Mother Nature has been successfully managing the world’s environment for hundreds of millions of years. Yes, she has allowed some plant and animal species to become extinct (long before man came into the picture) while at the same time scientists today continue to find new species that have somehow evolved.
Some people today think that they could do a better job than Mother Nature and want to do this or that with plant and animal species. Or we say, “It’ll takes a 100 years or more to replace this forest” after a fire. But that’s just a blink of an eye in Mother Nature’s horizon.
Maybe we shouldn’t interfere as much as we do. Take a walk in your outside world and look at some of the truly amazing work she does all by herself. Here are three amazing examples.
‘Gus’ is the largest living Larix (Larch) in the entire world, and it is just a short drive away from Jefferson County. On the south edge of Seeley Lake turn west on Boy Scout Road to the sign about Girard Grove. Gus is a short distance west of that sign. Take a walk on the trail through the entire grove and you will see hundreds of Gus’s relatives. Many are almost as big as Gus, who is more than 1,000 years old.
2. Pinus edulis, Pinyon Pine. These trees, which bear one of the best edible pine nuts in the world, are native mostly to just Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. They love extreme dry hot desert-like regions and can survive on less than 5 inches of annual moisture; they are generally rated for USDA hardiness zones between 5 and 9.
But we have nine Pinyon Pines in our collection—seven of them for the past 15 years—and they have experienced temperatures between -20º F to -40º F more than 150 times. Many plants of similar species cannot tolerate cold temperatures. I attribute Pinyon’s cold hardiness to a specific seed source location.
(By the way: Many people believe that if they baby a plant and protect it, the plant can adapt to a harsh environment. This is not true. Yes, plants do evolve and can adapt to different environments over time—but that can take many thousands or millions of years, not in just one human’s lifetime.)
3. Another plant that amazes me is the perennial Delosperma, from South Africa. We have about a dozen varieties of this plant, most of them rated as zone 5 and 6, and find that some are not as hardy as others. But some of the ones we began testing 16 years ago are still going strong and have experienced -25º F to -40º F hundreds of times. These plants are on a very steep direct south-facing slope in 100% decomposed granite that has never been amended. More than 100 different perennials and about 75 coniferous and deciduous trees and shrubs have been growing on the slope without any irrigation except what Mother Nature gives them and bit of watering to get them established.
Richard Krott is co-founder of the Tizer Botanic Gardens & Arboretum in Jefferson City.
