This past weekend I found myself with a free moment to finally trim back the Bougainvillea that has grown with abandon for some time. This vine thrives along the fence between our yard and our neighbor’s, and I have hated it for years and avoided dealing with it. But this plant had gotten so tall and unruly that it had begun to shade-out my cold season crop, making confrontation inevitable.
Before the trimming, the 14-foot shoots of this Bougainvillea arced toward our pool and tangled in our redwood tree. The stalks can easily put on a foot or more of growth each day. Over time, the soft vines thicken and turn tough and woody like a tree. But unlike most trees, the branch-like shoots of this vine wield inch-and-a-quarter, hooked thorns tipped in a mild toxin.
I came away from the work with my arms and legs utterly lacerated and a decent slash across my face. I came away bloodied, the spikes having cut, and caught, and torn, and punctured through leather glove and rubber-soled boot. In short, they did exactly what they were supposed to: They tried to protect the plant from me. Despite my hedge trimmer and chainsaw, this South American native wouldn’t stay hit.
Getting close enough to a plant to cut it can provide a unique perspective: The menacing thorn that protects new growth, the specialized leaves, called bracts, that evolved to attract pollinators to an otherwise unassuming flower, and that carry the mature seed in the wind like a paper-mache glider. This vine can be pared back from full, lush green to brown, dead stubble and in a week be resiliently sprouting away. It can grow to 36-feet tall. It can opt to be deciduous to survive a drought.
And it’s no passive resister, leaving cuts that redden and itch like a rash on account of the poison barbs.
A strange intimacy exists in becoming the victim of a plant’s natural defenses. It provides an immediate ecological context that is often missing from our lives. For most people, a plant’s defenses are easily avoided. The reason for this disconnect exists largely in our no longer having to look at plants and decide if they are safe to eat, and if so, how best to harvest their edible parts. Choosing produce from the market that is ripe or unspoiled hardly compares to making decisions in the wild. And, frankly, some vetting has gone on before we get the opportunity to use our finely tuned senses to pick an orange out of the pile of oranges. We are not the deciders.
When was the last time most consumers had to get around a thorn to eat a blackberry? Or decide if that mushroom is the Amanita lanei they are after, or the Amanita phalloides that would kill them?
Or even simpler, when’s the last time most Americans had to put any effort into peeling an orange? I can’t buy San Diego-grown oranges in San Diego, despite the excellent taste and superior quality of the fruit, because San Diegans refuse to be burdened by the struggle the peel entails. Apparently it’s also not orange enough. So San Diego County sends most of its oranges to Japan and India (where they’re quite popular), and San Diegans buy fruit that unzips easily from Chile and South Africa.
These are the kinds of frivolous carbon expenditures that encourage climate change and waste resources.
We’d be better for getting pricked by plants a little more often.
I like how you incorporated that little Orange tidbit. On a similar note from Rebecca Solnit at LATimes we get:
Take water. My friend Derek Hitchcock, a biologist working to restore the Yuba River, likes to say that California is still a place of abundance. He recently showed me a Pacific Institute report and other documents to bolster his point. They show that about 80% of the state’s water goes to agriculture, not to people, and half of that goes to four crops — cotton, rice, alfalfa and pasturage (irrigated grazing land) — that produce less than 1% of the state’s wealth. Forty percent of the state’s water. Less than 1% of its income. Meanwhile, we Californians are told the drought means that ordinary households should cut back — and probably most should — but the lion’s share of water never went to us in the first place, and we should know it.
I love the “don’t stay hit” reference; kids in the South Bronx have more in common with Bougainvillea, which they’ve likely never seen, than I thought.
@Mike-Great points on the drought. I had no idea…And here I was blaming my neighbor for watering at noon.
Bougainvillea is a very vicious plant–it bites! I am the bush trimmer at my house and I can’t get to the top of my very healthy Boug. And it ate a good set of clippers–they’re in there somewhere, but we can’t get to them!It does “protect” my water meter–and the water company keeps sending us the same (relatively low) bill.
Don’t forget the cats mom, it also makes a great fort for cats! That’s hilarious about the water meter tho, but who can blame them?
Jason, that is fascinating about the oranges. I had no idea. Of course, we have our own little clementine/tangerine/whatever tree that is currently working on it’s second round of fruit for the year (it seems a bit late to me, but who am I to argue?) so we don’t really buy many oranges. Loving the blog!