Shady invaders #phenology

Our local temperature is in the mid-50s. Skies are cloudy all day. This is far from ideal weather at the start of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial beginning of Summer. Still, it's a marked improvement over the conditions only four months ago when the outside temperature was about 80℉ less than it is today. The "outside" reading in the picture below is the temperature, not the wind chill, of -31℉ at about 7:15 am on January 31.

Minnesota Winter temperatures

Photo by J. Harrington

It's entirely possible, maybe even probable, that in 6 or 8 weeks or so, we'll be complaining about heat and humidity, or, the continuation of cool, cloudy weather. We repeat here what we've said and written a number of times already: Minnesota would be a much more pleasant place to live if our average temperatures and precipitation amounts weren't comprised of such extremes.

Because we have a habit of reading more than is good for us, and character flaws that tend toward lots of worry and fretting, this week we've started to wonder about the relationship between a broken climate and invasive species. Our position is that we've earned our right to fret because we've been pulling buckthorn for the past three years while we've not seen Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) do aught but encourage others to "manage" buckthorn on their own property. We'd be less Eeyore-ish if MNDNR would walk their talk.

most of this buckthorn understory is gone now

Photo by J. Harrington

It appears that buckthorn isn't the only invasive plant that tends to outcompete native plants. Nature's Notebook, brought to us by the USA National Phenology Network, has some interesting and informative information on invasive shrubs, those Shady Invaders. They didn't include buckthorn as one of the invasive species studied, but buckthorn shares a trait known as "Extended Leaf Phenology (ELP), and allows these early-leafing invaders to take advantage of the greater amount of light reaching the forest floor in early spring." Since Minnesota's Winters are reported to be warming more than our Summers, those concerned with invasive species should note that "Given predictions of warmer spring temperatures across the East due to climate change, we could see an increased advantage of invasive species across latitudes in the future."

All of the preceding has us contemplating if we humans have yet developed a sufficiently holistic perspective to exercise healthy stewardship of the environment on which we depend, or if we will spend much of a prematurely shortened existence swatting at symptoms of fractured biodiversity as if they were mosquitos. Remember John Muir's observation: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

Extinction

by Jackie Kay

We closed the borders, folks, we nailed it.
No trees, no plants, no immigrants.
No foreign nurses, no Doctors; we smashed it.
We took control of our affairs. No fresh air.
No birds, no bees, no HIV, no Poles, no pollen.
No pandas, no polar bears, no ice, no dice.
No rainforests, no foraging, no France.
No frogs, no golden toads, no Harlequins.
No Greens, no Brussels, no vegetarians, no lesbians.
No carbon curbed emissions, no Co2 questions.
No lions, no tigers, no bears. No BBC picked audience.
No loony lefties, please. No politically correct classes.
No classes. No Guardian readers. No readers.
No emus, no EUs, no Eco warriors, no Euros,
No rhinos, no zebras, no burnt bras, no elephants.
We shut it down! No immigrants, no immigrants.
No sniveling-recycling-global-warming nutters.
Little man, little woman, the world is a dangerous place.
Now, pour me a pint, dear. Get out of my fracking face.

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