Growing Wild

Image: The Taylor's Checkerspot butterfly. [source]

Habitat loss is one of the biggest driving factors towards its decline, because its habitat is Garry Oak Prairie, which is an endangered ecosystem due to fire suppression, agriculture, etc.

A significant part of the Taylor's Checkerspot population in Washington is centered around a big swathe of land that wasn't converted to other uses due to being a military base (Fort Lewis), which means that it's also potentially threatened by military exercises.

I believe the push to grow Milkweed for Monarchs took less effort because milkweed grows like a weed. Paintbrush is hemiparasitic: it connects to other plants' roots for extra nutrients/energy, but usually specific plants, like lupine and grass species. So one would need to grow those first, or sow their seeds and paintbrush seeds at the same time, and hope they connect. I suspect it would be rather difficult to make growing paintbrush a widespread thing over there.

Images: harsh paintbrush; golden paintbrush. Golden paintbrush is a threatened species. [Source] [Source]

But you know what ISN'T hard to propagate?

Plantain.

Images: the two most common species, common plantain and ribwort plantain [source] [source]

That's right, this incredibly common non-native plant that will grow in your lawn is the ONE other genus that these endangered butterflies will eat.

But lawns are not hospitable environments for baby caterpillars!!

If you have a pollinator garden within the range of this butterfly, consider including plantain. I don't know how much it will help; I don't know what the likelihood of them finding it is, and there are more threats than just loss of host plants.

But I was in the land of milkweed recently, and it was incredibly heartening to see the number of people who had allowed Milkweed to grow: even letting it grow in the middle of their otherwise manicured lawn.

- the reason why the caterpillars can use plantain is because plantains have the same iridoid glycosides as golden paintbrush!

- as with Monarchs and milkweed, the plants the caterpillars feed on are mildly poisonous (because of the iridoid glycosides) and the caterpillars use these compounds to make themselves mildly poisonous and taste bitter to prevent predation!

- Golden paintbrush in the South Puget Sound region has most successfully been grown using yarrow or Oregon Sunshine as host plants. When I show people this plant in real life, I point out that you almost always see them right next to either yarrow or Oregon Sunshine. Sometimes they use other plants, but they have the most success with those two species.

- Golden Paintbrush itself used to be federally endangered, but once they figured out the host plants, propagation efforts became very successful.

- You can buy golden paintbrush here:

- You can buy Oregon Sunshine and Yarrow seeds here, from the CNLM which is very involved in the efforts to save Taylor's Checkerspot and Golden Paintbrush:

- You can also get the seeds here:

- Both yarrow and Oregon Sunshine are tough, resilient plants that like full sun and well-drained soil. Do not make the soil rich and fertile like you would for non-native garden plants. Do not water once established. Do not plant them in shade. They are prairie plants, adapted to the conditions and soils of the prairies that developed on glacial till and have been maintained by the native peoples of this area.

- Taylor's Checkerspot butterflies are present in three prairies located in the south sound region that I know about, and I have personally seen them using narrow leaf plantain. These are areas south of Olympia. If you're between exit 95 and Fort Lewis in the Puget Lowlands, there's a lot of work going on around you to support these species.

- while considering these, also consider Viola adunca (a host plant to multiple other local struggling butterfly species) and local Lomatiums (support SO MANY native bee species)

So, "everyone" pictures western Washington as naturally being covered in evergreen forests made up primarily of Douglas Firs. (If they know what a Douglas fir is) They think everything over here was just old growth evergreens. Therefore, many, many people's first thought when getting into ecological restoration is "Plant more trees!!!" And they go out and they get a bunch of Douglas firs and they plant them. Because they're cheap, they're native, and they grow well.

(Do you know what our most common tree is? Do you know what tree has actually expanded it's range since colonialization? Do you know what tree pops up everywhere? Do you know what tree will just show up on it's own and is doing JUST FINE and DOESN'T NEED ANY HELP????? And has actually caused a decrease in biodiversity as it takes over and crowds out other species????)

America's picture of ecological wellness, at least when it comes to Washington state, is a thick, vibrant evergreen forest full of Douglas firs.

But! That's actually not the only ecosystem that was here before colonialization, and before the diseases that Europeans brought over killed a huge percent of the native human population. A huge swath of what people now call the I-5 corridor was prairie and oak savanna! We only have 3% of the historical extent of the oak savanna!

That means there's less of it left than of the old growth!

But the thing is that those prairies and oak savanna had been actively maintained by native peoples (and these ecosystems have greater biodiversity than the Douglas fir forests!!!) Until! The U.S. government banned intentional fire and actively suppressed naturally occurring fires! Which turned out to be A BAD IDEA.

And the thing is, oaks support so many MORE species of insects and birds than Douglas firs, it's incredible. Oaks are a keystone species, and so many of the species that are struggling in this state are struggling in part because the DOUGLAS FIRS INVADED THE PRAIRIES AND OAK SAVANNAS and turned them into closed canopy evergreen forests with fewer species and less food for people and other animals.

Because the thing is that the oaks and the camas and the lomatiums and a bunch of other extremely cool plants that are super important to native bees, native butterflies, native birds, and native peoples, are adapted to fire.

Douglas firs (and scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry and a bunch of other invasive species that really want to take over the prairies) are not. So for many hundreds and thousands of years- since the last ICE AGE!- native peoples in this area have been intentionally maintaining open prairies and oak savannas by using fire to keep the Douglas firs from taking over and turning everything into a Douglas fir dominated closed canopy forest.

But when the people here were hit first by European diseases and then the U.S. banned intentional fires, Douglas firs started moving in from the surrounding forests. Their seeds are everywhere. They are pioneer species. They're widely adapted. They're fast growing. They transform every ecosystem into one ecosystem that they dominate. They're planted by the million each year! Because they're a great timber tree! But they're also literally everywhere else!

We have so many! SO many Douglas firs! More than any other tree species!

So tell me why people go out and plant EVEN MORE! Instead of, I don't know, something that actually supports way more species and is a much rarer tree and part of an ecosystem that has almost been wiped out, like, say, the Garry Oak?

But the other plants and the animals that depend on them need space to grow, too.

Redwoods National Park, northern CA, USA

Image: The Taylor's Checkerspot butterfly. [source]

Habitat loss is one of the biggest driving factors towards its decline, because its habitat is Garry Oak Prairie, which is an endangered ecosystem due to fire suppression, agriculture, etc.

A significant part of the Taylor's Checkerspot population in Washington is centered around a big swathe of land that wasn't converted to other uses due to being a military base (Fort Lewis), which means that it's also potentially threatened by military exercises.

I believe the push to grow Milkweed for Monarchs took less effort because milkweed grows like a weed. Paintbrush is hemiparasitic: it connects to other plants' roots for extra nutrients/energy, but usually specific plants, like lupine and grass species. So one would need to grow those first, or sow their seeds and paintbrush seeds at the same time, and hope they connect. I suspect it would be rather difficult to make growing paintbrush a widespread thing over there.

Images: harsh paintbrush; golden paintbrush. Golden paintbrush is a threatened species. [Source] [Source]

But you know what ISN'T hard to propagate?

Plantain.

Images: the two most common species, common plantain and ribwort plantain [source] [source]

That's right, this incredibly common non-native plant that will grow in your lawn is the ONE other genus that these endangered butterflies will eat.

But lawns are not hospitable environments for baby caterpillars!!

If you have a pollinator garden within the range of this butterfly, consider including plantain. I don't know how much it will help; I don't know what the likelihood of them finding it is, and there are more threats than just loss of host plants.

But I was in the land of milkweed recently, and it was incredibly heartening to see the number of people who had allowed Milkweed to grow: even letting it grow in the middle of their otherwise manicured lawn.

I love you. I appreciate you.

You got us here, and that was INCREDIBLY hard.

Thank you for surviving for us.

Just please, for the love of everything tell me,

if you use your voice to defend people from harm by their own peers, thank you.

if you use your voice to remind people they are worthy and loved, thank you.

if you use your voice to share a hopeful story when people need it most, thank you.

if you use your voice to admire others' strengths, and accept their weaknesses, thank you.

if you use your voice to add kindness and goodness to this world, thank you; thank you for being you in a world that is too often confusing, stressful, or cruel.

the world will always need people like you. anyone who tells you something different is only projecting their weaknesses onto you. if someone devalues your heart, that is not your fault.

Let me make one thing clear. I didn't choose to be a target.

I didn't choose to be 14 and have FAG written in sharpie across my entire new jacket. I didn't choose to be mocked (and sometimes attacked) every single day for having too much hair in too many places, for being more at home wading in mud pulling cattails than wearing a dress that felt like barbed wire, for being too much of a gross dyke. I didn't choose the constant threats of rape or "a good time that will show me how wrong I am" from men in their 40s while I was a 16 year old cashier, or out at a park. I didn't choose for the mother of my first girlfriend to tell me I was going to hell, that I was a monster, that she would charge me with statutory rape on my 18th birthday if I ever had sex with my partner a year younger than me. I didn't choose to lose friends because their parents were worried I might Turn Them Gay, or because it was just "too stressful" to go against the flow with their new army wife friends. I didn't choose the friends of my partners who've tried to convince them that I could never love them, because I'm bisexual and greedy, or really Too gay, or really not gay ENOUGH. I certainly didn't fucking choose to have my rights to marriage, healthcare, and the ability to ever go home and feel even a little bit safe again taken day. After day. After day.

Most of those things happened to me before I ever cut my hair short, or dyed it loud, or came out as trans, or for a lot of them before even I knew I was gay. They always knew. They always know their targets no matter how well you try to hide.

What I DID choose for myself, was how I was going to respond to all of that. Was if I was going to run back into a closet full of venomous snakes and false promises of safety, or look at the risks versus the reality of living in a cage and walk out regardless. I chose to make a home for myself in my own body, one that I could feel comfortable and happy in, even knowing it would make the target on my back more visible. I didn't choose to have it placed there, but I sure as hell chose to be queer and out and an example to other kids buried in their ink-covered jackets that they can survive and become who THEY want to be. I chose to embrace all the things about myself that conservatives want us to cut off to be acceptable - the disability that was otherwise KILLING me to try and push through, the gender fuckery, the inclination for non-monogamy, all the rough edges that the middle class WASPS of the Proper LGBT Movement have been begging us to sand down because please pretty please they want to be RESPECTABLE goddamnit! They don't want to be FREAKS they just want the right to a happy marriage, and if we are the cost, well - what's the lives of those who were bleeding out worth anyways, better to leave them to the wolves and hope they'll be sated enough never to arrive at OUR door.

For some people being gay was never a choice. For me, I have to choose every single day. To keep being queer and myself and stubborn and BRAVE enough not to retreat and hide, just because the worst of the worst around me will it. I choose to make and fight for the world that I want, one where everyone has a place and no one has to force themselves into a certain broken shape just to fit, and I can only do that by living queer and loud and finding and working WITH my community, not against it at every beat. By accepting that every one of us has a place at the table, and making sure that table is big enough to handle the weight. Not by cutting away anything unseemly or difficult, and certainly not by blaming the very people under attack for the ire of those who aim to erase them from being.

A new large scale battery project in California is now the first in the country that can discharge stored, clean energy for up to eight hours at a time. The longer discharge time is a crucial next step in meeting 24 hour energy needs with clean power.

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Protests and lawsuits from Native American tribes and other local groups stopped a graphite mining operation in South Dakota that was going forward without appropriate environment review.