Nature Notes: Untamed Spaces

Talk about global warming! Man, we are swimming in it. Monday night’s rain, though much less than an inch, was just enough to keep the broad-leaved trees from beginning to turn pale green. The lushness of the foliage characterized by spring is on the verge of collapse. We’ll see if today and tomorrow bring the rains promised daily by the TV weathermen and weatherwomen. Otherwise, it will be an early fall, and not a very colorful one at that.

You may have noticed that a recent Newsday showed a color photo of a deserted iron mine, long fallow in upstate New York, that has sprung up with grass pink orchids, the same species that we have most years in our cranberry bogs dotting Napeague. It brings to mind the contention between those horticulturists who would recover a forlorn piece of property long desecrated or mummified, say by mining or dumping, by planting native species across it and those with the patience to let it revegetate on its own.

Another recent newspaper article showed how plants making up a well-established natural community don’t stay that way on their own. They rely on a subterranean network of fungal mycelia, i.e., fungal fibers, to communicate between the roots of plant species, relaying messages from one to another in the form of “packets” of nutrients and other chemicals necessary to maintain healthy growth. Our stomachs and intestines rely on similar actions by the flora, bacteria, and the like in our digestive tracts to maintain healthy bodies. Thus, the current popularity of probiotics as a means of reestablishing and maintaining that flora over time.

In other words, there is a good chance that if you take a vacant piece of trashed landscape and plant it with all of the native species you think belong there, fertilize it, water it, and give it your most devoted loving attention, you are still likely end up with a mishmash of natives and invasives cloying in an eternal struggle that carries on for years, not at all to your satisfaction. If the needed microflora and microfauna species aren’t there in a balanced way, your chances of fulfilling your original intentions are likely to go unheeded and you will end up with a new ecotype, one that is new to nature, one we have begun calling a “novel ecotype.” Drive around, bike around, walk around and you will see many of these coming and going.

Karen Blumer, a practiced plant ecologist, and the author of “Long Island Native Plants for Landscaping: A Source Book,” is the second kind of horticulturist. After 30 years of recovering desecrated native plant assemblages on Long Island, she takes the longer view, one that requires a lot of patience, especially when dealing with those of us who want it done overnight. I have come to believe in her methodology and have some examples on which to base my belief.

In the first decade of the 21st century while working for East Hampton Town, I got grants to install a series of ponds, four altogether, in Lake Montauk’s primary watershed. These ponds were dug out of lowlands where surface runoff from roads and other sources was directed into Lake Montauk through a series of culverts. Local contractors dug out disturbed habitats landward of the culverts, the holes filled with water, and the ponds began to be populated by fish, turtles, muskrats, and the like, and their sides became vegetated. Runoff from Montauk ditches landward of the ponds would flow into the ponds, sediments would settle out, nitrates and other chemicals would be captured by the ponds’ algae and other vegetation, and so on and so on.

One pond in particular, the last one created, is situated on East Lake Drive on a piece of land given to the town by a Richard Bond, who has since moved away. It once was used by locals to grow pot and was almost completely covered with phragmites before it was dug out. Phragmites lined the south and west sides of the pond. The phragmites were repeatedly cut and otherwise removed on the north side, but not on the south side. Out of neglect or with respect to Ms. Blumer’s hypothesis, the cleared side grew up on its own. Lo and behold, at least 30 species of native sedges, shrubs, wildflowers, and even alder trees sprang up and took over that side, creating an almost impenetrable thicket, but one that was typically riparian for Long Island. The “propagules” — seeds, root sections, and such — had remained dormant under the phragmites matrix of shoots and runners, but came to life as soon as that matrix was severely weakened.

Contrast such an outcome with three others: the sides of the other three ponds, which were planted with the appropriate native pond-side species, purchased with state grant money from different native plant vendors. They all grew up into mishmashes, some overrun with phragmites, even though we gardened them to the best of our abilities.

The late Stuart Vorpahl, fisherman, town historian, and welder, was cut from the same cloth as Karen. He would tell me time and time again that the seas will take care of themselves given enough time. He cited the return of the bay scallops to local waters on their own after their disappearance in the 1930s and 1940s. Yes, he knew of the various algal blooms and how they could damage stocks, but he believed that stocks would always rebuild if given the opportunity. Modern fishery management is largely based on that premise. When a particular stock dwindles to low numbers, don’t fish it.

On the other hand, the modern hypothesis, that practiced by the large majority of mariculturists, is one based on stocking, stocking, stocking, and more stocking. In a way, it worked for scallops in the first decade of this century, but not for eelgrass. No matter how much we planted it in harbors and creeks where it disappeared in the 1990s, it didn’t come back. Yet, dredging the Shinnecock Inlet a few years back was followed by a surge of eelgrass growth in parts of Shinnecock Bay. The more ocean water flowing in, the more eelgrass covering the bottom, it turns out.

In this day and age, when McMansions spring up almost overnight and expensive extensive landscapes are installed in a day or two, complete with sprinkler systems, it is nigh impossible for us to wait for the bountiful “old days” to return on their own. And if we are successful after using lots of money, equipment, and labor in bringing something back in quick time, we will try to do it again and again, even if we fail. The shortest road is not always the quickest way to get to where we want to go.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].