Here & Now: Bioregionalism

We all might do well to remember that names are one measure of how one chooses to inhabit the world. — Lauret E. Savoy

Three years ago, I didn’t know any of the plants that live around me. The plants, more accurately, that I live among. I didn’t know them by name, by sight, nor by their place in an ecosystem. After deciding it was time for me to learn, I spent some time on the internet — as one does. I learned that English Laurel was a common choice for evergreen living hedges and had become invasive. It has broad, flat green leaves, and I mistook salal for it. Salal is a native shrub that is also evergreen with broad, flat leaves, though less shiny and oblong than laurel. It’s subtle though, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, to the brain that has not yet built the inroads for pattern matching. I learned that English Holly, also invasive, has waxy, evergreen leaves, sharply pointed, and mistook Oregon Grape for it. Oregon grape leaves are similarly sharply pointed and can be waxy, though it doesn’t grow to be a tree, and its leaves are directly opposite each other, while holly leaves alternate on a branch. I mistook salmonberry for Himalayan blackberry — at least those are both in the rubus genus. It’s interesting to look back and realize that the only plants I knew the names of were invasive ones: education and outreach programs by the county and parks departments were working, I…