Growing Wild

Mooli in all her upside-down glory

The morning after, we found out that she had laid eggs! I wasn't sure that they were fertilized, but there was a good chance, so we kept the case on our plant. Mooli left a day after laying the eggs. (Farewell, my friend, I hope you lived a good life filled with lots of bugs)

Mama mantis with her eggs

Well, after three long weeks, guess what? They did hatch! I now have 4 little baby mantises running amok our plants and absolutely devouring all the plant-eating bugs.

Sweet tiny little puppy

It's been storming quite a lot here now that it's almost the monsoons. I hope they dont get blown away by the winds. I really hope they stay with us, but if they don't, i wish them all the best for their adventures ahead! I've already begun feeling a bit motherly towards them, though, so I can't help but worry.

Baby trying to reach the other side (I believe in you!)

I've given them names. They're named after Sonic characters, because I'm a little freak nerd.

The biggest of them all is a fast little bugger. Like blink and he's traveled from your finger to your shoulder fast. Of course he had to be Sonic. (He's the one in the third pic)

The one in the fourth pic is Knuckles. He's a warrior through and through!

Tails is also in the same picture, but he's really just a green blur. He's not quite strong enough to run yet, but he's made amazing progress in just two hours!

Last but not least, Amy ready to fight like the fierce gal she is. Adorable, all of them.

Amy ready to throw hands

Related Posts:

I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.

@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.

Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches

And THEN.

I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.

HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.

I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."

Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.

I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.

It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research

There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA

Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."

The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.

It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.

I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.

Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.

The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.

@motherfucking-dragons

it's called the Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant and there are, in total, 11 known sites where it still grows.

in general i'm feral over the carnivorous plant variety of the Southeastern USA. we have SO many super-rare carnivorous plants!!!

I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.

The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.

Well, several reasons. As y'all may know, bamboo is stronger than any wood, and therefore it makes a fantastic building material.

The Cherokee used, and still use, river cane to make fishing poles, fish traps, arrows, frames for structures, musical instruments, mats, pipes, and absolutely gorgeous double-woven baskets that can even hold water.

Here's some distinguishing traits I've observed myself:

River cane has a really full, bushy, leafy look that makes it really hard to recognize as bamboo from a distance, because the stems are harder to see. The shape of the individual cane with its branches and leaves is narrow, because the branches spread out very little, but the foliage is DENSE. It's like a plume.

River cane is stronger, denser and heavier than invasive bamboos I've seen.

River cane stems are always green all the way around, no yellow (unless the plant's been dead for a good long time)

River cane stems feel smooth like plastic to the touch. The common invasive bamboo I've seen here, when you run your hand upwards along it, the stem feels awful like sandpaper.

The biggest way to distinguish them: River cane grows 6-4 feet tall when it's in little patches, and up to 10-12 feet when it's in a large size patch (like, the size of a backyard) It is known to reach up to 15 feet tall nowadays and historical records claim heights of 30 feet or more in fertile river valleys. I really want to stress that it's RARE for it to get big. A canebrake will almost always be many times wider than it is tall (sometimes they grow in very long strips along fence rows)

The best time to look for it is in winter before things leaf out, because it's evergreen and grows in dense masses, making it easy to spot.

Some more cool stuff i've found out—River cane was a common food of bison! Earliest European settlers reported canebrakes so big that "100 bison could graze on a single canebrake." Apparently it used to make extremely high quality forage for livestock, before it was mostly destroyed.

European settlers apparently set their pigs loose in the canebrakes purposefully to destroy them, because the pigs would root up the nutritious rhizomes and kill the plant. Thinking of the relationship between Bison and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Eastern Native Americans and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Plains Native Americans and Bison...it seems like a pattern, huh?

In the case of both bison and canebrakes, they were a fundamental part of their ecosystem, and fundamental part of the indigenous cultures that used them for every material, their musical instruments, their homes, their most advanced arts, and even food (Rivercane shoots are edible just like other bamboo, and supposedly the seeds are edible too!) but European settlers purposefully destroyed the species almost completely. I can't help but wonder if there was a similar motivation.

Books that talk about Rivercane:

Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry by Sarah H. Hill talks about rivercane a LOT and gives tons of details of its uses and history.

Saving the Wild South: The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction by Georgann Eubanks has a whole chapter about Rivercane.

Venerable Trees: History, Biology and Conservation in the Bluegrass is a book about Kentucky, but it talks about rivercane's importance including its relationship with bison. It's only a couple pages out of the whole book but it's still great information.

By the way, though, if you read any very early European account of Kentucky, the word "cane" is everywhere. It's just such a nondescript word it's hard to realize its significance.

On a more personal note...god, I love this plant. Here's another photo I took. When you're in the canebrake, it feels so cut off from the rest of the world; it's shaded, quiet, cool, and someone 10 yards away couldn't even see you.

i actually talked to my neighbor that I learned owns the canebrake. She had no idea what it was but she was excited to learn about it! It was a lovely conversation.

Apparently, she knew I had been down there a bunch of times and thought nothing of it. She said "Yeah I told my husband, If you see her down there, just leave her alone she's doing her thing." In the most sincere way possible, God bless this woman

She said I could transplant all I wanted, too. This was great! ...but I quickly learned how RIDICULOUSLY HARD it is to transplant from a canebrake of this size. The rhizomes are so big and tough, a shovel can hardly get through them, and unless you're at the edge of the canebrake, there's a thick mat of them going every which way. I was driving my whole weight down on this shovel and it kept just denting the rhizome and glancing off.

I did get some transplants but each one took like half an hour because I was fighting for my life!

Also, with a canebrake this size, it doesn't grow little canes that will later become bigger—it shoots up tall canes in a single season. The youngest canes, more accessible and toward the edge of the canebrake, were significantly taller than I was. I cut the top off of one transplant for ease of handling—I had a pair of hand pruners with me that were usually perfectly useful for small limbs, but I could barely get these things through the cane, it's just so strong and dense.

Here is some YouTube videos that talk about river cane!

Roger Cain of Keetoowah/Western Band Cherokee shows and talks about Rivercane. This video has a BIG canebrake, the mature canes look as if they could be 15ft tall, but he says it's only a fragment of what they used to be!

Stan the River Man visits a Canebrake in Northern Kentucky. This channel only has 22 subscribers, I feel like I've discovered a rare and priceless treasure

River Cane Renaissance, Episode 1. This guy has devoted a large part of his life to studying Rivercane and now works with the eastern band Cherokee to try and bring it back.

Chattooga river conservancy video on Rivercane, haven't watched the whole thing myself but it looks really good and detailed

This is exactly what you think it is.

For privacy reasons, I share details online of my real world activities only reluctantly, and not very often. But don't be bamboozled into thinking I have forgotten the Canebrakes. It's exactly the opposite.

I have done a lot of networking and made a lot of contacts. I am not alone. There are other people with a story exactly like mine: first, they heard an offhanded mention of forests of American bamboo, which shattered everything they thought they knew about their environment. Next, they became crazed with fascination, searching for knowledge with insane ferocity. Then, they realized that river cane is not only a plant, it is a keystone species symbiotic with indigenous cultures for thousands of years, and it was almost destroyed due to the subjugation of its habitat and the genocide of its caretakers.

The canebrakes' devotees have been working tirelessly to compile every single scrap of information on canebrakes that exists in writing. Every record, every primary source, every historical mention, every comment and conjecture. I have been given access to some of this priceless treasure trove. The wealth of information is amazing, but even more amazing is how much is still unknown.

The history, properties, and ecological importance of the canebrakes is so much more than I imagined.

For example, the massive amounts of seeds produced by huge canebrakes in flowering events fed the passenger pigeon flocks. Likewise the Carolina parakeet was also dependent on canebrakes, and the extinct Bachman's warbler was a canebrake specialist. The destruction of canebrakes could be responsible for why these birds went extinct.

Canebrakes were absolutely fundamental to the indigenous peoples of the Southeast, providing for their every need. Food, shelter, containers, tools, music and art. The settlers foolishly thought the indigenous peoples were not "advanced" enough for metal tools, but in truth, they already had a material superior to metal. River cane by weight is stronger than steel. You can make knives and blades out of it.

I am excited for the future. It seems like momentum is building to save the river cane and bring back the canebrakes, and I am hoping to join together with all the other like-minded people to accomplish this task.

Holy shit okay i looked it up and HOLY SHIT. Published 2 months ago.

1700 years old.

And it says A. appalachiana, (the Appalachian species of native rivercane), has actually NEVER been observed to flower, which means ???? i dont even know what the fuck that means.

THIRTY hectares. THIRTY. That's HUGE.

Does this mean that???? Most canebrakes are so small now because they're babies????

I will do SO MUCH river cane stuff when I have finally graduated and my classes aren't crushing me anymore. literally have a list of contacts ready to go.

I have to followup with people who took my seedlings...I have to contact people who i know have canebrakes on their land...and I definitely want to get connected with tribal nations and the work they are doing to bring back the rivercane.

Also considering trying black tea and coffee. We have curly dock all over the yard too, which is apparently supposed to make a pretty creamy tan color. Plus there is sumac everywhere around here, like literally lining the side of every road, so I might go out and gather some of that too. Yarrow too, all over the side of every road.

One of my garden beds has been completely taken over by sheep sorrel, chicory, and mustard, but I think it's too late for the sheep sorrel because I'm pretty sure you want to use the seed heads for dye? Which are already dead here (and boy am I probably going to regret letting those go to seed later, oops).

There is also so so SO much elderberry and pokeberry in the back, but from what I've read the dyes from those aren't lightfast at all so idk if they're worth bothering with? and there's also a chokecherry tree back there (with a huge pokeberry trying to suffocate the life out of it lol). We have a good amount of aster growing wild around here too but it's the blue-ish puple-y kind? Not sure if that type produces different colors or not, but I know flower color doesn't necessarily indicate dye color at all.

I let it sit "overnight" (during the day while I slept) because I didn't get done with this until like 4 am and was not about to stay up even longer waiting for the dye pot to cool down lol. Read somewhere that letting it dry fully before you rinse it off helps the color fix better? idk if that's true but trying it only costs me a bit of patience so why not ig.

ngl I was terrified that I felted the whole batch into one big blob of wool because at one point I walked into the other room to go do something else while the stove was set to a temperature that would normally NEVER get hot enough to boil, only to come back and see that it was bubbling a bit. Immediately pulled it off the heat until it cooled enough to stop doing that and had a mini heart attack the whole time about it. Lesson learned, water full of wool and flower pigment can apparently start to boil a bit at a lower stove setting than plain water???

Now the question is... can I realistically use this dye bath for another batch???

Berry time

BERRY TIME

BERRY TIME

Lilium Columianum . . .

This year I am growing:

Sun sugar cherry tomato, roma tomatoes, jalapenos, cubanella pepper, bell pepper, green/purple beans, great northern beans, black beauty eggplant , pickling cucumber x2, zucchini, lettuce, mustard greens, dill, basil, Tulsi, parsley, sage, lemon balm, marigolds, and zinnias

Lots of us already knew that goldfish--a type of carp--wreak havoc when released into ecosystems they aren't native to. This recent study enumerates the specifics of the damage:

"The damage was quick and extensive. The Journal of Animal Ecology study found that water clarity dropped almost instantly in nutrient-rich conditions as goldfish stirred up sediment from the lake bottom. Populations of snails, amphipods, and zooplankton the small invertebrates that are the base of healthy aquatic food webs crashed through direct consumption and habitat destruction. Native fish exhibited declining body condition, an early warning indicator of long-term population health."

Defenders of invasive animals often claim that the introduced species aren't really causing harm, or that they're just accelerating evolution. (There's also the appeal to emotion that the animals didn't choose to be there, and therefore we should leave them alone.) But whether it's goldfish and European starlings in the US, Sitka spruce in Europe, rabbits in Australia, or hippos in Colombia, the facts show that non-native species have a deleterious effect on ecosystems they're introduced to, taking up space and other resources needed by native species.

The article also got me thinking about the irresponsible attitude many people have toward "disposable" pets like inexpensive fish. When I lived on the coast, I had a 60 gallon aquarium with a variety of tropical fish. Before I moved back to Portland, I rehomed all the inhabitants minus the bladder snails (which are thriving in a jar with my marimo moss balls). I very easily could have just walked a hundred yards to the lake behind my coastal home and dropped the platies and cardinal tetras in there; instead I took the time to find them new homes with other people.

I get that people don't want to euthanize unwanted pets, even goldfish. And there aren't as many rescues that take pets that aren't furry or feathered. But the answer is not to dump these animals in the wild and hope they can survive; this is how we end up with lakes full of giant yellow carp, and domestic rabbits spreading diseases to wild rabbit populations. It also leaves a lot of these poor creatures to slow, lingering deaths from exposure or starvation, assuming they don't end up as predator food.

Responsibility toward nature includes properly caring for those we have domesticated or tamed, to include ethical care from beginning to end, and responsible breeding practices. Unfortunately as long as there is a profit to be made, there will be those facilities--and that is the best name for them--that will churn out large quantities of high-demand, inexpensive animals to meet the pet trade without taking any responsibility for where they end up. While an ethical breeder of dogs, for example, will always take back one of the dogs they've bred at any age, you can't just return your goldfish once you realize you can't house a two foot long carp.

these are images from a 1930s pamphlet that endorsed kudzu, entitled "stop gullies: save your farm"