The MN wildflower blog

After posting a recommendation on our Wildflower Facebook page of a local oak savanna remnant (Helen Allison SNA in northern Anoka county) that provides some wonderful  views of the broader landscape of just a century or more back, a fan made this comment:

“but we really don’t know. I often wonder, driving through the county – what was it really like, 200 years ago?” – Arne

Here is my response:

Arne – I have to disagree.  While it should be obvious we cannot experience the past in the present, we can increasingly “know” it in great detail. Scientific  study and it’s tools, such as the launching of the Hubble space telescope in 1990 have pealed back billions of years of history for our knowledge and understanding of the entire Universe in far greater depth than could have been imagined even 50 years ago. Likewise the ancient study of plants – botany – continues to inform our “knowing” the world around us – past, present and future.

We do have enough accumulated  records and data to know what types of plant communities existed and what plants made up those plant communities thousands, even millions  of years ago let alone just two hundred years ago. While becoming exceedingly rare in this period of exponential  environmental change we still have remnants of those communities here and there for our study, understanding and appreciation. That’s fairly accurate “knowing” just through historical documentation. When you visit a place like Helen Allison where that plant community that existed 200 years ago is still remarkably intact you can literally know it by seeing it with your own eyes. That “knowing” is far more meaningful when you are able to discriminate between native species from those that have invaded much of what little remains of the “natural” landscape in just the past 50 years and seeing they are not there (at least not yet).

There are swales and hollows at Helen Allison that nearly completely obscure any vision of the modern age. What we will never know is what it was like to step out of that hollow and have the knowledge that the vision extends beyond the horizon. To know and appreciate that you will need to apply both your own unique human imagination and your uniquely Human Spirituality that the study of native plant species inherently evokes.

Aldo Leopold’s words of just sixty some years ago were perhaps prophetic when he suggested; “It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.” With today’s revival in interest and popular study of botany, native species and their histories, the questions cannot help but be asked; what is it we once had, what we have lost, what we are losing and what are we getting in return for those losses? That at least portions of society might experience some cultural angst in this matter is long overdue.

While all of history is the story of change over time – as provided for the evolution of species itself, until some 200 years ago, this change in Minnesota’s (and most of the World’s) landscape was so incremental over time that those who viewed the land back then could only envision it as timeless, regardless of how they imagined utilizing the resources of the land to secure their children’s future.

What they could never have seen that we can so clearly see today is how quickly so many of those “timeless” resources disappeared in just a mere 200 years with the majority of those losses within just the last several decades. What we know that they could never know was how severely and quickly, human activities can change the entire surface of the planet and its future. They could only look upon the landscape as a source of hope for their children’s future and it appeared to be theirs for the taking. Unless you are in complete self denial, I don’t see how you can look at the landscape today, with even a little amount of informed knowledge of the state of things without feeling at least a little bit of concern and trepidation for the future.

In this age of unprecedented “knowledge”, never before has the security of our children’s future been in such grave doubt.

Petyer

29 November, 2010

James W. Sanders, Forest Supervisor
Superior National Forest
8901 Grand Ave. Place
Duluth, MN 55808

I am concerned about the proposed land exchange between the USFS and PolyMet Mining Inc. This is nothing about a “fair” land swap – but as noted – a “connected action” to a proposed environmentally destructive project. Also, while suggesting otherwise, the proposed exchange does not in any way demonstrate that it meets, let alone exceeds, four of the Forest Service’s Strategic Plan goals.

The present federal lands proposed for exchange are contiguous by definition and in that capacity act as a unit providing ecological and environmental benefits to wildlife, the public and the planet. As it sits immediately adjacent to private tracts with an extensive history of environmental degradation, it serves as an important buffer to the on-going and persistent negative environmental impacts previous land use has created. Removal and conversion into expanded environmental degradation only moves the buffer further out and exponentially subjects additional environmental resources, both public and private, to harm.

Regarding these goals as now exist on the federal lands:

For the goal to “provide and sustain benefits to the American people (desired outcome is forests with sufficient(?) long-term multiple socioeconomic benefits to meet the needs of society), it fails completely – this is a de-forestation action. The present disposition of this tract meets that end, and cannot be improved upon. Any inference to economic benefit cannot be quantified within a forest management paradigm and becomes an equivocation to purposes anathema to the environmental spirit and vision. What economic benefits can be referenced are predetermined – the lion’s share going to outsiders – Minnesota resources, both mineral and environmental – offered up to internationals.

To “conserve open space” – this is a qualitative, not quantitative statement. The present space is already completely open and carpeted with a rich ecologically diverse and living epidermis – a protective skin. This land exchange would create more open space that by definition is erased – non- protective – non-living – to perpetuity.

To “sustain and enhance outdoor recreation opportunities” – this already exists on site. The present conditions are the definition of sustainability and open for public recreation. Exchanging  them away is to remove sustainability and no public recreation of higher value is created. It is a self serving presumption that this exchange translates into more people using better land elsewhere.

In “maintaining basic management capabilities of the Forest Service by reducing landlines and mineral conflicts” – this maintains nothing and the small numerical net gain of decreased landlines does not equate into better management capabilities. The site is now under full Forest Service management and should & can basically be kept that way. While everyone should move and live to reduce all conflicts, mineral extraction is inherently conflictual with ecological and environmental goals and should not be pre-empted or avoided. The Forest Service’s mandate by definition lies in management of forest as forest. That private (?)mineral wealth is overlaid by public forest is no imperative for the Forest Service to abrogate its duty to conflict. It is no secret that other potentially rich and exploitable mineral deposits and proposed projects lie under other public forest resources. To acquiesce to this exchange sends an ominous warning to future public forest interests and brings into question the Forest Service’s ability, vision and integrity of securing and managing our forest resources for our children.

Of the non-federal lands offered for exchange:

It cannot be shown that adding a single foot of these private holdings to FS management expands or improves upon FS mission and goals.

By and large all of these pieces of private property are paradoxically irrelevant in their exchange while being intrinsically imperative to the long term FS mission. Whether their ownership has fallen inside or outside the public domain has little impact on their environmental function as it exists today. They are small and relatively underutilized and generally un-exploitable. The regional geography, topography , ecology and economy is necessarily the predominant management template under which they exist. Adding that they mostly lie isolated  and scattered between predominantly state, county and federal ownership, present regional public management, pragmatically,  is the de facto management strategy implemented. That most are essentially not managed at all, for these reasons any exchange becomes nearly mute in public value. “Enhancement” is theoretical only. The FS cannot demonstrate their incorporation improves their lot significantly. Even what private use or abuse might incur is marginal, and obscene as a comparison to the already highly demonstrated and purposefully intended future corruption of present federal land.

Of the five tracts, the fifth implies more merit than the rest in evoking its proximity to the BWCA. But here too, reality trumps theory. That it is near an important entry point is of no consequence for FS inclusion and cannot be demonstrated to be an area enhancement at all. McFarland lake is and will likely remain mostly outside of federal jurisdiction because it is deemed and desired of higher private value. As ownership and public accessibility presently stand, it has not even been demonstrated that enhancement is required let alone to be realized. If these parcels are of such great consequence and justifiable, another more appropriate and less destructive acquisition strategy can easily be implemented. That being said, the FS to date has not fully demonstrated to my satisfaction that it has either the vision or resources to effectively manage its present holdings.

As a square foot for square foot swap this exchange is unjustifiable and untenable.

Of the other “connected” issues (tissues?):

While the FS would like to separate its self from the greater environmental issues contested in other public arenas, by only considering a narrow numerical management exchange value, in admitting it is a “connected action” it cannot do so. In just the land exchange alone this is a net loss of public forest resources at the greatest conceivable cost. But this great net loss is connected to even greater influences that bear heavily upon this decision.

That mineral owners find a method to take what they have come to possess by their economic means, remove it and leave the rest would greatly solve many problems – they cannot. That the FS would abrogate their mandate and keep the forest would be the end of conflict – they cannot. The FS bears as great of scrutiny for the ultimate consequences of their actions as the mineral owner are to be held for the ultimate consequences of theirs.

Nowhere is a land exchange measured for the waste disposal consequences that the FS cannot separate itself from politically or geographically. Ground and surface water contamination concerns are not extreme and additional nearby public and private holdings will be impacted – both within the vicinity and downstream. There is high risk inferred to federal lands outside of the exchange acreage, both in the present and a very long term future. There is no mitigation in any land exchange for this failing.

Regarding my own personal connection and interest to the Arrowhead region, I am a botanist, ecologist and imaginographer. I have and will travel extensively throughout the region documenting and recording plant species and their rapidly diminishing habitats. The only expansion of my activities this mine would affect would to be an unfortunate witness to the further encroachment of invasive weed species such destructive activity inherently causes. At present the FS is bedeviled with this problem beyond its means already. There is every imperative against this mine, in this place and in this time.

A century old next year, the Weeks Act was a loud public voice of understanding in addressing these concerns and enacted into federal law for that reason. Having spoken once – must it be made to speak again? A FS decision supportive of this land exchange is precedent setting, smears tailings mud on the face of an evolving democratic public ideology and marks a significant de-evolution of public ideals. As great as the depth and magnitude of the permanent physical scar this action will incur on the Earth’s skin, it will also forever call into question the tenure of the USFS’s moral vision and integrity.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Dziuk

This morning I found a message in my inbox from a fellow in Ohio:

“In any temperate climate, rich-soil, damp, slightly to somewhat shady place (like much of Minnessota’s environment and any low area between two rivers)… this ivy is FAR easier to maintain as a groundcover than grass. It won’t get tall, it won’t go away, and it displaces the other plants in it’s place. It will dominate a yard with only slight maintenance, if the yard is the right conditions and it is mowed two or three times mid-late in the season.

This ground ivy is here in N. America because it was brought here from Europe by settlers who desired it’s many valuable qualities. It was especially useful to the settlers for it’s various herbal/medicinal and culinary purposes. It is very fortunate for us that this excellent plant has taken root in the wilds surrounding the midwestern N. American forests, and so shall remain available to us into the distant future. ”

Sorry, Mr. Ohio, but this doesn’t fly.

As much as I’m not a fan of blue grass lawns, I cannot condone encouraging a highly invasive non-native species as a substitute.

I don’t consider it fortunate at all that it has taken root in the wilds. It displaces natives that are a vital part of the food web, severely threatens diversity, and costs millions of dollars each year trying to get it under control.

How is that a good thing? A few people finding some medicinal benefit to it out ways all that? I don’t think so.

I hope he never moves to Minnesota.

Today I received an email:

Subject: Polygonum cuspidatum roots are required!

Dear Sir/Madam,
I would like to purchase the roots of Polygonum cuspidatum (Japanese knotweed) for planting purpose. Could you please inform me that you can supply it or you know someone others supply it?

Thanks!

Yours truly,
SL, Ph.D.

Note the Ph.D. I was stunned at the request and wondered if this person had spent any time at all looking around the web site. If they had I think it would have been pretty obvious that we wouldn’t honor such a request even if we could.

My reply:

Polygonum cuspidatum is a highly invasive species.

It should not be planted anywhere in the U.S. under any circumstances!

Within moments I received this:

Thanks for your e-mail. I am in Canada. It is not a banned plant in Manitoba. Do you know where I can obtain the roots of this plant?

Heavy sigh. How can someone smart enough to earn a Ph.D. have so little common sense?

K Chayka

I had not intended to become an activist, but it seems I just can’t help myself these days…

A couple days ago I came across a web page about invasive species and noxious weeds: wildflowerinformation.org/InvasiveWildflowers.asp.

I started reading it with interest, then concern. It basically says that it’s OK to plant pretty much anything that isn’t officially designated a Noxious Weed. So anything that isn’t specifically prohibited is fair game, and don’t let the moral tut-tutting of “self-appointed zealots”, who promote planting only natives, stop you from planting whatever you want!

Firstly, I am not some self-appointed zealot, but someone who spends a great deal of time out in the field recording plant information in Minnesota. It breaks my heart to see what damage invasive species, many of which are garden escapees, have done to our native ecosystems.

Secondly, there is a glaring omission that invalidates their conclusion.

I cannot speak for all states, but in Minnesota there are political reasons why some species–some known to be very invasive–will continue to be omitted from noxious weed lists, including reed canary grass, crown vetch, and bird’s-foot trefoil. It all boils down to money and the power wielded by the agricultural and nursery industries.

The truth is: It is irresponsible to promote gardening with species known to be invasive just because it failed to make an official list. They even said on the above page that garden escapees are often how problems like kudzu get started in the first place.

If they want to inform their readers about invasive species and noxious weeds, they should give the complete picture. To anyone who spends time outside the garden setting that page merely sounds self-serving as it stands now.

And in fact it is indeed self-serving!

It turns out that the wildflowerinformation.org domain name is registered to none other than their “recommended seed supplier”. Since they are selling seed for invasive species (and trying to hide that fact!), it’s probably safe to say they have no real concern for environmental impacts and money is their true motivation after all. Some of the worst things they are pushing:

• bird’s-foot trefoil
• chicory
• dame’s rocket
• oxeye daisy
• Queen Anne’s lace

Finally, I will mention that I tried to send these people an email expressing my concern over the content of their invasive species page. It bounced. I think that says a lot.

Don’t buy this crap, please.

Katy Chayka
Minnesota Wildflowers

RE: The carp are coming! (And is that really such a bad thing?) by Greg Breining

Dear Greg:

You are correct about how little we really understand exotic species and their place in ecosystems, but it is your propaganda that provides evidence the loudest. We are and will be finding out just how disastrous they will turn out to be and I don’t think we’ll find a lot of exceptions. Washed up is not how I would describe their arrival. If that is your poetry, please keep it to yourself.

Few of the species I am concerned about washed up on our shores. While many were careless accidents, many others were netted and dug, crated, fork-lifted, loaded, shipped and/or flown to be bought and sold in the market place and then dumped into prime habitats.

#1. We do not describe exotic species with the same language we do immigrants who, unlike exotic species, typically give back more than they take. But you are correct that it is warfare over food and the losers are quantified in diversity lost and species extinct. There are generally no policies based on science conducting this war.

#2. Continents can suffer massive widespread extinctions, it just takes longer. Islands are like saplings that you run over with a bobcat and it’s done with. Continents are like a century old oak that you damage with construction this year and it gives up the ghost ten years later. If Michigan where an island, their EAB problems would soon be over.

No, local ecosystems are not richer in diversity from the addition of foreign species. Overwhelmingly, all of the many local ecosystems I have wandered across all the years I have lived here in Minnesota are moderately to severely degraded from the invasion of non-native plants. Even the rarest of places no longer remain un-touched.

I have personally witnessed thousands of small white lady’s-slippers, Cypripedium candidum and other orchid species including our state flower, Cypripedium reginae growing among them down in the Minnesota River Valley in Bloomington, wiped out of existence from just a half handful of non-native species, primarily reed canary grass (RCG), Phalaris arundinacea.

Not only are the non-native species of far fewer number than the abundant native flora they replaced they are also generally of poor character. If you are talking about people’s little back yard gardens, it is true they can be a diverse source of non-native genotypes but even they lack in diversity from what was on the land before the gardener dug it up. One of the biggest things they are missing is insects. Any responsible gardener would read Doug Tallamy’s “Bringing Nature Home – How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens,” before putting another shovel into the ground. Diversity on a global scale is far more important than people’s back yards.

#3. It is only with exception that you cannot tell a native from a non-native as we see here in Minnesota right now with RCG but you sure can tell its destructive behavior. Botanists don’t know everything and not all natives are well studied or understood. But that natives may change behavior in response to environmental changes, especially something like climate change, is to be expected as diverse ecosystems are dynamic for just that purpose. Non-natives do not or cannot behave in this fashion in their new environments.

I have not walked through the Bay Area’s abandoned groves of Australian eucalyptus but I have walked into endless melaleuca, Melaleuca quinquenervia, stands in Florida and if you are seeing much diversity in there you are smoking something. I hear rumors that more and more Burmese pythons, Python molurus bivittatus, have been showing up lately…yippee!

You are correct that there is no such thing as a good or bad ecosystem but in that regard there is no such thing as a good or bad economy – just different economies. But even the poorest economist can recognize a rich, diverse and thriving economy from an impoverished one. Ecosystem or economy, should we not know which we would have and strive for it? Healthy ecosystems are rich, diverse, resilient and stingy. They know how to capture energy and conserve it by sharing it with all. Non-natives share nothing.

#4. This is the most obfuscative preposition I’ve heard lately, you out do yourself. Exotic species are unequivocally hard to control because too often they are out of control or politically protected. As for the heroic zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha, I don’t know of a single environmentalist that would argue that crystal clear water is the end of all goals. What happens to the sharp-shinned hawk, Accipiter striatus, that would have eaten the common yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas, that would have eaten the emerald spreadwing, Lestes dryas, that would have eaten the midge, Stenochironomus macateei, larvae that would have eaten the plankton algae, Anabaena spp. that zebra mussel, D. polymorpha, got to first?

#5. I don’t like that the world is increasingly made up of a hodge-podge stew of bewildered species collected from all over the globe with just a few dwindling pockets of desperate hold outs that have somehow managed to stay under the radar screen so far. For sure something or someone is hunting them down to destroy them as we speak. I do want and love nature and what you are proposing is miserable.

When is the last time you looked for any wildflowers in a buckthorn, Rhamnus cathartica and Frangula alnifolia, forest – if that even is what it can be called? Between them, exotic earthworms, Lumbricus terrestris (among more than 60 other non-native worms introduced to North America) and garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata, there is nothing left! Thanks much in part to gardeners we now have our first non-native orchid species helleborine, Epipactis helleborine invading the hills of Winona county. We already had some 44 native orchid species in Minnesota, (the only state with an orchid for a state flower) – wasn’t that enough? Most of them didn’t even bother to figure out what we already had before they were off looking for something new and they found a poor excuse for what they were replacing.

You are correct that Asian carp, Aristichthys nobilis and Hypophthalmichthys molitrix are winning and will end up being the largest single biomass in many of our water ways just as round goby, Neogobius melanostomus now makes up most of the biomass at the bottom of Lake Erie. You are also correct that the time to stop them is before we import them. You talk about “wreaking tremendous change” but as we’ve learned, earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes and meteor strikes also wreak tremendous change – should we then embrace them?

I say; Mille Lacs Lake for Minnesota walleye, Stizostedion vitreum and coniferous bogs for Minnesota orchids!

I am not stupid, of course we will continue to move life forms around the planet, as that is our nature, but must we insist on continuing to do so, so mindlessly? I find my nature to be anything but mindless.

Will people be willing? I find too many people unwilling or incapable of changing just about anything, dangerous or not. Something can be done about many of our invasive plant species but too few people have chosen to do so. We have been effective against many weeds in the past. I still have a copy of the 1925 – State of Minnesota, State Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 43 – Weeds in the Fields, Gardens, and Lawns, as well as the accompanying “Noxious Weeds” colored flyer with The Minnesota Plan for Cooperative Weed Control and Eradication flow-chart on the back. While that program is trashed today, they had most of it all figured out back then.

I also know we do have improved knowledge, understanding and better management tools to fight these problems today. We also have many good people, both in and out of government with skills, knowledge and no small amount of passion who but languish for so much to get done and nothing to do. They have no leadership with vision right now.

A change we can believe in? The person that manages to outlaw the stupid penny will get my next vote for president.

For those who would still insist on gardening with Asian wildflowers and fishing for Asian fish I might suggest they purchase a one way ticket to China and think about staying there.

For you, Homo sapien, I would suggest a one week’s vacation on a treeless (some previous tourist released some damned insect that ate them all) tropical island with a Bengal tiger, Panthera tigris bengalensis, and just six days worth of food – live young wild pigs, Sus scrofa, between the two of you. We will see who goes extinct first.

You are correct that it will take a lot of convincing or if not, LTL

Regards,

Peter M. Dziuk
Minnesota Wildflowers
Columbia Heights, MN

p.s. Doug Tallamy will be speaking at the Wild Ones Spring Conference 2010, 27 February – Radisson Hotel, Roseville

Maybe I should subtitle this:

Hope springs eternal

Today I took a walk through an area of Long Lake Regional Park that I don’t get to often–the east side of Rush Lake, between the lake and Old Highway 8, a stretch of nearly a quarter mile. While the west side has some very nice plant life, the east side is loaded with weeds and invasive species: sweet clover, butter and eggs, motherwort, lamb’s-quarters, buckthorn (of course) and a host of others. I got a nice surprise, though. Scattered along the way I came upon Culver’s root, wild bergamot, fringed loosestrife, and surprising amount of clammy groundcherry. None of it in huge quantities, but enough to make me think it wants to be saved. I’d start this new restoration project if I only had the time…

Hope springs eternal, part 2

A few months ago I wrote about The death of a prairie remnant. I’ve visited the site several times since then looking for signs of life. I had some hope at the beginning of June when some groundcherry and wild licorice looked like they might come up after all. I thought about changing that post’s title to “The prairie remnant that refused to die”, but the drought on top of the severe soil disturbance seemed to be more than the poor distressed plants could handle after all. Most just shriveled up after a couple weeks, including the 2 or 3 Nuttall’s evening primrose plants. Today I visited it again and found a wild licorice blooming. Sweet. Maybe some of it will survive after all.

Railroads have been a sanctuary for prairie remnants. The right-of-way along the tracks goes largely undisturbed, allowing patches of native plant communities to survive amidst urban development and expanding agriculture.

At Long Lake Regional Park in New Brighton, one of my favorite places to be, the railroad runs the length of the park, forking at the north end near the old train depot. There are prairie remnants scattered along the tracks, with 2 especially nice spots: one near the fork and another near the swimming beach.

This week I discovered what is most likely the death of one of those remnants.

As part of the Northwest Quadrant Redevelopment project, sections of the railroad tracks are being dismantled. The rails and ties are being piled up next to the tracks near the swimming beach and construction workers and equipment have heavily disturbed the surrounding soil. Last year Nuttall’s evening primrose, wild licorice, Virginia ground cherry, prairie coneflower, butterfly-weed, and a number of native grasses had been found growing there. I have little hope they will survive this and expect to see more sweet clover and spotted knapweed take over in their place.

It makes me very sad.