Re: [pf] seed speed

David, I am struck by these observations of yours.  The last issue of Orion
Magazine has a special section on the loss of naturalists in the higher
education establishment and in the popular culture throughout the United
States (and probably the rest of the industrialized world, too).  The
blatant hubris of this neglect is going to create havoc down the road.

I pull weed seeds off my pantlegs when I come in from doing yardwork, too.
However, I think few people do so.  The reality is that the change that's
been building for decades is so great in both mass and momentum that there
is little any individual or small community can do to counteract it head-on.

I think it is Wendell Berry who wrote a piece advocating the establishment
by forward-thinking people of "ecosteries" (ecological monasteries) to
shelter and cultivate what biodiversity they can, to truly observe like you
have so as to know and preserve life forms for later (re)distribution once
the dust of the collapse--like the World Trade Center towers--of full-tilt,
get-it-while-you-can industrialism settles a century or two from now.

The calling that guides my life certainly is leading in this direction.

Kaleopono


----- Original Message -----
From: "David MacClement" <davd@ihug.co.nz>
To: "Positive Futures list" <positive-futures@igc.topica.com>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 10:26 AM
Subject: [pf] seed speed


> · Last Wednesday we three came back from a day-and-a-half on our farm,
> pruning trees that we had helped plant in July (winter) 1996.
>
> · I had worn some thick woollen socks, and after getting home here in our
> Auckland suburb I spent more than 40 minutes pulling some long grass-seeds
> out of them.
>
> · One of the main concerns about global warming (greenhouse gases) is the
> speed - such a great change in only a few decades, maybe a century.
>
> · The time-scale for tolerable change is how fast plants of various kinds
> can move, to keep up with the pole-ward movement of the climate they can
> survive in. Our current climate change is too fast for almost all plants,
> which can only travel roughly a hundred metres a decade.
>   Parent plant produces seed, often just dropped, sometimes on the end of
a
> long stem which lays it down a couple of feet away, sometimes carried by
> the wind (maple spinners), and sometimes carried by animals including
humans.
>   The seed (or the daughter "clone"-plant, if it's asexual vegetative
> reproduction) will only produce a new parent plant if the conditions are
> suitable. This is one reason why humans should leave uncleared corridors
> between wild copses and forested areas; so not only ground-travelling
> animals but also plants can travel north (in the northern hemisphere).
>
> · The grass seeds I removed from my socks had travelled 180 km in 2 hours.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> · One little feature, that could be considered "design" if you have little
> idea how long a billion years is, or the difference between a near
> infinitesimal probability and a zero probability.
>
> · These seeds each had two curved strong hairs or fibres at the tail, and
> just back from the sharp point at the front they had backward-facing
> spines, so small as to be hardly visible.
>
> · Over a day-night cycle of humidity and temperature, the two curved
fibres
> straighten then curve again, pushing against whatever they're touching,
> like the soil. The sharp point at the front is pushed through most
> obstacles (my socks, a sheep's wool, the soil), and is held there by the
> ratchetting effect of the backward-facing spines.
>   So the seed digs itself deeper, day by day.
>
> David.
> David MacClement davd @ ihug.co.nz (remove spaces)
> http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
> http://davd.tripod.com/GrAPR-011228.html#top
> ********************************************
>
>
>
>

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