I pass over the usual formulistic December-holiday greetings -- it seems my own high holy days occupy different spots on the calendar than everyone else's, anyway -- to wish you a Very Joyous Nondenominational New Year, instead. I hope the Earth's next revolution around the Sun is a productive and adventurous one for you. Because the wonders of natural history are so superabundant wherever one travels or lives, the raw material for such productiveness and adventure has already been provided, as Robert Louis Stevenson reminds:
The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
To help you appreciate this superabundance, I have established my Spring 2005 course and tour schedules. Note especially the new Geology of the North Shore course offered by Oasis program in Northbrook, Illinois -- it begins in early January, so do not delay in signing up, if you're interested and fifty or more biological years old.
Also note my one-day Winter Tree Identification course, sponsored by the Lake Forest Open Lands Association, which imposes no age restrictions whatsoever. It's slated for a Saturday in late February. Join in, if you can: developing dormant-season keying skills for is a must for any aspiring naturalist. (It was a severe temptation to here write "for any budding naturalist" instead -- a sordid plant-anatomy pun that would be apparent enough to anyone taking this course. But in any case the subject matter should be quite pithy.)
Welcome to a Yankee bayou. The Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain and its evocative bald-cypress swamps stretch 500 miles up the Mississippi River valley to the southern tip of Illinois. This shows Heron Pond-Little Black Slough Nature Preserve, in Johnson County -- one of the featured stops on my Redbud Special tour this coming April. We'll also collect 340-million-year-old fossils, see the magnificent geology of the Garden of the Gods and other Shawnee National Forest sites, and visit the ancient, old-growth Forest of the Wabash. (Photo by Raymond Wiggers)
PART I. NONLINEAR SOLILOQUIES & SERMONS
A. A Taxonomic Pilgrim's Progress
"Why do we have to learn so many names? My brain hurts." -- This is the classic refrain of students of all ages nineteen and over who take a botany or geology course that has not been patronizingly dumbed down to ensure the instant popularity of the instructor or the sponsoring institution.
Still, why are all the hard-to-remember names and abstruse terms necessary? It's true that both subjects are awash in jargon -- everything from epigeous and epigynous to allocthonous and autochthonous. And then there are those extraterrestrial-sounding taxonomic names: Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Rhipidomella penelope, Volvariella bombycina, Physarum polycephalum. Is it really all that important to learn this alien vocabulary, especially since it involves resorting to that whipping-boy of modern educational theory, memorization?
Yes, it is important. It's crucially important. We mistakenly think that memorization and "creative thinking" -- problem solving, pattern recognition, and so forth -- are diametrically opposed to one another. In fact, the two forms of learning were always meant to be interwoven, with one gaining greater significance by being associated with the other. And "creative thinking" spins its wheels in vain if the thinker doesn't already have a well-stocked storehouse of terms -- here read ideas -- to draw from. After all, these names and terms represent centuries' worth of conceptualization and experience of thousands of inquiring minds, which have been distilled for later use into a sort of shorthand. That shorthand, that interior language, is difficult to learn and requires constant mental preening, but if the effort is made it goes on to enrich one's understandings in so many different ways.
My own passion for finding the names of things began in my childhood. It's a passion that only those with a child still lurking within will understand. I remember accompanying my parents on trips to the local garden center: the name tags in the flats, the seed packets arranged in those rotating racks -- they were nothing less than a lexicon of magic symbols: symbols that opened doors into the secret richness of the world -- a richness that was not always otherwise apparent in somnolent suburbia. What did it mean, I wondered, to be something called betony or dusty miller or Canterbury bells? Where or what was Canterbury, anyway? And why were there so many different types of plants? And why did some plants conspire to look like others? For that matter, why did human beings consistently have certain traits in common?
Years later, I found myself at Purdue's undergraduate geology field camp in Colorado, where I pursued another form of taxonomy by learning to identify various Western rock formations -- the gray, crumbly Mancos Shale, the Triassic redbeds of the Chugwater, the polychromatic Morrison, whose green and purple strata were nothing less than a charnel-house of dinosaur bones. As I did so, I noticed that one of my buddies, who was double-majoring in geology and dendrology, could also tell Colorado spruces from Douglas firs, and columbines from death-camas plants. I wanted that form of magic, too. For one thing, it would allow me to understand, at least slightly more than I did before, the landscapes of dry washes and sagebrush flats and alpine meadows of the Park and Never Summer Ranges, rising up before me.
And more than three decades later, I'm still entranced by the science and art of telling one species from another, and one rock formation from another. But the gradual accumulation of new information has not been the biggest reward. Had there not been another payoff -- and a certain ill-defined religiosity about the endeavor -- I would have been nothing more than a farmer of details. Instead, that sparkling sea of Latin and Greek syllables has led me to think more ecologically and temporally than I would have otherwise. For example, the dandelion I see growing with such proud defiance on some overtended lawn is not just Taraxacum officinale -- it's also a member of Asteraceae, one of the most highly advanced families of flowering plants. In turn, this tells me that the dandelion and nearest its relatives have, like Homo sapiens, arisen quite recently in the history of organic evolution. Further, I can better sense the dandelion's secret affinities with plants as seemingly disparate as lettuce and artichokes and goldenrods. And I notice that it is found only in certain places -- which suggests that factors of soil, microclimate, and human disturbance can define a species just as much as any name can. There is a synthesis of time and space and the will to live forming in my mind.
And the best thing of all is that I've seen this same process of multidirectional discovery occur in the minds of my students, too. So, when I hear people describe taxonomy -- the practice of naming and classifying organisms or minerals or anything else, in a hierarchical pattern -- as "mere stamp collecting," I respond with an edifying clarification. (And by the way, what's wrong with stamp collecting? Every hobby, every profession is a noble one if it's pursued with enthusiasm and an understanding of its connections to other things.) The poet and the Zen roshi rightly point out that the dandelion doesn't need to know that it's in the genus Taraxacum. We, on the other hand, do. It's part of what makes us human. In our quest for higher consciousness, we should always admit that names are artificial constructions. But like bridges connecting the banks of great rivers, these uniquely human constructions help us span reality and reach places we otherwise would never see.
B. Quick Takes on Earth History, Part Two: The Archean Eon
As noted above, biologists are by no means the only scientists who use a hierarchical system of naming things. For example, geologists classify different rock types and minerals according to their origin or structure or chemistry; in fact, they even divide and subdivide the very stuff of time itself. As kingdoms traditionally have been the life scientist's highest and most general groupings of organisms, so eons are the largest sections of the earth scientist's chronological yardstick.
In the June 2004 Newsletter, I began this series with an examination of the first of our planet's eons, the Hadean (4.6-3.8 billion years ago, abbreviated as "bya"). The following eon, the Archean (3.8-2.5 bya), is bounded by two of the most profound events in all Earth history: the origin of sustained life and its first self-inflicted environmental crisis. In between, a remarkable catalog of developments and revolutions: the solidification of the Earth's crust; the origins of oceans, ocean basins, and continents; the beginning of continental motion and plate tectonics; and a dramatic revamping of the atmosphere. As mind-numbingly far back in time as the Archean is, in one sense it's the rise of the modern world -- nothing less than the transformation of a planet from a boiling, steaming, and bubbling hell into a world the human eye could almost recognize as home.
In many historical-geology courses and texts the Archean still gets pretty short shrift -- not because it deserves to, but because evidence of its long span is scanty compared to that of later and better preserved times. Still, the situation is improving. Certain places in Australia and South Africa have Archean rock outcrops that have been more thoroughly scrutinized in recent decades, and in North America, too, there are famous locales that give us revealing glimpses of that far-distant eon. While Archean terranes are more common in Canada, the United States has some notable sites, particularly in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
PART II. REVIEWS IN THE REALM OF NATURAL HISTORY
A. Books: Geology
While it edition doesn't contain images and analysis from the current U.S. Mars Rover or European Mars Express missions, William K. Hartmann's A Traveler's Guide to Mars remains my top recommendation for this issue. In truth, it's a dangerous work, in that it may turn you into a irredeemable planetary-geology addict. Cleverly designed to mimic field guides to much more accessible locales, this book is, simply put, spellbinding. The text, engaging enough by itself, swims in a sea of maps and photos from earlier unmanned missions to the Red Planet. What better way to spend a long winter evening than exploring our solar system's largest canyon system (Valles Marineris) or its most immense volcano (Olympus Mons)? (Sturdy paperback; Workman Publishing; ISBN 0761126066.)
B. Books: Ethnobotany & Medicinal Botany
No plant genus has played a greater role in the history of human-disease prevention than Cinchona. This legendary and much sought-after group of South American tree species, the source of what was once known as Jesuits' bark, is the subject of Fiammetta Rocco's Quinine: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure that Changed the World. Ms. Rocco, a talented stylist, keeps the narrative going strong throughout, and in places delivers stunningly beautiful descriptive passages. Unfortunately, the impact of the text is sometimes blunted by a certain factual sloppiness. She apparently thinks "Solanaceae" is the specific epithet for the datura plant when it is the name for the entire expansive Nightshade Family, and her nautical terminology is unintentionally humorous -- she seems to think every ship in the days of sail was either a battleship or a galleon. Also, both she and her copy editor fail one of my own pet literacy tests, in that neither know the difference between the terms nauseous and nauseated -- no small matter, given the book's subject. Still, Quinine definitely offers much handsome prose and valid insight about a disease that still exacts a deadly toll in many parts of the world. (Paperback; Perennial Books; ISBN 0060959002.)
C. Books: Ecology
And speaking of great literary stylists, every fan of excellent nonfiction exposition, and indeed every earth-science buff, owes a debt of thanks to John McPhee. That author's now-classic earth-science trilogy (Basin and Range, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California, bundled together these days as Annals of a Former World) is essential reading for any natural-history enthusiast. But McPhee has also written many other books that explore the intersection of natural history and human nature. Perhaps my favorites of these are Encounters with the Archdruid and The Control of Nature. However, it wasn't until three days ago that I read an earlier work of his, The Pine Barrens.I'd bought my copy of it this past summer, and right at the source -- New Jersey's Wharton State Forest, just after a friend and I had hiked the Tom's Pond Trail from the restored Batsto village and through the blazing heat of the pitch-pine sand flats to an Atlantic white-cedar swamp. McPhee treats this botanically wondrous and culturally anomalous region with his usual sympathy and understated grace, and as usual he succeeds in weaving glimpses of human lives into the greater tapestry of the natural setting. Among the most delightful passages in The Pine Barrens is his droll account of the annual ceremony honoring Captain Carranza, whose career as "Mexico's Lindbergh" ended when his plane, the victim of a passing thunderstorm, crashed into this silent green wilderness. (Paperback; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; ISBN 0374514429.)
It might seem a nondescript place to most travelers, but to geologists interested in the early history of the Earth the small town of Morton in southwestern Minnesota is an awe-inspiring place. What a thrill it is to run one's hand over the glittering, crystalline,wavy-banded rock that is exposed there. Known in the building trade as Rainbow Granite but more accurately dubbed the Morton Gneiss, this highly metamorphosed rock has been isotopically dated to approximately 3.6 billion years. In other words, it's the oldest know rock outcrop in all fifty of the United States. In fact, it was once thought to be the oldest surviving rock unit anywhere on the planet -- until its claim to absolute primacy was usurped by a few other, remoter locales. (Nowadays the Acasta Gneiss of northwestern Canada, dated to at least 3.8 bya, is thought to be the oldest.)
The Archean cores of continents are composed of two contrasting zones that alternate in striking, zebra-stripe patterns on geologic maps. These zones are greenstone belts, thought by many geologists to be the remains of ancient ocean floors, and gneiss belts, apparently representing the earliest forms of continental crust. The picture that emerges from the painstaking study of these areas is that of a young planet still giving off perhaps three times as much internal heat as the modern Earth does. That means, among other things, volcanic activity that was rampant by present-day standards. As for the atmosphere, it had gone through quite a change already. The earliest Hadean mixture of gases -- primarily hydrogen, helium, and such hydrogen compounds as methane -- had been largely replaced by carbon dioxide, water vapor, sulfur dioxide, and nitric oxide. It was to this version of Earth that the earliest forms of life, simple-celled bacteria and archaebacteria, were well adapted. The earliest fossils of bacteria date to about 3.5 bya, and indirect but impressive chemical evidence suggests the presence of the complex metabolic process of photosynthesis was present even earlier, at the very outset of the eon.
Among the most successful inhabitants of this strange proto-paradise were cyanobacteria. These relatively large, chlorophyll-containing microbes were, like other bacteria, single-celled. But collectively they built large, cone- and dome-shaped colonies called stromatolites -- the oldest of all macrofossils. Cyanobacteria, in common with other photosynthetic organisms, give off free oxygen as a waste product, and by the end of the Archean, the O2 level in the atmosphere, while still miniscule by modern standards, had risen enough to trigger Earth's first episode of organisms gravely polluting their own environment. It was this closing event of the Archean, the Great Oxygen Crisis, that threatened the continuance of a complex world of microscopic life that required an oxygen-free environment. But this crisis also set the stage for the emergence of much more complex organisms that, far from being poisoned by O2, were utterly dependent on it -- as we, their distant progeny, are today.
And speaking of courses, this coming spring I'll also inaugurate the first Natural History Exploration Guild series, entitled "Nature's Classroom." All sessions will be held outdoors at parks and nature preserves, and will feature my integrative natural history technique and the same types of handouts and learning materials you've come to expect from my courses. To learn more about this new series, click the course link above or visit the Guild website, www.nheg.org.
As far as spring tours ago, I've already received inquiries and a number of bookings for the weekend trips to southern Illinois and Wisconsin's Door Peninsula and Kettle Moraine. If you're interested in going and haven't contacted me yet, don't linger too long. Verbum satis sapienti est. And one organization-sponsored tour has already been set up: I will be leading my "Architectural Geology of Downtown Chicago" trip for Highland Park's Heller Nature Center. For more on it and my other excursions, go to the Tours Page.
PART III. WIGGERS' WONDERS
(A New Section Dedicated to Whatever Springs to Mind)
Attack of the Giant Puffballs. This is the largest of a group of Calvatia gigantea fungi I encountered in my solitary wanderings this past fall at Marengo Ridge Preserve, McHenry County, Illinois. It's been estimated that these puffballs can hold up to twenty trillion spores -- an unimaginably large number even more immense than the number of cells in your amazingly complex vertebrate body. Treasured as choice edibles, giant puffballs have long also served as impromptu kickballs. Far from being being another example of fungus abuse meted out by us humans, the act of punting these irresistible targets is just what the puffballs want -- what better way could there be for them to distribute all those spores?
Paleo-Pahoehoe. Basaltic lava often hardens into one of two forms, which geologists the world over identify by their Hawaiian names. Aa -- pronounced, onomatopoeically, ah! ah! -- is viciously jagged and sharp-edged; pahoehoe -- pronounced pah-HO-eh-ho-eh -- has a smoother, ropy texture. Both are found in abundance in modern volcanic terrains, but to find an example of pahoehoe that has survived from an eruption that occurred 1.1 billion years ago is no mean geological feat. This exposure, just a stone's toss from the Lake Superior shore, is at Temperance River State Park, Minnesota. Incidentally, the park's river was given its name because it has no bar (i.e., no sand bar) at its mouth. Get it?
Clones 'R' Us. The Plant Kingdom must look down on our species' pitiful attempts to clone other animals with some contempt. After all, it's been in the cloning business for untold millions of years. Here's one extreme example of asexual reproduction in a highly advanced angiosperm (flowering plant). In this species, the South African Kalanchoe tubiflora (otherwise known as the chandelier plant or the mother-of-thousands), tiny planlets form along the adult's leaf margins. Exact genetic copies of the parent plant, the plantlets fall and often root successfully in the soil (or in other flower pots) nearby. This specimen thrives in the sunny walkway of Lake Forest College's Johnson Science Center, a few meters down the hall from my office.
"We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the seacoast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander."
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
PART IV. THIS ISSUE'S PARTING QUOTATION
With best wishes for the transgression of your limits and mine,
Ray Wiggers
(Et in Arcadia ego: an evening view of the Peloponnesus from the Arcadian Mountains of southern Greece.
Photo by LTJG Raymond Wiggers, USN, Spring 1978.)
What do a giant manmade crater in northeastern Minnesota and a Chicago Loop architectural landmark have in common? The best way to find out is to sign up for next spring's Heller Center architectural-geology trip, cited above. (Photos by Raymond Wiggers)
Field-botany students of mine puzzling over the notorious genus Solidago. Described by one of my former New York City Parks Department coworkers as botany's closest approach to sadomasochism, keying out the goldenrods can be tough work that involves understanding a flurry of arcane scientific terms. Is all this work really necessary? Does it really matter which species is which? In fact it does. (Photo by Raymond Wiggers)
A gallery of Archean rock types from that geological paradiso terrestre, Minnesota. Clockwise from upper left: the Morton Gneiss, BIF -- banded iron formation with lovely overturned folding -- of the Soudan Iron Formation, graywacke of the Lake Vermilion Formation, and pillow lavas of the Ely Greenstone Formation. These rocks provide clues, respectively, to an ancient protocontinent, to Earth's earlier, low-oxygen atmosphere; to submarine landslides; and to lava erupting underwater -- perhaps at a long-vanished midocean rift. (All photos by Raymond Wiggers)
A peat bog in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. In this locale, one finds Atlantic white cedar growing with carnivorous sundews, sphagnum mosses, and goldcrest -- an enigmatic wildflower whose closest relatives are native to Australia. This great wilderness area, wedged within the East Coast's sprawling urban corridor, is the subject of the John McPhee book reviewed above. (Photo by Raymond Wiggers)
