What's in a name?

Earlier today I managed to once again confuse myself about whether the understory plants I was pulling were actually buckthorn or some species of wild cherry. In part this tells me that, despite my best efforts  and intentions, I haven't been paying enough attention to details. I run into the same kinds of issues when faced with white and red pines; all of the local oak trees; and numerous other local flora. I do much better with local fauna, with certain exceptions such as purple versus house finches.

red pine? white pine?

Photo by J. Harrington

It also tells me that I continue my life-long dislike of learning things through brute memorization, compounded by the fact that photos and pictures in field guides for trees and wildflowers are rarely an exact match for what's in front of me in the field. The past week of so the Better Half and I have seen two foxes. Each was a red fox. We know this because, although the area where we live is within the range of both red and gray foxes in Minnesota, we aren't colorblind and the foxes we saw were both red. That identification is more readily accomplished while driving past a fox, or having one run in front of the Jeep, than counting the number of needles in a fascicle to distinguish white (5) from red (2) pine trees. It can't be done, even traveling as slow as 30 mph.

Admittedly, these are not matters of great personal significance. If they were, I'd hope I'd rapidly improve my knowledge of functions, purpose and identification of various species. Although, I've been an angler for trout for many years and I still readily forget which is the adipose fin. I keep confusing it with a different fin that also begins with an "a." Neither fin is of as much significance to me as they are to the trout.

So, which comes first, the nomenclature or the significance? Perhaps I'll gain some insight if I read an article I came across earlier today, How Oak Trees Evolved to Rule the Forests of the Northern Hemisphere. That may provide a useful context to hang other information about differentiating characteristics, or perhaps some mnemonic hints to make memorization easier and less brutal.

Naming the Trees

By Bruce Guernsey

At the national cemetery in Gettysburg

all the trees have names,

both family and genus

on small brass plaques at the base of each

to let the visitor know

the kind of oak,

whether red, white or black,

and is this rock or silver maple

looking once like any other

burlapped ball of roots

when it was lowered to earth

those decades after the war.

Colorful names like Tulip Poplar,

Weeping Beech, Buckeye,

Sweet Gum and Gingko—

sounding like nicknames almost, these trees

from every region and state

with broad leaves or skinny,

shiny, dull, or no leaves at all

like the Eastern Hemlock,

but all, all with names every one,

no matter the size and shape

amidst the many anonymous

mute stones in their shade.

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Where's your Planet B?

Do you remember, during the last campaign for POTUS, Donald Trump asked "What do you have to lose?" in an appeal for the votes of black voters? I hope by now it's clear what black voters, and the rest of US, have to lose. For one example, in the midst of a pandemic, with more than 130,000 dead in the United States alone, CDC no longer in charge of the nation's COVID-19 data. Health experts are concerned. If anyone doubts this is the beginning of magically making the pandemic end before November of this year, by manipulating or hiding the actual numbers, I have some fracking company stock to sell them.

Trump has already begun attempted intimidation of more liberal, urban locales such as Portland, Oregon: Federal officers severely wounded a Portland protester. Local leaders blame Trump.

Closer to home, in Minnesota, recent reports note that:

It’s well known that the Trump administration has done enormous favors for Antofagasta, the Chilean-owned mining company behind Twin Metals, the proposed copper-sulfide mine at the edge of the Boundary Waters. Not only did the administration resurrect expired mineral leases, effectively breathing new life into this controversial project, but it’s becoming more apparent that federal agencies have allowed Twin Metals to set the terms.

The Trump regime is now in the process of trying to loosen National Environmental Protection Act rules to make it even easier to preclude local interests from participating in setting terms for potentially polluting projects that often offer few, if any, local benefits. (Trump Revised Rules Are Set to Cut Project NEPA Review Time)

who protects this northern Minnesota trout stream

Photo by J. Harrington

If you read this blog even occasionally, you may have noticed that all too often we find cause to criticize decisions made by our public agencies. That's frequently due to their failure to follow established rules and procedures. Minnesota may not (doesn't in my opinion) have the most stringent environmental rules governing mining. It does have one of the best, if not the best, Environmental Rights Acts.

The legislature finds and declares that each person is entitled by right to the protection, preservation, and enhancement of air, water, land, and other natural resources located within the state and that each person has the responsibility to contribute to the protection, preservation, and enhancement thereof. The legislature further declares its policy to create and maintain within the state conditions under which human beings and nature can exist in productive harmony in order that present and future generations may enjoy clean air and water, productive land, and other natural resources with which this state has been endowed. Accordingly, it is in the public interest to provide an adequate civil remedy to protect air, water, land and other natural resources located within the state from pollution, impairment, or destruction. [emphasis added]

The preceding language is much stronger than the comparable "Purpose" section of the National Environmental Policy Act.

If enough of us don't become too complacent, or just plain lazy, to vote come November, and actually create not only a blue wave but a blue tsunami, I'd strongly recommend a follow through by pushing for a National Environmental Rights Act, comparable to Minnesota's, separately or as part of any Green New Deal. It's time to get our priorities straight. Jobs on a dead planet aren't worth much unless there's a different home planet where the workers live. Where's your Planet B?

Work Song, part 2: A Vision

by Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it
and over it birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
Whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.