Botany Buddy

As yesterday would have been the 201st birthday of Charles Darwin I found it overly ironic that all I saw on the news was a barrage of people declaring that global warming was a farce because it had snowed outside. I have to admit that I am starting to find the snows I have missed from my youth a bit annoying now. However it hasn’t effected me enough to start denying reality and the evidence of real science.  I may be delirious from cabin fever and the total loss of routine from an ad-hoc school schedule, but it is not about to lead to the closing of this American mind.

Had it not been for the steady drumbeat of an old friend’s facebook status, Chuck-D Day might have slipped by me completely.  This friend is someone I new well in my youth.  For many years as children we spent every daylight hour walking up an down our town’s railroad tracks and creeks collecting turtles, snakes, frogs, salamanders and any other little critter we could get to ride home in our pockets.  Of course we evolved over time, and got smart enough to carry buckets and boxes.  At one point we even moved up to traps and converted a neighbor’s walk in aviary into an all out zoo.  This particular friend is now a Herpetologist and was leading a read-a-thon in which they finished the Origin of Species in approximately 18 hours.  (I can only assume this was faster than the last time.) As I watched the devolution of our politicians minds on TV his constant updates assured me that somewhere someone was actually evolving.

As for my own celebration, it was going on in my head all day.  As I spent all day listening to the talking heads knowing full well they were incapable of thinking,  I was thinking about how I became most aware of global warming through the spread of invasive species.   Over the years I wasn’t always aware of either problem, it took a move to a different climate to make me see how differently things react under the slightest change.  It became even more evident when I began working across the 3 distinct zones from North Georgia to Virgina that I could see how differently species adapt and react to different ecosystems.  Hybrid Burning Bush and Barberry that for years no one would have imagined spreading are not only growing from seed, but they are adapting and moving into climates that normally would have been to cold for their seed to survive.

When I hear people talk of climate chance, I always hear about it’s effect on water, and people.  How the oceans will flood the cities, rivers will run dry, and other factors that we see directly related to our needs as humans is all that seems to matter.  The only time I hear plants discussed is in how trees can offset carbon so we can create more.  Unfortunately I hear more talk about whether the change exists in the first place, than what we can to do prevent it.  However, more than fighting of global warming plants can help us see and understand it.

In some respects plants are the antithesis of humans.  Plants adapt and get stronger every year and can live several of our lifetimes, but they create a new generation and pass on those traits every year.  When winters were consistent invasive species were easier to keep in check.  The annual minimum temperatures used to keep the non-native seeds in check year after year.  As winters have gradually warmed, those seeds have have adapted and become more cold tolerant as those few extra degrees have allowed them to survive.  Now they can handle the extreme conditions that now occur once every five years instead of annually.  We on the other hand have not adapted.  Burning Bush that used to be contained to areas near it’s cousins in Georgia are now making their way up the coast to New York.  Princess Trees, Barberry, Butterfly Bush, English Ivy, and many more are making that same journey.  In less than a generation of our lifetime, these species have adapted to the climate change and produced dozens more generations while we are still arguing over whether it even exists.

As humans we are different from plants.  We may live for decades but usually only reproduce during a short window of that time and in small numbers.   While we do physically evolve generationally, we usually reproduce at a peak moment and then actually become weaker for the next two thirds of our life.  Plants and trees that can live hundreds of years get stronger and reproduce every year until that last year of their life when they actually produce the most seed.  Where we differ is in that we have minds that can evolve way beyond our physical bodies.  However, unlike a tree whose wood gets harder with age and ease, we have to work and use our minds to keep them growing even as it gets harder.  If we don’t do this, collectively as a society we can actually get weaker and devolve.  The more we separate into individual pockets of though and deny the science that exists in nature around us the weaker we actually become as a species.  Too often because of our self awareness we lose the awareness of the world around us and slow the evolution of our collective conscience.

In the United States we track plant hardiness and nativity with the USDA system for for classifying plant hardiness known as the USDA Zones.  The system is based on a ranges of temperatures, recorded temperatures by areas, and the minimum temperatures those plants can supposedly take.  The system isn’t based on where these plants should grow, but where they could grow.  It also only covers minimum temperatures and not maximums.  Even more odd, this “could” focus is based on how we can use plants to alter the environment through a commercial view not how to protect and preserve it.  This is from the Department of AGRICULTURE though, not the Environmental Protection Agency.  Throughout the world these systems vary, but an emerging and evolving trend throughout the world does not start with temperatures, it start with plants.  Aerial photography is used to map where the species that form the canopy are, and the undergrowth can be determined by combining that and other data; yet another Copernican shift in the right direction.  People are actually using plants to gain perspective rather than trying to fit them into their own perspectives and learning more about themselves and the world in the end.

Unlike trees, if our minds continue to grow after reproduction we cannot continue to pass it on year after year through our seed.  Even what we do pass on isn’t the content of thought, only the ability.  We can only continue our evolution as a species through education.   The strongest ideas aren’t the ones that are said the most often, screamed the loudest or that have the most money to advertise them.  They are the ones that come from listening, hearing, and collectively evolving with the world around us.  Our evolution as a species is dependent the recognition of our role in the community of species, listening to each other within our species, and admitting that trying to be the strongest being isn’t necessarily in our nature as a species, and doesn’t make us the fittest species.   As a species we can learn a lot from the trees around us, but the message we should learn isn’t to reproduce like the Duggars.  It is that the world is changing, and for us to become the fittest species possible we have to continue to evolve mentally every year, even after our body ceases to evolve.  The lesson is that our seeds are seeds of thought, and without them our minds cannot grow and neither can our species as a whole.

It is funny how we all develop.  I probably could have guessed that my friend leading the read-a-thon would grow up to be a turtle hugger.  As for me, while I was in horticulture at a young age, the technology I work in now was still in the form of a punch card and we couldn’t have seen this coming.  There was a third member of or 9-10 year old research team, and I don’t think I wouldn’t have guessed the future for  him either.  He is writing his dissertation on the effects of invasive species on soil fertility in the upper Midwest.  However, as kids nature planted seeds in our minds, and as we moved to different climates those seeds evolved with the world around us.  I guess our evolution is proof that passion can evolve into thought and doesn’t have to lead to the death or denial of it.  When I look at how we’ve grown, it is reassurance to me that for us to remain the “fittest” species we must continue to evolve our minds and realize that we are part of a community of species.  Likewise, by denying evolution, including climate change, we deny our role in the community of species, weaken our collective mind and species as a whole, and  jeopardize the species Earth as we know it.  How this all came about isn’t what is important, but acknowledgement that it exists and our role in it is vital to our development as a species and to the survival of the world as we know it.