In Nature, Every Change Has its Purpose, Place

In The Garden — December 2014

 "Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful." Anne Michaels in Fugitive Pieces

             The decorations we're putting out for the holidays we will soon pack up again for storage in closets, basements and attics. Meanwhile in the landscape, elements that have been developing all through the growing season are suddenly made visible as the green of lawns, deciduous trees and perennial beds begins to recede.

            Every change we see in the landscape has a purpose. To us, that purpose may appear simply ornamental, but very little that occurs in the landscape is wasted. It might not be as dramatic in terms of color or quick-change but everything is there for a reason – primarily as food, propagation or shelter.

            Even the beautiful fall color we enjoy is purposeful, a result of the green of chlorophyll breaking down and disappearing to protect against the cold, and giving way to the suddenly visible yellow to orange to red colors.

            Almost all the berries and other fruits we enjoy in our gardens are winter food for wildlife. Many of them, including crabapples and some viburnums, are only palatable after a long series of freezes and thaws, ultimately providing essential late winter food at a time when other food sources have disappeared.

            The pine cones we use for outdoor and indoor decorations hold seeds in overlapping scales that the beaks of some birds are perfectly angled to remove seeds from. The seeds of lodgepole pine are even more deeply "lodged," only to be released after fires, when new tree growth is most needed.

            Milkweed seeds normally burst their feathery pods in June or July, just in time to provide soft, fibrous seeds for the mid-summer nests of American goldfinch and other birds.

            The bare bones of tree trunks are exposed in their varied colors and textures. John Burroughs writes that "the rough dry bark of the trees is not such a barren waste as it seems. The amount of animal food in the shape of minute insects, eggs, and larvae tucked away in cracks and crevices must be considerable, and, by dint of incessant peeping and prying into every seam and break in the bark, [birds and insects] get fuel enough to keep their delicate machinery going." And further, "The brown creeper, with his long, slender, decurved bill, secures what the chickadee, with his short, straight bill, fails to get."

            Bees, meanwhile, have stored their wealth of honey in strikingly architectural hexagonal combs, the perfect shape for maximum storage—and winter necessity. The honey they hold has its own perfect form as one of the few foods that never rots. With its high proportion of sugar and lack of moisture, there is no room for bacteria to grow.

            The seedheads on asters, coneflowers and sunflowers are arranged in arcs or spirals in perfect increments to provide maximum sunshine and growth for new tissues at the base. And the entire heads of some plants in this family turn to follow the sun, almost like a solar panel.

            The examples of form following function in the landscape are endless ("Looking Closer" images at www.pinterest.com/nearboretum/looking-closer). So this winter as you're putting things away, do your own inventory of the ways the natural world expends rather than packs away its beauty.

Karma Larsen
Communications Associate
Nebraska Statewide Arboretum
402-472-7923
klarsen1@unl.edu


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