Which stories do fields, gardens, forests, and deserts tell? How are they articulated in—and between—the extensive and intensive senses of articulation? In what ways are they distributed between muthos and logos? There is no one all-embracing answer to these questions because the answers are indexed to various plant communities, distinct vegetal milieus, or modes of inhabiting the middle. Plant communities are tangles of stories about interactions among plants; the collaborations and collisions of plants with bacteria, fungi, and animals; agriculture and permaculture; diets and habitats; and, less and less so, the wilderness.
The deserts that grow worldwide as a result of deforestation are the environments that best correspond to the arid abstraction of globality, inherited from the rarefication and dematerialization of reason. It did not have to come to this: spirit could have been receptive to matter, feeling at home in the forest, while culture could have meant care for and cultivation of life.
… assuming that the plant’s self is not separated from the place of its growth, whatever it tells about that place is already a phyto-biographic narrative and, vice versa, the story of a plant about itself is a slowly developing narrative about its surroundings.
… keepsakes of my memories, the mnemonic centers of gravity that evoke the events and even the atmosphere of my life at the time
A Philosophy of Stories Plants Tell, M.Marder.Plant Stories.pdf, 2023. “plants not only silently tell us something (indeed, a great deal) about themselves and the world, but also that they tell stories, rendering witness accounts about life and death, light and darkness, middles, beginnings, and ends.
Plant-Thinking, A Philosophy of Vegetal Life, 2013. “Reconstructing the life of plants “after metaphysics,” Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, “plant-thinking” is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike.”
Plants in Place, A Phenomenology of the Vegetal, Edward S. Casey and Michael Marder, 2023. “vegetal existence involves many place-based forms of change: stems growing upward, roots spreading outward, fronds unfurling in response to sunlight, seeds traveling across wide distances, and other intricate relationships with the surrounding world.”
Philosophy of the Home, Emanuele Coccia, Richard Dixon (Translator), 2024. Interview in Pin-Up.
This video, made in 1986, documents some of the testimony given in the Trial of Titled Arc. The artwork on trial is Richard Serra’s public sculpture, Tilted Arc, commissioned and installed by the U.S. government in 1981. Four years later, a public hearing was held to consider the removal of the sculpture from its site in Federal Plaza in New York City. Richard Serra and other artists, politicians and community members speak in defense of Tilted Arc, on public art, and the role of the government and the of the people in shaping the public’s visual environment. 1986, 28 minutes, Paper Tiger.
Slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. elliottii) or South Florida slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. densa). ifas.
The species elliottiiis a large, stately, heavily-branched, long-needled conifer has a rapid growth rate and is capable of reaching 100 feet in height with a three to four-foot-diameter trunk.
Pine rockland is a savanna-like forest on limestone outcrops with a single canopy species, South Florida slash pine, and a diverse understory of shrubs and herbs. It is a fire-maintained community requiring periodic burns every 3 to 7 years (Snyder et al. 1990). This community is often found in association with rockland hammock and short hydroperiod freshwater wetland communities.
The flora of pine rocklands is influenced by the community’s proximity to the tropics as well as its peninsular connection to mainland Florida (Robertson 1953, Snyder 1986, Snyder et al. 1990). K. Bradley and R. Hammer (unpublished data) have recorded 374 native plant taxa in pine rocklands of Miami-Dade County, outside of Everglades NP. Although species diversity and richness varies geographically for pine rockland communities, the Richmond tract in Miami-Dade County contains 260 taxa of native plants (DERM 1994), the Navy Wells Pineland Preserve contains 172 taxa, and the Tamiami Pineland Preserve contains 163 taxa.
A high degree of vascular plant endemism is observed in the pine rockland community. In a 1977 survey of the 186 species noted in Miami-Dade and Monroe county pine rocklands, 30 species were only found in pine rockland communities in Miami-Dade County (exclusive of Everglades NP), and nine of these were endemic to the pine rockland community (Loope et al. 1979). Approximately 31 plant taxa which occur in pine rocklands are currently treated as endemic to South Florida (Table 1); 13 of these taxa occur in additional plant communities such as marl prairies or rockland hammocks (e.g. Blodgett’s wild-mercury (Argythamnia blodgettii) , pineland clustervine (Jacquemontia curtissii), and false-leadplant (Dalea carthagenensis var. floridana)). Many taxa which were formerly considered to be endemic have been found in other regions such as peninsular Florida, the Bahamas, or Cuba [ e.g. Blodgett’s ironweed (Vernonia blodgettii), Florida gamagrass (Tripsacum floridanum) , Florida white-tops (Rhynchospora floridensis)], or are no longer considered to be taxonomically distinct (e.g. Polygala boykinii var. sparsifolia), and pineland-privet (Forestiera segregata var. pinetorum).
Many plant taxa reach their northern or southern limits in the pine rocklands of South Florida. Taxa with their entire United States distribution in South Florida which are limited to pine rocklands include Bahama sachsia (Sachsia polycephala) , pineland daisy (Chaptalia albicans) , quailberry (Crossopetalum ilicifolium), and shrub eupatorium (Koanophyllon villosum). A number of species in pine rocklands are disjunct from sandhill communities in central Florida. These include Asclepias viridis, Cyperus filiculmis, Desmodium marilandicum, dollarweed (Rhynchosia reniformis), Gray’s beakrush (Rhynchospora grayi) , green-eyes (Berlandiera subacaulis) , Rhynchosia michauxii, Tracy’s bluestem (Andropogon tracyi) , and Zornia bracteata . These taxa are primarily found in deposits of sand in the northern Biscayne pinelands, although Asclepias viridis can also be found on Big Pine Key.
The overstory of pine rocklands is open and dominated by a canopy of South Florida slash pine ranging in height from 20 to 24 m (65.6 to 79.2 ft) (Snyder et al. 1990). In the lower Keys the pine trees are smaller and the subcanopy includes Thrinax and Coccothrinax . Slash pine densities in pine rocklands have been reported at 453 to 1,179 pines/ha (185-477 pines/acre) on Long Pine Key (Snyder 1986), and 90 pines/ha (36 pines/acre) in the Turner River Area of Big Cypress National Preserve (Gunderson et al. 1982). This canopy provides a source of pine needles for fine fire fuel. The pine canopy ignites rarely, typically after long periods of fire suppression. Germination occurs during October, November, and December, with survival highest when optimal soil moisture is present the following dry season (McMinn 1970). The seedlings remain in the grass stage for 2 to 5 years. Growth occurs over a period of approximately 10 months from February to November (Langdon 1963). There is little to no subcanopy. However, hardwoods that may occur in the subcanopy include live oak (Quercus virginiana), wild-tamarind (Lysiloma latisiliquum), and willow-bustic (Sideroxylon salicifolium). These species are more abundant in areas where natural fire is suppressed (Snyder et al. 1990, DERM 1995) and in pine rocklands in close proximity to tropical hardwood hammocks (Loope and Dunevitz 1981).
Taken from: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 1999. South Florida Multi-Species Recovery Plan. Atlanta, Georgia. Pp. 3-162, 3-164. ifas.
do we make work about where and when we were raised … do we make work about the road that crackles with sirens or about Dad’s hydrangeas which came up again that summer violet clouds of bruises and pinker than the Hubba Bubba we were popping so loud,
a prison spoon, sharp teeth, a rosary and chicken feet, a compass rose, magnetic blood TNT, equanimity, and a diamond file for a finger; jeweler’s glass, rubber suit, passport stamp kick in the ass, the right shoes, the North Star a shiv and an ampule of musk; sulfuric acid, wooden mask, litmus test, laughing gas, atom bomb doctor’s note, hammer of Thor, a metaphor, a stronger rope, a longer hope, a golden tongue le mot juste, safer roost, divining rod echolocation and a sleeve of magical staves.
But in order to exit, I first had to step over the body.
In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon, a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree. I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey. I belong there.
