It's fall and I'm handling that in a very balanced way
Part one of a series on local grasslands, flower of the week and an exciting new climate podcast
Flower of the week: Woodland sunflower
Woodland sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) is a reminder that late summer and fall have plenty of flowers to offer. It’s feeling like fall around here, but don’t despair: many species are just now beginning to bloom, in particular many lovely asters. (And we’re going to see just how long into fall this year I can find blooms on plants. Then I might switch to “berry of the week” or something.) So I’m not in denial about the time of year. I’m confronting it head-on. Taking it all in. Very balanced and very mature over here, no time anxieties to speak of.
You can often find woodland sunflower growing along the edge of the woods or a fence row with good shade trees. For scale:
Hi, Priya!
Signs of fall where you are? Tell me about it: possum.notes.substack@gmail.com
Local grasslands, part 1: Passanageset
Grassland habitats aren’t the easiest to find in eastern Massachusetts. As agriculture dwindled in the region over the 20th century, forest cover has grown and made open habitats sparse. Historically, Native Americans in the region used controlled burns to create more open habitat for game species such as turkey and deer. Grassland habitats have been a part of the region’s landscapes for centuries. It’s only in the most recent period that open habitats have become harder to find.
But grasslands are here if you look, just not always in obvious places. Today is the start of a short series on some of the grassland habitats I’ve gotten to know in eastern Massachusetts and what their histories tell us about the past and future of grasslands here.
Quincy’s Passanageset Park, formerly known as Broad Meadows Marsh, ties together several key themes in local history. The Massachusett people have long had a presence at the tidal marshes they named Passanageset, which offered abundant fishing, foraging and arable land during the summer. The Neponset band of the Massachusett, led by Chickataubut in the early 1600s, primarily lived at Passanageset during the summer.
When English colonists arrived, they passed on a smallpox epidemic to the local Native Americans. It reached its peak in 1616-1619, killing 50-90% of people in affected Native communities. Once the village at Passanageset had an outbreak, Chickataubut moved his band to Moswetuset Hummock, a small hill in a marsh area to the north. This action likely saved lives; Chickataubut lived until 1633 until finally contracting and dying of smallpox. Alongside the epidemic, negotiations with the English broke down. Miles Standish of Plymouth, a murderous piece of garbage memorialized in many histories of the colonies (including A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving), invited leaders of the Massachusett and other groups to peacefully convene south of Quincy. His forces ambushed and massacred the Native leaders. As attacks continued and the colonists strengthened their grip on the land, the Massachusett were forced to move to Ponkapoag, which remains the present-day home of the tribe (here’s their website).
You probably know this part of the story: years passed, the colonists pretended that Native Americans had completely vanished, colonists became citizens of a new country, John Adams and John Quincy Adams were presidents, Quincy grew and industrialized. In 1938 and 1956, the federal government dredged the Town River, which leads to Quincy and Weymouth’s shipping docks. The dredged material was dumped on Passanegeset, filling in the marsh.
As Boston’s economy shifted from manufacturing to healthcare, biotech, and education, local authorities began reckoning with the region’s many landfills and waste dumping grounds. In 2009-2013, the Army Corps of Engineers sought to restore salt marsh habitat to Passanageset and seeded grasslands where the land was too high above the water table. They named the resulting park Broad Meadows Marsh, because the name Passanageset, while retained in the histories of the Massachusett tribe, had been forgotten by local governments. It wasn’t until 2015 when a collaboration between Ren Green of the Massachusett and several middle schoolers recognized the importance of the spot to the Massachusett people. They had the park renamed Passanageset and created signage that describes the history of the Neponset band.
As I noted earlier, much of Passanageset is a grassland as a result of the dredged material raising the land above the water table. I use the presence or absence of grassland birds to try and assess the overall quality of the grassland habitat, since grassland birds require an ecosystem that’s healthy at multiple levels: a base of plants supporting arthropods for birds to eat, and enough grass cover to protect them from predators.
In the breeding season, there are many savannah sparrows, some turkeys, and mourning doves, but other breeding species I might expect such as bobolinks haven’t been seen consistently. This could be because the site is along the water rather than inland, because it’s a relatively new grassland (just a few years old, effectively), because of the amount of invasive phragmites reeds that are too dense for good grassland habitat, or some combination.
However, the species that appear during migration suggest that new breeding species may appear as time goes on. This spring, sandhill cranes briefly stopped over in the marsh area—a species I saw in the thousands in central Nebraska but which is much rarer here. Upland sandpiper, Wilson’s snipe, bobolink, and dickcissel have also stopped by in spring or fall.
Passanageset suggests the potential of mindful habitat restoration and the importance of involving Native American communities with ancestral ties to a place in decisions about that place. As an ecosystem, it continues to offer surprises in the species that call it home for the summer or a few days.
Looking for a lively new climate podcast focused on solutions and structural change?
What a coincidence!
Gimlet Media is putting out season 1 of a new podcast, How to Save a Planet, hosted by biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg (of Reply All, This American Life and other beloved podcasts.) Their pilot episode centers on a town near my neck of the woods, Somerset, MA. There, a politician went from being the “queen of coal” and backing the local coal industry to becoming the “witch of wind” and supporting offshore wind development. The episode considers what it takes to pull off such complete conversions.
Their latest episode focuses on what we normally call natural disasters, which they recommend calling natural hazards instead—since it’s human policies that turn predictable weather events and climate trends into disasters. It features a segment where my friend and classmate Kendra Pierre-Louis, a senior reporter for the show, walks a reluctant Blumberg through creating a “go-bag,” a kit you’d grab if you had to flee your home from a hurricane or similar danger during COVID. You’d think that would be pretty grim material, but the podcast makes it all feel doable and within reach, which is remarkable. There’s a surprising amount of laughter in a show mostly about surviving the collapse of your local infrastructure. Gotta hand it to em.
By the way, Johnson co-edited an anthology of essays by women in the climate movement that’s focused on envisioning a path forward, called All We Can Save. The book has an essay from Kendra entitled “Wakanda Doesn’t Have Suburbs’ about the way our popular stories influence whether or not we believe humans can live cooperatively with their environment. Needst I say more? This stuff sells itself.
Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.