Giving Thanks to the Low Dwelling Plants
April 23rd, 2016
By Michael McMillan
“Thank you low growing plants,
You are like the hairs of the Earth,
Protecting the lives of the little ones,
Swaying in the wind,
Rooting and covering the soil ,
You bring luscious green beauty in the springs and summers and provide food for so many.
We have evolved with you.
We would not be who we are without you.”
Ohenton Karihwatehkwen; The “Words Before All Else”, from the Thanksgiving address in the Iroquois and Six Nations tradition, the Haudenosaunee people call all of us together as “One Mind”, to give thanks to everything, as a reminder of where we are and what we are a part of. Jake Swamp, a Mohawk sub-chief had a vision of peace making between the many tribes of Earth. He believed that if all the children of the world were to take part in a thanksgiving each day, “that the problems of the world would start to go the other way”.
Have you ever laid in the green grass on a summer day? Maybe spend hours just enjoying the sun and the softness of the grass supporting you? You may have noticed those little blades of grass move suddenly, or slowly, or gradually throughout the day. I usually give into the temptation of pulling out the grass with my hands, playing with it and tossing it aside. I love feeling it between my fingers, and even wetting it with my tongue, putting it in between my thumbs to blow through it and make an instrument.
Have you ever spread those blades of grass apart to discover where it is they come from? If you have, you may have encountered the world beneath the plants who dwell close to the Earth. Ants, millipedes, caterpillars, roly-polys, earwigs, all riding the surface of the soil, occupy the niche of the low growing plants.
There are innumerable details existing in the microcosm of the ground dwelling plants. If you are curious enough to explore them, you will undoubtedly discover something nobody else has. Ever since I was a little guy, I have loved noticing the small plants, the flowers especially. Flowering plants, or angiosperms, are one of my favorite areas of study.
A few years ago while hiking a section of the Colorado Trail, I made friends with an ecologist named Mycol, so named for his expertise in mycology. We hiked together for three days between Mt. Princeton and Monarch Pass, near Salida, Colorado. As an amateur botanist, I had brought my guide to North American flowering plants, hoping to identify as many wildflowers as I could during my trip. If you have ever picked up a book on the whole of North American plant species, you know, this is a formidable task. Little did I know, it is much more astute to have a book specific to the region you are in, I was as much of a rookie as they get, but I was hungry to learn more.
Our first night on the trail we did not hike too far. But we arrived at a meadow full of wildflowers and decided that would be a good place to camp for the night. After hitch-hiking hundreds of miles, meeting lots of interesting people, some of which I was a little scared of, I was really relieved to have met someone with similar interests who would keep me company on the trail. I love solo-hiking, but I am much more at ease in my little tent with another human close by in those wee hours of the night when thoughts of bears can’t help but arise.
I felt a strange connection to Mycol, like he could have been me in the future, or I him in the past. Maybe it was that our names are basically the same, or that when he saw my locks at the time, he said he used to have some, too. Whatever it was, I looked up to him and realized there was a lot I could learn from our time together.
After cooking a humble dinner of Zatarains, we gave thanks and went on a twilight stroll into the meadow of wildflowers. When we encountered a new plant, we would stop, bend down low, and observe, it. What color is the flower? How many petals does it have? What is the flower shape? What do the leaves look like? What is it growing next to? With him I learned not to memorize all the millions of Latin names assigned to the diverse plant families, but I learned how to ask the right questions, tell the difference between plant families, which plants to eat and not to eat.
I was blown away, after an hour we had seen more species than I could remember. I was glad I brought my book along to make bookmarks so I could revisit them later. I felt really lucky to have a mentor in those days.
Throughout the next few days, we found ourselves playing games of naming the various plant families as we walked by them on the trail. Asteraceae (Sunflower), Apiaceae (Parsley), Alliums (Onion), my personal favorite, Scrophulariaceae (Figwort), Cruciferae, Ranunculaceae (Buttercup), Polemonaceae (Penstemon), Liliaceae (Lily), Lamiaceae (Mint), Fabaceae (Legume/Pea), Orchidaceae (Orchid), Iridaceae (Iris), Rosaceae (Rose), and so many more. I felt as if I had been introduced to a whole world that there was so much more to learn about. In just a matter of days, I felt like I had learned more about the natural world than in any college course I had ever taken. And yet, there is always more to learn, more families to get to know, more relationships within those families and between them. Not to mention the birds, mushrooms, mammals, geology, etc… I was ignited.
That was an incredible experience I will never forget. Now it is not only a hobby of mine to get to know the diverse life around me but it has become a lens through which I view the world. Diverse life-forms are always communicating in some way, whether we recognize it or not, to get their needs met, just like us. I am so grateful that the angiosperms have evolved to express themselves in a way that can be so visually striking.
Loren Eisley has an amazing piece called How Flowers Changed the World, which I could not more highly recommend. After you read this piece, you may see through a new lens, a re-framed narrative of flower’s place in our world, we truly would not be who we are without them.
Closing my eyes, I kneel down and listen to the four directions. I let my ears wander to the farthest stretches of the East, South, West and North, listening for the quietest sound.
With gratitude and recognition of the diversity of communication forms on our planet we give thanks to the low dwelling plants.
