The Plant Binary

Ack! A bug! But perhaps a "good" one?

Piled with years of decaying refuse, its thin soil scraped away and overgrazed, the Patch was in a state of outright neglect when I moved in. But spring by spring and in cooperation with all the life forms that show up, a dramatic change is afoot. As the weather opens into warmer, longer days, the restorative work of plants at the Patch surges. Grateful to all these intrepid volunteers, I bristle at the neighbor’s suggestion that the “invasives” be sprayed, or that certain species be eradicated.

After years of research and writing about the intellectual gymnastics necessary to create the fiction of “good women” and “bad women” in American culture, I am loathe to attach moral judgements to the world of plants. Two pernicious assumptions are at fault. First, that the natural world can be moved forward to a point of correctness and stasis where things are “right” and “done.” How silly. Life is about change, on the human front and likewise for plants, animals, and ecosystems. Done right? That is some sort of commodity thinking at work, laying a production mentality onto living creatures. In the real world of life forms, it’s all about process – product is a modern human imposition. Patch pastures will never reach a point of doneness, but rather continue to adapt to context and conditions. Patch inhabitants will always shift – one season a bumper crop of chokecherries, the next year just a few, and the next more clover varieties than I can keep track of.

The second assumption – that there are better and worse plants – is also ridiculous. Rather, plants exist in context, and varied species move through a landscape, sometimes leaving entirely only to return years later, just like a grazing herd of antelope do, albeit at a plant pace. While we certainly can affect and control them, on whose behalf, and by what right? To assess better or worse, we’d have to ask: “Better for who?”

Beautiful. But "invasive"?

A dandelion, that plant so effective at survival in disturbed spaces and poor soils, is the scourge of suburban lawn perfection, and is also the favorite food of Jorge the Boar. He saunters from one dandelion to the next, lipping the blossom first with a couple of loud smacks, and then snuffling up the splayed leaves one by one and chewing them down, all with an air of intense satisfaction. I’ve come to see the happy-faced dandelion as a friend and anticipate Jorge’s pleasure when they appear in the field. If I want to change the health and appearance of my pasture, doing violence upon the soil by ripping out or (egad!) spraying the dandelions is the last thing that I should do. That will only leave the soil exposed to bake and blow away. Instead, I can help to build the soil with compost and manuring, and welcome all volunteers to this harsh landscape. I’d be surprised to see a full crop of “invasives” in the pasture a decade from now, as there will likely be other species thriving in their place, at home in the dirt made ready by the work of Jorge’s dandelions.

Lamb's Ear, a popular perennial, and also a perpetual volunteer and pest in my herb bed.

The moral fate of dandelions is a symptom of a far more pernicious tendency to oversimplify and moralize, to see the world as populated by creatures, objects, and humans that are inherently good or bad. The quack grass that invades the greenhouse? BAD. The perennial herbs that poke up early in the spring? GOOD, at least until I realize the spread of the mint, and declare that BAD. The friend who dominates conversation and over-emotes? BAD, at least until they leverage those same qualities to support marginalized communities. Then I reclassify them as GOOD. My local Costco, stuffed with wasteful consumer goods? Obviously BAD, at least until I purchase higher quality tires there at a price that I can afford, which is, of course, GOOD.

All of this GOOD/BAD assessment structures the world in a way that denies relationality and masks useful information. A willingness to rank plants on a moral hierarchy abstracts them from their more-than-human context and denies connectedness, the very qualities necessary to understand the role each species plays in ever-evolving ecosystems. The question isn’t “Are dandelions good or bad?” but “What is this particular dandelion doing right here?”

Dandelions and pigs bring their autonomous selves to this Patch project, and they are out there doing their own pig and dandelion things. It’s about time that I recognize the work they do and the contributions we all make. If I carefully script the play of life, if I enact heavy-handed direction, I might – with enough herbicide and power tools – create some sort of terraformed landscape that is dead to everyone’s needs but mine. But if I can resist the judgment impulse and try to understand all creatures on their own terms, no good or bad attached, this adventure becomes a quirky improv, and I get the fun of cooperating with dandelions and pigs. The lovage? It grew to the size of a bush in one of the least hospitable places at the Patch. The geese? They are subsisting, by their own choosing, entirely on the slimy green growth on the bottom of the irrigation ditch. The guinea hens have thus far evaded the local coyote, and I’ve seen more wild bee species this year than ever before. I’m sure there will be something that might be labelled devastation to come, as there always is at some point. But it will take me by surprise, and that is as it should be. No inherent goodness or badness about it.