‘>
Fico Relate kere] oY=
»
From the Library
of Wiliam A. Niering
a 8
CONNECTICUT COLLEGE LIBRARY
The Wild Gardener in
The Wild Landscape
Morning mist on the lake as seen thru white pine, on the property of the photographer. The foreground has been herbicide-cleaned.
Memorial Edition of
The Wild Gardener in
The Wild Landscape The Art of Naturalistic Landscaping
by WARREN G., KENFIELD
Photography by Happy Kiichel Hamilton, FRPS, APSA
Published by
Connecticut College Arboretum New London, Connecticut 1994
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Charts and plans drawn by Harry E. Van Deusen.
Drawing, page xii, by Lewis Browne, from the World’s Great Scriptures, by Lewis Browne, courtesy of the Macmillan Co., New York, NY.
Two 19th century woodblock prints, pages 6 and 7, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Line drawings of individual flowers, from the New Britton and Brown Illustrated Flora of the Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada, by Henry A. Gleason, 2nd ed., 1963, Hafner Publishing, reproduced with the permission of The New York Botanical Garden.
Biographical sketch of the author by Kathryn Whitford, Depart-
ment of English, University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee.
Definitions throughout the text from Contributions to a Glossary of Terms as used in Vegetation Science and Vegetation Management, a manuscript by Ambrose Q. Bierce, 1965.
Memorial Edition Copyright © 1989 Frank E. Egler
Copyright © 1966
by Hafner Publishing Company, Inc.; copyright transferred to Frank E. Egler
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-81833
ISBN: 1-878899-00-7
Published by Connecticut College Arboretum New London, Connecticut 06320-4196
In gratitude tO those friends without whose en- -couragement this present work would never have been completed. In the words of Josef Haydn (1732-1809), in a letter to a musical community written under remotely analogous circumstances,
You gave me the pleasant conviction . . . that I ... [may be] the enviable source from which you and so many ... [may] derive pleasure and en- joyment ... What happiness does this cause me! Often, when contending with obstacles of every sort... a secret feeling within me whispered “There are but few contented and happy men here below; everywhere, grief and care prevail; perhaps your labors may one day be the source from which the weary and worn, or the man bur- dened with affairs may derive a few moments of rest and refreshment.” What a powerful motive for pressing onward.
The marble not yet carved can hold the form Of every thought the greatest artist has And no conception ever comes to pass Unless the hand obeys the intellect. MICHELANGELO— 1475-1564.
from Sonnet XV, translated by Elizabeth Jennings.
PREFACE
DO YOU HAVE ONE OR SEVERAL ACRES in the suburbs? Or are you an exurbanite, with a second home on a tract of forest land? Are you plagued with lawn-mowing and weeding? Are you worried at the way “brush”’ is filling up your old fields, destroying your views? If so, then this book may be for you.
Watch out, though! Are you the tidy meticulous gardener, who cannot bear to see an autumn leaf on an immaculate lawn? Or a johnny-jump-up in the fresh spring earth of the asparagus bed? Do you walk thru the woods, compelled to clean up the dead branches and logs, never noticing the mosses and lichens upon them? Are you unhappy until you have removed the dead hollow tree, home of young raccoons, one branch with a woodpecker hole, and with its crown silhouetted against the sky, perfect perches for the mating swallows? Then do not waste your money on this book. It is not meant for the “pure” among gardeners, landscapers, and botanists. Go back to your little garden and lawn, chained like blinded Sam- son to a treadmill. My manicured garden and lawn get smaller each year. Someday soon I shall be entirely a free man. But even if you do not intend to be entirely free—your neighbors and your status will probably demand a bit of lawn; and beds of pansies and roses have true virtues, I know. Cast your sights to the farthest slope, and mold the botanical landscape as your fancy chooses.
It might almost be said that there are no other books on the sub- ject I am here discussing. Yes, there are many books on “wild flower gardens,” “‘growing wild plants” and “wild gardening.” But these all bear more in common with treatises on the care of polar bears and jungle peacocks in city zoos. (One does keep the poor things alive, at an extraordinary expenditure of time and energy, in anything but a natural environment.) One notable exception: W. Robinson’s British-based THE WILD GARDEN, which reached a fourth edition in 1894, a logical forebear of this book, tho I dis- covered it only a few years ago.
1945; the end of World War II; discontented at being a success in other eyes but not mine, I retired to an abandoned farm. It is still “abandoned” in the eyes of some. Now, after 21 years of joyful research and labor, involving more laziness than labor, I pass on to you some of the things I have learned. For a bit of labor, may you too enjoy your laziness. Laziness, in the form of appreciative lei- Sure, can be among the noblest of human activities.
Vii
PREFACE TO THE MEMORIAL EDITION
It has been over two decades since The Wild Gardener in The Wild Landscape was first published by Hafner, then a respected publisher of scientific works, located amongst others north of Washington Square, New York City. The volume was favorably received, was a popular item at all Hafner book fairs, received favorable reviews within the field, and never started any controversy—even amongst the rabid anti-all-chemical cults of the Organic Gardening extremists.
The Wild Gardener 1966 had a relatively short life because of the vagaries of the publishing world. Hafner was swallowed by Macmillan. Mac- millan moved to Darien, Connecticut, dropping most of its old-time employees in the process. Then Macmillan moved back to New York, with other changes of personnel, and finally dropped the “Hafner Division.” Sales of the book (unpromoted by any suitable division of Macmillan, and under pressure from its owning conglomerate), were found “unprofitable” A German publisher (actually the one who held the original publishing contract, but who failed to grasp the author's careful “design” of chapters and pages, who had already set up the page proof, and who then sold the contract to their New York representative Hafner, provided “birth defects” still seen); that German publisher wanted to buy the unbound Macmillan warehouse material. According to the laws, Macmillan could make more “profit” by trashing the book than by selling it. Incidentally, author Kenfield was never told about these matters, and was not given an opportunity to buy copies for himself. The book was trashed.
In one respect only, the Memorial Edition expresses a major change. All references to the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (referred to here as “D- T” or “D and T”) have been deleted, altho the emphasis on herbicides- used-wisely remains. In 1949 when Egler gave his first lecture to industry on Rightofway Vegetation Management (actually to the Connecticut Tree Protective Association who had moved into the Tree Destruction Field— good business), which was published as his item 1949-1, he was put under considerable pressure by the how-to-do-it methodologist-mentalities to name chemicals, concentrations, amounts, equipment. He flatly refused. By 1966, D-T had been “in” for over twenty years; there was nothing else “in the wind, Altho he found D and T weak on root-kill of a few critical tree- weeds, Kenfield succumbed, and so advised the public. Besides, the public opposition was shrieking about the herbicides being “poisons” (but sugar and salt can kill babies). We felt it necessary to defuse the word “poisons.” In this Memorial Edition we adhere to the original idea: methodologies are meant for morons; mind is major.
Vill
Professionally, there are no great critical changes in the Memorial Edition. It is essentially a facsimile with certain additions, while maintaining the original pagination. The illustrations by my wife have been remade from her original colored prints. (As Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (England) and as Associate of the Photographic Society of America, she submitted colored photos worldwide in “Nature” and “Color” categories, amassing awards until she had gained her “Diamond Star, the highest honor available.) No technical or professional errors have been found in the 1966 book that demand updating or correction. Commercial herbicides properly used to affect root-kill, with little or no kill on adjacent and contiguous desired plants—along with physical means such as ringing and sawing— remain the methodologic backbone of Kenfield’s original wildness. We should all remember, with respect to herbicides, that other plants and many animals have manufactured their own herbicides for eons. Uses of many of our spices and herbs evolved for such purposes (and may be poisonous to us also, as can be things like drugs, alcohol, nicotine and anaesthetics). Remember the ants (Formicidae). They are particularly astute in injecting formic acid, to massacre plants that would otherwise shade out their anthills.
There has been in the last two decades, a surge of new books in the fields called “Wild Gardening” and “Naturalistic Landscaping” designed as much for large estate owners, as for the suburban lot owners who do not want lawns. (We need a book for the no-lawn crowd, to describe their vicissitudes with irate neighbors and regulatory boards.) To each new such book, I look with hope. They are all, alas, by gardeners, nurserymen, landscapers, a breed and race of their own—I do like them—who bulldoze, plant, and play nursemaids to their delicate offspring. Kenfield’s contribution to his attempts at miscegenation of gardeners and ecologists—first conceived in the late 1930’s—is a virile hybrid, with the esthetic sense of the high-cost artificial landscaper, bedded with the low-cost scientific sense of the naturalist, i.e., he is the bastard who wants to let nature operate as she wants, with the least possible effort on his part for what he wants.
In the preparation of this Memorial Edition, I remain deeply indebted to the moral and professional encouragement of many friends, especially: John P. Anderson Jr., Vice-President and Secretary of Aton Forest Inc., and creator of MOW-NO-MOFE, a no-lawn landscaping program; Glenn D. Dreyer, Director of the Connecticut College Arboretum, New London, who updated the Bibliography (pp. 223a and 223b); Michael Wm. Lefor, Dept. of Geography, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs; William A. Niering, Research Director, Connecticut College Arboretum, New London, and Elaine Venti, EC Graphics, Vernon, Connecticut.
Frank E. Egler March, 1990
TO
the ecologist,
whose brains I have picked so unmercifully that he has asked to remain unnamed.
Table of Contents
weno ae hike 2 RRR RES PR eBREeRREME aes ee eoeEe Vv PIES epee dchas hr ot KTS TERS ORE ROHS ER Ne ekatoncenmibrend ban dte vii Preface to the Memorial Edition. coccnccasicccactawweanewereeueeeus viii "Tkble cE CIO, ni voce pede ee owned cio eta twmammnmnees FEROEGS xi UCR, 2 se naias 66 12-1 4A AUR EE REET SY 17 PO enna eke ae xiii
Prologue. Five Modes of Landscape Appreciation. ..............0e005. 1 I. The Wilderness as a Landscape ...............45. 3 Ih. “The Boral Lape ona pene neon amends 850845 4
Ill. The Herbicide-Sculptured Landscape
COGS OT AES BOGE ce enc canine nnamemaba bes saan 5 IV. The Occidental Landscape Garden ............... 6 V. The Oriental Landscape Garden ................. 7 Perspectives. Revolution in Land-Use. Horticulture; The Gardening Addict, The Lawn, The Hardy Flower. Plant Ecology: The Ecology Devotee, Vegetation Managment, Naturalistic Landscaping. Botany: Physiognomic Vegetation Types, Life History of a Plant, “Tools” of Management. ............ 9 Part I. INTAGLIO. The Art of Eliminating Plants ............. 35 Fienning the Landscape os1ccanceancavervaseanws 38 Kinds of Elimination Techniques ...............5. 48 ihwee Special Sinsatons «cn ccccecnenee re civeuwes 71 Part Il. MAINTENANCE. The Art of Perpetuating the Landscape ............02000- 77 Vegetation Development .ciscaccvwsasctsstsauens i? Behavior of Communities cascucasonrstesisesenne 87 Behavidd Gf SPeeigs 2. cc ccennesepers sy cyssewewen 90 Maintenance Procedures ... 04000000. scceseacaues 95 Part IIl. EMBELLISHMENT. The Art of Adding and Pie FIR kkk kee ee weenanenes ssa caveens 100 The Art ot Adding Plants .cccsccusssxnssesneeunr 102 The Are of Aiding Plants 2... .000c00cssnenacexce 108 Naturalization Notes. Systematic List of Herbaceous Plants, together with certain critical species, suitable for northeastern United States, and Siedler (atts Of The WEE. cscs svuscerensaveaseeeespenurens 119 PRS sb heieerne ese can nesdt wae beres cenkseeaeenuncaenntis Lid DOGG 8S FGA accconds cy ds ha(awwnveweasudncacneackemewnsinweet 224 Bporsivent SUP encase sdedky Kes es aeene Rennes se Soe EwRENRE RES) 231
X1
End papers:
Frontispiece:
Facing page 38
+?
”?
38 39 39
40 41 41 42 43 80 81 82 83 84 85
130
131
150
Lng 158 159 164 165 188 189 S18
213
Illustrations
Old-field junipers at the summit of a managed grassland Morning mist on the lake (colour)
Plan for an open grassland
Plan for a grassland spotted with isolated shrubs
Plan tor a grassland with highly irregular margin
Plan for a grassland of curving trails set amongst shrubs
Wild plums on a roadside Plan for grassland “‘lakes” set amongst shrubs Plan for a trail system
Variation in 20-year old junipers, set in grassland
A rural forested roadside in winter (colour) Vegetation development: change in physiognomy Vegetation development: floristic relays
Vegetation development: initial floristic composition Vegetation development: relays plus initial composition Vegetation development: before and after intaglio
A white pine stand before herbicide management, and one year after
A fountain of Big Bluestem grass The flush of pink in an Agrostis grassland (colour)
‘Three slender virgins, hair-do en bouffant’’—an ar- rangement (colour)
A sweep of daffodils in early spring (colour)
Japanese iris in a grassland, over a century old (colour) Further variation in junipers, set in a grassland
A giant dead chestnut at a turn of the trail
Beauty in death, a near view of the chestnut
Paper birch and laurel at the forest edge (colour) Fragrant pink azalea at the forest edge (colour)
A colony of Tall Goldenrod, spruce in background
Junipers and low blueberries in a grassland (colour)
Xili
PROLOGUE Five Modes of LANDSCAPE APPRECIATION
There are very few people in this world who are willing to spend their entire existence imbedded in the steel, aluminum, glass, plastic and concrete of the haunts of man. Most of us feel some deep-seated and unexplainable urge to “‘return to nature,” there to revive our spirits in peace and tranquility, in an emotional and esthetic experience that may transcend any obvious understanding. “Nature” can mean many things to many people. To some, it will mean a landscape untouched and unmarred by man. To others, it will mean a landscape idealized and symbolized. A person may be deeply and profoundly moved by one, but not by the other. Yet no man should pass final judgment, should overly praise or deride, that which another holds most holy. And thus, in this prologue, we will take a quick view of five different modes of landscape appre- ciation. It is only the middle one, the third, which forms the sub- ject matter elaborated in this volume. You may or may not find that this third mode creates a deep and satisfying experience. If not, I hope you have found your metier in one of the other four. Give them all a trial. You are poor indeed if the artificiality of man entirely encompasses your micro-environment.
|
Mode I THE WILDERNESS AS A LANDSCAPE
The wilderness was once the enemy of man. As man has beaten back the jungle, as the wild beasts have been vanquished, as the frontier advances, he no longer fears the unknown. For the first time in human history, we gaze upon the wilderness in contempla- tive security. What little is left we are beginning to cherish. And well we should. Unlike all other types of landscape, man can destroy the wilderness, but he cannot create it.
The wilderness is a landscape essentially free from all the effects of man. This is more or less a theoretical definition. There are relatively few parts of the world that do not know the insidious effects of the hand of man. Even in areas with no agriculture, an- cient man selected certain trees for his firewood, and certain roots and fruits for his food, and may have markedly reduced or eli- minated these species. Civilizations have come and gone on areas that now seem to be wilderness. One small tribe could start grass and forest fires that could change the landscape for many square miles. Be history as it may, the spirit of the wilderness starts to reenter where the effects of man are not obvious.
The wilderness takes a huge frame. A hundred thousand acres is none too much. An entire mountain range. An unfettered river from source to ocean. The whole of a lake from the deepest bottom to the fullest width of its shores. A view as far as the eye can reach. And solitude.
Solitude? He who loves the wilderness is never less alone than when alone. He is a conscious discerning being, a humble spectator of all the glories of creation, and of their integration into the system which is this Earth: of sky and sea, of climate and soil, of plants and animals. I know of no other mode of landscape appreciation in which it can be said that the greater our knowledge, the more pro- found our appreciation. A meandering river, an electrical storm, an upturned mountain cuesta, a flock of flamingoes against an azure sea and sky, a rainbow or an orchid—all may be moving experiences to children. Only those acquainted with the natural sciences inter- preting these phenomena however, realize that with such knowledge they attain to intensities of appreciation anne beyond the ken even of their imagination.
Mode II THE RURAL LANDSCAPE
Unless you are one of those hardy souls able to go off on camping trips in wild rugged mountains or far into extensive swamps, the probability is that “nature” to you does not mean wilderness, but lands in which agriculture is, or has recently been, the dominant factor. This, to the city man, is “country.”
The placidity of the farmer’s landscape with its straight rows of bright green crops and its herds of contented cows has long been idealized by the urban dweller. French royalty once played at being shepherds and shepherdesses, and the poetry and art of that time amply reflects this innocent but unrealistic game. However, even as the wild animals of the forest lead lives in which the species sur- vives, but the life and happiness of the individual are passing in- cidents, so too the farmer’s crops and animals have always been at the mercy of floods and drought, insects and disease—and marau- ding tribesmen, replaced in later years by absentee landlords.
There are magnificent beauties to the rural landscape. The terr- aced rice fields of the Orient are unparalleled in the world of art. Even the shifting agriculture of native tribes, tho unquestionably an unwise land use, creates pleasing and intellectually interesting variations in the landscape. In this type of agriculture, the native fells and burns the original forest. Among the stumps and ashes, he pokes his crop plants. Then, as the ash fertility is leached out by tropical downpours, and as uncontrollable weeds take over, he moves on, to fell another stretch of forest. Under more advanced agricultural techniques we are treated to broad open stretches and distant views that would otherwise be closed with forest. We have the tilled cleanliness of crop lands. Pastures can be areas of superb beauty, for while cattle produce a fine sward on the spots they trample and graze, other plants they will not touch. These un- touchables are often bright wild flowers, handsome shrubs like laurel and juniper, or magnificent conifers like cedar and pine. A pastured landscape is an unintentional work of art.
Mode III THE HERBICIDE-SCULPTURED LANDSCAPE*
If you do not have the flying capacities of a condor, and a 100,000 acte wilderness to enjoy, if you do not have cattle and till the land and a horse with which to ride around your farming domain, you may still be lucky enough to own a few acres, maybe even Io or 100 acres. Now “wilderness” has its place, but when your abandoned farm land becomes entirely and homogeneously covered with im- passable and impossible brush, you have a problem. You cannot farm it. You cannot garden it. A bit of brush may be nice, but you do not want to drown in an ocean of it.
Herbicides to the rescue! This magnificent tool—even tho over- sold by the hucksters of Madison Avenue, capital of the advertising world, and overused by utility and highway engineers and others— can become superbly powerful. It will allow you to work with nature, not against her. It will allow you to carve out, carefully to excise, what you do not want. The view-hiding thicket, the poison- ous ivy, the rank weeds, will vanish. In their places will emerge the landscape that you yourself choose to sculpture, waving grasslands dotted with bright flowers, backed by curving borders of shrubs, surrounded by a varied forest of boldly contoured evergreen and hardwood trees. Perhaps also you can ornament these natural plant- communities with a few bright gems, special plants chosen from far-off lands, or even hybrids that always could have existed but never did until man brought the parents together. Such hardy plants, judiciously used, will “belong” to your natural landscape just as completely as if a wild bird had dropped the seeds and nature had raised the seedling.
The herbicide-sculptured landscape is the subject of this book.
*Herbicides need not be the “poisons” that some uninformed people think them. All substances, even the pure chemicals sugar and salt, are poisons in undue quanti- ties. The safely tested herbicides are non-poisonous to animal life and man as here suggested. Applied discriminately, they only rootkill the plants they touch. Then the chemical is utilized as food by soil bacteria, and is bound to soil particles.
Mode IV
THE OCCIDENTAL
LANDSCAPE GARDEN
An appreciation of the wilderness (I) requires observation and comprehension, but not manipulation, of nature. Appreciation of the rural landscape (II) depends on the manipulation, often labor- ious, of someone else—the farmer. Appreciation of the herbicide- sculptured landscape (III) is related to the “triggering” of changes in natural processes, such as by the elimination of certain plant species. When we move on to the consideration of the Landscape Garden, we enter an entirely different world. ‘““Gardening”’ can be defined as the art or culture of growing plants, individual plants, under optimum conditions for their finest growth. Gardening in- volves the growing of potted plants in the home, of plants in the conservatory, of lawns and shrubbery around one’s suburban lawn, of the geometrically formal gardens of our city parks, of our large estates, and originally of royalty, as at Versailles. The professional gardener is a very different kind of individual from one who seeks the wilderness. That is evident even from the illustrations of authors themselves as they appear on the dust jackets of their books. They ate antipodal in several respects, each to be admired for what he is, not for what he is not. The wilderness man accepts nature. The gardener improves on nature—until it is beautiful but unnatural. Like a striking woman prepared for presentation to the Queen: one wilted flower in her corsage is as intolerable and unforgivable as a fallen flower on a bed of roses.
The Landscape Garden is a garden first, and a landscape second, even tho gardeners may call it “naturalistic landscaping”’ (not the Naturalistic Landscaping in the title of this book). The highly cultivated plants are arranged in pleasing landscape effects. Hills are utilized. Ponds, streams and rocky outcrops are worked into the scene. The effect is indubitably a landscape, a beautiful landscape, a completely unnatural landscape, and one that requires an enor- mous amount of time and energy to keep in condition.
Landscape Gardening has progressed along two quite dissimilar lines in the Occident and the Orient. The Occidental Landscape Garden has several historical threads. It is an outgrowth in part of the private hunting preserves of the aristocracy. It received tre- mendous impetus in the days of Romanticism, when ruins were created de novo to give that wild and ancient look. Ideals of shep- herds and shepherdesses played their part, and grazing sheep. Occidental Landscape Gardening is still a living art, as is evident from the spacious lawns and tended shrubbery of our large Western city parks. Possibly the finest and most recent examples are the post-World War II gardens in the Royal Park at Windsor, England. Maximum advantage has been taken here of the natural terrain, with its streams, lakes, rocks and hills. Species of plants have been introduced from all over the world in absolutely bewildering variety. They are tended with extraordinary care. Water is piped to all parts; pruning and fertilizing are done seasonally. All these plants are arranged around lawns and grassy trails in pleasing effects of flower borders, shrubbery masses and background forest. Occiden- tal Landscape Gardening is a profession and an art. Lesser mortals may aspire, but even if one has the knowledge, one may have neither the time nor the money for such elaborate indulgences.
Mode V
THE ORIENTAL
LANDSCAPE GARDEN
Quality and quantity more vast than an ocean separates the landscape garden of the Occident from that of the Orient. The Oriental Landscape Garden, receiving possibly its finest flowering in Japan, is an exquisite work of art, one of the noblest contributions of any race to human culture. One should “‘listen” to a Japanese garden as one listens to the intimacy of a string quartet from the decades near 1800. It has no relation to the brass combos of the 20th century.
The Japanese Landscape Garden is by no means a large wilder- ness. It is a small, sometimes exceptionally small, area, completely “artificial,”’ but representing a most extraordinary perceptiveness and sensitivity to the characteristics of a wild landscape. These characteristics are both idealized in the sense of materializing their most important aspects, and symbolized in the sense of relating those aspects to matters of human significance. It is this combination of idealization and symbolization which is unique to this school of gardening.
The Japanese Garden has had a long history. It was already developed 13 centuries ago, when the West still thought that a garden was a matter of growing things in pots, or in straight rows outdoors—if gardeners were that advanced. Since then, minor changes in style have come and gone, but the basic principles of the oriental garden remain much the same.
One will take a diminutive area, what we would call a back yard perhaps, with a rumbling street car nearby, and electric power lines in view. Topography is important. If the area is flat, it may soon cease to be. Valleys are dug, even 20 to 30 feet deep. Hills are made, perhaps symbolic of Mount Fujiyama.
Water is introduced. It plays a most important role in the land- scape, as ponds, as streams, as waterfalls. Where else in the world would one so plan a stream that scattering petals from an unseen plum tree are observed from a guest-room window as they go floating past? Where else would the quantity and height of falling water be so gauged as to produce just the right tinkling pitch as heard in the home? Islands are built in the pond, often of such shapes as to symbolize the crane and the tortoise, the most long- lived of animals. Where water is not available, white sand or pebbles can be used, in representation of a water-formed landscape.
And stones. Stones are chosen with infinite care. In shape, size, color and texture, they become as important in a garden as the plants themselves. ‘They are moved from long distances, often from old gardens being dismantled. Individual shapes are symbolic; and their arrangement in small groups carries abstract meanings.
Then the plants are introduced into this idealized landscape of rock and water. Many of the plants come from other gardens, grown for decades into naturalistic yet symbolic forms.
The Japanese garden is a place of retreat for contemplative peace and meditation in a crowded world. It satisfies a yearning for wild nature, even while it re-creates that nature in a form that idealizes it, in symbols representative of our highest spiritual aspirations.
PERSPECTIVES REVOLUTION IN LAND-USE
The Home “Subdivision”
In these middle years of the twentieth century, many developing nations are witnessing a greater revolution in land-use than at any time in their previous history. Land-use patterns are now being formulated which may well set the stage for succeeding centuries.
Two separate factors are contributing to this change. One is the extraordinary explosion in population. With old people living to be older, and fewer dying in childhood, the human race is increasing like an agricultural weed, like maggots on dead meat. What happens when the meat is gone, does not worry the flies—or the optimists.
The second factor is the removal in many countries of the average family from the crowded conditions of walled city, of slum and tenement, to the expanses of his own home and grounds, with an enormous increase of acreage requirements per family. I am not sute I understand, psychologically, the reasons for some aspects of this second explosion. For example, in America, many an average sociable family is now isolated on some country road. He does not “see” the forest around him. He must commute long distances to work; she must drive long distances to shop and market; sonny must be driven long distances to school; repairs and maintenance of home and grounds add to the chores of life. Perhaps this was a tawdry attempt to emulate the privileged of a previous age, with their country estates. Perhaps our minds are manipulated and persuaded more than we think by the advertising hucksters of in- dustry. After all, homes, and all that is used in on and for them, are what raise our Standard of Living, and our Gross National Pro- duct. At the individual and at the social level, these are twin idols in America and places emulating America. As good Americans, it is expected that we of a “higher” civilization should worship such standards.
While the concrete and steel of the city proper expand, the periphery is generally lost to housing developments. Here the lots are measured in terms of tens of feet, and the architecture exhibits such a sameness that I marvel at the homing instinct that leads one to find his own nest late on a Saturday night. As remarkable in its way as the avian intelligence that leads a booby to its nest among the thousands that dot a guano-covered islet. Of these populations, we are not here concerned.
Farther afield from the urban loci, there is—as yet—more elbow room. The homes may be just as be-gadgeted and overly applianced. (For which reason, shares in the securities of modern corporations are among the soundest of financial investments.) The difference lies largely in the “grounds.”
On the one hand, we have an extension of the area of lawn, of manicured flower beds, and of clipped hedges. The area in this type of land-use is often correlated indirectly with the ages of the own- ers: the younger the age, the more such land.
On the other hand—like an ogre in the offing, forever ready to encroach when one’s back is turned—lies “‘waste land,” “‘brush.”’ Here were the lawns, kept mowed when you were younger, the ornamental shrubs planted by your predecessor who could afford several gardeners.
This book is meant for those to whom fate or fortune—or misfortune—has given a tract of land of greater size than their lawn-mowing propensities can control. It is no ogre in the distance, when you get to known it. To the contrary, with a very minor amount of acquaintanceship and taming, you may find it is your truest friend. But do not expect a clipped and beribboned lapdog, neurotically demanding and temperamental. The land is a rough and shaggy animal, as gentle and true as a St. Bernard.
10
HORTICULTURE “Gardening” is not a pastime. It is a fine art, a philosophy. I
; greatly admire the magnificent gardens of our large estates and The Gardening Addict formal parks. Gardening is also a compulsion, a mania, an emotion- al disturbance with masochistic behavior patterns. The American wife, fatigued by manipulating the control panels of the household appliances, by committee meetings, by taxiing the children to school, is pulled relentlessly to the garden. Many of my friends drive to their suburban homes after a frazzling day at the office, or have a hundred-mile bumper-to-bumper parade at the end of five such days, only to find their garden fairly screeching for attention. Lustrous foreign beetles rustle in the rose buds. Dandelions smile seductively from the lawn. Birdseed-producing polygonums peep attractively from under the coarse foliage of the zinnias. Oak twiglets lie scattered on the fresh soil of last week’s weeded bed, eagerly sought by that song-outpouring wren who must express his exuberant masculinity in building a second nest. Possibly he will build it in the old shoe that the neighbor’s brat tossed into the lilac bush. And so, man and wife, in touching togetherness, doff their respectable clothes and don the ritualistic garb. Armed with knives, clippers and pokers of sundry shapes and sizes, sometimes made fiendishly effective with electricity, and with chemical poisons that would have made the Borgias blush with envy, they go their murderous way. They seem to like it! But masochists and sadists do.
The results of this behavior are truly extraordinary, even tho “sreen thumbs” (symbol of the gardener) have turned to red raw meat, and backs are painfully bent in premature senility. Suddenly “harvest time” is here. Tulips or roses or dahlias or mums come to full glory. Like vain women, they cry out for admiration; like vain parents, you want them to get attention. They want to be looked at; they want to be picked; they want to be “arranged” in the house. But you are far too weary to enjoy them, even to lie in a hammock with a good book and in the shadow of their color and fragrance. Your neighbor? He is equally weary, and with an equal abundance of his own riches.
Then the vegetables suddenly ripen. Peas, beans, cucumbers, corn, tomatoes, pumpkins, pumpkins and more pumpkins. They well up in the garden with cornucopial profusion. The vegetables are particular fiends. They demand to be picked, washed, shelled, stringed; and finally packaged and frozen, or cooked and canned. It has always seemed to me an especially exquisite torture to be so immersed in a vegetable between meals, just at a time when the : meals themselves are so overloaded with that same vegetable as eS ag ® Sears ‘ ie — , "
, to make a dead dietician disintegrate in his grave.
ie q oe ras | This is gardening. I should know. Many and many a time I have fe eds ee oe o 2 been at the receiving end of large quantities of flowers and vege- “9 | Till SER LS: tables from my worthy neighbors. I know the work that lies behind it all. I try to soothe my conscience by profuse appreciation. It is difficult though, for I value a few flowers in the house just as much as amammoth mess of them; and the vegetables just then are at
bargain prices in the stores. This is gardening.
The Lawn*
THE LAWN is one of the most interesting sociological and psycho- logical phenomena of our times.
It is a sort of living fossil, having evolved several thousand years ago in the history of our West European culture. Not a fossil in the sense of the coelacanth, which fish, until found recently off the African coast, had been considered extinct for 70 million years. It is still very much at home in those waters. Lawns, to the contrary, are kept alive only by an exorbitant amount of nursing and babying, otherwise they would disappear, to be as extinct as the dodo.
The Lawn arose early in our cultural history, certainly before the days of gardeners and landscape architects. When we first domesti- cated cattle, goats and sheep, we kept them fenced and tethered close to the hearth. This action was to protect them from marauding animals, especially human neighbors. (The custom of fencing still persists, for tho we have made the former animals extinct, the latter still exist.)
Vegetationally, the practice was a logical and esthetic coincidence. The hooves of the animals compacted the soil to walkable firmness. By their excretions, a high fertility-level was maintained. By tram- pling, only grasses survived. By grazing, a close-cropped sward was maintained. The result: a Lawn, a beautiful expanse of emerald green.
Times have changed. The original top-soil has been exchanged for “fill”, called top-soil by the man who sells it to you. The tethered front-yard cow has vanished, replaced by chemical ferti- lizers and herbicides (quite fine in their limited way) and by mechanical monsters (that keep the repair man busy, even when Junior does not pour water in the gas tank). The Lawn? A living fossil in a modern human zoo.
*T really like Lawns. They have the pure clean simplicity of a freshly painted floor, or a bolt of mono-colored cloth. I like them as I like sheathing evening gowns on other men’s women, beautiful to look at, but horribly ex- pensive to support. The economic theory of “‘costs vs. benefits” is apropos. I prefer a bed of moss, the subtle satisfaction of a stretch of periwinkle, or the inviting expanses of an unmowed grassland rippling in the breeze.
12
Grow that Hardy Flower!
THE HARDY FLOWER is an idea. It involves a concept unique to the gardening profession. It is a rough and rugged garden plant, which can survive our severe winters. It is advertised as “foolproof” (i.e., fit for fools to grow). Jf, to abstract from leading gardening books:
Soil improvement must be considered. Drainage is possibly poor. Dig out to a depth of three or four feet. Put in special kinds of drainage tiles. If there is a hardpan or an impervious clay layer, this must be broken, possibly with dynamite. Then simply replace the ton or so of overlying dirt.
If you wish to slouch on the job, dig down only a foot or so, and spread a layer of ashes or other such material to effect suitable drainage.
Your soil is probably low in organic matter. Grow leguminous cover crops for a year or so, ploughing them under at the proper time. Then start gardening. Or you might use well-rotted manures. If not well-rotted, pile the material near the back, by the kitchen door, or in front by the patio for a few seasons.
Sands are too light; clays are too heavy. You probably have one or the other. Get an adequate amount of what you don’t have, and mix thoroly. (A large concrete mixer is suitable. You merely have to shovel stuff into the mixer.)
Fertility levels must be maintained from year to year. Use well- rotted manures or proper (known after laboratory tests) chemical fertilizers. Too much, or too little, would be disastrous. Spade in thoroly. A compost pile is highly desirable (a ritualistic “must,” for one cult). If properly located near the kitchen door, things like coffee grounds and orange peels can be applied without leaving the house. (Odors can be called “‘healthy” and “‘natural’’.)
After due attention to seed source, coatings with disease-protec- tive chemicals, and depth of planting, the seeds may germinate. So also will hundreds more of very hardy “weeds.” (It is an absorbing incidental scientific study to find out how many different kinds of seeds, and what large numbers of them, exist in the soil—in addition to what you have planted.)
13
Then starts the jolly game of weeding. You can assume that the hardy weeds are not only more numerous than what you planted, but that they grow far more rapidly. By diligence precision and constant effort, you may eventually turn the tide of battle, without uprooting that which you planted. You think the last weed seeds have germinated? Come back a week later; a totally new kind of weed has suddenly germinated; threatens to produce a forest.
Need I mention the legions of pests? Bugs and beetles. Fungi and virus diseases. Moles, mice, rabbits, woodchucks, even the birds. Cheer up. There are books galore on the subject. (Buy that extra bookcase. You will need it.) There are new chemicals for each and every trouble. (But watch out. Some of them have the selec- tivity and discretion of a bulldozer, killing what you want and allowing other pests to multiply.)
You probably will not appreciate the way the plant grows. When the plant is six inches high, pinch off the tips. Pinch again at the second six inches, etc. Stake it, tie it, support it, otherwise it will sprawl indecorously.
Then it blooms. You have a few days of grace with which to enjoy it. (If you can spare the time from other plants.)
Those dead blossoms. They must be removed. Then the foliage starts to wither and yellow; unsightly. It is best carefully to trans- plant entirely to a hidden corner, so that the foliage can continue to nourish the roots.
Autumn arrives. All dried parts must be carefully collected and burned, so that the propagules of disease (which you did not con- trol after all) do not survive the winter (tho you know they will). The frosts come. (You carefully mulch, knowing that frosts will heave the roots if you don’t, and mice will congregate if you do.) It is better, the books tell us, to take a few plants indoors (ugly things, now); make cuttings in midwinter (buy that greenhouse), transplant to suitable flats; put them out in early spring. Of course, such care means you cannot take that cruise to a warm climate dur- ing the winter, but the satisfaction (they say) is worth the depri- vation.
(I think of the huge mass of peonies on the slope below my home, all but thrown into holes over a decade ago. The only labor in ten years has been that of picking some blossoms each spring. That is naturalistic landscaping!)
Pest — Previously, any organism, animal or vegetable, which I don’t want, now. Currently, any organism killed by the pesticide under discussion.
Pesticide — That chemical which kills the pest-of-the-moment, regardless of what else it kills incidentally. Ex.: a blanket of carbon monoxide laid over a city will kill all the rats in it. —~ AQB.
14
PLANT ECOLOGY
“If Naturalistic Landscaping is not gardening,” you ask, “then assuredly it is plant ecology; and I must read the ecology books.” You are right on two counts, wrong on two counts; four counts to be considered.
As for gardening, I have already shown that the answer is not to be found in the gardening books. But gardening knowledge is very very pertinent. The more you know about garden plants, and the scientific reasons why such irrationally laborious efforts are necessary to make the blessed things grow, the more successful you will be in Naturalistic Landscaping. It is the gardening spirit that is completely out of place, the spirit that prefers a clipped yew in a formal garden to a curvaceous coconut on a wild shore, that prefers a Roxy Rockette to the original South Sea lass.
So we turn to plant ecology. I raise my eyes from my type- writer as I write these words, avoid the tendency to look at the deep snow blanketing my natural grassland, unmowed for 21 years, and glance at eight feet of shelf space frowning with the world’s leading texts and surveys of that science. Not one mentions this subject! And yet, the more factual information you possess about this science, the more successful you will be in Naturalistic Landscaping. Read those books!
A paradox? Not at all. It is true, however, that gardeners and plant ecologists will rarely help you, if at all. I should know. For several years I tried to interest botanical gardens and university botany and landscape departments in projects on this subject. Everyone was extremely interested, cordial and polite. Said the botanist, ““Go to the landscape department. That is their field.” Said the landscaper, ““Go to the ecologists. That is their field.” So | I found out for myself. In the last few years, there has been one exception. Dr. William A. Niering, at Connecticut College, is establishing his own herbicide-induced landscape at the Connecticut Arboretum. As such, he can almost be said to be the exception to prove the rule. His professional interest has enormously encouraged me, tho I should add—to protect him—that he by no means shares my flippant, irreverent, and unbotanical enjoyment of the subject.
He would have been far happier had I cut the length of this book most drastically, preserving only its botanical facts.
15
The Ecology Devotee
Ecology is a strange subject; the ecologist is a strange individual; but the ecology devotee is the strangest of the three.
Ecology as a science has had a strange history in America. It began about the turn of the century, tho its roots stretch far back. Ostensibly it was involved with the description and understanding of natural and seminatural Vegetation (i.e., plant communities). Actually, it became side tracked into a body of esoteric doctrines involving “‘plant succession” (a very orderly idea, which in most cases nature, not reading books, does not know about) and the “climax,” or “virgin vegetation”’ (strictly an anthropomorphic con- cept; nature does not believe in virginity). Furthermore, the science has been defined as “‘all forms of life in all relations to all the en- vironment.” Thus, it has slipped over into an all-embracing en- vironmental-causationism, encyclopaedic in scope, and excellent for a scatter brained general-ist who wants to be thought a special-ist. Whether as a biological science investigating environmental rela- tionships, or as a study of Vegetation in all its relationships, ecology has a fine future.
Ecologists have much in common as a professional “‘type.”’ They are really admirable individuals, and you will find them intelligent and cooperative, tho not always sympathetic with Naturalistic Landscaping. The ecologist to a certain extent represents a con- temporary version of an age-old phenomenon: the “return to nature,” the avoidance of the “‘artificial.’’ He studies the wilderness, untouched, “‘natural” vegetation (or what he thinks is natural). He studies old-fields only insofar as they are undergoing “plant suc- cession‘ back to the original climax. Such inordinate meddling as invoked by Naturalistic Landscaping is simply not to his taste.
Textbook — Formula for preparing a textbook: Take several old and well- established volumes, and cut in small pieces. Mix well. Sprinkle lightly with a few fresh herbs, sharp in color but essentially tasteless. The mixture will be exo-thermic. Set aside to cool, and for various components to rise as scum, to settle as sludge, and/or to separate. Remove undesirable parts and pour the remaining broth into new molds, where it will permanently solidify. To be sold to professors who themselves have no basic knowledge of the subject and cannot refer to original materials. Note to professors who use the book: Cut and dish daily in chapter-size doses to students, with explanatory patter to justify your own position, and to make seemingly rational the inherent ambiguity of the text and of its author. — 4.Q.B.
16
The meddling to which the ecologist is opposed is not only on the sociological, Vegetation, level. It is also on the floristic or spe- cies level. Most ecologists have a strong contempt and resentment for the introduced and alien species. For them, horticulture is scarcely to be considered a branch of botany. Vegetation possessing
such Auslander is not natural, not worthy of being studied (unless to study what it was, before the aliens entered). We find an analogue of this situation among some gardeners, especially those who only have “‘wild flower gardens,” and belong to such so- cieties as the Daughters of the Original Barbarians. These are the true natives; it would be better if everything else were eliminated, even still older antecedent “‘barbarians.”’ Personally, I think this may be an extreme view. Whether a Japanese iris arrived on American shores on a log drifting on an ocean current, or by jet plane, is a difference of degree, not of kind. On the contrary, the alienophilists can become extremists to an obscene degree. Some will shun every native plant as common and vulgar, to be yanked up and destroyed, while their gardens are crowded with “exotics” (say the word as tho you are describing some rare carving of white jade). There should be a happy middle-ground, says the Naturalistic Landscaper, where hardy carefree peonies from the Orient can merge their pink perfection with that of the superb Occidental mountain laurel (Kalmia).
Thirdly and lastly, the ecological devotee results when the science of ecology acts thru the ecologist upon a layman. Beware of becom- ing one! The devotee uses the word “ecological” with a sense of infallible authority, to allay all doubts in the hearer. He alone has access to the Truth. He knows just enough of the jargon to impress a circle slightly more illiterate than himself. A lilting lingo, thoa language, is not necessarily literacy. Be modest. None of us, cer- tainly not myself, know very much about this subject.
Ecosystem — A complex interacting whole in nature, the parts of which are likened to the strands of a spiderweb. An Ecosystem is not more complex than we think—it is more complex than we can think.
Methodology — The objective consideration of methods. Methods are foolproof techniques (i.e., fit for fools to use). They are fishnets, designed to catch fish of a certain size. Larger fish break the net, smaller fish slip thru, both remain unknown to the data-gatherer. Accepted methods are the end of creative research, not the beginning. —~ A.QB.
17
Vegetation Management
If academic ecology is not going to help us, at least directly, can we expect aid from some of the more practical fields—forestry, range and pasture management, and wildlife management? Here too, the answer is “‘yes;” and “‘no.”
Forestry, as a profession, is highly developed, with an enormous literature. The main purpose of forestry however is to produce and harvest timber. The forester is a man who gauges the beauty of a tree in terms of the board feet of lumber he can get out of it, and the dollars it will bring. Forestry as a profession has largely been concerned with an inventory of our forest resources, and the hand- ling of them so as tc harvest the most timber now and in the im- mediate future.
Range management is involved with the handling of grasslands, primarily for their forage values. Beauty is in terms of the number of cattle that can be nourished on an acre. We can learn much from the literature of range management, but we must pick and choose with considerable discretion.
Wildlife management, historically, is the youngest of these three fields. The wildlifer is primarily a hunter. He wants more game to shoot; he is a sports-man. He is learning that wildlife is a product of the habitat, the Vegetation habitat. The more game to kill, the more beautiful the land. His management of that Vegetation has been heavily empirical: try something, and see if it-works. We can learn from what he has done, but we have to adapt his results to our own ends.
We may look upon Horticulture and Plant Ecology as a kind of Scylla and Charybdis: necessary, important, but dangerous cliffs, past which we must sail our barque, picking up important ex- perience and information on the way, before we emerge into the placid but relatively unknown seas of Naturalistic Landscaping.
International Congress — Great ocean liners, slowly maneuvering thru the night in a fog-bound harbor, all lights on, all fog horns wailing and shrieking. Actual contacts are rare, and when made, are highly damaging to either or both parties. —~ AQB.
18
Naturalistic Landscaping a Branch of Vegetation Management
The purpose of the preceding pages has been to show us that Naturalistic Landscaping—a practical art involving the esthetic manipulation of plants and plant-communities to form a pleasing whole—borrows from many sciences, only because it is young. It is fundamentally an independent and distinct branch of the bio- logical sciences.
Naturalistic Landscaping appeals to the kind of person who likes wild nature, modified just a bit. He glimpses a view of a distant hill, marred by a big unnecessary tree. He sees a scraggly spot on the marsh edge, and wants to convert it to a grassland, the better to sit in the sun and watch the beaver. He spots that colony of berry-laden viburnums, and knows they will grow far better along the stream side if he removes the miscellaneous things now
competing with them. His eye envisions daffodils under the burst- ing buds of the white birches. He is willing to tip the scales of nature with one finger, not to spend his life trying to grow plants in anti-ecological unnaturalness.
The rest of this introduction will be in three sections:
1. The major Physiognomic Vegetation Types: grassland, shrubland and forest. The chances are however that you have none of these now, but simply “brushland.’ To manipulate vegetation types, we must manipulate, not the types, but individual plants. Thus we are next concerned with
2. The Life History of the Individual Plant, with particular reference to its reproduction, its root systems, and the form of its aboveground growth. Then we move on to
3. The “Tools” for managing vegetation. Originally, these were such mechanical tools as shovels and axes. Now we have herbicides of ever- increasing kinds and names, with ever-increasing federal and state regulations, non-poisonous if properly used, without which proper uses this form of Vegetation Management would be impossible. Only plant-by-plant herbicidal spot-treatment with hand-held equipment is here recommended, never from airplanes or from high-pressure wide-application devices.
19
BOTANY The Physiognomic Vegetation Types
As our eyes pass over the natural vegetation of the world, in all its manifold complexity, it is convenient for many purposes to classify it. Classification, besides seeming to be a compulsion on the part of many people, is an extremely efficient way of organizing scientific data, of showing similarities and differences, of generaliz- ing, and of showing relationships.
When we attempt to classify vegetation types in terms of gross morphological differences, because of the abundance of certain kinds of trees, shrubs, or herbs, we speak of their “physiognomy.” Three of the most widespread physiognomic types are Forest, Shrub- land, and Grassland. There is also the low Tundra of polar re- gions, as well as the Deserts of arid parts of the world, neither of which concerns us here. Elsewhere, trees are scattered in grass- land, called Savanna in the tropics, instructive in its phenomena but not of immediate importance for this book.
The Forest
We work with forests often in Naturalistic Landscaping. Most of our readers will be living in parts of the country that either were in a preceding civilization, or are tending to become, forest. We want forest in our landscaping plans, in some places, not in others.
For our purposes it is well to look upon the Forest as an entity in itself, a kind of “‘whole”’—not just a collection of trees. The com- bined effect of the branches and the foliage produces conditions of shade, atmospheric moisture and other conditions that are unique. The Forest itself is composed of certain kinds of trees. (Many light- needing trees may not be found in it.) Beneath its canopy, only certain shrubs and herbs can grow, and these grow in special ways (not as they would if you put them out in the open). The trees affect the soil; and the soil affects the trees, so that a particular balance, or equilibrium, occurs. Respect the Forest. Work with it, not against it.
20
The Grassland
Not many people in forest regions know natural grassland. Not many people in the Prairies, Plains and Steppes know natural grass- land either! That land is mostly now in corn or wheat, and the forests of the river bottoms have crept up the slopes. The Grassland however is one of the most intriguing and beautiful of natural phenomena. It is true we cannot have it in a thoroly “natural®’ con- dition, for that would require herds of buffalo, antelope and other hoofed animals, with all their trampling and grazing effects. It would also require periodic fires, to burn off the accumulated mulch and the woody plants that may have started, as well as to open up bare spots in which flowering herbs may start.
The Grassland is a thing of beauty. As the season advances from early spring to late fall, one grass after another becomes prominent, in green, yellow, pink and bronze. Each in time waves in the breezes like the proverbial field of wheat—except that a field of wheat is a mighty poor substitute for the real thing.
Furthermore, the Grassland is not just a blanket of green, as monotonous as your lawn. It is a tapestry studded with flowers. From the earliest spring bulbs to the last chrysanthemums they come and go in endless profusion. Sometimes there will be a low- lying carpet of yellow, extending continuously. Then there will be the isolated orange of lilies and the purple spikes of blazing star, or patches of asters and goldenrods. As one vanishes (literally vanishes, without benefit of gardening) another bursts into view. Finally, all turns to magnificent hues of brown in the autumn frosts. It is submerged beneath a sea of snow. It emerges with spring thaws as smooth 4s if flattened by some conscientious roller.
The Grassland has a life of its own. Many plants thrive in it; others survive; others just won’t grow at all. The chances are, you have no natural Grassland. But you can create one. Once created, it is not much effort to maintain. Only certain kinds of invading trees tend to be nuisances. Know your Grassland, and it will know you, reflecting your own temperament and personality.
2]
The Shrubland
There is less “‘natural” shrubland in the world than either grass- land or forest. Shrubland occurs where there are wet winters and dry summers, as in southern California and the Mediterranean area. There such vegetation is called chaparral, macchie or garigue. How “natural” such brush is, is anybody’s guess, for past races and past cultures have had roles in its history, and both forest and grassland ate mixed up with it.
Once you have shrubland however, you continue to have it. It “stays put,” relatively. There is some on hilltops of the southern Appalachians which has lasted for 200 years. Others, in England, date from Roman times. And Mediterranean macchie may be pre- Roman in part. The Shrubland is another kind of vegetational “entity” —sufficient unto itself. Trees have difficulty in entering it. There is no space for the low-growing grasses and flowering herbs. If destroyed, it tends to reproduce itself in very much the same form.
It has its own types of animal life, particularly in regard to song birds.
The Shrubland has especial value in Naturalistic Landscaping, particularly at the margins of grassy areas, where it can form a sort of transition to the high forest.
The Brushland
The chances are that you must start off with neither good forest, nor grassland nor shrubland, but simply “‘brushland.”
The word “brush” is not a good botanical term. It merely in- dicates woody plants, of a kind you do not want. It is probable that the acreage you are eyeing with landscaping intent is only abandoned agricultural land, growing up to a miscellaneous mass of trees, shrubs, grasses and other herbs. Cheer up! This is the best possible land with which to start. You undoubtedly have a tremendous floristic diversity from which to pick and choose. It will be all the easier to convert to grassland, or shrubland, or forest, as you, the creator of the landscape, decide. The marble is an unsculptured block. You, the creator, are free and untrammeled. The choice of what to carve is yours.
22
Life History of a Plant
Vegetation types, even tho they act in many ways as “wholes” (like a hive of bees) are ultimately composed of individual plants of different species (like individuals of the different species and castes of ants in one colony). Our actual endeavors in Naturalistic Land- scaping will naturally be on the species and individual levels of thinking. The more we know at these levels, the more successful those endeavors.
The Kind of Plant
In the first place, know the species or the horticultural variety with which you are working. Our floristic manuals of native plants make it appear that a species is something very distinct in nature. As facetiously stated by some of our more liberal Western plant taxonomists, a species was at one time created by an Act of God. Later, it respectably left the Ark in company with its spouse; and thereafter stayed haughtily aloof from all the de-segregation ten- dencies in the world about it. No. A “species” is made by a taxo- onomist, not by a God. A species is a relatively uniform population of individuals, existing at this moment in the geological evolution of the race. It is a relative continuity between two relative dis- continuities, in the opinion of some botanist who has the audacity to break into print on the subject. (I should know—the making of a species was my very first contribution to the scientific literature— a very incidental offshoot of a technical study). A species is a name, attached to that continuity. When, therefore, you are work- ing with a “species,” be modest and cautious. It may be quite different, in soil requirements, in time of flowering, in size of flowers, than what goes by the same name in someone else’s territory.
Horticultural varieties of plants can be more stable and reliable. These are often propagated vegetatively, that is, without benefit of pollen, ovules, seeds and the associated techniques. They are as alike as different branches off the same tree—which indeed, they may be, as rooted cuttings of an apple. They are as alike as identical twins in a human family. But watch out. Even identical twins can develop very differently when separated and brought up in totally different environments.
23
Reproduction of the Plant
In the second place, when we become interested in a certain plant, we should endeavor to find out about its normal modes of repro- duction. I do not mean its reproduction in floricultural practice, but the way it spreads and disseminates itself in nature. If we know what happens in nature, we can encourage or discourage that phenomenon according to our wishes.
“That is easy,” you say, “by seeds, of course.” Yes, Ionce thought so too. But that is only part of the story. The weed seedlings in your garden are overwhelming evidence of the importance of seeds. Young birches, pines and ash in the grassland are further evidence. The heavy production of acorns and beechnuts bears out the tale. But there is also another tale. The more one studies nature, the more one realizes that many of the predominant “plants” in the Vege- tation did not begin their present growth as germinated seed. That came several “generations” earlier, from the now-ancient roots. Then why this annual profusion of flowers and fruits on the part of plants? Your guess is as good as mine. Nature is lavish, and ir- rational. (Only man is rational.) That abundance: to please the bees; to feed the squirrels; to delight man; or—as I am sure they, the plants, would say if they were conscious—to please themselves, for the sheer fun of it. The fact is: they do; and that is all that concerns us at the moment.
Vegetative reproduction is what we should watch for and know about, for it is by vegetative reproduction that many species con- tinue from “‘generation”’ to “generation.” Vegetative reproduction is that which arises by special development of some vegetative part of the plant, such as leaves, stems or roots. In temperate regions, leaves are of little importance. It is the stems and roots we should know about.
Some plants “get about” largely by specially developed stems. There are above-ground stems that arch down and root at the tip (like some blackberries). Others run over the surface of the ground, rooting at every node (strawberries and myrtle). Others have their stems underground, at various depths and of various sizes, spread- ing outward, and periodically sending up shoots. Knowing these differences, you can effectively encourage or discourage many kinds of plants.
Vegetative reproduction by true roots may be less common than by stems, at least for herbaceous plants. But in such large root- suckering trees as beech, aspen, locust, ailanthus, sassafras and plum, it may be the dominant factor that changes.and controls the vegetational landscape. It is essential to know the root system of the plant with which you are working.
24
Life-form of the Plant
In the third place, the term “‘life-form” is used in a general way by botanists to refer to the vegetative appearance of a plant at maturity. There are many classifications of life-forms, the majority of which recognize the major groups of: trees, shrubs, and herbs. (The word herb is also used to refer to plants of special medicinal scent or taste value, as in “herb garden.”’) Herbs (all plants not woody) are conveniently divided into three groups: annual, bien- nial and perennial, depending on the persistence of the root systems. Ragweed is an annual, starting each year from seed; carrot is a biennial, flowering, fruiting and dying in the second year; irises are perennial, sending up new foliage each year. Another convenient classification of herbs is into: grass-like plants or graminoids (grasses, sedges and rushes), and forbs (all other herbs, including those with conspicuous flowers). We shall be using all these terms in this book.
The Naturalistic Landscaper is especially interested in the forms of the forbs, for these forms can be used to describe or judge the value of the plant in his Grassland. The following categories often need to be recognized:
1. The Narcissus Type. Narcissus, and other spring-flowering bulbs have their own especial role. They spring up as green oases thru the snow-flattened mulch. They burst into astonishing blooms, just at a season when blooms are most appreciated. Then the grass- es emerge and overwhelm them. The old foliage is still there, yellowing and eventually browning (as we know from the un- sightly garden plants), but in the grassland no one sees it.
2. The Daisy Type (most highly desirable). The foliage is low and inconspicuous. The flowers are raised on high, just above the level of the grasses, where they can be seen best. They form the pattern of our “oriental rug.” After flowering they dry and seem to vanish, while some other flower can emerge into new conspic- uousness.
25
3. The Cinquefoil Type (highly desirable). The cinquefoil seems to cover the ground with its semi-prostrate node-rooting stems, thru which the vertical blades of the grass emerge. This blanket is literally sequin-spangled with yellow in its flowering season.
4, The Blazing Star Type (desirable). The Liatrises or blazing stars send up bright striking spikes of flowers high above the general level of the grassland. Many of the lilies belong to this general life-form. These are the “feature plants,” not to be used too abundantly, for tho the eye rests on them with pleasure, they break thru the smoothness of the grassland carpet, like a piece of furniture on our oriental rug.
5. The Peony Type. Here are plants that are extremely valuable because of their flowers. Their foliage however is rank and abun- dant. It persists long after the flowers have disappeared, forming a sort of blot in the fine weave of the grassland. For this reason, such plants must be placed with discretion, as where the summer foliage will merge with background shrubs.
6. The Rugose Goldenrod Type (usually undesirable). Golden- rods are of many types, some highly desirable, but this one (So/idago rugosa) forms a heavily foliaged mass, of such aggressiveness that it can eliminate the grasses and the forbs. For most of the season, it is simply a mass of rank foliage; it is colorful for a short time; then the rank foliage again takes over. If used sparingly, andor at a distance, it can have its value.
7. The Summer Goldenrod Type (usually undesirable). Summer goldenrod (Solidago juncea) typifies a plant that might otherwise be desirable, but its tall unsightly flowerstalks remain standing thru the winter and all thru the next season, disrupting the continuity of the grassland carpet. One can, of course, cut these down each fall. You may not want an acre of them.
In this discussion of types, you are beginning to form an idea of what is desirable for the Grassland. It is essentially a living carpet, basically of grasses and cinquefoil types. Flowering aspects of plants such as daisy emerge, and vanish, as the season progresses. Here and there are conspicuous feature plants, sometimes with more foliage than we may like, but then so placed as not to detract from the essential continuity of the grassland.
26
The “Tools” of Management
In Naturalistic Landscaping you are working with plants. You are either putting them in or taking them out. In that respect it is not much different from ordinary common gardening. But there is this difference: in ordinary gardening, you are working in bare soil, on a telatively small patch of ground, and you keep the soil essen- tially bare, a part of each year. In Naturalistic Landscaping, you are working in plant-covered land, and you shun bare soil, always. Furthermore, in gardening, you are forever clipping, pruning, stak- ing; in Naturalistic Gardening, the plant grows as it wants to. If that way is not what you like, you do not enforce your will on that plant; you change to a different kind of plant. For these reasons, altho the various “tools”? may be more or less the same as in gardening, you will use them with differing frequencies. For con- venience these tools may be classed as (1) mechanical, and (2) chemical.
Pollution — The normal concomitant of an effluent ephemeral stage of ecosystem development, shortly before the dominant species becomes
extinct. —A.QB.
2/7
Mechanical Tools
I assume you will have all the mechanical tools that are needed in this game. By mechanical I mean those operating thru physical forces, human muscle (increasingly obsolescent), fueled motors, or electrical energy. The ordinary assortment of garden tools is fre- quently used: shovels, spades, trowels, sickles, scythes, saws, axes, shears, clippers. Do not neglect a small “‘lady’s shovel,” with about a 6x7 inch blade. Unless you are in the 200-pound class, there is no sense in jumping on a shovel to cut 12 inches of snarled quack- grass, when six inches would do just as well.
Power tools will not be in great demand, unless possibly at the start when you first enter your jungle of brushland. Chain saws, and knapsack rotary-bladed brush cutters have their places. Lawn mowers are out of place, tho you may want sickle-bar equipment for developing a mowed trail. Tractors for ploughing and harrowing are definitely out of place, unless you want some original construction, such as a small dam; and then it may be best to have the work done by an outside contractor. There is much little dam foolishness in our society, as well as big dam foolishness. You are probably not the kind to have bought a tractor barely able to turn around in your miniature vegetable garden, but even if so, manipulating a stream can be dam foolishness at several different levels.
Chemical Tools
The word chemical is here used in contrast to mechanical. Mechanical energy is a matter of forces and pressures. It is related to wheels, levers, screws, to electricity and magnetism. Chemical energy on the contrary is related to the behavior of atoms and mole- cules. Chemical substances are those of known composition and organization in regard to the elements, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The sugar and salt on our dining room tables are two of the purest chemicals we meet in all our lives, and quite essential to our lives. So also are the anesthetics that have removed the tortures of the dentist’s chair and the operating room. Likewise the carbon monoxide of an auto- mobile exhaust that can terminate other tortures; and the arsenicals, that can be as effective as a gory guillotine without the colorful display.
For our purposes, chemical tools have three potential roles in Naturalistic Landscaping: (1) as fertilizers; (2) as controllers of diseases and animal pests; and (3) as weed killers.
28
1. Fertilizers
Plants, in order to grow and to grow properly, absorb thru their roots both water and a variety of substances in relatively simple chemical form. It has long been known, both in gardens and under natural conditions, that the addition of various substances will im- prove that growth. These substances may be animal excrements, compost of decayed animal and plant matter, or chemicals. Since natural soils are constantly being leached by rain water, and the nutrients constantly being washed down our rivers (even without floods and soil erosion), and since this loss occurs more rapidly than new nutrients can be produced by weathering of the soil and natural mulching soils are seldom in an “optimum” state for plant growth. They are just in a “natural” state. This natural state can usually be “improved” by fertilizers. Our food, our society, our civilization, are directly dependent upon this artificially increased level of plant growth. Compost is certainly an excellent fertilizer, but unfor- tunately, there is not, there cannot be, enough compost (even if every mite of it were saved) to maintain the world’s agriculture at its present levels. Thus, the importance of chemical fertilizers. In the Rothamsted Experimental Gardens in England, chemical fertilizers have been used for over a century, with no diminution in crop pro- duction and with no deterioration in the health of animals eating those crops.
Use fertilizers if you want, in your Naturalistic Landscaping. I do, in a few cases; but I look upon it as “cheating,” a return to fussy gardening, even if on one square foot of a one-acre grassland. Ordinarily, if the natural fertility level is not suited for the plant, I let the plant die.
29
2. Controllers of Diseases and Animal Pests
Diseases and pests are entirely natural phenomena in the life of the plants. The absence of such diseases and pests is a thoroly un- natural condition. In that sense, the completely healthy man is a completely abnormal organism! True, in nature at large. The parasitologist, to study intestinal parasites, takes the first animal he comes upon. The bird-louse scientist finds what he wants on the first bird in the hand. The forest pathologist does not have to look far for the fungus cankers that signify the presence of rots. Diseases and pests are everywhere. They are an integral part of the vegetation around us.
Now our entire medical profession is engaged in the endless, costly, and eventually fruitless effort of keeping us free from dis- eases and pests. It is still worth while, for the individual. (I am not sure it is of much importance to the race. There is good reason to believe that the practice is dysgenic.) Somewhat similarly, the entire gardening profession is engaged in the endless, costly, and even- tually fruitless effort of keeping our garden plants free of diseases and pests. Gardeners think it worth while. I am not sure it is of much importance to the plant races (tho there may be exceptions). Many of our garden plants have to be given perpetual care, equivalent to the best of our nursing homes—parasites in another sense. Even- tually fruitless, as judged by the tremendous replacement business— of our commercial nurseries. So maybe it is ““worth while.”
As for Naturalistic Landscaping, I suggest you throw away all your powders and sprays. (Not too far—you may want them for some especial and critical case). If there are aphids, beetles, cut- worms, blights, mildews, molds, rots, rusts, let them come. Let the weaklings die, even if they have the wan beauty of a 19th century neurotic consumptive courtesan. You only want the sturdy hardy individuals. (Or do you still want to be a nurse, a slave, a host organism parasitized by them?)
30
DAUCUS
3. Weed Killers
In Naturalistic Landscaping, fertilizers play a very minor role. Disease and pest controllers play a very minor role. But the weed killers play a tremendously important role. So important is this role that for a long time the title of this book was planned to be “Taming the Landscape with Herbicides.”
Words should be used properly. Preferably, herbicide means plant-killer. (The word herb in this case means all plants.) In contrast, zoicides are animal killers, for anything from mosquitoes to moose. When insects alone are considered, the chemicals are called insecticides. Since these chemicals are manufactured, pro- moted, and sold as killers of organisms-which-we-don’t-want, they are collectively called pesticides. Few of them are specific for one pest alone, the so-called target organism. Instead they may kill a vast range of animals, from mouse to man. It is like shooting at one starling in a large flock of swallows, with a high-powered shotgun. You will probably get your starling. Furthermore, what you do not kill (to follow our analogy—like the mole that may be under- ground) may then increase to epidemic proportions. In addition,
we do not know how long some of these other poisons may remain in the environment, in the soil, and carried from one tolerant animal
to another that may not be tolerant. Altogether, the virile enthusi- asm with which various elements in our society are boosting the use of some (not all) of the pesticides in the mid-20th century is valid cause for concern.
Herbicides are used as weed and brush killers. A ‘‘weed”’ is a plant out of place, that is, a plant we do not want. Most people use the word weed to refer to herbaceous plants only. “Brush” is com- posed of woody plants. Previously, the word was merely a des- criptive term, referring to any mixture of shrubs and young trees. Due to the advertising literature promoting “brush killers,” brush has become a derogatory term, comparable to weed. The herbicide kills brush. Therefore all brush must be undesirable. (Else how can the most chemical be sold?)
Do not think you can be a Naturalistic Landscaper without using herbicides. I tried to, back in the 1920’s—before these chemicals were even a glint in the eyes of the manufacturing companies. I used a pickaxe and shovel. I did not get very far. It was much too much work. Besides, I left little bare spots of soil, and that is not playing the game properly. Bare soil is an open sesame for starting all sorts of seedlings that you do not want. You produce more trouble than you eliminate. It was only in the mid-1940’s, with certain herbicides commercially available, that I could return to this type of work. I’ve been using them ever since.
How freely and fearlessly should you use herbicides? Yes, there are certain things you should know, and the numbered statements (pg. 33) cover all the important features. Knowing these things, you will be able to use herbicides with the same ease with which you put sugar in your morning dose of caffeine, sprinkle salt on your lunch, gulp down an alcoholic drink before dinner, smoke a stogie after, and go to bed with a barbiturate. All these things are poisonous, or can be, if misused. A “poison” is not in what you use, but in how you use it.
31
HIERACIUM
NZS, It aey
Si" , zy “xe ai $e: yA, A eepaaesies-— a) aah
“ ALES 5S sa PONT NS ‘
Fa ere, eet TTI SN ED
“> ara
2
Equipment Needed
You will need sprayer, chemical, brush hook and pruner.
For a sprayer, any knapsack sprayer sold in gardening and agricul- tural supply places will be suitable. The three-gallon sprayers operate like a bicycle-tire pump and it is difficult to maintain a constant pressure in the tank. With five-gallon sprayers, one pumps with the right hand while spraying with the left. Altho the five-gallon sprayer may be reasonably heavy when full (about 50 pounds), it need not be refilled often. If kept at the proper level on the back, even a light-weight person can carry it. Or use a 1 quart sprayer.
Keep the sprayer for one chemical only. It is difficult and time- consuming to clean it, and even the slightest trace of these chemicals, sprayed onto other plants, will keep them from flowering.
Most commercial sprayers are fitted with nozzles suited for high- volume wide-scattered orchard-tree spraying. You will need another type of nozzle. My choice is a low-volume unit that gives a fine spray in the shape of a flat fan. It is equipped with a check valve, that prevents drips between sprays.
For the chemical, any chemical “Brush Killer” will do. It will contain esters of 2,4-D [Tordon is 20% 2,4-D] in the mix. Recom- mendations on the can for mixing are generally satisfactory. Be sure to note the concentration of the chemical you are buying. What is cheapest, may also be the weakest. Somewhere, in very fine print, it might state that there are “4 pounds acid equivalent per gallon;” and if you do not understand what that means, do not worry.
Just see that that is what you buy, by label regulations.
You will be using two kinds of spray: weak water sprays and strong oil sprays, amines and esters respectively.
Water sprays are mixtures of one part of chemical to 100 parts of water. Use tablespoons, cups, beer cans or gallon jugs, but keep the ratio straight.
Oil sprays are mixtures of one part of chemical to 8-to-50 parts of oil. Any kind of light oil, such as fuel oil or kerosene. Some contractors recommend one-to-eight (you use more chemical that way). I have for several years been using 1-to-50, with satisfactory results. Effectiveness more often depends, not on the strength of the solution, but in using adequate amounts of it.
I always carry a small brush hook with me, hanging on my belt, or on the pumping handle. Some resistant plants, like white ash, should be cut and stub-sprayed. If one does not spray such a plant at the very moment of cutting, you are likely to miss it (and find three of them next year, four feet high).
(The different spraying techniques, and the special needs of the different species, will be discussed fully in “Part I, The Art of Eliminating Plants.” Herbicides will also be used afterwards, in maintaining the landscape you have so created, but in relatively small quantities.)
32
1. There are many kinds of herbicides, varying from simple and simply pronounced words as salt, gas and gasolene, to such a tongue- twister as polypropyleneglycolbutylether two, four, five-trichloro- phenoxyacetate, and the tri-isopropanolamine salt of 4-amino-3, 5, 6-trichloropicolinic acid. There are other herbicides on the commercial market; there will be others in the future.
2. Most herbicides are non-poisonous to all forms of animal life, including man, as normally used. Those individuals who won't use pesticides, no-how, no-wise, never, they like to refer to “toxicity tests) laboratory experiments in which the organism is fed increasingly large doses of the stuff until he finally gives up the ghost. Could be, just from overeating!
3. Grasses are relatively resistant to these herbicides, as well as ferns, and certain deep-rooted rhizomatous perennials such as common milkweed, dogbane, and a loosestrife. Thus, the herbicides are said to be “selective? when they are applied indiscriminately.
4. These herbicides are not soil sterilants, baring the soil and making it unfit for other plants to grow, if used as recommended. Remember that table-salt (NaCl) is an herbicide.
5. Most herbicides do not toxically persist in the soil for more than one or a few months. They are broken down (used as “food”) by certain soil bacteria, and eventually decompose to carbon hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. There are no persistent residues, such as of copper, arsenic, sulfur, lead, zinc or mercury.
6. The herbicides can be a p p | i e d selectively. This is one secret of their enormous value in Naturalistic Landscaping. A young red maple can be removed from the very center of a blueberry bush, with no harm to the blueberry.
7. 2,4-D was not sufficiently effective on woody plants. 2,4,5-T was more effective on all plants including woody ones.
8. There can be unwanted damage from both drift and volatility. Drift is due to liquid particles being blown sidewise. Do not spray on a windy day, or hold your spray nozzle up high. Volatility is a gaseous emanation. Early tender spring foliage is especially sensitive.
9. The effect of the herbicide in the plant is predominantly upward, not downward. This is embarrassing to the chemical manufacturer, exasperating to the Naturalistic Landscaper, and highly advantageous to the plant. Industry has spent large sums of money financing prestigeful university research trying to “prove” that the chemical goes “down” in the plant, i.e., down from the leaves into the roots. The evidence for such downward movement is in terms of a measly few centimeters in isolated strands of the conductive systems.
10. Herbicide treatments of one kind or another are applicable in every month of the year. Do not spray during or after rains. Do not spray in deep snow. Do spray the root collar, where shoots can emerge.
33
LONICERA BELLA, Beauteous Bastard or Honest Hybrid?
Lonicera bella, one of the Bush Honeysuckles, was originally given its Latin epithet by Hermann Zabel (1832-1912). Liberty Hyde Bailey, in his Manual of Cultivated Plants of 1949, called it a hybrid. Henry Allan Gleason, in his three-volume New Britton and Brown Illustrated Flora of 1952 (not the reprint of the original, that never should have been reprinted), called it a hybrid of another kind. And thus the die was cast, in botanical iron, by the High Priests of Phyto-philology. Bailey has a close group of four species: West Asian L. tatarica with four varieties and hybrid Bella; L. korolkowii of West Asia with one variety and one hybrid; L. ruprechtiana with one hybrid; and an East Asian L. morrowii. Gleason has three: one from East Asia and one from West Asia, plus a third L. bella, yet he called it a “hybrid . . . of garden origin.” For almost 40 years I have accepted the hybrid “fact,” the way another rat followed the Pied Piper.
Status in The Midwest. In that part of our country, and notoriously at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), one talks of a recently-arisen hybrid between two common garden introductions and escapees. Its progeny exploded, to fill the Amerindian prairies that were no longer burned and Buffalo-trampled, and the cow-pastures that were no longer over-grazed. Bella thus became a pest, that had to be “destroyed,” in order to “restore” the original “climax,” on lands that were now “preserved.” Bella is beautiful; hybrids, plant and animal, are known to have a legendary beauty.
Status at Aton Forest (Norfolk, Connecticut). | have lived year-round at Aton Forest (AF) since the end of 1945, and watched and documented the slow natural reversion to forest from the days of lumbering, charcoaling, pasturing, cropping, and re-lumbering. Yes, about 10 percent of AF has been “managed” to develop relatively stable Herblands and Shrublands. The rest is kept as Natural Area, s.s.
I have seen the East Asian L. morrowii heavily invade once-overgrazed pasture land in northwestern Connecticut. I have seen it predominate in previously herbicide- oversprayed railroad rights-of-way. So in 1956, I introduced four plants here at AF! | have since had a dozen small volunteer shrubs; no invasion into Forest. (See Egler’s The Nature of Naturalization, 1983, item no. 502.) No problem.
I have been deeply puzzled by two shrubs of pre-1926 vintage which are 400 feet apart (on opposite sides of a tree-lined Town Road) that are pink-flowered, the flowers yellowing with age, smaller leaves 3 - 4 cm long, the leaf bases acute, the greatest width below the middle (not 5 - 7 cm long, the bases of the leaves rounded, and the greatest width at the middle). No volunteer seedlings from the pinks. Sez me to myself, sez 1, how can one have a hybrid going back to the late 1940’s, and even the mid-1920’s, when one accused parent did not arrive until the late 1950's, and the other parent was brought in as a slender child (The Nature of Naturalization, item no. 503) in 1971, and went the way of infant mortality in a few years. Does not this predicament need that most uncommon of all senses, common sense?
I propose the falsifiable hypothesis that:
1. Since the West Asian L. tatarica, and the East Asian L. morrowii, being variable escapees from American Gardens and thus well represented in herbaria; and
2. Since according to establishmentarian methodologies (and a natural science is usually an artifact of its methodology), eminent creative phytotaxonomists place herbarium specimens in piles of similar morphologies (i.e., similar flowers, fruits, leaves, stems); remembering when I was once “taught” by one of the most eminent of species-creators (but the routine did not get digested — see my 1944 paper on the taxonomy of Achras zapota, then the source of chewing gum); since the bigger the piles, the more certain they are “good species;” since minor little piles are called “hybrids;”
3. Ergo, Lonicera bella may also be considered a rare native American, so rare that it was rarely collected for our American herbaria. Thus actually, it becomes a candidate to be listed as a Rare and Endangered SPecies according to the conventional wisdom of the RESP-ists who have established a new RESP-ism. Unfortunately a diligent gardener once wrote “hybrid” on the herbarium label, thus baptizing Beautiful Bella. Now her progeny have exploded into a pestiferous over-population, due to over-population and mismanagment by Homo sapiens himself.
— FEE.
34
Part I
INTAGLIO
The Art of Eliminating Plants
A. Plasiing the Landscape <cccaccasciiiicewenuuwene ows sieas 1, Vises, Trails, ened the Shrub Edge 14: causa euvwnneseaes 2, FiRe TO SOG cp dacs mwwnswnnn so J 44) baseReRweEHA LSE oo F1OOe Tt SOME kk a cdademkere yes ee yeae enero ePber ens
&, Plans for Paras go ogc eee e ake HERDER DEER Re HRS EO OSES 5. Plans fot Wie 6oac ccc cccuuawemseranestbbvcaumeeviuwe
B. Techniques for Eliminating Plants ..............00sseeeeees 1. Kinds of Elimination Techniques ..............0 cece euee a) Mechanical ‘Technigaes c2.icsva cscceaeee cn ndsinew van by Centical) TEGhqee oe ce ee eM Re REE OOD 2. Winds Of Plants po EMGAte occas cuir pewewwwecqunerens o: eB go ee I Previaceous PIMSS cccwanintiti is casmaeeeenenenss cas 3. A Calendar for Elimination thru the Year, in Eight Periods
Ce Date Spoeetal Siastiete csccawwdaracsiaiagesewnnnnnss sss ], FOS GOT GIES ca cwesoancannntsagegeesneeene veces 2s MMI OPA occa ncadavesccawancesyseuseonsess enc
5. Encouraging Remaining Plants ...........00cseeecaesersan
38 39 40 41 42 43
48
48 52
58 61 62
71 72 73 74
Part I INTAGLIO The Art of Eliminating Plants
Ordinary gardening is largely involved with putting in plants, and getting them to grow. Naturalistic Landscaping is largely in- volved with taking out unwanted plants, and simply letting the remaining ones grow. I use the Italian word intaglio for this latter process, since it bears many analogies to the fine art of en- graving, to a carving out of unwanted portions of a flat or sloping sutface, so that a planned design remains.
This type of intaglio can, conceivably, be the only procedure with which you will be concerned. Intaglio, and intaglio alone, can produce some beautiful Naturalistic Landscapes. Take things out; let nature do the rest. For these reasons, the sections on “‘Planning”’ (immediately to foliow) are placed in this Part I. Planning, in this game, is overwhelmingly a problem of what-to-take-out. This situation is different from that of the gardener, who starts with “nothing” and is forever concerned with what-to-put-in. I say “forever,” for what he puts in is not likely to last very long, even with his care.
In Part II, we will consider the “maintenance” of the landscape. There are some very important points here, but you will find that “maintenance” is generally an absurdly easy task.
In Part III, we will let our meddling propensities get the best of us, and carry on some actual embellishment in the form of planting. We can use only native materials, if that is your preference. Or we can use some hardy plants from other countries, plants which would probably move onto our land naturally, if it were not for the ac- cident of an ocean, a mountain range, or a desert separating their original home from us. Or we can use some horticultural varieties, on the grounds that man has only saved and perpetuated what naturally arose when we brought certain parent plants into con- genial propinquity, and which offspring would otherwise have been lost—as have countless other such “experiments”’ of nature
herself.
37
A. PLANNING THE LANDSCAPE
Whether or not you plan your landscape in advance, down to the last little crocus, will probably depend more on your heart than on your mind. You will find landscaping books, the first chapter of which is entitled “Plan Carefully Before Planting.” I am sure there are others who would recommend going step by step, urging you in sage counsel “never to cross a bridge until you come to it.” It is fun to plan, especially in the middle of winter. It is fun to change plans. It is even more fun to discover, in a later year, some little swale, a picturesque conifer at the side, a view beyond, which quite simply you never realized had existed.
My advice is to do what you like best. Plan a bit at the desk. Work a bit in the field. Do not bite off more acres than you can chew up and swallow, or you will find that you end up with just as much unwanted brush as you started with—or so it appears.
Get to know your tract of land, in all its messy brushiness, very thoroly. The more imagination, pure and simple imagination, you have, the better. Compare yourself to a sculptor, who “sees”’ his finished statue inside the block of marble, while his apprentice sees only a hunk of stone.
In general, it may be said that your landscape will be composed of open Grasslands, of irregular shape and contour, surrounded by belts or broken areas of Shrublands, the whole set in a matrix of Forest.
It might be helpful to think of the Grasslands as of six general types: (1) a clear open grassland, with relatively smooth tho curving margins (p. 38a); (2) a grassland spotted with individual single shrubs, such as tall blueberry (p. 38a); (3) a grassland with an extremely irregular “coastline,” with numerous “embayments”’ and “lagoons,” each affording its own landscaping surprises (Pp. 38b); (4) a grassland which is essentially a system of wide grassy trails, either gently curving or tortuously twisted, lying in a “sea” of shrubs, the shrub sea being surrounded by forest (P. 38b); and (5) a system of interconnecting circular or oval grassland “‘lakes’, in its way like the flat, heavily glaciated, poorly drained terrain of Fin- land and the upper parts of the American states of Michigan, Wis- consin and Minnesota (p. 40b). All the above types are applicable to the “general uplands” of abandoned agricultural lands. If you are fortunate enough to have a flat meadow with a stream, with old drainage channels, you can capitalize magnificently on this gift of nature.
38
Forest
Plan for a clear open Grassland, with relatively smooth tho curving mar- gins. The edges are a highly varied assemblage of tall herbs, more than 25 kinds of shrubs usually grouped in masses of 10 or 20 individuals, and various forest effects including young aspen colonies, dense coniferous stands, the gray boles of a mature maple forest, and white shafts of paper birch. The surface of the land reaches its highest elevation at the upper right, from which an extensive view can be obtained. (From a 7-acre field planned and developed by the author.)
<r pet fos, “Sen e tn ne ae ae 4 e “Sy A a4", ms > OT a nsgh WB 6 ae Cd a ey
Plan for a Grassland spotted with individual single shrubs. Several apple trees remain from an ancient orchard. Individual native shrubs have been allowed to develop, in full light and without competition from adjacent plants. A few have been planted, but most of them were saved from the
Original intaglio operations. (From a 2-acre field planned and developed by the author.)
38a
oh iia leme Be Ms Fn f CORN SEE ) aan PSR ~ J
“* " GRASSLAND ° «Scee
+ " v .‘ °
uw
Plan for a Grassland with an extremely irregular “coastline,” with numer- ous “embayments” and “lagoons” each affording its own landscaping sur- prises. The various embayments were carefully chosen so as to take advan- tage of large rocks, of berry-bearing shrubs, of certain patches, of goldenrods or ferns. The woody vegetation between embayments often rises to heights of 15 or 20 feet, developing a feeling of secrecy and isolation for each such area, as well as a loss of orientation due to the frequent turnings and twist-
ings. (From a 4-acre field planned and developed by the author.)
eNF ep ow
> \ F Vay C ‘ola al cc?) GRASSLAND ( = TRAILS
)
Plan for a Grassland which is essentially a system of wide grassy gently curving trails. Depending upon the degree of curvature, the trail “unfolds” 50 to 150 feet ahead of the walker. Special shrubs or boulders are featured along the sides. By contrast, there are several very narrow and tortuously twisted trails with curves every 5 to 10 fect. All these trails pass thru a series of “shrub seas,” themselves surrounded by young forest. These shrub seas are areas up to 300 feet long from which all trees have been removed, and in which shrubs 5 to 8 feet tall cover most of the land. They are not easily traversed on foot, but since one can look over their summits, they are
bright and sunny. (From a 12-acre field planned and developed by the author. )
38b
1. Vistas, Trails, and The Shrub Edge
Your planning should take into account two elements that can easily be overlooked. One is what you will see, beyond the con- fines of the immediate grassland, the vistas. The other is where you, and others, will walk, the TRaILs.
Vistas are curious things. You may pass by a spot many times, many years. Then, one day you will suddenly “see” it. Rather, you realize what you would see if you removed a few trees and a bit of brush. Wander around your property in winter, when the foliage is gone. Let in more sky. Get a glimpse down that valley. View that distant mountain. There are “Sky Vistas.” They are often most effective when at the top of a rise, or a small rocky bluff. If the land drops away in front of you, you may leave attractive shrubs as a ground cover, and get your view right over their tops. Such vistas ate utilized constantly along scenic highways. You can probably have your own.
At other times you can remove lower branches and shrubs from the forest, opening up a “Tunnel! Vista” to a grassland beyond. Such tunnels are especially effective in summer, when the sunny grass- land shines thru like a brightly lit room at the end of a dark hallway. They have the appeal of keyhole-peeping as seen thru the wrong end of a telescope, with the added attraction that you are free to walk right in and inspect at close range.
A trail system demands careful thought. It should be practicable. It should center out from your home. There should be ‘round trips,” of various lengths, so you do not have to come back the same way. If there are flooded sections in spring or the rainy season, or steep rocky slopes that would tax an older visitor or one in- experiei.ced on show-shoes, have alternates available. Do not have needless meanders, or even you will “‘cut corners.”” Avoid two sides of a right triangle when the hypotenuse is the logical route. You may have to take such meaningless detours on many college campuses; you never would, on your own property. See that you pass by the more important features, the rare shrub, the gnarled tree, the huge boulders, the views and vistas. Trails thru grassland can be marked with boulders or cairns, or kept mowed once to thrice a year. Thru the forest, they require initial clearing and herbicide treatment, after which one need only remove falling branches. The author maintains a mile of mowed grassland trails (about ten hours of labor a year, much more if the power scythe becomes temperamenta]),and about 5 miles of forest trails (needing just occasional pick-up, as one walks them).
59
After considering the four Plans preceding ( pp. 38a, 38b) and the one succeeding (p. 40b), it is clear that the Shrub Edges with open Herbland before them and high Forest behind them, provide one of the chief attractions of the entire Kenfield System of esthetic Landscape Management. It is here that all the beauty, diversity, and seasonal variation in line, color and shades of green are apparent. Much of it is planned; much of it is not planned; much of it grows thru the years.
In a vegetated landscape, the Shrub Edge is its own ecosystem. It is— and always was under natural conditions—the place where Forest meets Prairie, and where, in the absence of grazing and trampling by native ungulates and in the absence of fires by man or lightning, the Forest advances upon the Prairie, usually by root-suckering shrubs. It is the ecosystem where high shade reduces the aggressiveness and density of the grasses and forbs; where leaf litter (coniferous or deciduous) in kind and acidity and actual thickness, is variably favorable or unfavorable for a host of small plants that can grow there and nowhere else, and yet not at the exact spot where you want any one plant to grow. The Shrub Edge is like the concert-stage-performance of an opera laden with arias, where the spotlight passes from one species to another, as each gives its own floral and fruiting brilliance, and then passes into its own forms and shades of greenery. And lastly, by the very presence of the singers, the advance of the forest trees is hindered.
To return to our Landscape problem, there are four main factors for you the manager, to manage. Firstly, are the esthetic effects, the reds, pinks, whites and yellows, and the more sober colors of the fruits, all to develop in large masses 20 and 30 feet across, or as single conical spires. Secondly, is the “closedness” of the shrub community. (You will get no help from phytoecologists here, or the Nature Center oohers and aahers, for they are still imbued with ancient dogma about shrubs being merely a “stage of succession,” despite Egler’s Ten Thousand Dollar Challenge. Thirdly, there are tremendous wildlife values in this Edge Effect, known, accepted and promoted by the profession for many years. Even small dead (ringed) trees will provide the very perches and lookouts for birds. And fourthly, rest assured that most of these shrubs (as you yourself can see, without a Ph.D. from an ivied tower) are a deterrent to forest invasion, not a come- on red-light.
39a
The following is a list of the more-important shrubs that I would recommend for temperate northeastern North America and similar areas elsewhere, tho each part of the world will easily add its own increment. They are arranged in the taxonomic order of Gleason’s 3-volume flora.
Juniperus communis (Common Juniper) will hardly need encouragement. I find it a shrub that enters the herbland (maybe ten per acre per 5 years), that pull easily when a few inches high; but older ones will not resprout when cut.
Salix spp., the shrubby Willows, should not be overdone. They are usually short-lived (30 years). Preserve S. discolor (Pussy) and S. bebbiana (Bebb) if you have them, remembering that male pussy is preferred. Try some easily- rooted cuttings of S. gracilistyla, the Pink Pussy from Japan.
Carpinus caroliniana, the twenty-five foot Blue-Beech with its interesting fruits and its muscled gray bark, should be present.
Berberis thunbergii, the Japanese Barberry, can be a plague after 20 years. I have not seen it spread seriously in Herbland, but it can spread in the over-deered forest, forming an impassable thorny tangle that only pigs can eat. Berberis vulgaris from Europe is a well-behaved lady.
Lindera benzoin, the Spice Bush, grows naturally in swamps (getting started probably without competition) but it does well on uplands.
Calycanthus fertilis, the Carolina Allspice—a rootsuckerer—has deep- mahogany flowers, and fruits that are worth nibbling.
Philadelphus coronarius, the fragrant Mock Orange, clonally spreads, tho slowly.
Hydrangea arborescens, the colonial Wild Hydrangea, stays below your height, despite its name. Deer love it.
Hamamelis virginiana, the Witch Hazel, is remarkable for flowering in autumn, with fruits maturing a year later. It is the source of commercial witch hazel extract.
Physocarpus opulifolius, Nine-bark, is worth a spot. I have never found volunteer seedlings (but many of these shrubs might volunteer with seedlings on bare garden soil, or overgrazed overmowed or overcropped lands).
Sorbaria sorbifolia, a rootsuckerer, grows where it wants to, which is not often, but do try it.
Potentilla fruticosa is a small shrub (less than your height) and can spread on some farms. | treasure the few I have.
Rubus odoratus, Flowering Raspberry, rootsuckerer, is worth attention, for it rarely occurs naturally, in its full lush growth.
39b
Rosa multiflora farmers call a pest, because it invades their overgrazed pastures. I treasure the few I have planted. Rosa rugosa from Japan thrives on salt-sprayed shores and on your fields. It is a root-suckering colonial, that also occurs in a variety of white-to-pink shades, double and not and colonial and not.
I am acquainted with many other roses, roses from old gardens, those of contemporary rose-fanciers, and runts that I find persisting in odd places. I have all the admiration for them that I had as a child at New York City’s big annual flower show. They suffer from that insufferable super-feminist trait known as apomyxis, abetted by the compulsions of determined hybridizers. When it comes to Kenfieldian wildness and laziness, the rose field is underpopulated.
Prunus virginiana, Choke Cherry, is not an aggressive colonial, and its solid little inflorescences and bitter berries are always a delight.
Pyrus americana, the Wild Plum, if planted, can expand over abandoned lawn to a colony over 40 feet in diameter. (Documentation: from a 1934 double-murder, suicide, fire, and farm-abandonment). Fruitings can be prolific, but averaging only once a decade.
Pyrus communis, Scrub Pear, can flower beautifully. Save what you may have, but know that the fruits of mine cannot be boiled to softness.
Aronia arbutifolia (Red Chokeberry) and A. melanocarpa (Black Chokeberry) are colonial spreading shrubs about 8 feet tall. The latter is usually the common one. They are worth a spot in your Shrub Belt.
Sorbus americana is the native Mountain Ash, typical of more northern forests. It grows well here, needs freedom from competition, and can reach tree size. Sorbus aucuparia is the closely related European Rowan Tree. When grown close to each other, you will find that the flowering period is distinctly different, by a week—at least for the strains I know. Suited for the edge of the forest.
Crataegus, the Hawthorns, have 102 species according to the botanist who wrote up the genus for Gleason’s manual. Probably most of them are the progeny of that peak of feminist perfection in plants, apomyxis. My form is slowly root-suckering.
Amelanchier, the Shadblows, have two species in our region which can
be easily separated only when the leaves first appear. Grow them a dozen at a time. Laburnum anagyroides, the Golden Chain from southern Europe, with its golden pendants, is a jewel of the finest appearance, as high as a lilac. Wisteria has truly superb pendent blossoms, but left to grow wild, it is an aggressive vicious vine.
39c
Robinia viscosa, the clammy locust of the southern Appalachians is a tree (with a few root-suckers), which is well worth having. Suited for the edge of the forest. Robinia hispida, the Bristly Locust (very soft bristles) is a low colonial shrub, superb in flowering season. It spreads aggressively; and when one herbicides the excess stubs, the chemical travels back to the plants you do want.
Zanthoxylum americanum, the Prickly Ash, is a colonial spreader that can, after a century, form a large stable cover-type, more interesting than beautiful.
The Sumachs have their value. Enjoy (but stay away from) Poison Ivy and the swamp-loving Poison Sumach, which grows well on uplands. Rhus copallina and Rhus glabra are low colonial shrubs. Rhus typhina can grow to 20 feet. All have bright fall foliage, and berries for the birds.
Ilex verticillata, the scarlet-berried deciduous holly, can in some years be extremely colorful. It is colonial and dioecious.
Euonymus alatus, the winged Strawberry Bush from Europe has been disliked for its readiness to escape. Its deep-pink autumn foliage is distinctive. I have to nurture my young ones.
Rhamnus cathartica and R. frangula are two Eurasian shrubs. The former has remained close to pre-1850 home sites. The latter, one may find at distances from the parent.
Daphne mezereum is a real prize that should be encouraged. Its bright pink fragrant flowers occur very early in spring. Seedlings volunteer under the parent plant, and must be nurtured into adolescence.
Elaeagnus umbellata (the bronze Autumn-Olive from east Asia) and E. angustifolia (the silver Russian-Olive from west Asia) have striking foliage due to stellate pubescence. They can aggressively spread, thru birds, but so far mine have not become pests.
The Cornel shrubs (Cornus) are always attractive, especially C. amomum, and the red-stemmed C-. stolonifera. The Pagoda Tree, C. alternifolia (to 20 feet) is so-called for its layered pagoda-like form. C. racemosa is a dense colony-forming shrub that should keep out every other woody plant. Four small clumps were planted in 1962. The mass is now 35 feet across.
Aralia elata, the Japanese Hercules Club, a colonial plant of thorny slender treelets, from a 1910 planting, has established itself in several nearby localities, but seems no great threat.
The Rhododendrons (including the deciduous Azaleas) are sources of infinite satisfaction. Rh. maximum and Rh. catawbiense very slowly spread to form thickets, and occasionally produce volunteer seedlings. Rh. roseum is extremely fragrant (unlike the more southern pink azalea) and is the prize shrub for many persons. Deer love it. Rh. viscosum is the summer swamp white azalea - but then I found a volunteer in the middle of an herbland.
39d
Rh. canadense is the low slowly-colonial pink Rhodora, worthy of being planted extensively.
Kalmia latifolia, our Mountain Laurel, unpalatable to cattle and increasing under the oldtime pasturing, may need some thinning if you have too much of it. The small (2-foot height) Lambkill, K. angustifolia, is delightful for the front of your Shrub Edge.
Lyonia ligustrina, a hard-fruited ericad, can be abundant, unnoticed or annoying. The flowers are small—but are extremely fragrant. It spreads. Keep several clumps of it.
Gaylussacia baccata (the 10-seeded huckleberry) is a spreading colonial shrub which in fall has a deep-red color that is one of the pleasures of the season.
Clearly the taxonomy manuals have “too many” species of Blueberry, Vaccinium. The populations (in flowers, foliage, twigs, and height), are variable, or hybridizing, or both. For our local purposes, there is the low (up to 9 or 12 inches) colonial V. angustifolium, which is constantly increasing. It may yet, in another 50 years, turn my Herblands into a “Heath.” And there is the high (to 10 feet) V. corymbosum. Where V. corymbosum is “pure” (it is not colonial), it effectively keeps out other woody plants.
We used to get washtubs full of berries, for winter use. Flowers are still beautiful; green fruits develop; then they disappear. I once blamed the problem on dry summers. Now | am sure, after having two young raccoons peer at me at head height, that coons, foxes, and birds take priority.
Forsythia spp. can be disdained as “common” and “suburban.” I bought one ‘Lynwood’ in 1955. Expanding by occasional “layering” of stem-ends, it is now a clump 35 feet in diameter, a solid mass of gold in its season.
Do not overlook the Privets, Ligustrum amurense from China, and L. obtusifolium of Japan. These shrubs, growing to heights of 15 feet, when in flower are extremely fragrant.
Syringa vulgaris, the lilac one, and the white one, I consider as sterile clones, slowly expanding if given the space. Their fragrance as everyone knows, is extraordinary. Do not pen them up between house and lawn. They need 0 pen space.
The Catalpa, C. bignonioides (I am not happy with the species distinctions) has huge flowers. I brought in two small seedlings from a bare oiled railroad rightofway in 1961. Now 20 feet tall. Not yet flowering. Suited for the edge of the forest.
39e
The genus Viburnum is the most extraordinary single complex for the Wild Gardener. Each has its own short period of brilliant flowering, so that one might make a calendar on those phenological observations alone, by which to judge the season in general. Amongst those which I recommend are Viburnum opulus (the Highbush Cranberry, widely recommended for the birds—but the birds don’t know that), V. alnifolium (attractive when grown in the open), V. acerifolium (colonial), V. cassinoides, V. lentago (colonial) and V. dentatum (the only one which can become troublesome in the open Herblands).
Sambucus canadensis (Black-berried Elder) and S. pubens (Red-berried Elder) are excellent. | have seen them grow to full size on some old fields. I have never been successful in planting small shrubs in what look like suitable places. There is die-back and deer damage. | still try.
The honeysuckles belong to the genus Lonicera. The Japanese Lonicera morrow can become an aggressive pest in pastures and over-sprayed railroad rights-of-way. Yet my few plantings have extremely few progeny.
Symphoricarpos orbiculatus, the small-fruit Coral Berry, and S. albus, the large-fruit white Snow Berry are colonial Prairie shrubs. Their fruit-color is needed in autumn, but they are not aggressive.
If this list does not give you the diversity you seek, you can easily browse in larger pastures, as at any library.
39f
: * ‘ 5 _
Dy
Plan for a Grassland composed of a system of interconnecting circular or oval grassland “lakes,” in its way like the flat heavily glaciated poorly drained terrain of Finland, and the upper parts of the American states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The edges of these “lakes” are not smooth, but are a series of swept-out areas, often with radii up to 10 feet (a reasonable limit for knapsack-spraying when standing at one place). Intervening woody vegetation, 10 to 15 feet tall, promotes a feeling of secrecy and isolation for each such “lake.” (From a 2.5-acre field planned and developed by the author). These figures can only indicate the larger and grosser features of planning. Many of the attractive elements are on a size scale too small for inclusion. Single unusual shrubs, the clear bole of a tree, a cluster of boulders, a swept-out arc of wildflowers, a distant view under the branches of a coniferous tree, these are elements of the landscape that can only be incorporated by careful on-the-site planning.
1Z00 Feet
A trail system planned and executed by the author, with eight trails radiating from the main residence. The system reflects not only property lines and stone walls, but streams, pools, cliffs and special aspects of the topography.
40b
3. Plans for Summer
Summer will surely take the least imagination, if only because you will probably be out in summer more than in any other season, and you will be aware of every flicker of her eyelash.
There will be one continuous succession of changing surprises, as flowering aspect succeeds flowering aspect in your Grassland. Never a dull moment.
It is the “feature plants” which demand most thought, in saving, or in planting. Put them in compact groups that appear solid at a distance of one or two hundred feet. A single one is simply lost. Most of the shrubs flower early in the season. They also look better 6,8 or 10 at a place. (You are no longer restricted to a 100x 100— foot city lot.)
Late summer demands more careful thought. Fewer plants give color. This is the time when the horticulturist talks of “bridge plants.” He is plainly at a loss to keep your garden brilliant. It is the dowdy down-at-the-heel late-middle-age of garden life, before that final flowering which so gloriously crowns the entire fowering—for a chosen few. Pay particular attention in summer to Japanese iris, the milkweed called butterfly weed, tige1 lilies, monardas, and phlox. Here is where nature needs some help if the dry hot days of summer are to be kept brightly hued.
41
4. Plans for Autumn
When autumn comes, I am sure it is the finest season of the year (but I feel the same way at three other seasons). Buzzing and biting “bugs” are gone, the sun is invigoratingly warm. The grasslands are first gay with the yellows of goldenrods, then with the blues of the asters. Then the rainbow hues of the chrysanthemums take over (if you can convince them to grow by themselves). All this while— if you live in one of the Deciduous Forest regions of the world—the autumn foliage puts on a display unrivaled anywhere else on earth.
It is wise to plan for this foliage display. Each species of tree, and many of the shrubs, have their own shades of reds and yellows. What brighter deeper red than a mass of blueberry or huckleberry bushes. The fine yellows of the birches, the incomparable golden of the aspen, both contrast with the brilliance of the red maple. With these colors on your palette, you can paint in huge gorgeous masses. That which all summer had been a homogeneous green background of shrubs and forest suddenly assumes new signi- ficance, each kind of plant no more to be mistaken for another than an iris for a peony.
Keep in mind also that each species has its own time of maximum color, with enough odd-ball individuals to make life interesting. Some consistently reach their peak of color earliest; others hang on and on, like a prima donna taking too many curtain calls for an enthusiastic audience. Keep careful notes on these differences as they occur in your locale, and you will find that you can encourage a clump of aspen in a distant corner, or a glowing red maple at the top of the hill. Such plans pay unbelievably rich dividends in the
years to come.
42
An _herbicide-managed grassiand, with 20-year old junipers (Juniperus communis) selected for the variety of their shapes.
> f ;= ae
Winter view of a forested rural roadside near a property managed by the
author. Note the inconspicuous utility pole in the background.
5. Plans for Winter
“Plan for winter?”’, you say, ““Nonsense.”’ Nonsense to you. Winter is a symphony of brown green and white. Green on the forest floor with the lycopods. Green among the shrubs with juni- pers and laurels. Green among the trees, with pine, hemlock, spruce and fir. Plan to feature the evergreen trees and shrubs in large bold virile masses, slashed by the immaculate whiteness of birches, and you will think yourself an architect, designing a fairy castle, with all its wings, courtyards, and turrets.
Plan for snow and ice also. Every species of conifer, and every deciduous tree and shrub take on new and distinctive forms under the white drapery of heavy snows or the crystalline casings of ice that can serve as twinkling prisms in a bright sun. That same ice weighs down the branches to reveal a whole new world of harmoni- ous arcs and curves, an unimagined transformation previously unimaginable. There is no finer snow sight than the spun delicacy of a cluster of bending birches set beside the mammoth blanketing fans of a group of pines.
Plan for all the seasons. Your landscape is like some extraordinary combination of the Mozart concertos. The full symphony is always there, playing in combination, well worth listening to. But as time progresses, instrument after instrument finds itself in the spotlight and demands attention. Every instrument with a dual role: as a soloist for a short time, as part of the background symphony the rest of the time. One must know his instruments before he can compose a successful multiple concerto.
43
B. TECHNIQUES FOR ELIMINATING PLANTS
Initial planning, as discussed in preceding section A, will allow you to lay the major areas of grassland, of other types of herbland such as those involving ferns and goldenrods, of shrublands, and of background forest. Your problem is to “take out.”
You will take out all trees, and trees only, if you wish a shrubland.
You will take out all woody plants, both trees and shrubs, if you wish to be left with an herbland. If you later wish a grassland, you will also take out the more coarsely growing herbs and those ferns that are not desirable for your purposes.
It is a great saving in time and energy to know in advance where you are going to end up—with shrubland, heavy herbland, or grass- land. If you go step by step, you may find that certain shrubs will completely take over the land when you remove the trees. Then, after removing the shrubs, heavy herbs previously rare will form a solid mass of vegetation. By that time, the few grasses may hardly be in a position to cover the land without an intermediate bare-soil stage, which in turn, may allow trees to seed in. Do not let this happen.
KNOW THE COMPLETE FLORISTIC COMPOSITION of your area, once you decide what vegetation types you want to end up with. This may sound like a formidable botanical task, and it may be, to a few people. If you have known nothing but carnations, roses and chrysanthemums from the florist shop, or tulips and peonies near the lawn, you should spend one season living with your land. You do not have to know the Latin names of these plants, but get to know them, as individual species. They are all distinct, and have personalities. Look at these plants as tho you were a deaf man watching a stage play. You can still separate Beauty from the Beast, negro from white, grandpa from baby. You might even be able to see differences between twins. Decide what you want, and what you don’t want. Surely there is someone in your neighborhood who can then put names on most of these things for you. It might be the local biology teacher, or any of the government extension agri- culturists or foresters.
44
THE ECLECTIC VS. THE BLANKETEER. Once you have decided what Vegetation Type you wish to develop (young forest, shrubland, heavy herbland, or grassland), once you think you have a knowl- edge of what kinds of plants are involved on the tract, then you have to make an important decision: will you be an eclectic or a blanketeer? The eclectic is the man of knowledge, who goes in carefully and picks and chooses. The blanketeer is the man with the attitude of driverless bulldozer—enormous power and ac- tion, but hardly discrimination. ‘‘Foolishness,”’ you say, “‘there is nothing in all that rubbish and brush to save. Let’s clean it all out, every damn bit of it. I can hire a man with a power saw to cut it all down in no time at all. Then we can spray the whole area. Sure. Junk. Clean it all up at once...”
Just possibly you may be right! In about one per cent of the cases I have known, the blanketeer approach might be justified— after a thoro inspection of the area. But if you really feel any deep- seated compulsion to tear into the land in bulldozer fashion, I strongly urge you to drop this book, give it to a friend, and go out and get yourself a job on a highway labor crew, or as a highway engineer, or in the commercial herbicide field. They are looking for such people. Quite simply, your God did not design you for Naturalistic Landscaping. You are out of tune in several respects:
Just because you seem to see undesirable kinds of “weeds”’ does not mean that there is nothing worth while saving. The rare plant of today may become the dominant plant of tomorrow. The rare plant of today may be the feature specimen plant of tomorrow. The rare plant of today may be grown for a time, and then transplanted
45
to a favored spot tomorrow. Some of the finest plants are the rare plants. Sometimes (but not often) their very rarity makes them “fine.” Yet such superiority may often be the evaluation of the character who considers rarity and quality synonymous—a type of snobbishness, for the man not the plant.
Furthermore, what you see above ground is not always indicative of what there is below ground. A few measly sparse scattered shoots of huckleberry can indicate a root system that fairly well ramifies all thru the soil. On cleaning out the overstory, huckleberry can blanket the area. A few sterile shoots of colonial goldenrod can be saved, to spread in the subsequently open soil to form a large solid clump. The gawky viburnum which never flowered in the forest can be cut back, and allowed to regrow and flower in the open. The pink azalea may be surrounded by miniature seedlings, kept nibbled down by rabbits and mice for the last 20 years. If you protect them by wire screening from the animals, you will soon have some superb young shrubs for transplanting. Woodland ground covers of various kinds can be moved to new sites. They will be lost any- way, for they do not thrive under a dense shrub cover, and grasses will crowd them out.
In short, there are 99 chances out of a hundred that your brush- land should be treated with eclecticism. Take out only those things you know you do not want. Leave untouched what you do not know. It may prove very valuable.
ARE YOU IN A HURRY? The next decision to make is concerning the quickness with which you want results. There are slow ways of doing these things, and faster ways. For example, basal-bark spray- ing is one of the most effective and cheap ways of killing some trees, but it is also one of the slowest, for it may take a year before the plant is killed. Then you can either chop down the dead tree, ot let it stand and slowly crumble under the interesting impact of animals, insects and fungi.
There is good reason for being relatively hasty if you are a retired senior citizen in his 60’s, 70’s or 80’s, and are fearful of cancer in the bargain. Some day I may be so myself. At least I hope to live that long. But if you are 20 or 30, being in a hurry is another problem. The normal American is neurotically hurried. That some- times-admirable trait has made them leaders or near-leaders in a great
46
variety of human amusements, involving telephones, radios, TV, automobiles, airplanes and flush toilets. A musician can now set someone to banging on a piano, while another pushes the piano screechingly over the floor; the recording of the noise is called music. An artist can stand on the top of a step ladder, yelling to his naked model as—with her foremost parts paint-smeared—she slithers across a huge canvas on the floor. A sculptor, sitting beside a pile of metal junk gathered from the town dump can, blindfolded (so as not to let his sight interfere with blind creation), take the debris piece by piece, sticking the things together into some con- traption that does not collapse; it possesses “‘balance.”’ A gasket- like design can be repeated 24 times in each square of a checker- board pattern, on each of four sides of a cube-shaped building, and the result is “architecture.”’ Some literary editors discuss, analyze and compliment these contemporary fashions with solemn pseudo- erudition, while the sheep-like public follow, with over-display of their democratic freedom. I am not so sure that Mozart, Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Christopher Wren would approve. Nor do I have the arrogance to say who is “‘right.”’ But I do say that if you are in this kind of hurry, and have these standards of craftsmanship and esthetics, I urge you most seriously to put aside this book, and turn to your nearest landscape contractor, who is only too anxious to convince you of the merit of his highly costly plan, to start with complete bulldozing. He will even supply a gardener each season in the future, to keep it in order—at only triple the minimum legal hourly wage.
So—if you have decided you are not under a compulsion to transform the entire area into a finished product in one year; if you have decided that you are an eclectic, with discrimination, able to utilize all the potentialities that nature is offering; if you know the plants on your area reasonably well—then you can start operating. We have already discussed the “‘tools” that you need (pages 27 to 33 ), both mechanical and chemical. Now we will approach and re-approach our subject from three different aspects:
1. The kinds of techniques, such as peeling, stub-spraying, basal-spraying.
2. The kinds of plants, not by species, but by “‘types,” such as stump- sprouting trees, root-suckering woody plants, rhizomatous herbs, etc.
3. A calendar, indicating the sequence of events around the 12 months of the year.
47
1. Kinds of Elimination Techniques
a) Mechanical Techniques
In these days of power tools and mechanical monsters, many Americans are almost ashamed to use a simple tool, or even simple muscle. In this game, if you have such ideas, you had best try to lose them. Power equipment has its place, but in some instances there is no practical substitute for mind and muscle, even if you have very little of each.
CHOPPING. A hatchet or an axe is a valuable tool. This technique for felling a tree is as old as primitive man—and he merely learned from the beavers. With few exceptions, the conifers do not resprout from the stump. Consequently, if you want to remove small speci- mens (up to 3 or 4 inches in diameter), particularly if they are mixed up with shrubs, or are a long rocky walk from your headquarters, you may find that a small axe is much the more sensible way of destroying them, in terms of time and money, than packing in a chemical spray. The tree should be completely severed from its base. Whether you leave it leaning against the shrubs (it will decay, and drop, in a couple of years), or knock off the branches and leave it flat on the ground, is a matter of taste. There is nothing “wrong”’ about seeing such dead branches among the shrubs. They are always occurring under natural conditions. And you may find that rare warblers will alight on them, giving you a chance to see some you would otherwise miss, if they had nothing but leafy branches upon which to perch.
48
RINGING AND PEELING. Another long-known way of killing a tree is to ring it, to cut off the bark in a complete circle around the trunk. You will recall that the cambium is the microscopically thin growing part of a tree trunk, lying just between the bark and the wood. It produces both wood (inwards) and bark (outwards). Thus, it itself is pushed outwards by the growth of the wood, and pushes the bark outwards (so it cracks, or thin layers fall off). To remove the bark is to dry and destroy the cambium. Furthermore, the con- ducting system in the bark (by which food goes from the foliage to the roots) is severed. The roots starve and die. The rest of the tree dies. (Some trees can send up new shoots from different parts of the roots. These we will discuss later.)
Trees may be ringed at any season of the year. A hatchet or an axe is desirable. It is best to remove a vertical band of four inches of more, or new growth may grow over, and reconnect the severed parts. It is also wise not to cut into the wood any more than necessary. Cutting into the wood means that you sever the con- ducting tissues for moving water and nutrients from the roots up into the foliage. If such conduction is stopped, it appears that new shoots below the ring may be stimulated. Such new shoots may develop into new trees.
The cambium is most active in spring and early summer. At this time, it is a slimy slippery layer, and the bark breaks very easily from the wood. This is the time for sPRING PEELING. In fact, spring peeling is so easy and so much fun that I could never understand why anyone exerts the extra energy and effort to ring trees at any other time! You can use a hatchet. With thin-barked trees like birch and beech, I use a special thick-bladed tool. By pushing it in at one place, one can enter between bark and wood, and work around the tree, somewhat as with an old-fashioned can opener. This is by far the cheapest, easiest, and non-intelligence-demanding way of killing larger trees. With some species like red maple, I find it desirable to keep a glove on my left hand, soaked in the herbicide mixture, and slide it around the exposed trunk of the tree, thus killing the cambium which, in moist weather, might otherwise reform over the entire surface.
49
PULLING. It seems rather strange in this day and age—with all our pride in chemical and mechanical controls—that simple Neander- thal-like yanking is still the quickest, cheapest, and most effective way for handling certain unwanted herbaceous plants, at least on small areas. That is, unless you are too proud to stoop to conquer. There are certain herbaceous plants with deep-seated underground rhizomes. The chemical herbicides we have do not travel ‘““down”’ significantly enough to kill them. If anything, such herbicide treat- ment stimulates the roots to send up additional numbers of shoots. Mowing is sometimes satisfactory, but that only severs the plant near the soil surface. The full rhizome is left in the soil, to provide nourishment for future shoots. I should know: it was ten years before I had sense enough to give up some relatively futile “‘mo- dern”’ techniques, and return to good old-fashioned pulling.
Pulling, if done properly, serves to pull up several inches, some- times 6-8 inches, of underground stem or root. Considerable nourishment from the remaining parts is then used up in sending a new shoot to the soil surface before that new shoot can form leaves and start replenishing the depleted roots. Thus, pulling—per treat- ment—can be mote effective in reducing root health than any treat- ment which only kills or removes to the soil surface. Do not think that pulling is suited only for morons. Even a Neanderthal would have to think about it (and he had a larger cranial capacity than yours). A gentle firm tug is needed, so that the stem does not snap inthe air, and that it breaks at the deepest possible position. If the stem grows on a slant, you will learn that pulling in the direction of growth, or sometimes in the opposite direction, will be the better. In other cases, a firm pull will lift up 3-10 shoots radiating from the main stem. These shoots would have formed that many plants the next year.
Pulling is highly desired for large rank goldenrods and asters. It is recommended for Canada thistle (if your hand is gloved). Dogbane and bracken, with their flat-topped foliage surmounting a naked stalk, are also good pulling subjects.
50
SICKLING, ETC. A curved sickle is an extremely handy tool for undesirable herbs with the foliage raised on bare stalks, like the bracken and dogbane mentioned above. One can clip the heads off these plants very very rapidly (and with very little stooping). True you do not “get” as much of the plant each time, but you may prefer the ease of operation.
Mowing, with scythe or power scythe, is not a selective technique in most instances, and is not recommended unless you wish a mowed trail. A heavy bladed brush scythe is useful in cutting some types of brush up to one inch in diameter. “Brush hooks” of vatious kinds are highly useful for woody weeds up to about 3 inches in diameter. Beyond that you will probably want to use an axe.
POWER SAWS. Rotary saws are available, with knapsack motors. Chain saws, with self-contained motors, are extremely efficient. With such tools, you can quickly cut a swath thru dense brush that will give you a trail-like access thru an area otherwise inaccessible. But do not let your enthusiasm run wild with you. Think twice before you tear thru a whole acre of young forest and tall brush, elated to “see it all come down.” You will be left with a mess of stuff that will probably have to be stacked and burned. Then you will go thru and spray the larger stubs you see. You will miss an even greater number of the smaller ones. And in a year or two you will have as much brush growing as you had before. Think before you act. Look before you leap.
51
b) Chemical Techniques
Chemical herbicide techniques at the time revolved mostly around the use of 2,4-D and 2,4,5T, called D—T* in oil or in water.t The method of application is by a knapsack spray-tank, either 2-gallon or 5-gallon. The nozzle should be suited for the purpose, to give a concentrated cone-shaped or fan-shaped spray, not a diffuse mist such as is used for orchard tree spraying. (Paint brush or garden watering can may be used, if you have only an hour or two of work—but this is not Naturalistic Landscaping.) Do not plan to use these cans or tanks for any other purpose, as it is difficult to wash them clean of the chemical, and the slightest trace of it will affect the growth of other plants. Since practically all your chemical control will be done with two kinds of solutions, a water-borne one, and an oil-borne one, we will divide our discussion accordingly. It is highly desirable to have two such spray tanks, one for each spray. In this way, material can be left in them, and can be ready for use again at a moment’s notice.
*Completely unrelated to DDT, the insecticide that is critically poisonous to all
forms of animal life.
TThe frequent mention of “2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, called DT, in oil or water” in this present mainly-facsimile Memorial Edition is no longer applicable. Mr. Kenfield’s basic studies from 1946 to 1966 utilized these then standard herbicides, and he assumed there would be no radical change. Chemicals, federal laws and regulations have changed, and will continue to change. Nevertheless, Mr. Kenfield’s unique contribution to using herbicides as “poisons” are carefully used in hospitals, remains his unique contribution.
a2
WATER-BORNE SPRAYS. The standard concentration was one part chemical* to 100 parts of solution (1. e. 99 parts of water.) Water- borne sprays are often called “foliage sprays.” It was said that the mixture was drawn in by the foliage, moved down to the roots and killed the roots. This was a nice advertising story, apparently based on the study of small germinating bean seedlings, where the chemi- cal moved downward a few millimeters. Actually, most of the chemical stays in the leaves, and dries them, creating the highly un- desirable “brown out” seen along many of our roadsides. If sup- plied in sufficient volume, the solution soaks the buds and the bark of the stems, resulting often in a kill-to-ground (but not necessarily a rootkill). Thus, this spray is now being called “foliage-stem spray.” It is still a very poor rootkill, highly undesirable for tax- payers, but highly desirable for commercial interests. It is easy to sell to some government officials and taxpayers, because it is the cheapest per spray, like painting your house with calcimine or whitewash. In Naturalistic Landscaping, water-borne sprays can be used for special purposes, for both woody plants and for herbaceous plants.
The use of water-borne sprays for woody plants I find very limited. I used them extensively in 1946, 1947 and 1948. In 1949, I gave up the use, in preference to oil-borne sprays, and never re- turned. Since no dye had been found to add to the solution, it was extremely difficult to know what you had sprayed even a few minutes after, much less a few weeks later. Eventually the foliage browns. By next spring, the dead shoots may lead you to think you have had success. Soon the plants are resprouting gaily. Things like ash and basswood may have had nothing more than a leaf- burn. Root-suckering weeds like aspen, choke cherry, meadow- sweet and steeplebush will be sending up more shoots than you had before. The actual volumes of spray required for this work are 10-20 times greater than for oil-borne sprays, and since this is all carried on your back, you have an added reason for avoiding this method. At the present time, when I am using water-borne sprays,
* When the commercial material carries four pounds acid equivalent per gallon as may be seen by reading the very very small print in the label.
53
I usually do not hesitate to wet any small woody sprouts I may come across, up to two feet in height. Anything over that height I do not treat. Not only is an excessive volume needed, but I will be soaking the land underneath, destroying valuable herbs, and the slightest breeze will waft the spray to distances of 20 feet or more, affecting all the flowering herbs in that stretch.
The use of water-borne sprays for herbaceous plants is important. Keep in mind that new soft spring foliage is much more sensitive than the hard foliage of autumn. Species which may be found easy to kill back in early summer may not react at all later in the year, ot with only a little distortion in their growth. This is especially true of the coarse goldenrods. Realize also that the very quantity of foliage is important. In spring, plants are but a few inches tall, and you can easily distinguish the different kinds. By mid-summer, you are confronted by a tangle four feet high or more. By that time you will need 20 or 30 times the volume of spray, and the spray will be relatively ineffective. Know the root-systems of your plants. If the roots or rhizomes are deep, the most you can do is to soak the foliage and kill that. As soon as there are new shoots, go back and do the area again. If the growing bud or a short rhizome is at the surface, wet the foliage, but see that you thoroly soak the position of the bud. In this way I have killed several thousand plants of the summer goldenrod (So/¢dago juncea) with less than 1% survi- vals, and they were “personnel misses,” to use an industry term.
Some of the ferns have their rhizomes close to the surface (inter- rupted fern, sensitive fern, New York fern). The water spray will not affect the foliage, but by soaking the soil you may get the grow- ing ends. This treatment is fairly “rough,” and will probably bare the soil. Watch the spot for the next year or two, or you may have an abundance of plants you do not want. In general, I would avoid spraying anything over 2 or 3 feet high. Better to cut it down first. At the higher levels, your spraying is hardly “‘selective,” and both by drip and drift, you will find that you are affecting a very large area.
54
OIL-BORNE SPRAYS. Oil-borne sprays were “stronger” than water- borne sprays in regard to the quantity of D—T. The standard concen- tration is one part of chemical to 10-50 parts of oil. I find that 1-to-50 is satisfactory for my work, tho industry liked to use 1-to-10, or stronger. The oil (kerosene or fuel oil) may have some toxic effect in itself, but apparently its chief function was to “wet” the bark. Bark is normally impermeable to water. Its impermeability is essential to the life of the plant, for if not, the plant would shrivel, like a filmy fern in the sun. Thus the ordinary water-borne sprays to a large extent merely run off the bark like rain. Oil, however, wets the bark, and permeates to the cambium. D—T was carried with the oil, and killed the cambium. Once into the woody part of the plant, it moved down- ward very inefficiently, unfortunately, for we wanted it to kill the roots. It moved upward however very very quickly. Once in the smaller branches and leaves, the foliage browned and dried. This browning is ideal for color photos, and salesmen and advertisers always have a gullible public to fool. Actually, the quicker the kill of the upper vis- ible parts of the plants, the more likely is it that the underground roots are left in a healthy condition ready to send up new shoots, requiring new spraying! This regrowth—judging from what the industry usually recommends—is a desirable situation—for them.
Oil-borne sprays may be considered in three categories: basal bark spraying, stub- and stump-spraying, and spraying of herbaceous plants.
55
Basal-bark Spraying is a quick easy and efficient way of killing many woody plants. The kill is related to the wettability of the bark. For practical purposes, thin smooth bark is easily wettable. Thick corky bark (as on cork-bark oak, or California redwood) I would not attempt. The idea is to soak, not just spray, the lowermost 18 inches. Let the spray roll down and soak the root crown, the part in contact with the soil. The root crown, as on birches, may be a myriad of dormant buds, which will sprout profusely if they are not killed. In general, I would basal-spray only sprouts and young trees up to 15—20 feet in height and 3-4 inches in diameter. Beyond these dimensions, the quantity of spray needed makes the procedure costly. Under exceptional circumstances, you may want to so kill large trees. I have myself killed a 50-foot thick-barked sugar maple, but it took over a gallon of spray. Large beeches have been killed in South Carolina, even tho it took three years for them to die.
In interpreting the results of your basal-bark spraying, be patient. Don’t start barking too soon. The chemical ringing may be the most important part of the procedure, and this may not have an effect on the life of the plant until one year later. If you get a quick effect within a few weeks, you can assume the herbicide has moved to the smaller branches. But you do not want the branches to die first! You want the roots to die first. The roots won’t die first after chemical ringing unless the top keeps on growing while the roots are being starved, since they can no longer get nourishment thru the bark which has been severed. This little bit of commonsense plant physiology, industry seems to choose to ignore.
Whether to basal-bark spray, or to stub-and-stump spray, depends on both experience and individual preference. Altho plants differ in their resistance—and that you will learn by experience—the de- cision often depends on whether you mind seeing the standing dead brush, and how much work is involved with clearing away, or at least flattening to the ground, the brush that results from felling a large tree.
56
Oil-Spraying of Herbaceous Plants, essentially a leaf- burning procedure, is a sort of “chemical mowing.” We all know that repeated mowing eventually kills plants. For this reason, young maple seedlings in your lawn eventually die. A browsing cow has a similar effect on many—but not all—the woody plants in a heavily grazed pasture. This is not a poisoning of the plant. It is merely a “clipping.” But for a clipping, it is remarkably quick and easy. With some experience, you can give the undesired piants the lightest of sprays—just a flashing “‘spritz”’ as you walk past. Being oil, your spraying will be noticed if you return to the spot 5 minutes later. Within a day, the foliage will be withering. Thus, the number of personnel misses will be much reduced, for on walking thru the area a second time, the unsprayed plants will show up as conspicu- ously as breakfast egg on a man’s necktie. True, such spray-burned plants will resprout rather readily. Then the sprouts are sprayed. You will find each resprouting much smaller than the last. Appar- ently, other competing plants also exert a strong effect. Before you know it, your unwanted plant has vanished. This technique is suited for rhizomatous and resistant species, especially ferns. If the herbicide won’t poison the plant, at least we can mow it, and mow it, and mow it, until it finally succumbs from sheer weakness, and from the competitive onslaught of other plants.
Stub- and Stump-Spraying is highly recommended for many purposes. See that the stubs and stumps are fairly close to the ground. Tall stumps require far more spray, and have more oppor- tunity for resprouting. See that the stubs and stumps are thoroly soaked with spray, not the central woody portion (spray hitting such central parts is completely wasted), but the outside bark and cambium. Small shoots up to 2 inches in diameter can easily be cut with a brush hook, even while you have a spray tank on your back. I advise one man handling both procedures, otherwise the second worker is likely to miss many of the small stubs. Large trees can be downed by saw or axe at any season. It is not necessary to spray immediately after cutting. I have had excellent results several months after cutting, and even after small shoots have started to grow. If such new shoots become too large, you can still kill the whole plant, but you waste too much spray simply “burning off” the new foliage.
57
FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF W.G.K.
TEACHING A DEER TO SPELL: or, A BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENT IN THE CERVINE SENSES OF SMELL AND TASTE
This article is intended as a scientific contribution to the field of Vegetation Management (specifically, the de-leafing of unwanted low shrubs), with specific reference to the intelligence and the sensory perception of the local White Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Studies were carried out in section Epsilon of Lot C-47 of Aton Forest, Norfolk, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Data were obtained thru several years in the early 1970s, from an observation post (a plate glass window) looking upon an herbicide-controlled Herbland about 200 feet in diameter. In general, seven deer would come out in the late afternoon (the pre-dinner hour for the author and his wife). In general, reactions between mothers, new young, yearlings and maternal rejection of the yearlings were observed as the mothers stayed close to their new young.
BACKGROUND. The author has no established methodology, suited for the standardized Grant-Swingered studies of establish- mentarian Research Technicians. In the course of observations, an ad hoc method was born (likely never to be used again). We all recognize the food preferences of animals. Range Management researchers work out long tables of stock palatabilities ranging from “ice cream plants” (kid candy) to starvation foods. Individual animals have their personal preferences, or nuclear-family customs. (I remember trying to recall my zoology-course anatomy, while eating my first large snails bought from a Paris street vendor. Each bite, going from end to end, tasted different.) We know that our own sense of smell is not as remarkable as that of the male gypsy moth, who reacts to the sex pheromone of his female with a long-distance urgent refinement that is the financial envy of the perfume industry, leading to the green-backed agerandizement of subsequent palimony attorneys.
VISITOR REACTION. Human visitors during this season were shown the results of our deer-educational venture: a clearly demar- cated large P, marked out in a leafy highly-unpalatable clone of Low Blueberry, Vaccinium angustifolium. The ‘P test’ was at least 18 inches from top to bottom. The scholastic evidence was indisputable. The edges of the letter were as precisely delineated as tho cut with a pruning shears, and the twig-tears were easily recognized as those of deer. One of several short or long explanations to the visitor would follow, depending largely on the visitor and his credulousness.
EXPLANATIONS. During years of deer observations, | endeavored to estimate the relative palatabilities of the various herbs (ferns, grasses and forbs) of this 30 acre herbicide-managed tract. (General reaction: deer have individual and family preferences, with changing tastes. But there is little they flatly refuse.) One day I noticed a young deer enthusiastically munching a spot where I remembered | had micturated the evening before. I noticed this a second time. I noticed this a
57a
third time.
Then I began to apply the human substance to specific low plants, both palatables and unpalatables, using a natural directional hand- manipulated nozzle, provided with a no-drip squeeze-operated control.
A pedagogic element was next introduced, choosing a simple but appropriate letter of the Roman alphabet. I accompanied the application with a verbal pedagogic request, which could later be correlated by computer software (and converted into a “cause”). I then varied the place of application from day to day, to spots distant by a hundred feet from each other. The success of the teaching was continued.
Soon a recognizable young deer was coming in before the sun had set, and was exhibiting singular and describable behavior suggesting eagerness to display his learning proficiency. He would trot into view from the same place in the north. He was not dallying. He pranced along with an obvious intelligence and in a straight line to the new classroom where he would stop and chew to contemplative completion the lesson of the day.
The final variation in this experiment was to place first a teaching- spot toward the north, and the next day a second one a hundred feet southward, so that this promising student would have to pass over this first spot in order to go directly to the second. We awarded the youngster an A-plus when he trotted over the old spot with nary a hesitation, thence kept on to the new spot, and completed his lesson with enthusiasm. Only then did he amble about, grazing casually elsewhere.
CONCLUSION. It is suggested that the subject deer (and by extrapolation deer in general) have a remarkably acute sense of smell. Strong preferences for certain odors overcome and blanket out other drives toward herbivorous behavior which we recognize as Relative Palatabilities (R.P.). There is also an individual varability, for the learning ability of this one student did not seem to be shared by other underprivileged deer. Unfortunately, soon after this designed experiment, the herd moved or dispersed. The training program was repeated in various ways in later years, with varying success, but never again with all the same factors present, including the coinciding cocktail and smorgasbord hours of both the observed and the observers.
It is well to remember that some natural scientists do study nature, not books. They accept the infinite variability of nature, and realize the silliness of sampling non-homogeneous wholes by random or by design, as tho the ecosystem were a tank car of Ricinus oil, to be known only by its quantifiable and moving parameters, needed to obtain the degree of B.S. The unobserved does not exist. Yet every large mammal leaves his spots upon the landscape. Think of what a single elephant could do, a ring of bison surrounding their young, facing outward to fend off for hours an attacking pack of wolves, or a bivouac of 400,000 Crusaders during the Middle Ages en route to the holy land.
— W.G.K.
57b
2. Kinds of Plants to Eliminate
From one viewpoint, the experienced professional Naturalistic Landscaper might say that every species of plant must be dealt with as a Separate entity. He might say that each is a problem by itself, and can be eliminated best with its own distinctive combination of chopping, sawing, peeling, water-spraying andor oil-spraying. It is true that when one gets to know a species, one gets to know its weak points, its Achilles’ heel. But none of us is born with that knowledge, and there are certain generalizations which may be made which will allow one to be highly competent right from the start. Woody plants and herbaceous plants differ in the treatments they need to eliminate them.
a) Woody Plants
NON-SPROUTING SPECIES offer only a minor problem. In this category are most of the conifers: the pines, spruces, hemlocks. Pitch pine of eastern North America is one of the exceptions. It regularly sprouts from the stump. Shortleaf pine in the southeastern United States will also do so. Most other trees and most shrubs will sprout after being cut or mowed. Under some circumstances, sprout- ing will be less than normal after cutting, or may not occur at all, but these cases are unpredictable, and have not been fully explained by the scientists.
For the spruces, hemlocks and non-sprouting pines, it is well to remember that the foliage, at least after the flush of their spring growth, is highly resistant to some water-borne sprays. This was early discovered in the ill-advised rightofway spraying by many American electric power utilities. Their spraying, rather than killing the entire tree growth, only served to kill the associated hardwoods and thus release the conifers. Essentially it was a reforestation procedure. At the present time, such blanket spraying, selective in its effect, is being used in Christmas tree plantations, and in silvi- cultural practices to promote the fast-growing conifers.
For killing larger spruces, hemlocks and non-sprouting pines, chopping or ringing seems to be the most effective. I have used herbicides in many ways, for many years, on such conifers, but the time and energy I have put to such matters has never been practical.
58
For the smaller conifers, it is sometimes easiest to give them a soaking with oil spray. Such treatment is essentially a foliage burn and a bud killing. If all the buds are so killed, the plant dies, for adventitious buds are rarely formed. How small is “small” is for you to decide. It depends on your judgment between the energy of chopping and possibly removing the plant, and the carrying and the cost of the spray. For the common pasture juniper, I prefer spraying, even tho the plants may be several feet in diameter. This juniper is sharply prickly. Some people are allergic to the scratches. J aim to avoid handling the thing. I prefer soaking the plant with oil spray. After several weeks the foliage browns. One can see what one has missed, and spray again. After a season, the brown needles have dropped. The plant soon vanishes into the grassland. If one is bothered by small pine trees, two feet or less in height, a flick of your oil sprayer will solve the problem. Surrounded by grasses as they are, the browned plant is all but invisible.
For sprouting woody plants, be they shrubs or trees, you must know whether they are “stump sprouters”’ or “root suckerers.”’ The stump sprouters are those which send up new shoots from the base, like birches, maples, ashes and oaks. The root suckerers are those which can send up shoots from the roots, and thus the new shoots can form a large colony surrounding the original trunk. The root suckerers include beech, sassafras, aspen (which has been recorded as developing a shoot in the grassland over 30 meters from the parent tree!), ailanthus. Some of the shrubby oaks belong in this category, as do plums, fire cherries, choke cherries and many of the blueberries and huckleberries. If in doubt as to whether you have a seedling or a rootsucker, dig up a plant. Do not trust other people, especially engineers, and even some foresters. If the plant you are digging belongs to a colony, and if it is connected to a heavier horizontal root, the chances are that you are dealing with a root- suckering species.
STUMP-SPROUTING WOODY PLANTS are fairly easy to murder. You can kill or remove the upper branches by any one of the several mechanical or chemical methods. The most critical and important aspect is the “root collar,” that part of the plant at or just below the soil surface. It is the root collar which will develop adventitious buds and send up new shoots. It is seldom practical to remove this part mechanically, unless indeed you want to go to the trouble of digging out the entire stump.
59
The most feasible procedure with stump-sprouting species is to see that the root collar is thoroly soaked with oil spray. ‘This is most easily done at the time of stump spraying or basal-bark spraying by putting on ample volume and letting the spray roll down and soak the soil line. If there is loose soil or dead leaves at the base, it is best to kick them aside, for your aim is not to soak the adjacent soil, but the lowermost bark.
It is important to realize with these plants that it is not necessary to poison or to kill the roots themselves. The roots are entirely unable to develop new shoots. Bereft of their “head” they die just as surely as the torso of a beheaded man will die even tho every- thing below the head is entirely uninjured.
ROOT-SUCKERING WOODY PLANTS must be treated with a very different understanding—or you may end up with an actual forest of what you are trying to get rid of. Many railroads and power compa- nies, ill-advised on the part of the herbicide industry, are now burden- ed with solid stands of sassafras, ailanthus or aspen, simply because their spraying predictably stimulated the growth of root suckers.
Knowing that the chemical does not effectively move into and poison the roots, one must guard against the possibility of stimu- lating the roots to produce suckers. One of the best ways to so stimulate the roots is to cut off, or kill, the main tree. And one of the easiest ways of killing the main tree is to cut it and stump spray it, ot to basal spray it in such a way that the chemical quickly moves out to the branches and kills them. The chemical industry loudly advertises this as “control.” True. It is not kill! The roots are left alive, and quickly develop suckers. There are suckers and suckers in this live-ly game.
Present recommendations indicate that rootsuckering trees should be basal-sprayed in late summer, not at any other season. When so sprayed a chemical girdling occurs. Relatively little of the herbicide moves upward. Possibly some moves downward, linked to the sugars that are moving down into the roots at this season. Further- mote, the girdling soon stops all downward movement of starches; the roots are starved for lack of nourishment; the roots die; then the top dies. This procedure is a bit slow for hasty engineers— but with these plants, haste makes waste—for the home owner (but more business for the contractor, who gets it from the tax-paying home owner).
60
CIRSIUM
b) Herbaceous Plants
Annual herbs are no problem, for if one keeps the plant sprayed, no seed is formed, and no seeds will be available the following year to germinate. If bare soil is turned up, buried dormant seeds may germinate. In fact, it is quite remarkable what enormous numbers of seeds will lie dormant in soil, waiting for suitable conditions of light temperature and moisture in order to start growing. Since, however, bare soil is rarely met with in Naturalistic Landscaping, this factor can be all but ignored.
Perennial herbs may be thought of as being (1) clumped, and fibrous rooted, forming single dense plants, or (2) rhizomatous and spreading, forming colonies. Another type (3) spreads by arching branches, or runners, which root at the tip. Such plants, if sprayed before the tip roots, may be treated the same as clumped plants.
1. Clumped herbs can be treated with either water-borne or oil-borne sprays. Water-borne sprays are effective early in the season, when the foliage is young and tender. Later, there may be no effect whatever. Oil-borne sprays may only burn the foliage, with no effect on the growing buds at the soil level. In general, it is wise to treat these herbs early in the season before the mere bulk of foliage becomes a hindrance to effective spraying. What you should be trying to kill is not necessarily the expanse of above-ground foliage, but the growing buds. For this reason, be sure you soak the soil where these buds are. The spray on the soil and on the surface mulch of dead leaves is wasted, in a sense, but there is no other way to get at the growing buds of the plant.
2. Rhizomatous herbs are real problems. For some plants, like Canada thistle, dogbane, and the common milkweed and cer- tain goldenrods, the plant spreads by pencil-thick underground rhizomes, sometimes at depths of 12 inches or more. Since the herbicide does not move “‘backward” to poison these rhizomes, spraying often acts to stimulate the development of new shoots, very much as for sassafras and aspen. Herbs are not constructed, in the anatomy of their stems, like woody plants. The bark, place of major downward movement, is not on the outside. The wood, place of major upward movement of water and nutrients, is not on the inside. To the contrary, the inside of the stem is composed of a lot of little bundles, somewhat like a handful of spaghetti. Thus, one cannot “ring” an herb, and basal spraying only serves to soak thru the stem and kill the above-ground parts. The most that one can do for rhizome-killing of rhizomatous herbs is repeatedly to “mow” them, either by a quick oil-spray leaf-burn, or a slow water- spray effect. Where the rhizomes are close to the surface, as with some ferns, then one can soak the soil. True, one kills most other plants at that particular spot, but in a few months other plants will invade the place. Just see that the wrong kinds of plants do not do the invading and never forget the importance of stooping to yank.
61
3. A Calendar for Elimination thru the Year in Eight Periods
We have already considered the kinds of chemical and mechanical material (with what?) and techniques (how done?). We next de- scribed the general types of plants (to what?) and the different techniques to be applied to each. What remains is the matter of “when?,” the problem of laying out an actual program in time, of when we do what and with what and to ‘“‘whom”’.
The process of Intaglio in connection with Naturalistic Land- scaping is a year-round procedure. There is no month in which you cannot do something, depending upon your ability to bear with, and even to like withexhilaration, extremes of cold or heat. There need be no great hardship here. I assume that if you yourself were the hothouse blossom that needs a totally air-conditioned environment, you would not be reading this book. Cheer up, tho, there is one pleasant “don’t:” don’t do any spraying while it is raining or snow- ing, or while there is snow on the ground, or after a rain when the bark is still wet. The spray, to be most effective, must permeate bark and in most cases must be applied close to the soil surface. Thus, this is no job for rain or snow. Mechanical operations yes, but not spraying. The following calendar is suited to regions in either Temperate Zone where there is a cold-dormant season with snow. It is easily altered for the Tropics where there is a dry-dormant season. In the humid Tropics, one easily adjusts to local conditions, when growth is more rapid or more slow.
62
1. MID-WINTER. DEEP SNOW. This is the most quiescent time of the entire year from the standpoint of Naturalistic Landscaping. It is one of the most beautiful from the viewpoint of skiing and snow- shoeing around the areas you have landscaped, or will landscape. It is an excellent season for clearing some of the higher branches along
your woodland trails. Branches which in summer are far out of reach are now within comfortable chopping distance. It is also a good time to knock off the lower limbs of conifers which you intend to ring-peel in spring. These trees may form solid tangles of lower branches, and the preparatory work of getting in to them takes more time than the actual peeling. If you are more or less clear-cutting any extensive area of larger trees, it does not make much difference whether or not snow is on the ground. Just be sure that stumps are not too high. And, of course, be absolutely sure that if you are having someone else do it, he knows what not to cut. Tie a big red rag on every thing you want saved. Even some- times that is not enough for some operators, who operate more like a butcher than a surgeon.
63
2. DORMANT SEASON. NO SNoOw. In the snowless dormant season, one can often accomplish nine tenths of all woody plant removal— if one knows his woody plants in winter. Recognition of plants at this season is mystifying to the layman, but really very easy. Bereft of their flowers and clothing verdure, of their necklaces and stoles, one merely learns to recognize certain basic features of their mor- phology and anatomy, the silhouette against the sky, the size and shape of the branches, the nature of bark and buds.
I would recommend the end of winter in general, not the begin- ning. At the beginning of winter, dead herbaceous material and fallen leaves lie heavily on the ground, and prevent or hinder one from spraying the basal parts of woody plants. At the end of winter, this material is flattened and partially rotted, and one can move around far more easily.
This is one of the finest times of the year for planning, and for preliminary opening of woody trails. One can now sight thru the woods for long distances, for several hundred feet even, whereas in summer the visibility will be limited to a dozen feet or so. One can see interesting rock formations, and general contours of the land, and plan his trail accordingly. The perspective at this season is almost like a bird’s-eye view, in comparison to the worm’s-eye view later on.
Both mechanical and chemical techniques are applicable at this season for woody plants. Trees can be cut down. Shrubs can be cut. Wherever you would use an axe or a chain saw, this is a fine time for the purpose. With no foliage on the plants, the cut brush is far more easily disposed of.
64
I would recommend that you do as much as possible of your basal-bark and stub-and-stump spraying at this season. Pick a quiet sunny day. It will be warmer then, and the spray won’t blow. Whatever inconvenience you may feel about the lower temperature will be more than offset by the fact that you are not encumbered by low-growing herbaceous material (on which you would waste a lot of spray), or by biting insects (causing waste of time and motion). I would go thru the area basal-spraying thin-barked trees like maples and oaks, being sure to soak the soil-line root-collar. Trees known to be very resistant, like ash, require cutting first. White ash seedlings have the unfortunate habit often of being in a zig-zag- zig shape, the “‘zag”’ being a horizontal part of the stem. The zag must be fully soaked also, and this requires nosing into the surface litter with your spray nozzle until you find where the plant turns down- ward into the soil. For root-suckering plants like aspen and sassa- fras (tho not the best season for treating them), your aim is chemi- cally to girdle the shoot; and thus soaking at the ground level is not so important. Psychologically, it may not be as satisfactory to spray at this season, for you cannot quickly “‘see results.” Worse, spring comes, and the tree leafs out as tho your spray “‘failed.”’ Have patience, the plant may not die until midsummer. Sometimes one must even wait until the second year. The top does not die until the roots first die, and thus this technique is by far the most efficient in the long-term picture. If you get too impatient in spring, cut out a little piece of the bark, where you sprayed, and see whether the cambium between it and the wood is black and dead, or white slippery and alive. If it is alive, you did not spray with sufficient volume and over a tall enough vertical section.
For certain evergreen shrubs like juniper, this is a good time to soak the foliage. In the summer you will see what you missed, and can complete the job. For smaller non-root-suckering deciduous shrubs, in addition to basal spraying, you may like to give them a light overall spray. In this way, you will kill most of the buds, and your results will be quickly seen in spring, including the branches you missed. I would not try this with the rhizomatous and root- suckering shrubs like huckleberries and trailing blueberries, unless you intend to follow up with additional sprays every time the underground parts send up new shoots. When the new shoots are short, 18 inches or less, there is not much else you can do. Be persistent in the follow-ups tho, or otherwise your effort will be lost.
65
3. BURSTING BUDS. There is a period of two or three weeks when buds are so swollen and differently colored that they stand out clearly from among dead stems. Then comes the time when green shows. And finally, the new small leaves have popped open, minia- ture but perfect in shape. If you yourself also feel bursting with springtime energy, by all means utilize it. The grass has not yet grown up to hide the bases of the trees, and it is still time for basal spraying and stump spraying. Furthermore, the new green leaves will show up all that you missed on the winter overall spraying. The smallness of the foliage will be no hindrance to such oil spray- ing as you may still wish to do on smaller woody plants, or on branches of larger shrubs. Such spraying of shrubs, even ones 0 to 8 feet tall, will not now damage the grassland underneath, for the spray will fall on the dead mulch, thru which the grasses and forbs will later penetrate unharmed.
4, FLUSH SPRING GROWTH. You who grow “flowers” in gardens may think that plants “grow” all season long. You are right, in a way. Actually, however, the greater part of the growth occurs in the first six weeks or so of spring. It is as this time that the cam- bium of woody plants is most active, and forms the greater part of the year’s increase in diameter growth. The twigs now grow rapidly in length, 6, 12, 18 inches or more. Then they stop growing, and the bud is formed, not to break until the end of the next winter. The foliage grows and reaches its full size. Herbs shoot up, and do most of their growing in this period. The result of all this extraordinary above-ground activity is that the roots of plants are in a state of relative exhaustion and depletion. The wise landscaper, knowing this, will often time his activities accordingly. The roots are more easily killed when they are depleted. Each species is slightly differ- ent, and knowing your species you can often time your spraying so as to give a knock-out punch. (After all this flush spring growth, the plants settle down to serious summer “‘growth” of another kind. The green foliage then manufactures carbohydrates, which in turn are moved to the roots and stored, ready to be utilized in the next season’s flush and excitement.)
66
If your herbaceous ground vegetation is not so dense as to cover up the bases of the trees, basal-bark spraying and stub-spraying can be continued. For small tree seedlings, the new-expanded foliage stands out on your “misses” like a minute thorn in your finger. They can thus be “lapped up” as you are casually walking around the fields.
This season is one of the best for water-spraying undesirable herbs. They are now large enough to be seen, but not so large as to require exorbitant amounts of spray. Furthermore, the foliage is tender, and far more reactive to the chemical. The worst problem is that there is no “‘color marker’”’ in the chemical, and a few minutes later—unless you have an inhuman memory—you will respray, or miss, plants. Under some circumstances, I would suggest keeping yourself aligned with markers temporarily stuck in the ground. Be sure you soak the foliage to the drip-off point. And for clumped non-rhizomatous herbs, or in situations where the rhizomes are close to the surface, snuggle your spray nozzle into the base of the plant while you take a second or two in a look-around pause-that- refreshes. In a few days, the growing tips of the plants will curl twist or bend, and you can recognize what you have missed. It may take the rest of the summer however for the plant to weaken and die.
Now is the ideal time for ringing and peeling trees. The bark literally cracks off and slides off. Don’t forget to use a herbicide treated glove (if regulations warrant), to slide around the exposed wood surface, to prevent regrowth. You can keep up peeling as the weeks advance, until the bark becomes “tight.” You can keep on for the entire year if you want, but it is too much work for me at these other times.
5. MIDSUMMER is a time of dog-days and general relaxation. You can keep busy, but there is no longer a sense of urgency. Except for resprouting and regrowths! There you must go back and respray, or your first spraying will be totally wasted. I used to wait, thru the season, thru another year, thru still another year, hoping the things would die. They don’t. If anything, they grow all the better!
Personally, I find water-borne sprays not of much use at this season. True, the commercial people recommend such spraying, but that is only because you get a color effect in the foliage within a short time, which they can point to as “results.” The fact that you usually do not successfully kill the roots is all to their advantage. If you have some “woody brush” around, water-borne sprays will kill them to the ground, and they will show “dead” the next spring. Frankly, I gave up this type of spraying in 1949, and never resumed it. I was not killing the roots as successfully as I was with other techniques. Furthermore—and this is only avery tentative hypoth- esis—I strongly suspect that such light water-borne sprays may
67
induce a dormancy on the part of some plants. They will be ‘‘dead”’ thru an entire growing season, or even thru two seasons. Then suddenly I will find I get a new “invasion” of the plants. On dig- ging them up, one finds they come from old root systems. An ideal situation, for certain people in the business, no?
In situations where you want a fern bed, at present mixed up with asters, goldenrods and other forbs, this is an ideal time for using water sprays. The fern foliage is now hard enough to be totally resistant to such sprays. The forbs however will be badly set back, even if they are not browned. The end result is a tipping of the competition scales in the direction of the ferns. Your aim is accomplished.
If your ground vegetation is thin, you can keep on with oil-borne sprays, for basal-bark and stubs. I very much recommend going over your land at this time to get not only the ‘“‘misses” of earlier spraying, but the resprouts from root-suckering plants. Unless these are burned off, they will be replenishing the roots with food, and you will have greater growth the next year. At the same time you can oil-burn the foliage of deep-rhizomed herbs, providing you do not choose to cut them or pull them.
Midsummer is the time for pulling the large rank rhizomatous herbs, such as large goldenrods, asters, common milkweed, dog- bane, bracken. I am perfectly willing to recommend some mechani- cal or chemical technique, when I find such a technique that is more efficient in terms of time, energy, and human cost. With the present state of technology however, and recognizing that this is a small- scale landscaping problem, and not one involving a hundred acres of flat open land, an old-fashioned yank serves in a most satisfying manner to pull up a large amount of healthy root that is not other- wise to be had—unless you use a pick and shovel. There is also one indirect advantage: you will be convinced, as nothing else can convince, that your problem does not lie with new invading seed- lings, but with old root-systems (despite all the ecologic theory of “plant succession”’). In other words, if you can clean up those old root systems, you have not “controlled” the plant, you have prob- ably “‘eradicated”’ it.
68
6. LATE SUMMER. Late summer deserves special recognition mainly for one type of spraying, basal-bark spraying of such root-suckering woody-stem plants as sumach, aspen, sassafras and ailanthus. Most herbaceous plants are now too hard-foliaged and too large for effective water-spraying. Resprouts of woody plants should be burned off with oil spray as they may be found. But if you are attacking for the first time a colony of root-suckering trees, I re- commend that it be done sometime between mid-summer and when the foliage begins to turn in autumn. Research data from several parts of the country indicate that there are fewer resprouts when the spraying is so timed. If you ask why, it may be said that in late summer the manufactured carbohydrates are moving down to the roots, and carry along some of the herbicide with them. Regardless of the “explanation” in dignified scientific lingo, you get better results that way.
This is the time when commercial people spray roadsides with water-borne sprays. If they put on enough gallonage, they may get the equivalent of basal-bark spraying on root-suckering woody plants. Their main reason for doing it at this season however is so that the resulting brown-out merges with fall coloration, so that the public is fooled. For many scientific reasons however, unrelated to brown-out, this spraying is economically (for the taxpayer), and conservation-wise unsound, and legislation should make it illegal.
69
7. AUTUMN FOLIAGE. Of the eight seasons into which we have divided the year, Indian Summer provides no “‘must” or “best” for the Intaglio activities of the Naturalistic Landscaper. The cool nights have all but eliminated the nuisance insects and give an in- vigorating start to the day. The warm quiet sun seems to gain additional fire by reflections from the brilliant foliage. Leaves are no longer sending carbohydrates back to the roots so there is no
use burn-spraying them, even while they get in the way of bark- spraying. Take it easy. If your herbaceous ground covers are fairly
thin, you might still basal-spray or stub-and-stump spray woody plants that are stump-sprouters. In fact, this is as good a time as any for doing this work. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy what you have done in preceding months, while planning for coming months.
8, EARLY WINTER. DORMANT SEASON. The leaves fall. The trees and shrubs are bare. The grass dries. By tradition, the hunting season is on. The larger mammals dangerous to man have long since been eliminated from our woodlands. But not so with the human hunter. Along with what he calls “game” he continues to take an annual toll of common ordinary laymen like you and me, of other hunters, and sometimes the breed even becomes suicidal. The last two situations, however, are statistically insignificant in re- ducing their population. Thus I would recommend that, for some parts of the country, you develop the habit of singing or whistling in an unmistakably human manner. (Brightly colored clothing is not enough, nor huge labelling like MAN. Some hunters do not read, judging from newspaper accounts.) Such noises as whistling even tho non-musical, may serve to make both hunters and other such animals flee the area. I know one individual who attached a whistle to the nozzle of his sprayer, but it only drew the hunters, who thought it was some new game bird. In general, the accumulation of dead plant life on the ground will hinder efficient bark and stump spraying. On the other hand, your local vegetation conditions may still permit such spraying. The foliage of unwanted evergreen shrubs can be sprayed at this season, and even of the evergreen lycopods that may be along a foot trail. Do what you can—it may be quite a bit, it may even be the major amount of your woody plant spraying—but do not waste spray on dead leaves and grass that may be covering up the bases of the stump-sprouting trees. The cycle is complete. The snows will soon come. Don’t go south. The white snows usher in one of the finest of the seasons.
70
C. THREE SPECIAL SITUATIONS
The elimination procedures we have already discussed (Section B above) can be an extremely disruptive operation to the botanical landscape. It may leave “‘holes” in the vegetation tapestry, much like moths operating on a carpet. This carpet can repair itself however, and it promptly starts to do so. Furthermore, there were some weak spots in the vegetation tapestry to start with probably, and these spots can be improved in chosen ways. From the viewpoint of logically developing our entire Landscaping program, it is wise to consider the immediate reactions to our elimination procedures. Later ( Part II,p.77 ) we will consider the long-term natural
changes in the vegetation types we have produced. Finally (Part III, p. 100) we will discuss the art of embellishing with new plants.
In this section, we have three related but none-the-less distinct problems. The first concerns the avoidance of making unnecessary “holes” in the vegetation cover. The second deals with the natural filling of those holes if you have accidentally or intentionally made them. The third puts emphasis on the encouraging and manipula- tion of remaining plants so as to most quickly fill the holes. These three procedures are very closely related, and you will find that in actual practice you are involved with all three procedures at once. For purposes of discussion and for your understanding, however, it is best to keep them separate.
fk
1. Avoidance of “‘Holes”’
To make a hole, or not to make a hole, that is the question. Many and many a time you will be confronted with a situation which poses this serious question. There will be patches of undesirable vegetation 10, 25 or 50 feet across that seemingly have nothing worth while in them. The temptation will be strong—even if you have been an eclectic in most other instances—to give free rein to the bulldozer element in your personality. (And who does not have it, to some extent?) My advice is not to give in, not to decide on the flip of a coin, but to stop, to look, and even to listen to that feeble inner voice. Put your knapsack sprayer down, and take the time to
walk over the whole spot, carefully looking for desirable plants. There may be a thin sparse spot of grass, a few shoots of a desirable forb, the mouse-bitten stubs of a handsome shrub. If so, get back into the eclectic spirit again, and plan to spray discriminately, even if it will require your coming back several times during the season. These things that nature planted are probably a lot hardier than anything you might introduce. They have already survived a lot of competition.
And even if you find nothing worth saving, it might still be wise not to act like a bulldozer, and tear over the entire patch. This is where the “‘divide and conquer” technique of military strategy can be utilized. Hem in the little spot by spraying all around the edge, thus “‘containing”’ it. You will find the plants stay contained very easily. Plants are not nearly as aggressive, not as likely to jump your barrier, as are animals and man. Then in your leisure and in the future, you can draw your net tighter and tighter, eventually pinch- ing the enemy out of existence. More often than not, you will find that a remaining small clearly demarcated little spot has an actual landscape value, and you will keep it!
72
2. Filling of “Holes”
Where you have chosen to spray out a patch of a colonial fern, where there has been a dense clump of some low colonial shrub, where you have removed a group of trees that had previously cast a very dense shade, it is quite possible that you may be left with a spot of relatively bare ground. Don’t itch, and get worried. Don’t rush to “plant it up” with some ground cover that an agriculturist recommends. Let Nature take her course. If the course is not exactly what you want, you can gently nudge her into another course. Only once did I ever consider that She was not cooperating with me as fully as I wished. I once blanket-sprayed several hundred square feet of rich sloping surface that was 99°, covered with un- wanted plants. I used 2,4-D alone, not a mixture of D and T. Brambles are resistant to D alone, and I was rewarded for my endeavors with a bed of 8-foot tall brambles, 99.99% pure. I saw no virtue in such a prickly situation. Furthermore it was absolutely sterile; not a fruit in the lot. Then I used 2,4,5-T. Root-killing was so rapid that I began to get soil erosion. The blackberries and the blanket-spray had killed out whatever plants might have been around, and which would have spread and held the soil. So I slowed down my anti-blackberry campaign. Unwanted rank goldenrods, asters, and ferns continued to pour in, while I continued to peck them out. Finally, 8 years later, I succeeded in obtaining the smooth grassland that I wished.
If there is anything for you to learn from my mistake: Don’t get overenthusiastic and “‘spray everything,” unless you are sure that something desirable will survive your murderous activities. If your spraying does leave small holes, just keep watching them. The chances are that rhizomatous grasses will creep in from the sides. Watch for unwanted tree or shrub seedlings. Let nature take her course, yes, but ever be ready to give a push and shove if She gets off course—in your opinion. And this idea leads us to the next section.
73
3. Encouraging of Remaining Plants
As you keep wandering around your natural-landscaped fields and forests, your eyesight will become sharper and sharper. You will see things you never saw before. You will wonder how you ever missed them. Or if you had seen them, you will wonder how much more they mean to you now. You will gradually get to see plants that are barely surviving in the competitive struggle with other plants. If it is a desirable plant, you will wonder what you might do to tip the scale of competition in its favor. There are many things you can do. Keep in mind that a plant in nature is not the ideal, perfect, hothouse-bred individual that you yourself are, among human beings. A daisy plant in the garden is a huge bushy affair, with a hundred blossoms. In the grassland, it may bear only 2 or 3 blossoms. A tree in the open is a rounded symmetrical specimen with many lower limbs. In the forest, with bitter competition from neighboring trees, it is tall and slender, and probably survived by a narrow margin over countless other slender trees that died in the process. They all are beautiful depending on your viewpoint, tho I doubt that I would consider an overpopulated starving part of the world, surviving as a human community only by a birth rate higher than a high death rate, as beautiful in respect to its individuals. But then, I am prejudiced.
You will find both herbaceous plants and woody plants that will repay a bit of encouragement. The herbaceous plants, possibly some unusual aster or goldenrod, may become 50 times larger and handsomer if you give it a helping hand against its adversaries. As for woody plants, if you see some little azaleas or mountain ashes in the grassland, they will probably be old as well as little. Actually, you will learn in the next section that seedling invasion by shrubs is very rare. What you do find may come from very old root- systems, barely surviving as each year’s growth is clipped off. Give them a chance, and they will grow up.
74
These small plants have remained inconspicuous and small for many many reasons. In general, however, it may be said that they have failed in competition (a) with other plants, and (b) with animals. Other plants may have the advantage in taking water and nutrients from the soil. The above-ground foliage may grow over and shade out the weaker plant. Among animals, insects may continually eat off the foliage. Larger animals, like mice, rabbits, woodchuck and deer may browse it off.
Competition from those other plants can be controlled by kiliing out the adjacent plants. One of the simplest ways is by applying a blanketing mulch. A few flat stones will often do the trick. There are many ways of mulching, and the subject will be discussed in detail in Section III. If you find caterpillars are eating your plant, use some powder. Very often these insects will only attack weaker plants, and protection for a year or so may be all that is necessary. Rodent damage can be really critical, and these little animals may be directly responsible for the continuance of a grassland that would otherwise become shrubland. For mice, caging with wire mesh is effective. At greater heights, deer browse is a factor. In this case, dead brush stuck into your shrub will be a deterrent. Large dead twigs mixed with small live ones do not please a déer’s palate.
Live in all these procedures, keep in mind that your function is to give “‘one-finger aid” to nature. You are not trying to establish a one- plant garden out in the wild. If the plant becomes neurotically deman- ding for care and attention, my advice is to let it die. There are plenty of fine hardy plants to work with, without your becoming a slave to an invalid. At this point, the analogy to a human society breaks down. Do not be sentimental about the plants, even if you are incorrigibly, sentimental otherwise.
Conservation — A minor slowdown in the exploitation of natural resources, designed so that our grandchildren get the blame for the final plundering of our planet, rather than ourselves. Ideally, a permanent balance between the earth and our needs, which situation of course cannot be equated—as any fool can see—without proposing a finite figure for the numbers of people to be involved in this utopian equation. — A.OB.
75
Part II
MAINTENANCE
The Art of Perpetuating the Landscape
. Vegetation Development. The sequence from community to com- munity
i. Physiogaomuc Development 616i civic cucavrnceevannnneeaswsens a, Developiitent in “Flotistie Reliys” sccccrcanectavssavecunanns 3. Development by “Initial Floristic Composition” .............. 4. Development by Combination of #2 and #3 ................ 5. Probable Developmental Trends in Your Fields ...............
. Behavior of Communities
1, Position of a Community im the Sequedice 2.245 ¢nxcacesueeener a, eae Gt Ce SS cna ve see cR eee eheeenewasewaneeecawes 9, PIGetIatOns With 42 COMMUN cei vi ccc anteneeasvnvncneas
. Behavior of Species L. Species teont “ontside™ the Community 2ciscacssesacenawawwws a. Species “inside” the Community 2.6 .iiakssvernsvnsavensnwans
. Maintenance Procedures
Mechanical and Chemical Tools .4...ccisenenaneenevavacecseves oe ne ee ee Se es eee eee ee ee eT
PIGWIOE nose uhuenctonGed 1h 242 oP RRDER ESE RH ORME REwERKREORER EMS
Part II
MAINTENANCE The Art of Perpetuating the Landscape
The day will come when your Intaglio procedures are essentially completed, when you feel you can sit back and enjoy the landscape that you have sculptured out of the formless brush acres. True, very true—but only quantitatively. It is not as tho you have sculptured the sphinx, to stand unchanged for millenia. Even the sphinx had enemies shoot away its nose, while the desert sands poured upon its paws. Nor should we forget that the sphinx will someday vanish, but an episode in beological time.
The Naturalistic Landscape you have erected is a living growing phenomenon. The plants composing it are growing, are tending to reproduce themselves. The shrubs that now look so fine against the 20-foot conifers will one day be overshadowed and killed out by the 60-foot trees. The clump of pure white paper birch at the forest edge may grow old and ungainly, scarred by ice storms. An un- desirable herbaceous weed may overspread your grasslands before you realize what an enemy it is. And you yourself will not climb the ledges with the same agility, nor take the same pleasure from sum- mer heat waves or the below-zero blasts of winter.
You have created a “semi-natural” landscape, a healthy thriving “organism.” It is not a gentle fragile hothouse flower that needs constant attention. You will find that it needs watching, and a bit of corrective medication once in a while. But it will be a relatively easy task. And a most interesting task. In my opinion, far more interesting that the previous strenuous sculpturing. Now we have to “understand” the organism we have created. We must realize the way it changes and grows naturally. My own personal interest and
enthusiasm always has been in this phase of the work. Here we have an intellectual challenge far superior to the heavy-handed removal
procedures that went before. I never would have become so deeply involved with Intaglio activities had not my agricultural predeces- sors filled up the fields, even if unintentionally, with a lot of brush that I did not want.
One word of caution tho: If you have been interested in outdoor natural history, you have probably somewhere picked up the idea of “‘plant succession” and of “succession to climax.” These are hypotheses that have been inordinately popular with academic plant ecologists, especially in North America where the ideas originated. They are not only easy to understand, but emotionally very satis- fying. And these things do happen in Nature, once in a while. But Nature is proving far more complicated than the minds of those ecologists. Do not expect your landscape to have read the ecology books on proper behavior for old fields. And if you yourself are in doubt, read Nature, not books. I find Nature a lot more interesting.
78
A. VEGETATION DEVELOPMENT The sequence from community to community
The chances are 99 to 100 that your Naturalistic Landscaping will be on lands that have at one time or another been used for agri- culture. That is, they are thick-soiled, and capable of growing crops ot of being pastured. We will orient our discussion around this type of land. If you ever start operating on such boulder-strewn slopes ot on such ledges and cliffs as to be fit only for goats, you will pro- bably not be dealing with “communities” of plants, but with in- dividual plants in crevices. And if you come to a pocket of soil, even a few feet across, it will be a Lilliputian field. Then borrow from your knowledge of larger fields.
1. Physiognomic Development
As a starting point for our discussion, let us assume that many yeats ago your field was growing a crop, corn for example, perhaps a century ago. Then the family was massacred, or for some reason we do not entirely understand, the family abandoned all the work that had gone into the homestead and the farm, piled its possessions into a covered wagon, and drove off to New Frontiers and a literal wilderness. Most historians follow the family. We shall follow the field. Corn is an annual crop, and does not survive a winter. Change comes quickly.
a) Annual Weeds. If you were around to see this field, you would have noticed that for the first several years the prominent plants were annual weeds, large rangy things that start from seed each year. Most countries have them, and they go by such dis- pataging names as pigweed, gooseweed, ragweed, beggarweed.
Plant Succession — The most sacred myth in ecological theology, arising in the uncertainties born of ignorance, nurtured in the compulsion to view natural phenomena with certainties, and destined to survive because it satisfies a deep inner urge of a simple mind to see a simple order in unsimple
nature. — A.Q.B.
79
b) Grass Stage. Come back a few years later, and the chances are that the vegetation looks quite different. The weeds have all but vanished, and in their place are grasses. Now whether this abund- ance of grasses is due to cattle (for grasses can stand being trampled and being grazed off) I am not sure. It is very rare to find an old cropland that is not used for grazing before it is completely abandoned.
c) Large Forb Stage. The next time you will have returned to the site of the old homestead, there will probably be less grass, and heavy non-grassy herbs will predominate. They may be goldenrods, asters, eupatoriums or any of many others. These forbs are larger, and more aggressive than the grasses, and tend to kill them out by competition. I am assuming of course that there is no pasturing and no fire and no mowing. We are considering the natural devel- opments when these other factors are not operating.
d) Shrubland. The years go on and you scarcely know the place when again you return. This time the land is covered with shrubs. There will be a dozen different kinds that are abundant, and many lesser ones. If they are over six feet you will easily lose yourself in the tangle of brush, and find it difficult to force thru an escape route.
e) Forest. The next and last time you come back, an even greater change strikes the eye. A forest has come into existence. You walk thru the deep shade. You see the remains of the shrubs that are dying. You see young trees starting in the shade, perhaps of differ- ent kinds than those which are now overhead.
We have seen the changes in physiognomy (p. 80a), That is not enough!
80
CROP | WEEDS GRASS | FORBS | SHRUBS| TREES
YEARS
Changes in physiognomy in the development of vegetation. The vegeta- tion on old fields, corn land for example, undergoes superficial changes in appearance as the years progress. Consecutively, these stages are often dominated by (a) annual weeds, (b) grasses, (c) large forbs, (d) shrubs, and finally (e) the forest.
80a
|"
Il
YEARS
The concept of ‘‘Floristic Relays.” By this concept, physiognomic change is interpreted in terms of Invading Relays of plants. Each relay invades and kills off the preceding relay. In turn, it modifies the local site, making it suitable for the invasion of still another relay, and is in turn killed off by it.
80b
2. Development by “‘Floristic Relays”
It is one thing to see that change, from corn to weeds, to grass, to shrubs, to trees. Most laymen, even scientists, even ecologists, do not see that much. They look at a dozen old fields that have been abandoned for different numbers of years, and then assume that any one field has gone, or will go, thru such stages. It is sometimes best to leave the state, before the years prove to you how wrong you were. If you cannot leave, you learn to look the other way. This physiognomic change we have described however, from corn to forest, very often does occur. But /ow it occurs is another question.
One way it can occur is by “‘waves” of invading plants, each coming in, ousting the previous plants, and taking over the land. In time, they are ousted by another invading group of plants. This particular method—it does sometimes occur in nature—is especi- ally easy to understand, and has fired the imagination of the scientists. They say that wave after wave comes in. Each wave be- comes dominant over the preceding stage; the plants in turn change the soil and the microclimate near the ground; in time they make the site unfit for themselves and fit for other plants; a new stage of succession comes in. The idea is likened to waves of human popu- lations. First we have the hardy native tribes in an area. Then the explorers and the frontiersmen. The early settlers arrive. They move on when the place gets too civilized for them. Farms develop; first the exurbanites, then the bedroom towns of the suburbs, and finally the city itself. (They do not talk about slum development.) Like most analogies, they serve until facts make them untenable.
This notion can be portrayed graphically (p. 80b), Insofar as your plants do behave in this manner (and this is where you must observe more, and read less) you know some of the secrets of maintaining the landscape as you wish. If trees invade only under a shrubland, you can anticipate that they will give you a problem amongst your shrubs. You will notice however that in the diagram no trees invade a grassland. It will only be the shrubs that give you a problem there. Furthermore, you can have forest and grassland side by side, and neither will invade the other. The “‘missing link,” the shrubland, the “‘nurse crop” as the foresters call it, is absent. In other words, where you have grassland, you will tend to get shrubland. Where you have shrubland, you will tend to get forest. As often as you destroy one group of plants, you will tend to get back the plants of the stage that immediately precedes. Unfortun- ately for this particular theory, it does not often work this way, at least in the humid forest temperate areas of the world.
81
3. Development by “Initial Floristic Composition”
You do not have to be a scientist to realize that more than “floristic relays” are involved in the ordinary course of vegetation development. Just go out and look for yourself, carefully. Some- times plant ecologists have not done that much. You see a large forb, a shrub, or a tree. How old is it? If it is a woody plant, cut it off, and count the rings? Wrong, that only gives you the age of the above-ground shoot. Having watched a peony for one year, would you say it is one year old? Actually it can be quite difficult to tell the age of the root system. Microscopic studies may be necessary, and even that may not be enough, for part of a root system may be dead and decaying while another part is growing. Do you know a seed- ling when you see one? Dig it up. You can generally tell from the shape and appearance of the roots. A shoot of goldenrod or aster or milkweed that is attached to a fat horizontal rhizome is not a seedling. A two-year-old above-ground oak shoot that comes up attached to a root as large as your wrist is no baby. It may date back a century or two. A tree shoot that comes off a deep underground stool-like structure probably was old when your country was young. A few-inch-tall shrub that shows a dozen or so little dead stubs is probably kept that size by the mice and the rabbits, and will be so controlled for the rest of your life, if you leave it. A bit of huckle- berry or plum pulled up and found to be attached to a horizontal root coming from a colony of the plant is no youngster. On the
82
SPECIES
| | | |
YEARS
The concept of “Initial Floristic Composition.” By this concept, physiog- nomic change is interpreted in terms of a floristic composition determined when the land was abandoned or last used for agricultural purposes. Physiog- nomic change is then not related to newly invading plants, but to plants there from the start, and developing into prominence only at a later time. These then die, or are overtopped, by still other plants which also had been there from the start.
82a
SPECIES
YEARS
_A theoretical type of vegetation development in which half the pre- dominant plants of each stage are part of the Initial Floristic Composition, and half are part of an Invading Relay. In this situation, if four kinds of trees are removed from a Shrubland, two kinds may return. Since for ex- ample the returning two kinds may be evergreen conifers, while the non- returning two were common deciduous hardwoods, the physiognomy of the returning forest can be quite different than that of the preceding forest.
82b
other hand, a small oak with the acorn still attached, a small ash with the fragments of the cotyledons still hanging on, a small pine showing a few annual rings when cut at the soil line, these will be seedlings in the true sense of the term. Only such seedlings are “invading,” and even for these there is no assurance they will “grow up.”
If you will take the time to observe the plants of the so-called later “stages” of vegetation development, you may be surprised to find that a great many of them are not young by any means. They have been there for a long long time. It 1s only recently that they have grown up, and dominated the physiognomy of the vege- tation. Graphically, we can portray this new idealized situation (p. 82b). In this theoretical case, the plants all started back at the time the field was abandoned. The changing physiognomy occurs when different kinds of plants grow up and dominate the landscape.
From the standpoint of maintenance of your landscape, it isvery important to know what plants are behaving according to this principle. For example, if you do not wish trees, and rootkill them, you need not fear re-invading trees unless you repeat the conditions under which they started, the bare soil of the ploughed field. If you eliminate the shrubs, they neither will return, unless you have bare soil. Furthermore, whether your grassland develops naturally into shrubland or into forest will not depend on what currently rein- vades as seedlings, but what did reinvade back years ago. Know- ing this situation you will consider the unwanted already-removed trees and shrubs as a problem in original “‘construction” of your landscape. They will be no problem at all in current “maintenance.”
83
SPIRAEA
in
ri
es x
s :
>
S. tomentosa
Boe:
1" G
ae:
4, Development by Combination of #2 and +3
The two preceding theoretical and idealized situations rarely if ever occur alone in nature. Rather, they are to be considered as “factors” which combine in various ways to form the vegetation development that we actually observe.
Page 82b expresses a combined but still theoretical situation in which half the plants of each stage occur as invading relays. The other half are there because of initial floristic composition of the old agricultural field.
Here we have a new problem in the original Intaglio, and in the subsequent Maintenance of our landscape. We may want no trees, so we remove the four kinds that are present. Two of them how- ever are capable of returning, and do return, amongst the shrubs. These two can cause us a considerable amount of trouble. Further- more, any one or more of these four trees may be conifers, in con- trast to deciduous hardwood trees. Thus we may radically change the physiognomy of the landscape by altering the proportions of deciduous and evergreen trees.
The situation becomes more complex when we want to remove the shrub stage also, and obtain a grassland. Some of the shrubs are part of the original cropland flora; a few may invade the grassland. In this case, we find that those shrubs and trees which are part of the Initial Floristic Composition and were removed in the Intaglio process cannot reinvade grassland, and thus will not give us any Maintenance problem. It is the shrub relay which we will have to watch for. Actually, this relay may involve species that previously were very rare. Now this invader is finding extensive grasslands to enter that it never had before. A population explosion is in the making. The idea is to catch the plant before it so explodes. Sounds easy, but the human race is certainly not controlling its own ex- plosion. As for the shrub-invading relay of trees, we need not worry about them at all—as long as we keep the shrubs from be- coming abundant. As in the tree situation described above, what- ever does come in as an invading relay may very much change the physiognomy of the landscape. It may be a needle-leaved coniferous shrub, or a broad-leaved evergreen shrub, or a deciduous shrub. In other words, developments subsequent to our original Intaglio efforts may be quite “natural,” but they may still be vastly different in appearance from the “normal” vegetation development one sees on old fields. What comes, or does not come, I cannot always predict. That is your problem. I am sure you will be fascinated by what does happen—for better or worse.
To this point (Sections 2, 3, and 4), we have dealt with idealized abstract theoretical situations. This approach has probably bothered the realistic ecologist who can only think in terms of concrete facts, or what he thinks are concrete facts. I consider this approach how- ever absolutely essential if you—and he—are to grasp the complex nature of Vegetation Development, and also that you may control it in a practical manner.
84
SPECIES
SPECIES
BEFORE INTAGLIO
NO GRASS-INVADING
se
GRASS- INVADING
yo TREES
__ ee, Jcti cu ccc acne ae Ce aa ee YEARS
BEFORE INTAGLIO. Probable and actual type of vegetation develop- ment occurring on old fields in deciduous forest regions of the world, and