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Re: Plants and Extreme environments
Jim,
For a good example, dandelions. They're far from native to subarctic Alaska,
but due to their incredible fitness, Denali National Park is having big
problems with them invading roadsides and colonizing trails. There're a
number of invasive weeds that we're having problems with up here; with no
natural competitors, they run rampant.
Will Elliott
Wasilla, AK
On 11/18/06, Jim Stebbings <j.stebbings@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
Tom,
I responded to this about a week ago, but List won't take my responses
from webmail (slight difference in address I think). Here is what I wrote
Nov 12:
>>
The vocabulary may be a bit subjective, but the concepts are not. The
basic physologies of plants and animals and microorganisms are compatible
with only a limited number of the environments available in the
universe. Some organisms are more adaptable than others, but the harshness
of the environment is fairly well reflected in the number of species.
It is an old and well known fallacy in ecology that plants are best
adapted to the environment in which they are found. By this definition one
can find the environment to which telephone poles are best adapted. Plants
are found (excluding questions of geographic dispersion over long distances)
in environments in which they out compete competitors. Some plants in fact
do better in environments in which they are not naturally found because
other plants are even better adapted.
<<
Now that is based on my memory of ecology some decades back...so don't ask
me for examples!
Jim
------------Original Message------------
From: Thomas P Lynch <tlynch2@unlnotes.unl.edu>
To: asle@interversity.org
Date: Thu, Nov-9-2006 2:10 PM
Subject: Re: [asle] Plants and Extreme environments
What I'm responding to is having read numerous times how desert plants
"struggle to survive in a harsh and unforgiving landscape" or words to that
effect. My take is that, for them, it is not harsh at all. They are well
adapted to such an environment, and would find Ohio to be harsh and
unforgiving. That is, the desert is an extreme environment for a
rhododendron or a maple, but it is perfectly fine for a creosote bush or a
mesquite. And so the phrase represents the regional bias of the speaker, for
whom mesic, temperate climates are normative.
I would suspect that when botanists refer to extreme environments for
plants, they have a particular idealized non-extreme place in mind. And my
hypothesis is that such a place is modelled on their own conceptions of a
normal place, which is, perhaps, determined by their bioregional and
linguistic bias. (English having evolved in a particular and very wet,
temperate, bioregion.) They may be scientists, but "harsh" and "extreme"
don't strike me as scientific concepts.
That said, I'd think the creosote bush chapter in Nabhan's GATHERING THE
DESERT would be especially useful.
Best, Tom
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