Mature Thunderstorm

Early on I developed two interests. One was foraging for wild plants. It assured me food where ever I went. The other was watching clouds, one of the few things you can do on your back….and in public  On a 24-hour basis you can predict the weather just as well as the weather bureau, just by lying in a hammock and studying the sky. Those two interests enjoy the company of each other here in Florida.

Central Florida is the lightning capital of the United States and second in the world after Rwanda in Central Africa, which bests Florida by 2.5 times more strikes. Still, thunderstorms grow in a very predictable way here and one can watch their growth and their life cycle. Plants are the same way. When you are in your hammock all you have to do is look a little to the left or right to see a plant to study should the clouds blow away. But clouds and plants have one other thing in common: People ignore them.

As little as 70 years ago, or if you like round numbers, 100 years ago, most humans on the earth watched the sky and plants intensely for survival, food, shelter, advanced warning and contentment.

Until about World War II most people still lived an agrarian life. In the second half of the 1900s most people left the farm. And by 2000 most people had left the earth for the Internet.  Like books, radio and television before it, the Internet has removed us even more from the world around us.

On one of my plant videos a fellow left a comment that seemed obtuse so I looked at his YouTube profile. In 15 months he had watched 19,400 videos. That’s an average of 46 videos a day. Even if that were the only Internet access he had that is an amazing amount of time on the Internet…. and if he owned a television…. well, you see my point.

Not too long ago I had to do some research and among the findings was those under 30 or so view the Internet as reality and life off the net as not reality.  In a century we have gone from very attuned to the world around us to viewing it as not real.  When one considers it is the world around us that keeps us alive it is quite a thing to ignore.  Which brings me to the environmental movement. I’m not sure the environmental movement is … well… interested in the environment.

I started my videos and site because my environmentalist friends could barely tell apples from oranges, especially if the packaging was the same. Environmentalism has taken on a lot of politics and even militancy, such as burning down businesses. To me environmentalism is walking along a bike trail and seeing a 20-foot wide brown swath on each side, sprayed with an herbicide to keep the plants away from the trail. That’s quite brilliant: Build a trail though nature then kill nature around the trail.

To me environmentalism is personal not political. Can I eat that sow thistle or has the railroad company sprayed along here? (Active railways are, by the way, among the most toxic places to forage because most intentionally use extremely potent herbicides.) The environmentalism movement is very concerned about greenhouse gasses which may or may not be significant yet the greatest threat lies at our feet, the pollution of soil and water. Just as humans have drifted away from being attuned to the earth environmentalism has drifted away from the environment. Environmentalists tend to ignore the environment like police ignore traffic laws. I think we need to get back to the roots of things, pay more attention to the earth, and the sky. Air pollution and cloud watching don’t mix.

For the second time recently I was reminded of development. My favorite field of lamb’s quarters is now an upscale gated community. And where I used to forage for Apios americana, the groundnut, is million-dollar houses on a brooklet … it doesn’t take much water to increase real estate values.

For tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands, groundnuts grew along this little stream (less than a foot deep, often jumpable.) But houses were squeezed in between it and the road. You know the kind:  4,000 square feet home for a divorced overachiever with 2.4 kids and a .6 girlfriend. And gone were the ground nuts, or at least access to them. I could trespass a business to the south then walk/kayak down stream a mile and float through the gated community, stopping to steal a few but … I understand property rights but we are talking about people who’s view of greenery is golf lawns. I’ll gladly take the groundnuts off their property so they can have more decapitated grass..

There is a growing problem of people controlling access to land they have complete disdain for. This bladder stream is called the Little Wekiva. It joins the Wekiva River. That river  flows some 16 miles to the north to the St. Johns River. I know of no public access to the Wekiva River. There are three places that charge a fee, and of course, there are numerous home owners along the way, the majority of whom can’t tell an orange tree from poison ivy.  Access from one bridge to the river was closed after a dunk underage teenager dove in and died. The logic escapes me: Responsible citizens are banned from the river because an unsupervised idiot dove in head first from a 20-foot bridge into four feet of water. I call that a self-correcting problem and no reason to ban adults from a natural resource owned by all.

As a seasoned life-long bachelor I had my pickup line all crafted and rehearsed, so I could say it naturally at the right moment when my Dream Lady came near. It was: “Have you seen any Usnea?”

Now I am sure you will all agree with me that is a great pick up line guaranteed to set many a heart afluttering.  The problem is I never found anyone to use it on today… or yesterday… or the day before. And perhaps that‘s the problem: Great pickup lines are pickupless unless there is someone around to sound.

Let’s face it, as pick up lines go there are few better. It’s understandable but unknowable so there is no short answer or dismissing. She has to stop and ponder what I said… and in that moment I explain.

“It’s a hairy lichen that grows around here.  It tastes good, highly nutritious, and is a great antibiotic for battle wounds….or cat scratches” …. well… I suppose I could leave out the battle wound part if I ever get a chance.

Perhaps I’m missing something but women exercise to feel better and look better and from what I hear, meet people. Yet on the exercise/bike/nature trail only twice in the last decade have I ever had a conversation with a woman. One asked me what the name was of the tree I was looking at (Black Cherry: Prunus serotina) and another was carrying a bromeliad. I recognized it. I knew exactly where she got it off the trail. It was a great conversation starter.

She was the right age, nice personality, and I found her quite attractive… and we talked plants for a couple of miles. I gave her my card and she told me her name… I recognized it as an old cartoon character… Brenda Starr….definitely lost that one. I went and collected some Usnea for the wound.

Here’s an essay I wrote in 2001 about bachelorhood:

A bachelor, I have been told, is a man with no social commitments and unmatched socks. When I’m asked why I’m a bachelor, I tell the truth: I was born that way. And as a bachelor, I’m in good company. Most of the popes have been bachelors. Divorced men are also called bachelors, but what really is a bachelor?

Any male who’s never been married is a bachelor, but we don’t call 10-year old boys bachelors, though some women may call some bachelors 10-year-old boys. Young men in their twenties are technically bachelors, but it’s better to call them unmarried, which doesn’t convey the same nuance as bachelor. It’s as if men in their 20’s and early 30’s will get married, they just haven’t settled down or found the right person yet.

Somewhere in the mid- to late-thirties, the word bachelor becomes quite appropriate. By one’s forties, one actually exceeds the word bachelor. By age 50, “confirmed bachelor” says it all though some people might use the more descriptive phrase “entrenched bachelor.”

I’m now past 50. I always intended to get married and have kids, but it didn’t happen. I did ask a woman to marry me way back in the psychedelic Dark Ages of the 1970’s. The diamond ring back then cost me a semester’s worth of tuition. We soon disagreed over attending graduate school, finances and whoever won the ’72 presidential election…. At least some one did clearly win. So now, when most men my age are grandfathers, I am, for better or worse, childless and – certainly for the worse — still dating. Being my age and dating creates challenging situations.

It’s difficult, for example, to avoid having a family if I marry because most women my age have children or grandchildren. Nothing so far in life has made me feel older than the day I realized I was dating grandmothers. Another problem is younger, fertile women. If I were to become a father today, I would be retired before the child started high school, if I didn’t die from exhaustion first. I’d have to join OTHPTA, the Over The Hill Parent Teachers Association. Fortunately, younger women tend to take my age seriously and stay away, which is just as well. I’ve reached the stage in life in which when I think of going to bed, it’s really because I’m tired.

One advantage of being a 50-plus bachelor is that 65-year-old moms have finally stopped trying to set me up with their 35-year-old, three-times-divorced daughters. The disadvantage of being a 50-plus bachelor is the 65-year old moms are now making passes at me. I’m really not ready to date great-grandmothers.

Fortunately, my well-intended friends have stopped trying to set me up. They have accepted my bachelorhood, kind of. Instead of working to match me up with women, they’re always trying to give me a pregnant dog or cat. There is something ironic about avoiding a shotgun wedding all one’s life to end up with a litter of hungry, bathroom-missing furry infants to care for. My pet-pushing friends say I need companionship, as if becoming the owner of fleas and a hair ball collection gives one comfort. My friends also seem to think I’m a good place to dump unwanted furniture because as a bachelor I don’t have a woman around telling me disintegrating lava lamps are ugly.

While many women may be wary of a bachelor my age, men are not. That I have never tripped down the aisle has caused many a married man to call me his hero. The first thing a married man usually says is that he envies me, that there’s no reason to get married. He says he wished he never married and could still play the field. I don’t think my married friends realize the playing field was never level and that it tips strongly in her favor today. I also think my admirers are letting their imagination run wild. A balding, pudgy, grandfather-aged man with a flea-ridden house and fire-hazard furniture is not exactly a babe magnet.

I also remind my lamenting wedded friends that research definitely shows that as married men they will, on average, live far longer than I. Or, even if they don’t, it will at least seem that way. And to be frank, if I had to do it all over again, I would have married my first and perhaps only love. The ’72 election really wasn’t that important.

Most of us go by two names. So do plants. That’s Binomial Nomenclature. That is both good and bad. It’s good in that two people on different sides of the earth can be sure they are talking about the same plant. It’s bad in that there is a HUGE resistance among beginners to learn the terms. Any suggestion they do is with met with an attitude on par with “you don’t love me” and “I’m going to take my toys and go home.” Some reluctance is understandable: We all have ancestors who foraged for wild plants and they didn’t learn binomial nomenclature, nor did they need to.

When learning to forage was something passed down from generation to generation all you needed to know was to identify the plant and what your group called it. Even now learning wild edibles with someone is much faster than from a book. Like our ancestors, when studying with someone you really don’t need to know the scientific name, or the tribal one for that matter…. until you need to communicate with someone. Then the name becomes important.

There are some 18 plants in the United States called “pig weed.” Some are edible, some can kill you. That can make knowing which one is being discussed rather important. I had a friend and his family get quite ill because in discussions it was not understood two different pig weeds were being talked about. One you could just sweat the leaves and eat. The others had to be boiled in changes of water. It was not a fatal mistake but it could have been.

The first name of a plant is the genus it is in (much like an extended family or your last name.) The second name is the plant itself, like your first name except only one plant has it. Here in Florida, for example, there are several different yams, in the genus Dioscorea. D. Bulbifera, D. Alata, and D. Oppositifolia. One can make you very sick, one you have to boil once, one you can eat raw. Saying there are edible yams in Florida will not do. Having the right name can mean you are here tomorrow to read more blogs.

Now that we have established the value of Binomial Nomenclature, there is a dark side. What a plant is called is a matter of opinion. That opinion is based on details and sometimes a huge serving of ego. Plant names can change. Sometimes it is because someone makes a very good observation and the plant should be rename, or even put into a different genus. That has happened with Paper Mulberries and Mexican Tea. Other times the difference can be minute, literally one gene different which to people who find that significant is… well…significant. Personally, I am not that detailed of a person, which is why I forage plants not mushrooms and do just a few grasses — maddening to identify. However, my argument is you should learn the scientific names of the plants you are interested in because it can save you life, or that of a loved one.