Friends of the Wildflower Garden
A web of present and past events
These short articles are written to highlight connections of the plants, history and lore of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with different time frames or outside connections. A web of intersections.
This month we mark the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act and look at what's listed as endangered. Plants respond to sound vibrations in unusually ways so, does talking to them work? Check out our articles about the research, notes by Eloise Butler on her plants responding to her voice and details about two of her plants.
This Month
The Endangered Species Act reaches the 50 year mark
The Endangered Species Act reaches the 50 year mark; some would say “50 years of controversy.” Will we ever reach the point where it is no longer needed? Many strive to do more to achieve that goal but the effort seems to butt heads with the ever increasing world population, the ever increasing annexation of land for habitation, domestic animals and foodstuffs for the world.
Habitat loss is the prime driver of species loss. Climate change will push it along faster but curtailing habitat loss - that is - the habitat not already overburdened with human and domestic animal activity - seems to be the only solution to the continued up-creep in endangered species counts. More than 1,600 species have been listed under the act by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 1973. Only about 90 have been removed due either to recovery or extinction.
This chart produced by Scientific American illustrates the total number of species in each category that are currently listed. Graphics by June Minju Kin and Brown Bird Design.
Keep in mind that there are vast numbers of insects, fungi and other small organisms that have come and gone but never even been named or studied.
This chart produced by Scientific American illustrates the addition rates over the last 50 Years. Graphics by June Minju Kin and Brown Bird Design.
We tend to measure our successes by size and appeal to the human population. Ask people to name the now less-endangered species in our area and you may hear about the wild turkey, the gray wolf, the bald eagle, the Canada goose and the trumpeter swan, but if you ask about endangered species you will seldom hear about the burrowing owl, the northern cricket frog, the Higgins eye, the Karner blue or goldenseal - just to choose one from each of several categories. Those smaller species, all part of the web of life, but less noticed, attract minor attention as we continue to allocate their habitat to our needs.
Legislation to provide for more habitat protection and habitat restoration, the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA) passed the U.S. House in 2022 but not the senate. It is stagnating since being re-introduced this past spring. The recent weakening of the 1989 North American Wetlands Conservation Act can be considered as another set-back to habitat.
There are numerous resources for you to tap to further your knowledge of this topic. Here is a link to the Minnesota DNR list of endangered, threatened and special concern species
Here is a link to the to get you started on the federal list.
Do Plants Hear?
Two people, separated by a century, whose names you know, thought so: Eloise Butler and Charles Mountbatten-Windsor.
Eloise wrote of several conversations she had with her plants in the Wildflower Garden. Two are quoted in our accompanying article.
Charles, now King Charles of the United Kingdom, was widely mocked when, in the 1980s, he spoke of talking to plants. I suppose many of us know of an aunt Felicite who talked to her violets or some similar family recollection, but there is an accumulating body of evidence that plants do hear and do react to sounds. Plants do not have ears, although botanists have termed some structures of the grains as “ears” as in “corn ears,” but there is plenty of evidence that plants detect sound.
Sound is vibration so we are not talking about voice or musical notes as such, but vibrations. Much of the scientific research has focused on plants reaction to stresses such as loud noises, incessant noise such as vehicle traffic, insect chewing noise, groundwater noise such as water running in pipes.
Plants in stress produce elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide and malondialdehyde (MDA - CH2(CHO)2). This has been measured in flowers grown next to busy roadways vs the same flower grown in quiet areas. Those same stressed plants produced lower levels of hormones that fend off insect attacks.
Caterpillars, chewing on leaves, make vibrations. The chewed plant produces some defensive chemicals to make the leaves less tasty. If adjacent plants have leaves touching the eaten plant, they too will begin to produce the chemicals.
It is ancient wisdom and modern day repair cost that plant roots, especially trees, are attracted to water pipes. Tests with pea family plants found that their roots moved toward the vibrations of moving water in underground pipes.
For more information on this, look up the research of Heidi Appel, University of Houston; Reginald Cocroft at the University of Missouri; Monica Gagliano of the University of Western Australia or Lilach Hadany of Tel Aviv University.
Next time - do plants speak? Surprising answers!
Eloise Butler gets results by talking to her plants
There is much humor in Eloise Butler’s writing and to accompany our other article this month on the ability of plants to hear, we present two of her humorous conversations with plants in her wildflower garden.
“Are you all familiar with Prairie Dock, Silphium terebinthinaceum, belonging to the same genus as the famous Compass Plant, S. laciniatum? A single specimen was given me nine years ago and I planted it near my office. Every season it sent up its large green banners, but nary a flower. I hesitated to change the plant to another situation because of its large root and lest I might lose it altogether. So this last spring I gave it a ‘good talking to’ and bought half a dozen more Prairie Dock and planted them elsewhere. To my astonishment the obstinate specimen sent up at once the tall stalk that burgeoned out into a number of sizable yellow flowers! I have had somewhat similar experiences. Does it mean that plants are sentient beings?”
from Annals of the Wildlife Reserve - 1932
“A specimen of Rubus odoratus, the beautiful flowering raspberry -- its large rose-colored flowers and maple-like leaves familiar to many under cultivation - was procured from cold Ontario but it died down to the ground every winter and was as effortless as the first Mrs. Dombey [ref to a Dickens character]. Last season it was piqued by jealousy to sprouting into a big bush which blossomed and blossomed, outdoing every plant of that kind I have ever seen. I merely planted around it a quantity of Rubus parviflorus, the salmonberry, saying ‘I am sure I shall like these as well. They have beautiful white flowers, leaves as fine as yours, Odoratus, and better tasting fruit of an unusual color.’ ”
From A collection of garden experiences. 1916 [R. parviflorus is also known as western thimbleberry.]
The two species of Rubus just mentioned are compared in our accompanying article.
Odoratus and Parviflorus compared
To accompany the comments of Eloise Butler in dealing with the Rubus plants, we make a comparison of her two adversaries.
Eloise got results when she planted Rubus parviflorus, the salmonberry, also known as western thimbleberry. It is native to parts of Minnesota. The other rubus, Rubus odoratus, the purple flowering raspberry, is native to eastern North America, not here but both species will grow here in the right habitat, although Eloise had to first make an ultimatum.
Both species have long, usually sprawling stems, without prickles and large leaves resembling glorified maple leaves. Both plants form thickets. Flower stalks and flower calyxes are dense with glandular hair. The flowers have five petals and resemble a wild rose but differ in color - purplish red on odoratus and white on parviflorus. The fruits of both are domed structures of drupelets resembling other raspberries, but larger.
Eloise notes in her story how she acquired her odoratus. As she had not yet retired from teaching, she spent part of the summer on the east coast with her sister Cora. On her return train trip to Minneapolis, via the northern route through Canada, there was a train wreck in the wilds of Ontario near the town of Mackey. As a confirmed plant gatherer, Eloise found the wait for repairs rewarding in that she located and brought home plants for the Garden.
More details and photos - Rubus Odoratus.
More details and photos - Rubus parviflorus.
How Rubus parviflorus acquired its name is a story in itself.
Rubus parviflorus was named by Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859) English botanist who lived and worked in America from 1808 to 1841. Nuttall discovered this plant in 1810 while at the rendezvous for trappers and voyageurs of the Astor North American Fur Company at Michilimackinac. [A post, originally French, at the Straits of Mackinac. Some of your authors ancestors who were French voyageurs frequently made trips there in the 1700s from Montreal.] Our well known American author Washington Irving, who was also there, wrote "Here voyageurs frolicked away their wages, fiddling and dancing, parading up and down like arrant braggarts and coxcombs. They feast, they drink, they frolic and fight until they are all as mad as so many drunken Indians." While they were doing this, Nuttall found Rubus parviflorus. Nuttall was on a collecting expedition for Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton of the University of Pennsylvania and had arrived here by hitching a ride with the party (which included Irving) of the surveyor general of the new Michigan Territory after Nuttal's own transportation plans failed. [One of many interesting notes contained in Joseph Kastner's A Species of Eternity, Alfred Knoff, New York, 1977.]
Photo Note
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Previous articles
September 2023 - Friends Annual Meeting
September 2023 - The Wildflower Garden in October
September 2023 - Fall Gardening for Bees
September 2023 - The Wildflower Garden Perimeter Changes
August 2023 - School Classes in the Garden
August 2023 - The Wildflower Garden in September
August 2023 - Beneficial Wasps
August 2023 - Black Saddlebags
August 2013 - American Lotus in the Garden
July 2023 - Friends Annual Meeting Guest Speaker
July 2023 - The Wildflower Garden in August
July 2023 - The story behind the name - Riddell's Goldenrod
July 2023 - Fruit for rooters
July 2023 - Happenstance at the welcome kiosk - A woman walks by . . .
June 2023 - Kids Visits to the Garden Need Support
June 2023 - The Wildflower Garden in July
All selections published in 2023