Tuesday, part four
Weekend reading suggestions for after all this + flower of the week
Short newsletter this week. It’s been a challenge to think about much besides the election. I missed two unusual birds in my area on Tuesday because I was too busy alternating between staring at the wall and staring at voting results. I had the day off but spent most of it in an anxious daze as if waiting for a medical procedure.
At press time, as the possums are loading huge rolls of paper on which Possum Notes is printed and the trucks—driven by unionized Teamster possums—await to bring it to your inboxes, Biden pulled ahead in Georgia, so maybe we’ll get to move out of this waiting period soon.
But hey, I have things I’m excited to write about next week. Priya and I took an absurd, ill-advised hike on Sunday that ended up being 14.8 miles and up several large hills, all just a few minutes from home in the Blue Hills. I had become fixated on the idea of following a challenging hike route within the metro area (i.e., not going to New Hampshire) and, well, I guess we succeeded at that goal. We learned some other lessons along the way, though. By “we,” I mostly mean me and my bad ideas. More on that shortly.
Some links if you’re able to read more than 100 word election updates at the moment:
Robin Wall Kimmerer has a stunning new interview with Janice Lee in Believer on other-than-human life as protagonists rather than scenery, what mosses teach us about interdependency, how to learn from the natural world without words, and gratitude. If not today, save it for this weekend.
“How We Discovered Water on the Moon”—I’m still grappling with understanding the science behind this, frankly, but there’s something revelatory here about studying a system we assume we know well and having it surprise us. This research team took another look at the moon while other scientists search for signs of water on exoplanets. It causes me to reflect on how many very common species of birds are not actually well-studied because there’s not seen to be a need to do so, despite the value and wonder of what we might find with a closer look. The story of the passenger pigeon, I think, teaches us the risks of ignoring the ecology of abundant species.
I realized I never shared this interview I did with Delia Cai for her incredible newsletter Deez Links. We covered science journalism, my approach to nature writing, and finding nearby sources of wonder during the pandemic. Thanks again, Delia!
Flower of the week: Little bluestem
If I’m honest, it’s more like seed of the week, but what is a seed if not the final form of a flower. But little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) rewards close attention this time of year. It began the growing season as blue-green stalks pushing out from the dead clump of last year’s growth, developed into a dense tuft of green and tan in the summer, and now in the fall transforms again into copper-red at the base and gold at its seed-heads—and a little remaining blue. The same pigment principles that give us color in broadleaf trees creates beautiful shades in grasses, too.
This spot I found little bluestem in was a bit of a mystery, actually, because I found it in a small park growing a foot over an introduced grass that matures in the cool season (something like fescue or Kentucky bluegrass). How did we end up with the little bluestem towering over the other grasses? I suspect the spot was mowed at some point in the summer, taking away the advantage that the cool-season grasses had in growing during the early spring, and allowing the little bluestem space to grow tall in the rest of the summer and autumn. Had the mowing happened earlier in the spring, the little bluestem would likely have been even taller at this point (this is why the recommendation is generally to carry out controlled burns or mowing of managed grasslands in the spring rather than summer or fall.)
It’s hard not for me to get sentimental about little bluestem, given its connections to grasslands in Nebraska and Iowa. I’m writing an essay working more of those feelings out, so I’ll spare your time here. While it’s most well-known for its role as part of mixed-grass prairies in the Great Plains, little bluestem is adapted to environments throughout North America except for parts of the west coast. There’s a variety that specializes in sand dune habitats on the Atlantic coast and Great Lakes. In eastern Missouri as well as eastern Massachusetts, two places where open habitats are scarce, I most often see it in glades up on hills where it’s safe from aggressive mowing and outcompetes many other species of grasses.
It feels like a plant that knows itself well, that finds its peculiar niche in almost every region—not in an aggressive way, but instead in a way that stabilizes the environment for other species to flourish nearby. Little bluestem, like moss, perhaps has something to say about living in a community.
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Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.