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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2017)
1C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2017 CONTACT US Laura Sellers | Weekend Editor lsellers@dailyastorian.com WEEKEND BREAK FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian Coping with migrants on the move The plant world’s annual race begins By MATT WINTERS EO Media Group I f dandelions were hard to grow, we’d pay $2.49 for a slender package of seeds and hold festivals in their honor. There’s often a fi ne line between what we defi ne as a weed or esteem as a pretty little fl ower. This distinction is front of mind this time of year as the plant world’s annual race begins for real, everything busting out into bud and bloom over the next few weeks. W riter’s N otebook It would take a lot of willpower to pull off with a straight face, but we just might get away with redefi ning our luxuriant stands of gorse and S cotch broom as a tourist attrac- tion. Clear your mind of prejudice and it’s hard to deny these obnoxious invasive spe- cies are spectacular. There must few species anywhere capable of erupting into such solid walls of blossoms — usually a saturated yel- low, but in the case of S cotch broom some- times edging into copper, orange or nearly white. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were the result of a laborious roadside beautifi cation campaign. From our house overlooking the larger Sand Island in Baker Bay, my antiquated Gardner & Co. Glascow telescope makes the island’s outer edges look encircled by an enchanted golden wall, impenetrable by mortal man and woman. In this region, stands of gorse — cou- pled with blackberry vines and wild roses — are our bria r patches. As in the Old South, where Br’er Rabbit tricked the fox into throwing him into the bria r patch and thus provide a means of escape, our local thorn thickets shelter feral bunnies and much other wildlife. Humans don’t like being told where we can’t go; maybe this helps explain our enmity to these havens built from fl owers and wicked stickers. Blogger Green Deane recounts the story of an Englishman who woke up in the mid- dle of a gorse patch after a drunken night on the town. He was stuck there more than a day. “I wouldn’t advise anybody to go into it ( gorse bushes) , you know what I mean? At fi rst it seems fun but, before you know it, you’re like stuck,” he told the BBC after his rescue by a British Royal Air Force helicop- ter. “Whichever way I turned it seemed to be the wrong one that day.” One of his rescuers said, “We’ve no idea how he got there. He was right in the middle of the gorse. It was like he had been dropped there by a space- ship …” Gorse isn’t all bad. Both it and S cotch broom have some interesting medicinal qualities. From a pragmatic standpoint, gorse might be the more useful plant. Deane (tinyurl.com/Useful-Gorse) claims it is everything from a fl ea repellent to a wine ingredient to cattle fodder, once its spines are crushed. Gorse blossoms “have a slight coconut aroma and almond taste,” he said, an opinion I am unable to share after trying some earlier this week. Scotch broom, while lacking thorns, seems more often to endanger people. Its seed pods resemble those of peas, which tempts children and livestock into eat- ing them. A Canadian government website advises, “Scotch broom poisoning results in depressed heart and nervous systems and a consequent sensation of numbness, espe- cially in the feet and hands. In particularly susceptible persons, death can occur from respiratory failure.” Both broom and gorse form dense mono- cultures, crowding out native species. By being good at converting atmospheric nitro- gen into a mineral form accessible to plants, they enhance soil fertility. Ironically, this tends to be bad for native plants, which evolved to grow in poor soils. Natives and invaders I’m always on the look out for col- umn-worthy plants and animals, but out of ignorance often can’t tell what is truly weird. Fortunately, p eninsula renaissance woman Kathleen Sayce is never more than an email away to answer questions. For several years, I’ve been curious about a plant whose green shoots begin to poke through the surface as early as Janu- ary or February. Sending Sayce a snapshot, I learned it is the native species “sweet colts- foot, Petasites frigidus ssp. palmatus, a very early fl owering daisy. There are patches of it in the forest throughout our area. Import- ant early nectar source for many insect spe- cies.” Investigating further, Wikipedia claims, “The leaf stalks and fl ower stems (with fl owers) are edible, and can be used as Kathleen Sayce Gorse has sharp long spines and highly resinous wood; it burns easily, provides nectar for late winter to early spring foraging bees, and habitat for wasps. and African grain fi elds. One of its folk names is Rapunzel. For reasons too obscure to explain, this may be the origin of the Bothers Grimm tale of the same name. Sayce found it fl owering for a time near the Cape Disappointment boat launch. On another occasion, she found a hardy yucca — a desert plant — in the dunes along Discovery Trail near Beard’s Hollow in Cape Disappoint- ment State Park. She said it “was quickly identifi ed as having come in on a high storm tide with woody and plastic debris. Someone likely tossed it in the Columbia River well upstream, and it fl oated down and on to the ocean beach, was tossed up into the dunes and rooted there. I dug it out, of course.” Weird plants trying to carve out new hab- itats here — sometimes with human aid — aren’t a new thing. Some of the witchy-look- ing old apple trees around Chinook and McGowan are said to date from nearly two centuries ago. On the Oregon side, Sayce noted “Point Adams is an interesting area because there was housing for offi cers (with gardens) when it was fi rst taken over as a military fort. There are some very interest- ing trees, shrubs and perennials that have survived from those original plantings. Rem- nant orchards. Also bulbs.” The Russians are here Matt Winters /EO Media Group Sweet coltsfoot, a native species, is one of spring’s early bloomers, providing nourish- ment to many insects. Native Americans sometimes used a tea made from the plant to combat respiratory ailments. National Park Service Brown rats on the West Coast are all de- scended from migrants that are believed to have arrived with early Russian fur traders. Now dominating their habitat, they fight off all rat newcomers. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration A species from the high Arctic, a ribbon seal, was photographed last year near Surfside, Washington. How we choose to adapt, accommodate, manage or resist migrations of all kinds will be the defi ning theme of this century, and likely of many more to come. a vegetable dish. A salt-substitute can also be made by drying and then burning the leaves. This black, powdery substance will pro- vide a salty taste.” Northwest plants gurus Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon observed coltsfoot tea was used by some Indians as a treatment for respiratory ailments including tuberculosis. Walking years ago along the Altoona shoreline across the estuary northeast of Astoria, I encountered a fl owering plant which — like the drunken Englishman in the gorse patch — seemed to have been dropped from a spaceship. It was like noth- ing I’ve ever seen before or since. But even this experience is, in turns out, not uncom- mon. We live on the wild frontier when it comes to invaders. “On the Columbia River, we fi nd new species all the time due to shipping,” Sayce told me. “This makes identifi cation tough, because of not knowing where in the world to look for likely species. ( Local bota- nist) Cathy Maxwell has probably found more than 20 new species here over sev- eral decades. I also found a Eurasian wheat- grass on the Willapa River about fi ve years ago, Thinopyrum ponticum, tall wheatgrass, very salt tolerant, and widely planted in the Midwest because it can stand up to win- ter road salt on the verges. We have many, many incoming species here … And more are coming in all the time, from ships, tires, feet, pets, etc.” It seems it would possible to organize a scientifi c “scavenger hunt” here to look for plants badly out of place. Among others, Sayce has found Valerianella locusta, com- monly called corn salad, a leafy food plant that usually grows mixed in with Eurasian Plants aren’t the only unauthorized immi- grants and refugees here on the Columbia River and West Coast. All our local rats are, most likely, originally from Russia. One of my favorite science stories (tinyurl.com/Rat-Colonists) of the past half year was written by Carl Zimmer of the New York Times. In it, he describes a novel genet- ics study of brown rats, Rattus norvegicus, looking not just at how these intrepid explor- ers swept across the planet in the past 300 years, but also at how their behavior may actually protect us today. Although sometimes called Norway rats, researchers found the species probably orig- inated very long ago in what are now Mon- golia and northern China. Different waves of rat migrants eventually ventured into the outside world, these distinct migrations leav- ing unique genetic traces within the overall brown rat population. There were, for exam- ple, apparently three major arrivals of brown rats in Europe. Other exploring parties col- onized Siberia and other places, fi rst slowly and then swiftly dominating other common rodent species like black rats and house mice. “Brown rats in Alaska and along the Pacifi c Coast of the United States and Can- ada can trace much of their ancestry to Rus- sia,” researchers found, according to Zim- mer. “Their ancestors may have stowed away aboard ships that traveled to fur-trap- ping communities in the New World in the 1700s and early 1800s. … The brown rats of New York and other e astern American cit- ies trace their ancestry to those in Western Europe. So do brown rats in South America, Africa, New Zealand, and isolated islands scattered across the Atlantic and Pacifi c.” The really interesting thing is brown rats, once established, are about as anti-immi- grant as it gets. Despite all the international and interstate shipping now, rat populations show “very little evidence” of newcomers adding to the existing rat gene pool in cit- ies worldwide. “The researchers now theorize that the fi rst brown rats to show up in a city rapidly fi ll it up,” Zimmer reported. “Later, when bedraggled latecomers tumble out of ships in the city’s ports, the stronger residents rebuff them.” This may mean the olden days may never be repeated when rats are thought to have been culprits responsible for delivering ter- rifying new diseases like the black plague to seaside cities. We have angry armies of xenophobic rats defending their homes and ours. Accommodate or resist The world still can seem very large when you’re on an airliner for 12 hours to Europe or 22 to Singapore. In other ways, it’s never been smaller, either when it some to novel species disembarking at the Columbia River estuary, or people setting out from impov- erished and war-torn countries in hopes of sanctuary. Earth’s changing climate is dislodg- ing many organisms from old homes. Liv- ing here, it seems every year brings news of strange sightings of birds, fi sh, marine mam- mals and terrestrial plants popping up far beyond their accustomed ranges. Exciting as it is to spot things like Arc- tic ribbon seals, it also is worrisome. Like a comet passing through the asteroid belt and discombobulating giant space rocks that might plummet to earth, disruption of animal and human habitats will have impacts. How we choose to adapt, accommodate, manage or resist migrations of all kinds will be the defi ning theme of this century, and likely of many more to come. Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the Chinook Observer and Coast River Busi- ness Journal.