Honeysuckle Jewels and Women with Wings by Sara Wright

Initially I wrote this article for publication at a plant site but was forcibly struck by the reality that what we are doing to plants is exactly the same thing we are doing to humans, women in particular. Separating, Othering, Judging, Dismissing, Eradicating. I could go on here. When you read this article about invasives think about how we are being treated as women. It alarms me that no matter I turn I see the same story played out with humans (women and children suffer most overall), trees, plants, and the animals we are so busy annihilating if not physically then in some other monstrous way. Fill in the blank with your own story.  Then imagine yourself as a bird with wings who carries the seeds of new life into unexpected places.

When I first moved to this area many years ago, I used to spend most of the time in the forests that surrounded my house except in the spring. Then I walked along what used to be a country road to see the wild trilliums, arbutus, lady slippers, bunch berry, violets and columbine that peppered the road edges. 

All the trees and flowers were so plentiful and so beautiful that it took me a few years to pay closer attention to the bushes like the various pussy willows and wild cherries, beaked hazelnut, witch hazel and hobblebush that I also came to love. 

When I discovered the most fragrant honeysuckle bush that was covered with bees and butterflies early one June I was thrilled.  Later bright red berries covered the shrub only to disappear almost as fast they ripened.  There was just that one bush, so one year I tried to dig up a portion of the multi – stemmed base to transplant. Hard packed road sand defeated me. 

Today, of all the wildflowers and bushes on the main side road only the honeysuckle remains. With climate change upon us we can be grateful that this one is a survivor. Just the other morning I picked a few fragrant sprigs marveling at the golden swallowtails that literally collided with each other to reach newly opened flowers. I counted at least thirty butterflies along with a bevy of bumblebees in between. The honeysuckle was humming. This jewel was quite a pollinator! Today while walking by the bush after a light rain, hummingbirds were sucking down sweet nectar.

I finally decided to look  up the exact species after years of appreciating the bush for the simple pleasure of being with ki. Lonicera morrowii. 

You can imagine my dismay when I learned that this shrub was considered yet another ‘invasive’. Not here it isn’t I retaliated silently. In all these years I have found only two more bushes, and one small one grows next to the original and the other appeared nearby on my dirt road just this spring. ‘Welcome’, I quipped to this latest discovery. ‘May you thrive here tucked into the green’.

Then to my utter amazement I noticed another young shrub bursting with similar florets growing next to the first. Startled, I queried ‘Where did you come from… It’s not as if I haven’t been paying  attention…’ These flowers had a delicate pale rose tint. Ah, Nature has been busy transporting new survivors on the wings of disappearing birds. 

Lonicera Tatarica. Wow, another invasive,  this relative was also making a cameo appearance. Ki was buzzing with bees.

 Checking on this second species I learned that hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, bumblebees, large carpenter bees, mason bees, leaf cutting bees, and those gorgeous green metallic bees were pollinators. I also discovered that their burgundy berries feed robins, waxwings, and many other birds who help disperse the seeds.

I am so used to cataloguing plant losses that I was more than delighted to have two more invasives move in bringing with them so much food for hungry birds, bees, and other animals. I am so easily distracted by plant abundance in the spring that I am now wondering what else I have missed walking along my own road. 

Invasives offer us hope for the future of plant life.

 As the planet warms invasives are Nature’s way of preparing us for an unknown future, but one replete with plant survivors, most of which are moving north. 

I think our war on invasives is not only futile but denies the reality of a warming climate  that is working hard to adapt to change by offering us plants that will survive when so many will not.

Shouldn’t we be celebrating these changes by embracing the appearance of plants from ‘away’?  

Plants that will secure a future of life on this planet?

Recall that plants were the first beings to inhabit dry land and have survived five extinctions, although individual species come and go. With human induced climate warming, Nature is adapting by moving more species around. Offering us survivors.

Women with Wings?

Scientist/Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us:

I have faith in photosynthesis. The plants know what to do. They know how to sequester carbon. They know how to cool the air. They know how to build capacity for ecosystem services and biodiversity. Will the world be different? It will. Will there be tremendous losses? There will. Heartbreaking losses. But the evolutionary creativity of the plant world will renew itself. Plants will figure out how to come back to a homeostatic relationship with the planet.”

 I think the most obvious way plants are doing this is to pepper us with more plants from across the globe. The very plants that we in our terrible arrogance call invasives offset the frightening loss of biodiversity. Couldn’t the birds also be the women with wings?

What I also notice is that our need to wall ourselves off from change by viciously attacking all invasives (plants, animals, peoples) is more about humans who cannot deal with change at all. If the reader is in doubt, why not examine the current socio/political situation where we belligerently  stay stuck in the past even though it is killing us.

Nature is ancient and wise and reminds us daily that change is the norm.

 I’d like to think that we, the Women with Wings may also hold the seeds of future life in our beaks. Perhaps we can swallow and deposit them just when and where they are most needed. Just like our beloved relatives, birds.