in harmony with their landscape environment and the racial characteristics of its inhabitants. They shall express the spirit of America and therefore shall be free of foreign character as far as possible… the Latin and the Oriental crept and creeps more and more over our land, coming from the South, which is settled by Latin people, and also from other centers of mixed masses of immigrants. The Germanic character of our race, of our cities and settlements was overgrown by foreign character. The Latin spirit has spoiled a lot and still spoils things every day.” - Jens Jensen

Botanical decolonization: rethinking native plants, Tomaz Mastnak, 2014, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

Rather than viewing native plant plantings as an act of racially-pure occupation, Mastnak positions native plants in California as a decolonization of the sub/urban lawn. Uses a lot of quotations from 16th century English philosopher Francis Bacon, and is heavy on the philosophical musings.

From killing lists to healthy country: Aboriginal approaches to weed control in the Kimberley, Western Australia by Bach et al., 2019, Journal of Environmental Management.

This paper talks through some of the native vs invasive debate, and offers a different perspective on how to approach to plant invasive management based on cultural relations, rather than country of origin or behavior.

Beyond ‘Native V. Alien’: Critiques of the Native/alien Paradigm in the Anthropocene, and Their Implications, Charles R. Warren, 2021, Ethics, Policy, & Environment

DENSE but thorough, if you want to follow the entire history of the native/invasive debate, this has you covered. The most interesting stuff, in my opinion, is the discussion of invasive denialism, IE: the impasse of “You’re just being racist!” Vs “You know nothing about ecology!” I recommend the Discussion, which starts on page 13.

the Guardian

York groundsel blooms again in Britain’s first-ever de-extinction event

Yellow flower that only grows in York went extinct in 1991 brought back to life by Natural England experts

By Patrick Barkham

The Guardian

May 27, 2023

York groundsel was a cheerful yellow flower that slipped into global extinction in 1991, thanks to overzealous application of weedkiller in the city of its name.

But now the urban plant has been bought back to life in the first ever de-extinction in Britain, and is flowering again in York.

The species of groundsel was only ever found around the city and only evolved into its own species in the past century after non-native Oxford ragwort hybridised with native groundsel.

York groundsel, Senecio eboracensis, was discovered growing in the car park of York railway station in 1979 and was the first new species to have evolved in Britain for 50 years, thriving on railway sidings and derelict land.

But the new plant’s success was short-lived, as urban land was tidied up and chemicals applied to remove flowers dismissed as “weeds”.

It was last seen in the wild in 1991. Fortunately, researchers kept three small plants in pots on a windowsill in the University of York. These short-lived annual plants soon died, but they produced a precarious pinch of seed, which was lodged at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank.

Andrew Shaw of the Rare British Plants Nursery had a vision to bring the species back to life, but when tests were carried out on some privately held seeds very few germinated successfully.

So Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog, quickly authorised a de-extinction attempt via its species recovery programme, which has funded the revival of the most threatened native species for 30 years.

“The Millennium Seed Bank said the seed was getting near the end of its lifespan and so we thought we would only have one more chance of resurrecting it,” said Alex Prendergast, a vascular plant senior specialist for Natural England.

Natural England paid for a polytunnel at the Rare British Plants Nursery in Wales, where 100 of the tiny seeds were planted. To the botanists’ surprise, 98 of the seeds germinated successfully. The polytunnel rapidly filled with a thousand York groundsel plants.

In February six grams of seed – potentially thousands of plants – were sown into special plots around York on council and Network Rail land.

This week, the first plants in the wild for 32 years began to flower, bringing colour to the streets and railway sidings of York.

This de-extinction is likely to be a one-off in this country because York groundsel is the only globally extinct British plant that still persists in seed form and so could be revived.

But Prendergast said the de-extinction showed the value of the Millennium Seed Bank – to which plenty of York groundsel seed has now been returned – and there were a number of good reasons for bringing the species back to life.

“It’s a smiley, happy-looking yellow daisy and it’s a species that we’ve got international responsibility for,” he said.

“It only lives in York, and it only ever lived in York. It’s a good tool to talk to people about the importance of urban biodiversity and I hope it will capture people’s imagination.

“It’s also got an important value as a pollinator and nectar plant in the area because it flowers almost every month of the year.”

Erica pyramidalis, the pyramid heath, was a species of Erica (also sometimes known as heath/heather) that was endemic to the city of Cape Town, South Africa. Erica is a genus of roughly 857 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. The Pyramid Heath was restricted to what today is the city of Cape Town in the Western Cape Province, South Africa.The species disappeared due to the destruction of its habitat by the expanding city, and, despite the fact that the species was even cultivated for some time it is now considered extinct.

link to pdf 

White Calla

Ok but can we talk about non-native and invasive species in a nuanced way?

There’s more to this topic than ‘native = good’ and ‘non-native = invasive and therefore bad’. I also see horrible analogies with human immigration, which…no. Just no. 

Let’s sit back and learn about species and how they work inside and outside their native ranges! Presented by: someone who studied ecology.

Broadly speaking, when talking about species in an ecosystem, we can divide them into four categories: native non-invasive, non-native, non-native invasive, and native invasive.

Because ‘native’ and ‘invasive’ are two different things. 

Native and non-native refers to the natural range of a species: where it is found without human intervention. Is it there on its own, or did it arrive in a place because of human activity?

Non-invasive and invasive refers to how it interacts with its ecosystem. A non-invasive species slots in nicely. It has its niche, it is able to survive and thrive, and its presence does not threaten the ecosystem as a whole. An invasive species, on the other hand, survives, thrives, and threatens the balance of an ecosystem. 

Let’s have some examples! (mostly featuring North America, because that’s the region I’m most familiar with)

Native Non-invasive

Native bees! Bee species (may be social or solitary) that pollinate plants.

And stopping here bc I think we get the point.

Non-native

Common Dandelion: Introduced from Europe. Considered an agricultural weed, but does no harm to the North American ecosystem. Used as a food source by many insects and animals. Is prolific, but does not force other species out.

European Honeybee: Introduced from Eurasia. Massively important insect for agricultural pollination. Can compete with native pollinators but does not usually out compete them.

Non-native Invasive

Emerald Ash Borer: Beetle introduced from Asia. In places where it is non-native, it is incredibly destructive to ash trees (in its native range, predators and resistant trees keep it in check). It threatens North America’s entire ash population.

Hydrilla: An Old World aquatic plant introduced to North America. Aggressively displaces native plant species, and can interfere with fish spawning areas and bird feeding areas. 

Native Invasive

White Tailed Deer: Local extinction of the deer’s predators caused a massive population boom. Overgrazing by large deer populations has significantly changed the landscape, preventing forests from maturing and altering the species composition of an area. Regulated hunting keeps deer populations managed.

Sea Urchins: The fur trade nearly wiped out the sea otters that eat them. Without sea otters to keep urchin populations in check, sea urchins overgrazed on kelp forests, leading to the destruction and loss of kelp and habitat. Sea otter conservation has helped control urchin populations, and keeps the kelp forest habitat healthy.

—

There are a few common threads here:

The first is that human activities wind up causing most ecosystem damage. We introduce species. We disrupt food chains. We try to force human moral values onto ecosystems and species. And when we make a mistake, it’s up to us to mitigate or reverse the damage.

The second is that human moral values really cannot be applied to ecosystems. There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ species. Every species has its place. Applying emotional and moral rhetoric to ecology works against our understanding of how our ecosystems work. 

Third: the topic of invasive and non-native species is more complex than most of the dialogue surrounding it. Let’s elevate our discussions.

Fourth: If you ever compare immigrants or minorities to invasive species, I will end you.

There are more nuances to this topic than I presented as well! This is not meant to be a deep dive, but a primer.