Tillandsias, ferns, water hemlock, sabal palm

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More Plant Neighbors

We roved through a park in last week’s article with my friend and teacher Jean Mitchell to rave about the joys and beauties of plants all around us. But, when we go to a park, we expect to find beautiful, intriguing plants. So, this week, wanting to share more of the new knowledge, some more intriguing, useful plants that Jean recently shared with me, I’m limiting myself to plants that I can find in my back yard. This week’s plants, then, are more typical of the southeastern United States, so while last week I could link to a wonderful online herbal by a British author for each of the plants, this week, I’ll be linking to various sites for additional information about these new plants.

Although it is the state tree of Florida, the sabal or cabbage palm is common throughout the Southeast. It is a great plant for landscaping, since in its natural range, it requires almost no attention, except for some grooming, discarding its dead fronds. It is also a food source, providing the swamp cabbage of some cracker cooking or hearts of palm for the gourmet.

One of my favorite plants is Spanish moss (do follow this amazing link). Surely no one in Worth County or in much of the Southeast needs to be shown a picture of Spanish moss, but if you do, click here for a moonlit view of the plant that captures something of its role as background for a lot of Southern stereotypes. Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor moss. It is a tillandsia, one of a large genus of tropical and subtropical "air plants" in the bromeliad family of plants, ranging from Spanish moss to pineapples, many of which have various economic, medicinal, and culinary functions.

It surprises people that Spanish moss has flowers, but it does—and I've heard that people who have an allergy to its pollen suffer considerably. Unfortunately (I’m not allergic), I couldn’t find any blooming, but I did find another native tillandsia in bloom in my back yard. A little larger than Spanish moss, it shows the same colors and the scales with which tillandsias absorb moisture from the atmosphere. Although most tillandsias grow on other plants, they are not parasitic but epiphytic, not really taking anything from the host plant (unless they grow too exuberantly and smother it) but finding creative ways just to get along with it.

Throughout the southeastern United States, we have many varieties of ferns, one of the most ancient groups of plants. Not only ancient but also edible, ferns were the most common plants in the time of the dinosaurs, so much so that if we refer to plant-eating dinosaurs, we are most likely referring to fern-eaters. Today, dried fern appears in various Asian dishes, and even the very mainstream Joy of Cooking includes a recipe for steaming the delicate "fiddleheads," to serve them, like asparagus, with Hollandaise sauce.

So far, I have found five kinds of ferns in my yard. First, I’m sharing with you the Boston fern (in green) together with a fossil fern (not found in my yard but on eBay, the online auction).

And, then, here is a picture of one of my royal ferns, and… Yes, that’s it. At least, about 90% of it is of the fern, but believe me, when I ran into the house to get my camera (this is one of the first photos I took with my digital camera), I didn’t think, "Oh, wow, I’ve gotta get this picture of the fern!"

The truth is, we go through most of our lives seeing what we choose to see. If we observe a picture of one person surrounded by animals, we identify it as "person with animals" rather than "animals with person." And, when we see (or take) this photo, we think of it as "snake on fern" rather than "fern with animal." When we look at plants themselves, we focus on one characteristic, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Draw what lessons you can from that photo, but this next photo has a very important lesson for us. Rovin’ through my yard to find plants to rave about, I was pleasantly surprised to recognize the blossom of an old green friend, yarrow, an herb known in Europe, so it is included in Mrs. Grieve’s herbal which I referred to last week. It is also used in Chinese medicine, and its stalks were used to select the appropriate hexagram of the I Ching, the Chinese book of divination, which you can now consult with the click of a mouse.

I was so pleased—especially since this was not a plant which Jean had identified for me—I took a photo, but before brewing myself a cup of yarrow tea, I sent her the photo. She responded that it was not yarrow, calling my attention to its leaves. In fact, she said, it is water hemlock… and it is poisonous.

It is said in some traditions that the shamans discovered the uses of beneficial plants by talking with the spirits of the plants themselves. (I wonder how many shamans died in the line of duty?) Nowadays, we may not have such direct access, but we need to take advantage of our whole net of resources, people, books, Internet sites, before we take chances with plants. They are our neighbors, but not all of them may be our friends.

Surfing through the net of our plant neighbors may be somewhat like surfing the Internet. There is a lot of good out there, but don’t forget that the bad is there as well. So, keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and be very sure what it is you are putting in the hot water in your tea cup… or you may be in hot water yourself!

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