How to make friends with a plant

by Susan Marsh

When I was young, something traumatic happened that many may find familiar: my beloved 10-acre woodland next to my parents’ house was destroyed and replaced with houses. I was too young to understand that the house I lived in had been part of that forest since before we moved in, and the loss sparked a lifelong desire to preserve what was left of the forest and its individual trees.

Thanks to authors who have brought their findings to our attention, the science of ecology has helped us recognize forests not just as collections of individual trees, but as interconnected, interdependent communities of countless living things. Forests include shrubs, herbs, grasses, mosses and ferns, fungi, arthropods, birds and mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and microorganisms that live in the soil, water, and plant tissues. I think many forest lovers understand this concept intuitively, but the more we learn, the more amazing it becomes.

But connections to plants that we make on a deep emotional level often begin with individual specimens, be it the gently

branching trees that we climbed as children, or the wildflowers that we planted from seeds in the garden and that bloom again every spring.

Although there are obvious differences between humans and trees, I find a kinship in the company of trees. They are alive like me. And like me, they have needs in order to continue living.

While some of us perceive plants as individuals or necessary components of a place, others may not notice them at all. Plant blindness is more common than appreciation for plants. And “plant blindness” is a real term, not something I made up. It refers to the human tendency to ignore plants in the environment to the point where we no longer notice their various colors, textures, and shapes. For many, plants are simply part of an appealing backdrop.

Research suggests that humans are hardwired to perceive plants less clearly than animals. Plants grow together, with numerous species merging, and they don’t move. They don’t have faces and, for the most part, don’t pose a potential threat, as a giant cave bear might.

Although there are obvious differences between humans and trees, I find a kinship in the company of trees. They are alive like me. And like me, they have needs in order to continue living.

Familiarity with plants can be improved simply by paying more attention to them. Each plant has a characteristic shape, texture, shade of green, altitude, scent and the ecotype in which it occurs. Sometimes I do a little test while hiking along a ridge. How many different shades of green can I see? Can I identify lodgepole pines and subalpine firs by their shape and shade? Can I tell grasses from rushes in a wet meadow? With practice, this is doable from quite a distance.

In a world where plant blindness is the norm, what’s it like to love native plants not just as recognizable species but as individuals? Familiar trails are filled with little landmarks: the aspen trunk that housed a basketball-sized hornet’s nest one year; the lone hawthorn I’ve seen along a mile-long network of trails in the area; the young Douglas fir on which a pygmy owl perched long enough for me to get a halfway decent photo. Together, they signal my presence on a deeper level, making me believe I belong here because I know the neighbors.

Lack of plant awareness means not only noticing them, but also ignoring the importance of plant life to humans and other animals. Too often we treat them like mere objects, throwing away showy – and expensive – varieties of flowers after they have served their purpose as summer decorations. Our lawns are simply things you walk on. Children know better, I think; they watch in wonder as bees and butterflies populate the sunflowers in the garden, and lie on their bellies in the grass to watch ants, beetles and other small creatures clambering among the green stalks like hikers through a forest.

Sometimes I give myself a little test while hiking on a mountain ridge. How many different shades of green can I see? Can I identify lodgepole pines and subalpine firs by their shape and coloring?

I remember doing this as a child, and maybe that’s why I’m still one of those oddballs who thinks of plants as friends. They don’t have to return the affection; that’s not their job. This love of plants comes largely from a combination of playing outside every day when I was little and the trauma of losing the wooded lot next to our house when I was growing up.

Maybe I wouldn’t have these strong feelings if I hadn’t known the plants I grew up with as individuals. A young strawberry tree I climbed in a dress and patent leather shoes, a full-grown one my father hung a swing from. The blackberry patch where my mother and I picked berries for pies, the aroma of which I can smell baking as I write. The half-dozen trillium bulbs she and I dug up from the doomed forest and transplanted into our garden.

I address my botanical friends as I would any other friend, with simple greetings. “There you are,” I say to the emerging leaves of the turkey peas I transplanted from an empty field that was about to be dug up for construction.

Turkey peas (Orogenia linearifolia) is a small member of the parsley family that is native to only six states in the northwestern United States It is the first wildflower I see as the snow melts in spring, sometimes as early as March. Uncertain

Orogenia linearifolia (turkey peas/Indian potato). Photo by Susan Marsh

Not sure if it would live in my front yard, I planted the plant I dug up in a spot as similar to its original location as possible, and for three years it has been growing and flowering. Every time I see its first narrow leaves, I rejoice. I wait for it, greet it, water and talk to it, cut clover and grass short until it completes its short life cycle and returns to the soil as a starchy root resembling a gnarled, muddy carrot.

Another plant I love is a certain lodgepole pine. This species is one of the most common conifers in the Yellowstone region and typically grows into even-aged stands of tall, straight trees, nicknamed Pinus monotonous
for their seemingly endless regularity.

But my favorite pine tree is nothing like those trees. Instead of reaching for the sky, it stands barely ten feet tall. From its perch on the edge of an eroding slope above a busy road, it spreads its upward-curving branches, forming a shrub-like claw. Half of its roots dangle uselessly in the air, but the tree is firmly anchored in the stiff clay soil of a slowly advancing landslide and has been growing that way for decades.

A tree that yields neither lumber nor firewood, a tree that never seems to produce cones or provide a resting place for a passing jay, the little lodgepole pine is to me the most beautiful gift of all: an embodiment of resilience, tenacity and hope. Like the forests of my childhood, it lives on the edge of danger. It is a reminder of how to live in the face of possible disaster. Never give up. Do your best, as you always have. You cannot control the future.

All lodgepole pines in our region carry this message. They evolved through periodic forest fires and are highly dependent on them. The lodgepole pine has adapted to a regime of large, rare fires by developing different types of cones. Some open easily, their seeds sprout and grow wherever there is enough sunlight. Other cones are tightly sealed by resin. Heat softens the

Resin-sealed cones of the Lodgepole Pine (top) and opened cones (bottom). Photo by Susan Marsh

pitch, which allows the cones to open. Some of these serotinous (later opening) cones require the heat of a forest fire, others can open at lower temperatures. Put the clenched fist of a cone on the asphalt on a summer afternoon and watch.

A look over the hills near Yellowstone’s Lewis River Canyon, which burned in the 1988 wildfires, reveals a patchwork of shrubs, sedges, grasses and aspens. In between, dense stands of young lodgepole pines protrude from the charred tree trunks. The cones laid in the ground by squirrels were protected from the heat of the fire, and the constant churning of the soil by rodents helped bring them to the surface, where the seeds found conditions to germinate. Thus, an aging forest swept away by the flames has become a diverse mosaic of young pines, aspens, grasses and wildflowers.

The lodgepole pine is considered by many forest experts to be a medium-successional species, growing as thick as dog hair after a fire and giving way to spruce and fir after about a century. We didn’t give the lodgepole pine its true endurance. I’ve seen trees over 300 years old that showed no signs of being ready to give up their place to the firs surrounding them. I’ve hiked through open, park-like forests where the ground beneath them was covered with blueberries for miles. These stands of lodgepole pine are magnificent, lining the trail with thick, straight trunks that let sunlight slant between them. They don’t block the view of lakes and peaks, they are part of the view, the frame of the picture.

Perhaps it is the memory of hiking through such stands, from the West Pioneer Mountains in Montana to the Salt River Range in Wyoming, that leads me to a general affection for stands of lodgepole pine. Perhaps it is my gratitude for years of warmth from the wood stove. But the oddly shaped outliers, like the small pine above the highway, catch my attention as individuals. They help me appreciate the vitality a tree needs—something easy to miss because it doesn’t look back. And for these reasons and others, they remain in my memory and my heart.