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A European landscape
The last person to reach the bottom of the canyon is Rich Old (’77,
M.S. ’81, Ph.D. University of Idaho), distracted often on the
way down by plants in general, weeds in particular.
He seems disturbed by the fact that a plant that he had hoped to
find today, Phacelia ramosissima, is not yet in flower.
But he’s dazzled by the Thelypodium, lovely long-stemmed
flower stalks growing out of the sheer cliffs. “It’s
incredible,” he says, “not only that they’re established
there, but the seed rain it takes to get them there.” The only
way the seeds could have landed in the cracks of the basalt would
be to have been carried by the fierce winds that sweep through the
canyon.
Old, who is probably the leading expert on the plant life of the
scablands, is also the creator of the most comprehensive weed identification
guide ever written.
“The reason I’m into weeds,” he says, “is
I hate what they do to our native [plants].”
Old has been my guide through the scablands over the last couple
of years. With him, I have tasted red ants (sour from formic acid)
and dog lichen (tastes like bubblegum). I have learned that the flower
stalk of mullein was burned by the local Indians to treat hemorrhoids
and respiratory problems. Old’s knowledge of the area’s
plants and ecology is encyclopedic. He seems to thrive on sharing
his knowledge and excitement. He has taught survival classes for
Army ROTC and poisonous plant identification to WSU veterinary students.
He’s a born teacher, though a little too straightforward and
independent for academe. Though not didactic, he is demanding. Once
he identifies something for you, he expects you to remember, no matter
how many syllables.
Lomatium, Antennaria, Erodium. Camas, miner’s lettuce,
baby blue-lips.
Bromus tectorum. That’s one I can remember. Cheatgrass:
scourge and transformer of the arid West. But here’s another
one, even worse. Taeniatherum caput-medusae—Medusa
head. Not many plant names send shivers up the spine. But this plant
is truly diabolical in its survival strategy and persistence.
“See how it falls down and forms a thick litter layer,” says
Old. “It doesn’t biodegrade.” In fact, it builds
up year after year, choking out everything else. But here’s
the truly ingenious adaptation. The seeds extend their radical down
through the litter into the ground. Nothing else can do that, says
Old.
And then there’s fire. Fire was part of the scablands ecology,
says Old. But the fires did not burn very hot. Natives such as bluebunch
wheatgrass would come right back. But Medusa head, with its litter
build-up, burns explosively, killing off everything else. Except
for its own seeds.
Like Webster, though obviously within a different time-frame, Old
tends to look at things in terms of the past. “When we’re
talking about vegetation in eastern Washington,” he says, “we’re
talking about history, about the way things used to be.”
Pristine scabland looks bare, says Old. “If you were here
a hundred years ago, it would look like a bunch and a bunch and bare
ground,” he says, referring to the native bunchgrass. “But
it’s not bare at all. It’s got a solid skin of mosses
and lichens. That’s what held this together.”
That fragile skin was largely destroyed by the trampling of cattle,
as well as by pocket gophers, driven down into the scabland from
the more hospitable loess by tillage. Gophers churn the ground up,
again destroying the crust. And once that thin but protective skin
is gone, the “original scabland” is history. As John
Thompson, formerly of Botany and Zoology, and Dick Mack, Botany,
have argued, the ground of eastern Washington is so fragile because
it was never grazed by large ungulates. Native plants had never adapted
to such treatment, and exotics, some carried intentionally, some
not, by European settlers, rushed in to take the natives’ place.
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Richard Old ’77
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