Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Benjamin Vogt
http://bevogt.com
http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com
lawn separated our driveway from the neighbors', the mailbox stood covered in the
From a block away this mature vine was a beacon—the subtle and regal color, the
thick petals, and the puffy stamens. Someone who knew how to garden lived here.
But in the grass popped up the misplaced bright head of a dandelion bent on
ruining the majesty of the queen of vines. You could see it from inside the house,
fifty feet away, like a pulsing strobe light. You could see it from down the street. At
late-spring landscape.
Dandelions provide one of the first sources of nectar for bees and other
pollinating insects in spring, and confirm the first glimmer of hope we had when,
back in March, the temperature briefly hit sixty. With their proliferate seed heads,
dandelions are a staple of the American landscape. Once, when English colonists
came to the new world, they were also an imported food staple, a cultivated
delicacy for garden salads. Still, as humans have spread over the last 100,000 years,
reaching North America some 12,500 years ago, the development of agriculture has
world. According to biologist E.O. Wilson, the earth loses nearly 3,000 plant,
animal, and insect species each year, or three every hour. This constitutes what
many scientists call the sixth great mass extinction in the 3.5 billion year history of
the earth.
As the continents drifted apart long ago, separate and distinct ecosystems
began to emerge. One such place can be found in the Hengduan Mountains of
southwest China, the most biodiverse temperate forest in the world. Over the
course of one day, starting from the valleys to the high ridges, one can move
through all four seasons as the climate changes. This strong box of genetic
diversity was perfectly placed to survive the ice age's glaciers that ravaged the
fauna and flora of North America and Europe. As a result, many of the world's
amid tropical and moist landscapes. On the basis of the pollen spores found in
ancient sediment the world over, the first flowers began to appear among these
paleobotanists Sun Ge from China and David Dilcher from the United States,
shows a flowering plant named archaefructus dating to around 125 million years
ago in northern China. Though it lacks petals, and while alive had no scent, it is not
The end of the cretaceous period, 64 million years ago, marked the most famous
extinction period the world has ever seen, that of the dinosaurs and an estimated
50% of the total species on earth. The largest extinction occurred 235 million years
ago when over 90% of the species vanished. Niles Eldridge, paleontologist and a
discovered a recurring pattern in these extinction events that cycle at about every
64 million years; and though they are usually caused by forces such as tectonic
shifts, volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts, the current period is clearly caused
its crops, brings an end to ecosystems that support vast species, as fences and
poisons and suburbs create barriers to migration routes, as foreign invasive species
native species become pests and die away. Through farming, humans no longer fit
into the larger picture, are no longer bound or balanced by a place's ability to
physically sustain them. But eventually, at around 10–13 billion people, our
agricultural effects may catch up with us and we will outgrow the planet's capacity
to nourish us, even with the advent of genetic engineering of crops and animals.
and maintain our world. If we truly are in the midst of the sixth extinction, Eldridge
says that the hope of our population cap will mean the level of lost species should
not reach that of the largest extinction 235 million years ago.
Such statistics aren't meant to terrify, or even to humble in the strictest sense,
but they should make one more aware of the value—beyond nature for nature's
sake—of the biologic and human cultural diversity that needs to be preserved in
order to balance ourselves with the world for the first time in our species' history.
When I was growing up my dad had a gas edger. He fitted a makeshift metal
tube to the exhaust of this edger and shoved it down into holes we found in the
yard. For my mom, if she could, she'd use as violent a means to rid the world of
dandelions—with a passion for Armageddon that I've only come to know recently,
all dandelions must die. Their seed must be wiped from the earth. One spring I
casually mention over the phone how happy I am to see dandelions, that their
emergence means the forsythia and tulips are not far behind. "I hate those damn
dandelions," she replies. "I wish I could pluck every last one of them so we'd be
species, brought here by us, thriving in spite of our chemicals. Don't they now have
dignity of plants, or, to find out what plants' rights actually are. Is pulling a
dignity of creation when handling animals, plants, and other organisms.’" The
ethics panel was formed in an attempt to give such concerns practical examples and
the hay is intended to feed the farmers' herd—the report doesn't say]. But
his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can't
agree why. The report states, opaquely: ‘At this point it remains unclear
This panel does not consider that genetic engineering is unacceptable to the
free, reproducing, and wild organisms. I wonder how many "introduced" cultivars
of plants in the gardening industry have lost their own dignity over the centuries?
and sharp-leaved stalk from the ground? The entire wildness? The creation itself?
acted more like a prim and proper front-of-the-perennial-border ground cover, what
would change? Our dignity might increase at the expense of the plant's—perhaps.
lives on a mostly wild three acres—came along his back property line and yanked
out large prairie thistles. Then, apparently, he laid them down parallel to my fence,
almost as if they were sacrificial offerings. I don't know if he thought I'd planted
them, or what statement he might have been making. I do often seed just over the
fence line—perhaps he saw me—simply because I'm amazed his wild backyard
only grows invasive cedars, not one wildflower benefitting bird or bee anywhere.
And we need dandelions. I need dandelions. They're the first bright sign in
spring that winter is finally over, yes, praise be, finally over. And I've come to
appreciate them for this reason mainly, but also for their importance to, say,
emerging queen bumblebees hungry to start a new colony. I also have fond
memories of frying their blossoms at camp one year, and drinking warm Kool-Aid
to wash them down. In a way, this flower is my first flower—likely the first one I
weed because it has the ability to spread quickly and thickly on disturbed land, and
its progeny will always lay waiting just beneath the soil, hidden under other plants,
caught between blades of grass or cracks in concrete where the rain settles it in so
we can't get to it. The dandelion is a weed because it reminds us too much of
ourselves, of how our own thoughts and actions can suddenly become loosed from
our ethics and morals. It seems such a plant should be placed at the center of our
gardens.
http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/isq048?ijkey=EpY92LlVyLj6FCR&k
eytype=ref