The Swedish Academy’s announcement that the Nobel Peace Prize was being awarded to President Barack Obama met with considerable skepticism both in the United States and abroad. Commentators complained that the prize was premature, bestowed before President Obama had effected any peace initiatives—or much else. The President said that he viewed the prize as a kind of IOU, saying he could “accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century.”

I contend these brickbats are ill-placed. Who can deny that this President has changed the climate in international affairs? He has made it clear to nations both friendly and hostile that the United States will now be more of a partner and less of a martinet, seeking to impose its values across the globe by fiat. He has lowered the temperature of the global conversation, suitably enough, through words—and statements and declarations are actions of a kind.

President Obama has also signaled a willingness to listen on the part of the United States. This reminds me of the observation of C.G. Jung, the pioneering psychoanalyst, that receptivity is itself yet another form of action.

My hope is that the President, in his quest for peace, will look beyond his phalanx of foreign policy advisors. As he considers America’s role in the world, he’d benefit from a more profound and ancient perspective—that of nature. Mother Nature retains the best existential track record in the universe, stretching long before there were nations, families or even human beings. She, too, deserves a hearing.

When anthropologists contemplate foreign policy, they portray the battle for international supremacy in terms of the behavior and evolution of animals. Since, genetically, we are 99% ape, the reversion to animal analogies is 99% inevitable. But in statecraft this approach is myopic at best and narcissistic at worst.

My vantage point on global power is framed by gardening, the natural landscape and botany. In my garden I marvel at the continuous skirmishing for dominance pitched by plants, trees and grasses. The cunning, weaponry and tactics used in plant warfare are magnificent and terrible—enough to send the Jolly Green Giant running for his life.

I hope President Obama, Our Gardener-in-Chief, will take the time to study this green battleground—he has a garden, I’m told—and glean its Clausewitzian lessons.

G. Gordon Liddy, the Nixonian plumber, said of the contest of nations: “When you get out in the mid-Atlantic, it’s not Charlie The Tuna out there: it’s Jaws”. (Something to remember also when the president heads to the mid-Pacific.)

The same is true of the plant world. The rose’s thorns, a cactus’s prickles, the choking vine, the yawning maw of the Venus fly trap are not genetic accidents, but an arsenal of weapons in the life and death battle for the resources of sun, soil and water.

Rooted to one spot—unable to flee, take shelter or chase after food—plants have to defend themselves and battle for dominance while never leaving home. Dominance? Plants are natural-born imperialists. Even our word “race” speaks to the rootedness of nations. Indeed, politics does end, literally, at the water’s edge.

In his speeches, President Obama expressed the view that, in U.S. relations with other countries, engagement is preferable to “win and lose”, stressing dialogue and diplomacy over coercion or force, coexistence over conflict. In articulating this new agenda, the President sounds more like Charlie The Tuna than Jaws, or Major-General von Clausewitz.

The President has reached out, as he puts it, “an open hand…not a closed fist”—most notably to Muslims, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, China, Latin America, Cuba, Burma and Russia. Obama’s use of the olive branch has yet to bear fruit—or olives.

The President has spoken of a world without nuclear weapons. When addressing the General Assembly of the U.N., he asserted, “No nation can … dominate another nation”. Obama’s open-handed approach contrasts with President Ronald Reagan’s closed-fisted reductivism of the 1980s. When a reporter asked, “What’s your position on relations with the Soviets?”, Reagan replied, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win. They lose”, doubtless with a genial smile.

The two Presidents’ worldviews are worlds apart. President Reagan’s zero-sum calculus gave rise to a harvest of new democracies in Eastern Europe. Prime Minister Putin’s bullying efforts to reassert dominance over Russia’s “near-abroad” have been feckless before the “garden” of new democracies. Putin should tend to his nation’s garden, fast overgrowing with nationalist weeds, and respect the ecology of world affairs.

Nature offers an outstanding lesson in global realpolitik. “Succession” (as in “succeed” and “success”), a central premise of ecology, is a process in any natural environment with plants. Progressing over time, in phases, as various species battle it out, succession culminates in the climax period, a prolonged, stable steady state for the eco-system.

The great forests are called “climax forests”, where one tree is, literally, on top. The Sugar Maple is a prime example. In the upper Midwest, this efficient harvester of sunlight—a monopolist, really—is so dominant that Sugar Maple forests cover thousands of square miles. In the West, White Pine species reign over still larger areas. Every natural environment constitutes a “win-lose” situation.

Ultimately, though, the climax forest runs its course, and a new process of succession begins. As if cued by the Chaos Theory playbook, the prevailing species’ dominance is subverted by a number of possible factors: changes in climate, lightning fires, blight, soil erosion, new challengers (observe the avant-garde of the plant contenders mustering at the margins of a woods near you), or human interference (e.g. logging, development).

This natural regime change can take anywhere from a week to a hundred million years. Periodically the genes of the dominant species will recombine as a form of self-defense, but succession inevitably wins and the climax forest ultimately succumbs. If it didn’t, there would be no diversity but a global monoculture—the ultimate natural calamity.

Both dictatorships and totalitarian states are quintessential monocultures, utilizing much of their resources quashing individuality and the open exchange of ideas. What makes the United States the country best qualified to dominate the world scene is our extraordinary range of races, ethnicities, religions and ideas—all guaranteed by the Constitution. If one nation must dominate—and by nature’s rules it will—whom would you chose to lead the world? China? Italy? Saudi Arabia?

President Reagan was determined to weed out the encroaching kudzu of totalitarianism, and did so. At the time, Russia’s President Yuri Andropov declared Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan as “insane”. Perhaps the scheme was unbalanced: it sure unbalanced the Soviet Union. I wonder if President Reagan was a gardener.

President Obama, cerebral and idealistic, sees lurking in every demagogue a constitutional scholar struggling to get out. He thinks that, if one behaves in a civilized manner, others, awed by his shining example, will eagerly follow suit. The wayward rulers with whom the President is attempting to engage lack his high motives, hopeful view of human nature and innate good manners. Make no mistake, Mr. President, they are aggressively expanding climax forests.

Yesterday when President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, I hope he remembered that peace and stability come from strength, and strength from dominance. Among nations, and in nature, deference and acquiescence will land you on the endangered species list. If you don’t believe me, ask Mother Nature what happened to Charlie The Tuna.

The above appeared in a shorter version in the Op/Ed section of the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 10, 2009.

Life slips back and forth.

Come late December, in my hometown in northern Illinois, we kids used to run home from grade school—and later middle school—drop our books, pick up our skates and head to Lake Ellyn, an oval of about 12 acres of spring-fed nirvana that was frozen by mid winter nearly all the way to its 10 foot bottom.  Since then, the lake has shrunk in size and been landscaped for more ornamental, park-like display. No deep ice, no snow trucks; no snow trucks, no skating surface.

The Chicago area was “speed-skating central” back in the ‘60s and had been for years.  It was so renowned that a set of Olympic time trials were held on Lake Ellyn a year in advance of the 1964 Winter Olympics.  A couple European officials even came to attend, which was something special, since the Norwegians still dominated the sport and had been legends for years.  We little boy and girl speed skaters were amazed.  “Europeans”!  “Olympics”!

At night, street lights, the kind that used bulbs, surrounded a quarter edge of the lake, perched on high poles with pie-tin style lids.  The weak illumination was ghostly out on the ice and chiaroscuro along the shore of the lake, leaving everyone opportunities for all sorts of activities.  Lake Ellyn was an archetype of a simple natural structure providing great drama, romance and joy to a small community.

In those days there was still a tiny island off the northwest side about 50 feet from the centrally located “boat-house” that was what the town called the cavernous old skate prep cabin that had rental lockers at one end, complete with an attendant, a concession counter for hot chocolate along the back wall and a fireplace at the other end.  Long benches filled the main space where everyone would change into their skates, rest and tighten them, or just hang out.  Imagine a bowling alley without the lanes.  I remember first hearing ‘Telestar’ on the tiny transistor radio hanging on the wire wall covering the locker area.  Everyone wondered what the lead instrument was (a clavioline!).

Those winter afternoons and evenings were the height of my childhood.  Starting after breakfast on Saturday and church on Sunday, the weekends provided two-day marathons of every skating competition and elimination game imaginable.  Stingo, hill-dill, the AAA track events, bird-dogging the few girls that bravely showed up in their figure skates, always with a parent in striking distance, so to speak.  (The girl speed-skaters were magnificent tomboys for whom we had sisterly affection.)

Absolutely no one played hockey.  We used to look away every time a guy showed up, either from another town or a new neighborhood kid, wearing those odd-looking skates.  They were not a bit like our narrow, sleek, low-rising black leather boots with 16-17” steel blades.  In Midwestern racing, the design was the Norwegian, with the tubular steel clamps descending from the shoe to the long and elegant blade.  Planerts were the prized brand of this speed skate (from Canada) but they were pricey, so most of the amateur racers in our generation had local or mail order brands.  Everyone else rented from the boathouse.  I have seen maybe a half dozen Planerts in my entire life—like Stradivarius violins to us.  Nowadays, the “speed skate” is split into two types—sprint or track, and long distance.  Ours were like an original type between these two newer ones.  Also, the shoes or boots are now plastic.

The coaches and officials were typical “Dutch uncles”: brusque, direct and great skaters—even Mr. McLeese, the patriarch who must’ve been in his late 60s.  They viewed us as if we were race horses.

Then the blues came down like rain, as Robert Johnson sang so sweetly and so long ago.  Lonely, loveless, heartfelt blues.  They slowly crept up on the speed skating heaven of Glen Ellyn, Illinois.  By the early 1980s, the deed was done.  As usual with the blues, the crisis might have been averted had someone been wise.

However, no one even noticed.  At some point—and the precise date is locked up under piles of aged files, or perhaps destroyed—someone decided to increase the drainage capacity of the town’s streets surrounding the lake—enlarging and extending sub-sidewalk storm tunnels and punching more runoff grates through the street curbs.  Next, more cars entered society as wealth increased during the 60s, 70s and 80s.  Then—the major blow—someone invented an inexpensive and highly effective street salt.  Men stopped using chains for the few weeks they usually needed to—which was a nuisance but not a big pain.

More and more women began driving in winter, as second cars became popular in the outer suburbs.  Street salt was a godsend to a young woman on her way to work or an older lady visiting family.  They weren’t about to mess with chains.  Also, black ice on the hilly streets around town could make any driver nervous.  Add teenagers in cars during winter holiday seasons in affluent suburbs and you have a potential nightmare.

Here’s the irony.  Today virtually every new automobile can handle a typical, snowy and icy road.  Not only the cars but also the tires (performance vehicles excluded).  The need for road salt has dropped to very little.  Only the rare, crippling deep freeze, ice storm or blizzard will bring out the town salt truck. Black ice will defy all tires.

Unfortunately, salt accumulates—especially the new road “super salts”—in the lake’s clay floor.  As we know, salt raises the freezing temperature of water – thus melting the ice on the streets, but also destroying Lake Ellyn as a world-class circus of deep ice and one of the greatest centers of the village’s unique culture.

For nearly four months—a third of the year—we literally lived on our skates.  At night local mothers would sometimes have to shout us off the lake.  The lights were always turned off and the “boat house” closed up at 9 PM leaving us enough time to make 10 o’clock bedtime—common in those days—by which time we’d already be half dead.  It made me a bad student, and I wasn’t alone.  Generations of residents grew up in this way.

But in many ways it was a blessing.  Our lungs and hearts were certainly helped to develop, while our quads, calves and ankles were remarkably optimized—much beyond mere strength.

For instance, many years later, when my dad had his stroke, I was sitting near his ICU hospital room while he was being tended to.  I heard a rise of odd, light-hearted chatter.  Concerned, I went back in.  One of the nurses had asked a couple of others to come see this old man’s legs.  I knew immediately what was amazing them—they’d never seen a set of healthy thirty-something legs on someone well over twice as old.  They were acting appropriately—oohing and aahing.

That is one of the many legacies of speed skating.

Sometimes I’m told I’m “living in the past”, as if I was a poor learner or an unrealistic dreamer.  In fact, the past lives in me, some of which, in my view, should not have disappeared.

Whether it is walking to school, parental toughness, a high literary level or a small lake in the middle of a town that transformed the lives of its citizens for almost 100 years—it is the past I wish to return to us.

As gardeners, we often think of the soil as little more than something that holds up plants to which we sometimes need to add water and a little fertilizer. We forget its complexity and the universes within universes that it contains.

Mycorrhizae, the associations between plant roots and fungi, is one of those universes. When the ancestors of vascular plants first emerged from primordial seas, ancient fungi helped facilitate this transition. Today, almost all terrestrial plants participate in these associations. These associations are “mutualistic” or “symbioses” because in most cases, there is reciprocal dependence of both plants and fungi that results in gain and loss. For the gardener, there may be value in cultivating mycorrhizae.

There are several accepted types of mycorrhizae. The highly specialized orchid mycorrhizae make possible orchid seed germination and “feed” the young plant; the 16,000 or so orchid species are strictly dependant (obligately symbiotic) on these fungi in nature. Most of these orchid fungi are unidentified and seem to limit the distribution of orchids. Ericaceous plants such as cranberry, blueberry, azalea, and rhododendron form a fungal association that allows them to thrive in infertile, acidic soils; as a result of these associations, plants in this family survive in the subarctic, at treeline on mountains, and in the relatively harsh environment of the chaparral. One odd group of plants has no chlorophyll and cannot photosynthesize and transform solar energy into fixed carbon (sugars). Their survival is by means of an association with a fungus that acts as a bridge between the nonphotosynthesizing plant and another (photosynthesizing) plant that provides both the fungal symbiont and the dependant plant life-sustaining sugars.

The two most common mycorrhizal types that we know most about are endomycorrhizae and  ectomycorrhizae, so called because of the physical characteristics of plant fungal colonization. They are quite distinct groups of fungi.

Although several different types of mycorrhizae can be found in a single habitat, some generalization can be made about mycorrhizal type and habitat. Endomycorrhizal associations tend to be found in habitats such as the prairies of the U.S. Midwest that are characterized by great plant species richness; this group dominates also tropical, deserts, and understory plants. Nutrient use in these habitats is high and phosphorus particularly may limit plant growth. The fungi colonizing these plants grow intracellularly (hence “endo-”) to form what under a microscope appear as tiny tree-like structures called “arbuscules”. The fungal hyphae (“roots”) extend into the surrounding soil to capture nutrients, minerals, and water. The fungus in essence increases the surface area of the plant root and amplifies the plant’s ability to absorb nutrients and water.

The boreal forests of the northern hemisphere are composed of nearly monospecific stands of firs, pines, spruces, hemlocks, and larches. In this sort of habitat, the plant–fungus associations are mostly ectomycorrhizal. Fungi grow between root tip cortical cells and form a dense mat that covers the root tip and extend into the soil where inorganic nutrients (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) and water are absorbed and translocated to the host plant. The mushrooms and puffballs seen in forests are the fruiting bodies of these fungi.

There are as many as 5000 species of these ectomycorrhizal fungi. In the relatively plant-species poor habitats where they are found, they are often obligately dependant on a specific host plant. In contrast, endomycorrhizal fungi that grow in habitats with great plant diversity, tend to have broad host ranges, meaning that they can colonize many different kinds of plants, sometimes simultaneously, and they are able to survive independently of a host plant. About 80% of all mycorrhizal associations are endomycorrhizal. There are only 150 known species in this group; it belongs to a single fungal order, Glomales.
 
In nature, these fungal associations provide plants a competitive edge and are probably essential to the survival of most plants, but a well-fertilized and watered garden may be more or less free of mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal associations are a two-way street. The fungus facilitates plant absorption of nutrients and water, but in return, the plant translocates sugars and, under drought, water to its fungal partner. What’s translocated to the fungus may be as much as 30% of the plant’s net fixed carbon. In a well-managed garden, the partnership may not be worth the cost to the plant.

There are other benefits to the plant and the gardener, though. Mycorrhizal fungi improve soil physical structure and composition. Individual hypha is only about 0.0002 inches in diameter but can extend across several acres. While hyphae may account for only a few percent of the total soil mass, there can be several miles of hyphae in a single ounce of soil. Hyphae increase soil porosity, which promotes air and water conductivity within soil. Fungi also enrich soil by converting plant sugars into fungal storage carbohydrates that are deposited in soil.

Mycorrhizal fungi interact with other soil organisms, including pathogens, and may reduce the incidence and severity of root diseases. In the ectomycorrhizal associations, the fungal mat covering root tips may act as a mechanical barrier to root pathogens. But these fungi may also produce antibiotic compounds that inhibit root pathogens, compete effectively with pathogens for the same limited resources, and induce in the plant a generalized defense response.

Legume plants (peas, beans, lupine) fix atmospheric nitrogen when colonized by rhizobia bacteria. The interaction between mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia seems to promote the colonization of legumes by both fungus and bacterium, resulting in greater plant nitrogen and phosphorus content when present in combination than when either is alone used to inoculate the legume.

The concept of the sustainable garden is in the news. Sustainable gardens can take many forms and might be organic or might focus on planting local, native plants only. But whatever, improving plant growth, reducing or eliminating fertilizer and water additions, and suppressing root pathogens by cultivating mycorrhizal fungi is in accordance with this idea.
 
Mycorrhizae clearly have many potential advantages for gardeners, but the unwelcome news is that experimental work with mycorrhizal fungal inoculation is equivocal. While there has been certain promise in forestry and agriculture, in general, results are often unpredictable or unsustainable. There are a number of products available, but to my knowledge their efficacy is unproven.

Currently, the best advice for cultivating garden mycorrhizae may be to follow a few cultural guidelines. Flooded soil, chemical fertilizers, liming, systemic fungicides, and fallow fields suppress soil fungal flora. Some cultural practices promote and help to maintain mycorrhizal fungi. Crop rotation, mulching and minimal soil disturbance (minimum tillage), and use of cover crops are among these. For an overwintering garden, mulching is an excellent practice. Shredded hardwood or conifer bark make great mulches, are readily available in most parts of the country, and will support fungal growth.

Vacation time’s a coming.  Just like the Dolly Parton song.  December yields about 2-3 weeks of holiday in the seed industry.  The “holy” part has its origins in solar worship.  Sure enough, I’ll be heading toward the sun.  Enlightment, indeed.

For some years I’ve considered northern Arizona my home away from home.  Vacations in Yavapai County, then drive over to Jerome to enjoy the rockabilly bands at The Spirit Room, then up to southern Utah to stare at the stunning mountains, mesas and plateaus.  You haven’t lived until you’ve seen southern Utah.

One day recently, while leafing through a geology book, I discovered that, of course, I’d been spending all my time hiking across what was, not so long ago, the floors of enormous lakes and oceans.

What a strange planet:  I slog for days across a desert that was once the bottom of the sea.  It never ceases to amaze me.

Now, while I like exotic vacations as much as the next person, I have become bored with the desert.  Too much of a good thing, perhaps.  A bit weird, abstract and severe after awhile.

Also, more and more gardening is happening in the towns and villages across northern Arizona.  For reasons that are plain, I do not want to see gardens while I am on vacation.  In fact, I do not want to see plants. 

So I turned my trip planning attention to the recently fashionable tours to Antarctica (“Why it’s global warming, darling.  Polar caps and stuff.”).  I considered gazing upon icebergs and vast stretches of ice and snow from my deckchair like many other middle-aged horticulturist and nurseryman have done at some point.  You might even meet Ozzy Osbourne on those types of tours.  Then I thought, “I’m just not that aesthetically oriented.”  Tonal variations of white don’t “do it for me”, as the kids say.  Icebergs don’t work my stuff. Plus, much of it sounded like winter in Manitoba. 

Extreme cold and wind.  There is a haunting scene of Oliver Reed dying from existential boredom on a field of icy snow in “Women In Love”—an awful flick and a depressing book.  Melted away forever my appreciation of snowy fields. 

So, my next vacation should consist of snorkeling on reefs and exploring marine life in general.  And a bit of reggae life, specifically.

Like most children, the ocean terrified me.  Unlike most children, it continued to do so for a long time.  I was not a child who was typically “filled with wonder”.  It wasn’t until I was 21 that I was brave enough to swim out into the ocean, and do some snorkeling.  After I saw a shark only about 10 feet away, nearly a mile from the beach, I called it quits for good.  Never swam so fast in my life, like a powerboat.

But, nowadays, I care less about danger or injury.  Let them come.  I’ve grown less cagey.    My new interests are in vacations that involve “eyes” of all kinds—fauna, “insecta” and especially “fisha”.  They pull me to the shore and into the waves.  I love the feel of stones under my feet.

As you may know from an earlier blog, I’m a fan of SETI research and the announcement of GL 581c gave me goosebumps.  The reason for the excitement is that all sorts of life—animal and plant—can thrive in the most hostile conditions imaginable and do so, right here on earth.

For example, the Archaea are life forms so old they date back almost four billion years.  They include tiny, single-celled organisms that live in the vents of undersea volcanos and underground hot springs.  Some are used to treat sewage and chemical spills.  Others eat metals, for instance—and not as do geeks in carnival sideshows.  Metal ions, rocks, gases and chemicals such as ammonia are their nutrients.  Imagine what they’d be like if they were large.

It gets better when you consider how long Archea have been on earth.  If 3 ½ billion years is about a third of the universe’s existence, as currently measured, then there is little question that similar life forms exist throughout it.

This is likely because many Archea and similar creatures—like the marine life in pitch-black darkness—live at great depths.  Therefore, they would have little to no direct dependence on a sun.  Obviously, they can adapt.  Archea have been discovered by geologists in mines as well as during oil drills.  Since they have no calcium or other bone-like structures, they leave no hard fossils.  Instead, they leave “chemical fossils”, evidence of massive ancient colonies picked up through chemical analysis of deep rock core samples.

But let us return to vacation planning. Contemporary descendents of Archea are often found in plankton.  Therefore, I shall probably be gazing over the railing down into the water on the whale-watching boats this winter looking for the great mammals of the ocean.  And then, later that night, I shall be craning my head up and peering deep into the night sky.

Eyes made their first appearance, like so many humanoid features, in the oceans.  As marine life forms rose from the profound depths, they encountered light.  Many responded to this new selection pressure by evolving light detecting sensors.  It is theoretically likely that many did not.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, some silent movie actors made the transition to the “talkies”, and other great silent era stars had unpleasant voices and disappeared.

So, too, some super-deep sea creatures either had the genetic set up to evolve or did not, and the latter vanished from pre-history, or fought their way back down to the deeper submarine ecosystems from where they arose.  Good luck to them.  As I say, many probably didn’t make it.

It’s speculative—but fanciful—to think about the evolution of terrestrial eyes.  As in marine life, the eyes were used to hunt, avoid being hunted and select mates.  Colors were certainly invented by sea creatures in truly wondrous arrays within a range of  qualities of visible light that we do not see on land. Such dispersal and diffusion! The outlandish luminosity of coral life has to be seen to be believed.

Stuck in a hotel room recently, I couldn’t avoid the weird looking HD television.  On it was a great cable show by the Discovery Channel called “planet earth”.  I recommend it.  It’s as close as I’ve seen to a faithful representation of aquatic color, but still not the same. 

It mystifies me that a similar floral and foliar color based documentary hasn’t been done.  Must be all the swimming around that gets the “eyeballs”, as TV industry people describe their ratings.  The swimming sea creatures are so sexy, so beautifully poetic. Maybe if insects danced more often, they could catch the attention of nature documentary makers.  The cameramen should use more slow motion and stop-gap action.  Or perhaps the reason is that people dislike bugs.  Personally, I love them.

Continuing the blog’s meditation theme, I was looked at by my eye doctor, so to speak.  He described the “cup” at the back of my right eye as being more like a “collar” that “holds” strands or “branches” that radiate forward toward the lens—a bit like actual branches of a plant toward the sky—and then pass electrochemical signals (or whatever) through the “collar” back into the brain.  These, his very words, are the same that arborists use.  I was half-expecting him to say “dovetailing” at some point.

Which is “light” in the eye and tree metaphor?  Which end the “roots”?  I leave that to the poets.  However, my doctor’s descriptions were remarkably like those of a tree, though, of course, on its side.  Especially the “collar” part, which is exactly what a trunk is—an extended sort of tubular collar.  Thus, our eyeballs are like horizontal trees.

Many fish have vertical eyes, such as the bottom fish like skates and so forth.  And they definitely look like leaf debris down there on the murky ocean floor, as they gaze skyward.

Speaking of murkiness, I wish to add another thought.  I speculate that one of the contributors to our ultra-sophisticated eyes—and those of our distant ancestors—was the desire for shade.  The very early prehistoric sun must have been horrible, merciless—a bit like the entire world was Death Valley—a horrible place! The ability to spot a patch of shade made the difference between life and death. 

Finally, a friend reminded me recently that Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, about which so many of us aging baby boomers talked endlessly (at least the goriest parts) in college dormitories, was concerned mainly with plants and trees.  I had forgotten all that.  It is, he said, the point of the title.  Another new bit of botanical insight.

I had never looked at it that way.

I’ve noticed color more this year than in others, due mainly to its absence in our large, fruited vegetable garden, where I focused much attention.  On the other hand, the Happiness Garden—our .71 acre of meadow perennial heaven at Fordhook Farm—has never been more luminous, shining in the sun.  “Ganz lustig!” as my grandmother used to describe fresh pumpernickel bread.

Writing the Heronswood catalogue three years ago, I included phrases and sayings that “floated” amidst the copy and photography, as the designers say.  One of them was “Colors of the garden are the first inventions of light”.  I rather liked it, as these things go.  However, while I might have been poetic and provocative, I think now that I was wrong.

I’ve tried to piece together the history of color over the last few weeks, now that the poignant months of diminished daylight are here, and I have a bit of free time.  The last Open at Kingston was October 4th and the last at Fordhook on September 25th and 26th.

Fall colors are completely gratuitous, in my opinion.  The celebrated foliage colors—and impressive ones they are—serve no purpose to the trees.  They may mark time for birds or perhaps signal nut season for squirrels, but I’m not sure.  So, I wonder, how did the intentional, purposeful colors of flowers—so key to the plants’ survival—come about?  What, indeed, invented them?  Not the flowers, I mean, but the actual colors.  Color itself?

First, I understand that light is energy, and that, therefore, all “color” is within light.  It is light itself, so to speak.  Concrete enough, I suppose, if you are a physicist.  But let’s leave waves versus photons aside for the moment.

Consider the creation of the earth’s present atmosphere—the one we inhabit and use.  It’s mostly nitrogen and then oxygen and then an obvious, or visible, amount of water vapor, plus small amounts of various other gases.  Our atmosphere, as I mentioned in my last blog, was influenced heavily by the rise of the terrestrial plants, perhaps more than any single class of beings.  So much oxygen was produced so rapidly that we are still feeding off it and likely will be for millions more years.  Plants mothered the earth, as we know it, and certainly, in the next turn, gave birth to us.  We would not have evolved without them.

So how did plants invent their colors, so to speak?  When one looks at a rainbow or any glass-like spectrum, one sees the main “colors” of visible light.  But, like in a thought experiment, what would visible radiation “look like” to plants?

The reason I ask is because flowers co-evolved  with the tiny creatures that first pollinated them.  Pollen was probably an evolved form of spores, which is why it is not nearly as visually interesting as petals and colored petaloid parts such as tepals and bracts—flowers, in a word.

So, the first “eyes”—besides those of the sea creatures—belonged to these early insects that used them mainly to hunt, escape and mate—as you’d expect—and the flowers represented a major innovation in the ecology between plants and the insects they hosted, protected and—on the other hand—repelled when necessary.  Insect eyes probably preceded flower color.  But I don’t know; the fossil record should confirm this.

Did “colors” as we see them and enjoy them in the garden, woods and meadows, arise from the plants as an evolutionary step?  If so, then, they—the plants—invented color as we know it.  A simplistic thought, but profound and a bit provocative.

I asked a few colleagues last week if they knew why the sky was blue.  I did not know how terrible it is to ask someone this question—a “Scientific Era Taboo”.  But I was just hoping someone was going to answer it.  One friend finally came through. Various gas molecules, which make up most of the atmosphere, reflects visible light, at the wavelength “stopping”, if you will, at what we call blue.  Blue represents a level of energy that comprises visible radiation, a degree of its strength, or frequency of wave length.  This subtle quality gives “blue” its character.  (Why blue is such a psychologically complex color I do not know.  Perhaps because we evolved beneath it.)  But that is—literally—how we are able to see it, and probably how most similarly composed lenses and brains “see” it as well.

Inherently, living organisms are a lot more alike than is normally supposed.  So, a bee probably sees blue more or less as the color we see—probably less than a raccoon would in comparison to us, but you see my point.  Which is why it is that I believe that flowers invented terrestrial color.

So, let’s review.  Color was, or is, in light.  Light contains all colors, as potentialities.  Flowers—of all land-based creation—took up where light left off, in the general scheme of things.

Or put it this way:  plants “created” the atmosphere. The basic, coarse colors become visible only by passing through that atmosphere, which functions as a sort of spherical spectrum. The multitude of colors that we experience were created by tonal variations picked up by the primitive eyeballs of the day.  In time, our eyes became sharper in response.  So plants, indirectly, enabled us to see color.  Perhaps plants, by creating so much of the atmosphere, gave us our ability to see as well as we do.

Finally, it is interesting to note that one of the greatest debates among evolutionary biologists is how eyes came into being.  It’s almost like the debate about humans as “the symbol-makers”.  Eye-sight itself could be seen, so to speak, as the first language.

See what I mean?

Over dinner recently with Heronswood’s brilliant new plant collector, Simon Crawford, I learned that what we regard as soil resulted from plant life, not the other way around.

While not quite as simple as that, it’s true that plants created land, as in “land, ho!” or “this is good earth—our crops will grow here”, etc.  The brown and black stuff plants grow in?

In fact, most of the land that isn’t rock was formed by millions of years of plant life—especially their evolving root systems.

Over millennia, plants actually gathered soil beneath them—they created it.  Grew it.  Soil doesn’t grow plants; plants grow soil.  I mean, duh.

It was a bit weird to hear this over cocktails.  A spectacular, biblical type of insight—through the alcohol haze I discern . . . a green rock.

Grace Romero and Bill Rein, our “crackerjack” research team, in the immortal words of The New York Times’ Anne Raver, added more insights the following day.  Bill said that water used to flood characteristically across the land and only “braid” through early plants.  Then, some 400 million years ago, forests emerged—plants bound together in a common yet competitive struggle toward sunlight—and caused water to “meander” and thus become rivers.  Roots wove together as well as to substrate so firmly that they “dominated” the earth and, in effect, created soil to serve their existence.

The great mega tree of this period, a precursor to today’s giant flowering forest trees, is called “Archeopteris”.  It was non-flowering—a sort of giant proto pine with fern-like leaves and mega-spores.  It covered most of the planet’s land mass and provided it with its first large and effective shaded environment—a huge step in botanical history.

I was aware of the formation of oxygen—and our atmosphere—by plant life but, brother, I felt stupid when I learned this other, simple “rock to earth” sequence.  More correctly, the rock was covered by plants, and then by earth.

More or less.

We are reinventing our company. Since 2006 we have been transforming from a small but extremely diverse regional mail order nursery into a larger and more broadly assorted national research and production company with several nurseries, test gardens and a greater online presence.

One of our perduring services is a close personal contact with customers. We invite you to Open Days at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA, and at the original site in Kingston, WA—now our zone 8 and 9 research and display gardens. We held many Open Day weekends in 2009—with most of the proceeds donated to The Garden Conservancy—and plan more for 2010. Please stay tuned to this website.

Another way to talk to our customers is through email and weblog media. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed our Heronswood Nursery emails and my Heronswood Voice blogs. Soon we shall upgrade our web services for 2010, with everything up and ready in a couple of months.

Now enjoy a new blog about the current vogue for eternal love, sustaining beauty and enduring fidelity. (Edward Cullen might consider becoming “vegan”.) In any case, our passion is for stamens, chlorophyll and deep roots. Like you, we love new, rare and unusual plants. However, if you’re looking for Heronswood cultivars that will live many long, moonlit years, you’ve come to the right blog. These special selections will help you serve your new-found lust, or recurring addiction.

A few ground rules, so to speak. For a kind of immortality—not absolute—you must look first to the trees, and in general the taller, the better. Of all plants, the woody plants tend to be the longest lived. Larger more than smaller, alas. Some shrubs live an extremely long time because they can rejuvenate from the roots, if well established in the garden.

Heck, Kristen Stewart should get to know the Trembling Aspen, in particular the stand of them out in Southern Utah. It’s not only beautiful (even from a jet plane at 40,000 feet), it’s also over 75,000 years old and comprises one single plant, about 100 acres in size. It is, in effect, a single “tree” organism.  Try that in “Twilight“.

To add to today’s cinematic theme, I point out that woody vines can be extremely long-lived too, twining and wrapping themselves around, well, their sturdier neighbor. “Love the one you’re with!”

Here’s the timeless line-up:

Trees:
Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Dawn redwood) – This will last, under normal conditions, at least 200 years.

Shrubs:
Buxus microphylla japonica ‘Morris Midget’ – minimum 50 years

Buxus sempervirens ‘Elegantissima’ – minimum 50-60 years

Hydrangea, any, as well as the related vines, such as Schizophragma hydrangeoides ‘Roseum’– minimum 35 years

Rosa ‘Eddie’s Jewel’– minimum 50 years

Rosa noisetliana ‘Darlow’s Enigma’– minimum 50 years

Tsuga canadensis ‘Cole’s Prostrate’(a dwarf form of a woodland coniferous tree) – minimum 75 years, lasts up to 150-200 years

Wisteria brachbotrys ‘Shiro-kapitan’ – minimum 50 to 60 years up to 100s

Wisteria floribunda ‘Violacea Plena’ – minimum 50 to 60 years up to 100s

Wisteria macrostachya ‘Blue Moon’– minimum 50 to 60 years up to 100s

Perennials:
Helleborus species and Heronswood cultivars– minimum 40 years

Paeonia (Itoh Hybrid Peony) any, such as ‘Kopper Kettle’– minimum 40 years

Papaver – any Heronswood varieties – minimum 50 years

Grasses:
Panicum amarum ‘Dewey Blue’– minimum 15 to 20 years

Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’ PP12909– minimum 25-30 years

Dried plants and herbarium books go just so far and no more—flat, drained on a page or a bit dusty and stiff in a vase. Not quite so much for your descendents and their descendents—but not bad.

Heronswood’s more genuine “everlastings” are alive and, well, green-blooded. All they need is a bit of planning up front and then ongoing attention. I’ve always thought that they’re a bit like pets. Only they last longer, need less care . . . and don’t bite quite as often.

Norman Borlaug died recently (12 September 2009) at the age of 95. Borlaug began life as an Iowa farm boy, was trained as a plant pathologist at the University of Minnesota, and went on to direct some of the most important plant breeding efforts of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for those efforts.

Borlaug is father of the “Green Revolution”, which began after World War II. Green Revolution agriculture is often criticized because of its reliance on pesticides, hybrid technology, and intensive water use, but it is also widely credited as having saved more human lives, particularly in the Third World, than anything else in the history of the human species. Later in life, Borlaug conceded that there might be some merit in these criticisms but that the Green Revolution was a good start in the right direction.

A good start it was, but we still face many of the same problems that Borlaug encountered. One of these is excess soil salt, or salinity. Salinity is a soil condition characterized by a high concentration of soluble salts that inhibit plant growth. Excess soil salt is a problem as old as agriculture. The civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, the area centered around modern-day Iraq, are thought to have dissipated as a result of climate change and excess soil salt that destroyed their agriculture.

Soil salinity is one of the primary abiotic stresses affecting plant growth and quality. As much as 6% of the earth’s total land area is affected by excess soil salt. Much of this arises from natural causes. Rock weathering releases soluble salts, and rainwater itself contains 6–50 ppm sodium chloride. Clearing land for cultivation and irrigation are two other causes of increased soil salinity; both raise the water table and salts are then concentrated in the root zones of plants.

Salinity is a common element of arid and semiarid lands, but it is also found in regions with moderate rainfall such as the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, particularly where irrigation is used. Poor quality irrigation water and poor drainage can make it worse. And irrigation is important in agriculture. Only about 15% of all cultivated land is irrigated, but irrigated land is about twice as productive as rained land and accounts for about 30–40% of the world’s food production. Breeding salt tolerance in plants is an important goal for plant scientists.

Now, what’s a salt? Salts are ionic compounds, and ionic compounds are characterized as having an electrostatic bond between metal and nonmetal ions. Ions are charged atoms. In water, salt dissolves as the ions composing the salt disassociate. If the water evaporates and the concentration of salt in water (in solution) becomes too great (saturated), the salt precipitates out of solution and becomes solid once more. Sodium chloride (table salt) is the primary salt involved in soil salinity; the primary ions responsible for salinization are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and chlorine.

Sensitivity to salt differs in plants. Some are tolerant while others are quite sensitive. Plants that grow in salt marshes and estuaries where the salt concentration may vary diurnally are (not surprisingly) able to thrive at much higher salinities than can woodland plants; this is easily demonstrated. But salt is so common in soils that all plants have evolved the ability to cope with and adapt to some degree of salinity.

How does salt affect plants? There are two basic ways. First, high salt concentrations in soil make it harder for plant roots to extract water from the soil. This is purely the result of osmosis, the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane, as in a plant cell, from an area of high water potential (low salt concentration) to an area of low water potential (high salt concentration). When the concentration of soil-water salt rises above a threshold, water will tend to flow out of the plant. If plants had no way of regulating this process, they would quickly dehydrate and die. Second, in a saline environment, salt enters the plant and accumulates. With time, it can reach toxic concentrations.

Both can be exacerbated by environmental factors such as sunlight, air temperature, and humidity, but of the two, osmotic stress has the most impact, and after soil-water salt exceeds a certain threshold its effect on plant growth is more or less immediate. Salt accumulation, on the other hand, has a more gradual effect. Stress from salt accumulation occurs later in the plant’s life cycle, and only at very high levels of salinity does its effect dominate.

How do plants adapt to increased salinity? Traditionally, plants have been described as either “excluders” or “includers” of salt, those that select against its uptake or those that regulate its accumulation. In most plants, a little of both strategies is seen. Other plants adapt to salinity by completing their life cycles rapidly and avoiding the toxic effects of accumulated salt altogether. These are worthwhile summaries but trivial answers to complex processes.

All plant functions ultimately result from the genes that plants possess that control and coordinate growth in concert with the constraints of the environment, and that plants mount a coordinated response to their environment is easily demonstrated. The physiological manifestations of salt tolerance and the salt-stress response have been pretty well described. Traditional plant breeding of the type that Borlaug directed has produced quite stress-tolerant crops, mainly by introducing traits from stress-adapted wild relatives. So great progress has been made, but our understanding on a molecular and cellular level is only piecemeal.

Teasing answers from several issues will provide insights into the processes that cause salt tolerance and toxicity in plants. For example, what molecular processes control salt (actually ion) compartmentalization in plants, and what accounts for tissue tolerance and osmotic adjustment? How is salt transported once inside the plant? A gene family responsible for initial entry of ions into plants has been identified and gives us some insights. One fascinating question is how do the leaves know the roots are in salty soil? Clearly, they do because leaf growth rate is reduced proportionally to the concentration of salt in the soil solution and not to the salt concentration within the leaves. What accounts for this long-distance communication within plants?

In the next few decades, we will answer these questions. And in the process, we will have taken more steps in the right direction.

       —Frederick Dobbs

After giving a speech to 600 garden writers in North Carolina last week, I returned in a state of uncertainty—had anyone heard the underlying message?  It was too cerebral, I think, to read a speech to a bunch of pumped up enthusiasts who wanted to chat about the gorgeous Sarah Duke Gardens that surrounded us.  So, I’ll try again.

Dear Garden Writers

As we plant our flowers and vegetables, we are different from the people we were just one year ago.  Turning up the soil, we enrich it with a new and improved compost elixir.  We endeavor to build on last year’s successes and correct or avoid our past missteps.

Gardening tastes evolve, shift and expand.  Maybe this will be the year we create a colorful oasis in the shade, or fashion a meandering border like one of Mrs. Jekyll’s.  Over the winter you’ve been using more and more root vegetables—parsnips, rutabaga, etc.—in soups and dishes.  Perhaps they deserve their chance in the sun.  And there are so many lovely and fragrant climbing vines, where shall we grow those?

We in the seed and plant business are also in the business of re-creating ourselves each year.  We seek to answer and anticipate the changing tastes and needs of gardeners.

Each year at Heronswood, Burpee and The Cook’s Garden, we want to inspire and excite our customers with new varieties.  We look at every phase of the customer experience, and try to improve how we do things.  We want to make the process as fast, easy and informative as possible.

When gardeners come to one of our sites or order from our catalogs, we want them to feel a serene confidence in choosing us.  We want customers to be, not just satisfied, but substantially happy.  From time to time, we hear customers who are, in fact, ecstatic.

It’s time for us in the gardening business, and writers, to reexamine our approach and get better—a lot better.  We have an extraordinary story to tell.  People—millions of them—are waiting to hear it.

And we must continue to get better.  We are privileged to work in such a magnificent field, one with so many fascinating dimensions.  There are so many paths to the garden.

From looking at gardening catalogs, websites and journalism, you would think we want to keep this passion of ours a secret.  We’re parochial.  We tend to talk in a sleepy monotone, scarcely audible in our noisy world.

I’m not advocating hype, hard-sell or finger-jabbing ferocity—although I know some of you can jab with the best of them.  I could show you jab-wounds.  Far from it:  I’m advocating persuasion and seduction.  And, above all, knowledge. Give them what the British call “shiny bits”.

Consider other forms of popular recreation:  music, sports, design, food, fashion, fitness, reading, popular entertainment.  The people in those fields bring bravado and brio to their writing.  Good writers care about their subject and make you care.  Everyone remembers a good story.

Good writers whet your appetite, fire your curiosity, inspire you.  They convey a conviction and point of view that turns you on.

Let me tell you something.  Gardening is sexier, smarter, cooler and more interesting by far than music, sports, design, food, fashion, fitness, reading, or popular entertainment.  It’s more creative, more dimensional, more engaging and deeper than any of those things.  Gardening is the real deal, the last, best refuge from vulgarity and a dumbed down culture.

There are going to be millions of readers wanting to know about gardening.  Vegetables have become the new rare perennials, while the latter are utterly mainstream in the garden world.  Don’t pigeonhole yourselves as “garden writers”.  Just write features about the “news” that is the current explosion in gardening and wave it in your editor’s face.  “Over here!  Headline story!”  The good ones will hear you.  Remember:  great first sentence.

I’ve given about 100 interviews in the past year, and most were to non-garden writers.  Reclaim your place in the publishing world, both offline and on.

There’s another side to this situation, too, and that is the business.  We in the product vendor community have to step up to the plate as well, and do more creative advertising. 

No slackers allowed.  No hesitation on this particular battlefield.  It’s a moment to be bold, if there ever was one.  Imagine:  a growth industry in the midst of a recession.  There are few better opportunities than the one facing us in the next several years.

Thank you.