At Home in the Land? Welcome to Gaillardia World
The land was ours before we were the land’s. –Robert Frost
What better expresses the land than the plants that originally grew there?” --Aldo Leopold
Across the United States, millions of acres now covered in lawn can be quickly restored to viable habitat by untrained citizens with minimal expense. –Douglas Tallamy
Plants were here first and have had a long time to figure things out. What if Western scientists saw plants as their teachers rather than their subjects? --Robin Wall Kimmerer
How do I talk to a little flower? Through it I talk to the Infinite. —George Washington Carver
Can residents of the United States ever be at home in the land, or are we condemned to forever be (in Woody Allen’s words) “at two with nature?”
I thought a lot about that question this past summer as I concentrated on a single species of native wildflower, a lovely reddish orange and yellow annual called Blanket Flower, or Gaillardia pulchella.
While I focused on this one species of wildflower, the perspectives of the thinkers quoted in the epigraphs above swirled around in my mind, blending with my experiences.
Robert Frost’s line from “The Gift Outright” captures the terrible loneliness of the settler-colonial--one who owns but doesn’t belong—though that word “before” suggests that such isolation may be temporary, that reciprocity may some day come.
Indeed, the other four thinkers recommend ways to overcome that alienation.
For Aldo Leopold, Douglass Tallamy, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and George Washington Carver, native plants are the signposts that mark the way home.
But how apt are their recommendations?
I am not a “Western scientist”—I was an English major—but I did follow Robin Wall Kimmerer’s recommendation quoted above and allow at least one plant species to be my “teacher” for a season. Kimmerer, a professional botanist and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, is the best-selling author of Braiding Sweetgrass—a book in which Kimmerer blends scientific knowledge with indigenous wisdom to guide readers of all ethnicities toward reciprocity with the land. She says, “The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness.”
So for one season I was “mindful” of Gaillardia pulchella.
In this post I would like to describe some of what I learned—not as sweeping solutions to alienation from nature, but as personal anecdotes that might add some specifics to our communal, on-going discussion about ways to belong to the land.
Background
Before saying more about Gaillardia World, allow me to provide some background.
My husband Ron Young and I are prairie conservationists, proprietors of Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge, a prairie preserve in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The Flint Hills are special as one of the few places left where a native ecosystem thrives within a modern economy. European settlers, at government urging, tried to plow the native prairie but failed, due to the chert (aka flint)-filled rocks so close to the surface.
To this day the Flint Hills contain millions of acres of unplowed prairie that provide superior grazing and support for the cattle and bison industry.
Thus, while Aldo Leopold, a founder of ecology (within Western science), was restoring tallgrass prairie to degraded farmland in Wisconsin, Flint Hills ranchers in Kansas were already earning a living within that very ecosystem. And as Leopold argued in the 1940s and 1950s for Americans to recognize their “land communities” (made up of dynamic interactions among the soils, flora, fauna, hydrology, and geology where they lived), Flint Hills ranchers were already engaging in management practices, such as burning and grazing, that helped native grassland thrive.
Our half-section of land nestles inside this exceptional region, this fortunate expanse of tallgrass prairie. For the past 25 years Ron and I have managed the refuge for both biodiversity and grazing, preserving 250 acres of native uplands, while restoring 70 acres of former crop fields to a native polyculture that might one day approximate original bottomland prairie. Our experiences along the way are the subject of another essay. Suffice it to say that we can endorse what Leopold says in the epigraph above and testify to the emotional rewards. There is nothing better than feeling “the land expressing itself” through “the plants that originally grew there.”
But shouldn’t such experiences be universally available?
The yearning for widespread sharing of ecosystem encounters has made me an enthusiastic supporter of the movement to “bring nature home.” Douglass W. Tallamy, author of the best-selling Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants and Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard, is a prominent leader of this movement. Along with many others, he urges everyone, no matter where they live, to plant the flowers, shrubs, and trees that are native to their area. The problem with lawns (he calls them “ecological wastelands”) and non-native ornamentals is that they were bred to please the human eye, not to support the ecosystem. Native plants, on the other hand, evolved with the microbes and invertebrates that are the basis of the foodweb. They are the connectors that start energy flowing from earth to sky and back again.
We used to see this movement as applying mainly to urban and suburban dwellers, not to ourselves. We had been engaged with our upland prairies and bottomground restorations and had pretty much ignored the ecologically sterile, non-native lawns around our house and barn. We would mow them now and then and forget about them.
But that changed this past year as a temporary disability kept me from getting up into the hills or down into the bottomgrounds. The year before, I had absentmindedly thrown out some seeds of Gaillardia pulchella left over from a restoration, shaking out the storage sacks as I walked from house to barn.
Amazingly, the Gaillardia germinated without further attention, and the next year there were lovely patches of Gaillardia blooming in our front yard and by the barn.
Suddenly, I had a situation similar to that of city- and suburb-dwellers—a few native plants, surrounded by exotic lawn. It didn’t matter that there was real, honest-to-goodness prairie nearby, because I couldn’t get to it. But in this constriction the wildflowers had come to me. For the duration of my limited mobility, they would be my prairie experience.
My Three Questions
But could a small planting actually support biodiversity, as the proponents of the bring-nature-home movement maintain?
Could brainless flowers really be my “teacher?”
And wouldn’t it be a paltry, frustrating experience, if I could only encounter the prairie through the narrow gateway of a single species?
To find the answers, I went to Gaillardia’s school.
Academy Gaillardia
This was my school day: As the sun sank to an attractive angle, I would hobble to a lawn chair next to Gaillardia and set up my school supplies—a Samsung phone camera in my lap and an inexpensive 4-inch Sony Handycam on a tripod.
Gaillardia turned out to be long-blooming, from June through mid-October, and also hardy, blossoming vigorously through rain, heat, drought, and wind. And it was lively! An ever-changing stream of flying, buzzing, crawling creatures appeared on, in, and around Gaillardia. They arrived in a blur, these “neighbors” from my “land community,” and that’s when class began. I would take in as many of the sights and sounds as possible and get photos and videos if I could. Then, when the sun set and class ended, I had my homework—to send clips of Gaillardia’s creatures to experts for identification. I found both bugguide.net and iNaturalist.org to be user-friendly and full of information. In addition, I regularly learned more about my invertebrate neighbors from Kansas Arthropods, a Facebook group where generous entomologists counsel us enthusiastic amateurs.
In this way, one by one, I began to put names to faces. I met several species that were new to me. Here are three of them:
The Darker-Spotted Straw Moth (Heliothis phloxiphaga):
The Flower Fly, Eristalinus aeneus:
And the pollen-eating Fungus Weevil, Trigonorhinus sp.:
Just as I have to write down the names of new human acquaintances, or I forget them quickly, so I had to record the identities of these non-human acquaintances. Therefore, as I did my homework each night, I posted what I was learning to my blog. I documented the presence of butterflies, moths, bees, flies, fungus weevils, and other foragers, as well as spiders and other predators.
Question #1: An Answer
Can a small patch of a single species of wildflower support biodiversity? These posts certainly suggest an affirmative answer. The two most important groups of pollinators—bees and flies—were well represented. Here is a representative of the bees in action, the Southern Plains Bumble Bee (Bombus fraternus):
And here is a representatives of the second most important group of pollinators, flies:
Flower Fly Eristalis stipator:
Of course there was a lot more going on than pollination in Gaillardia World. All the foragers and predators documented over the summer certainly contributed to the ecosystem in ways experts may know and ways they have yet to discover.
Question #2: An Answer
Can a single species of wildflower teach us anything significant?
Because G. pulchella was such a magnet, I was able to learn the identities of numerous fellow residents of the prairie. I also learned about learning—that each fact leads to new questions.
For example, ants! A colony of ground-dwelling ants, Forelius pruinosus was living among Gaillardia’s roots in our front yard. At a certain point, some of the ants grew wings, indicating reproductive readiness. The entire colony then marked the occasion by swarming up and down Gaillardia’s stems:
But why the swarm? Couldn’t the prospective brides and grooms simply extend their new wings and take off? The winged ants seemed in no hurry to begin their mating flights. Indeed, they seemed ambivalent about their new role, running back down the stems as often as up. And how about the workers? What was the purpose of their activity? Were they encouraging the fertile ones or threatening them or simply promising to stay in touch?
Other species of ant appeared throughout the summer. Ants wandered into this video of fungus weevils:
But what are these ants doing? Feeding? Sheltering? Scavenging? Breeding? Scouting? Getting ready to transport seeds? The more specifics I learned, the more questions I had, and this taught me about myself as well as the ecosystem. Meeting my neighbors in my land community meant bumping into mystery as well, and mystery changed my sense of where and how I live—not just physically but spiritually.
Indeed, both Robin Wall Kimmerer and George Washington Carver claim that encounters with nature are spiritually transformative for human beings.
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you,” writes Kimmerer. “But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
And Carver, the accomplished scientist, famous for developing multiple uses for the peanut, expressed (with different vocabulary) similarly eco-mystical views. Familiarity with creatures is the portal to the Creator, in his belief. “As soon as you begin to read the great and loving God out of all forms of existence, both animate and inanimate, then you will be able to Converse with Him, anywhere, everywhere, and at all times,” he says.
Those are ambitious claims!
Does my experience with Gaillardia stand up against them?
Feeling “loved back?” “Conversing with Him?”
I have a long way to go before attaining such spiritual heights.
But I have to admit that Gaillardia’s teachings did deepen my spiritual perspectives. I can describe those lessons in at least three areas:
Mortality. You cannot watch wildflowers for very long without encountering death. I saw a crab spider eat a leaf-cutter bee and a Robber Fly eat a Damsel Fly:
I had to resist the impulse to save the bee, to free the damsel fly. Being mortal ourselves, we humans feel sorry for the prey—the individual whose life is being extinguished. We really feel sorry for ourselves, that one day we too must go. But Gaillardia tells a larger story, about ever evolving relationships. The bee becomes a spider; the Damsel Fly a Robber Fly, the ecosystem thrives, Creation buzzes along! In Gaillardia World, death is not the opposite of life; rather, death is the opposite of birth, and both are part of Life—ongoing, ever-changing Life.
As mammals, we humans are also part of a web of relationships, ready to catch us as we die. As our own mortal self dissolves, what new relationships will take us in, what transformations will we be part of? It is a Great Mystery but also, Gaillardia affirms, a Great Reality.
Comic Relief. In addition to sobering death, Gaillardia World offered amusing antics. Comedy partners with tragedy—as both Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks knew well. In particular, the caterpillars of the Wavy-lined Emerald Moth, Synchlora aerata, made me laugh. Known as Camouflaged Loopers, these moth larvae flourished on Gaillardia from June through October.
Some caterpillars have evolved to look just like their host plants, making it harder for predators to spot them. Camouflaged Loopers have a different strategy—they disguise themselves with parts of whatever plant they happen to be on.
The caterpillars chew off pieces of flower and mix them in their mouths with glue from a special gland. They then affix the sticky mass to little spikes (calcified growths on their bodies, like fingernails) that hold the disguise in place.
Their camouflage fooled me at first! One day as I watched Gaillardia’s blossoms, disk flowers got up and started to move! How was this possible? Birnam Wood was going to Dunsinane! But unlike MacBeth, I looked more closely and saw the creatures beneath the camouflage.
From then on, I got good at spotting these little con artists. Their costumes seemed preposterous, Easter bonnets stacked on top of Easter bonnets. “Are you sure you want to go out in public looking like that?” I wanted to say to them. And yet no matter how silly they looked to me, the little guys were deadly serious. And indeed, their costumes were a matter of life and death--of survival—to them. I deferred to their perspective while still chuckling from my own.
Amusing the Gods. But when it comes to silliness, we are all in it together! I watched two butterflies—a Silvery Checkerspot and a Gorgone Checkerspot—come to feed on Gaillardia. They met, awash in pheromones, and fell in love. Queen Titania’s desire for donkey-headed Bottom could not have been more intense than Silvery and Gorgone’s lust for each other. The two butterflies tried for over an hour to consummate their relationship. But in their case, anatomy was destiny. The male and female parts of these different species just did not match. Finally, exhausted, they had to go their separate ways.
How many humans, blinded by lust, have similarly wasted time and energy on a Ms. or Mr. Wrong? How many humans, blinded by hubris, have been passionately mistaken about a belief or a cause? “Lord what fools these mortals be” might be the conclusion of any observer with a larger perspective. In our blind spots, we are akin to our more-than-human neighbors. We take our own place in the Cosmic Comedy, right next to misguided butterflies. There is always a point of view larger than our own.
But Kimmerer and Carver are talking about more than spiritual perspectives: They are talking about feelings.
Carver says, “A little flower—you can reach out and look into and suddenly find that you are taking hold of the things that lift you up and carry you along and make people love you and give you the joy of living and the joy of having come into the place God has for you, and the exuberance of filling that place in life.” Love, joy, fitting in, exuberance—I would never presume to match such feelings—and if I could, my descriptive vocabulary would be different.
But I can say that in addition to ecological specifics and spiritual perspectives, Gaillardia gave me emotional experiences in return. I did not feel “loved back” in Kimmerer’s words or “lifted up” as Carver says. But when I focused on Gaillardia World, I did experience well-being.
Sitting next to flying, buzzing, thriving life, even in only a small patch of wildflowers, felt good. The feeling was pleasant but not astonishing. Indeed, it just felt right, almost familiar—dare I say, natural. I can hypothesize that such a feeling may have come down to us through our long evolution during which the vibrancy of an ecosystem signaled our survival—certainly a reason to feel good. Dynamism may say “All’s well” in a way that we’re attuned to. We may think of nature as a collection of disparate individuals, but that’s a partial view, ignoring interactions. “Land is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals,” writes Aldo Leopold. And Kimmerer describes the earth as “full of unseen energies that animate everything.” Perhaps our heart strings resonate to those vibrations!
In a moment of such resonance we might say to Robert Frost that we are “the land’s”—for during such a moment the forces of creation would have claimed us too.
But this brings me to the third question: Would the prairie experience be diminished if mediated by a single species?
Question 3: An Answer
While “mindful” of Gaillardia, I was experiencing only a tiny part of it.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience thoroughly. I felt entirely well.
Could it be that reciprocity with nature is a qualitative experience as opposed to a quantitative one?
George Washington Carver certainly thought so. To him, a “little flower” led to “the Infinite”—and there is no such thing as a little bit of Infinite.
Perhaps there is also no such thing as a little bit of feeling All’s Well.
But there is also no such thing as reciprocity between a specific individual and an abstraction. For us actual humans, the flower is as important as the Infinite. As individual humans, we connect to the specifics of nature—where we are. “Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world,” writes Kimmerer. And Carver says, “Begin now to study the little things in your own door yard, going from the known to the nearest related unknown for indeed each new truth brings one nearer to God.” Study the little things. Being “little” doesn’t make something unworthy of attention.
And a single species doesn’t necessarily mean an inferior experience.
Indeed, the well-being I experienced was both contentment with where I was and a kind of cosmic optimism—a tiny focus connected to all that is.
Both the contentment and the optimism seemed constantly re-confirmed by each new encounter with Gaillardia World.