130. American Plant Life

            Since I’ve started talking about the diversity found in our country and all the wildlife, I have to continue with plants. I am a plant man so I can only scratch the surface of all the variety of plants we have that amaze me in the US. Trees amaze me here. In Idaho and Maine the white pine is king, towering above us and holding the mysteries and histories of the main masts of hundreds of ships. In New England and the northeast, the sugar maple gave the early colonists their sweet sustenance with its syrup. And when you get in the southeastern states the palmettos make their distinguishing mark. Colorado and the Rocky Mountain west shimmer with the blue spruce. California boasts the largest trees on the continent with the sequoias and redwoods. The whole west is covered in ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. And if I want to mention big old trees I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t mention the western red cedar. And Nevada has the oldest trees in the world! The bristlecone pine. The south has all of those giant oaks. I am certainly enamored of trees.

            But there are plenty of other plants that are part of the American consciousness. I can’t forget huckleberry or blueberry or raspberry or strawberry or blackberry or cranberry—just berries. And we all know that the whole country isn’t forested so let’s not forget sage brush and bunchgrass and bluegrass. There are zillions of grasses.

            Plants aren’t specific just to land either. Marsh plants are everywhere in the country. In the Northwest the Pacific abounds with Kelp forests. Of course, I’m a land lover from the interior so I can’t begin to go too deep into the sea. Let me come back ashore and tell you more of the prickly pear, the Joshua tree and the Saguaro cactus. How about chaparral? And what about Spanish moss dangling from those southern oaks? And mushrooms? We have morels, chanterelles, and cauliflowers in the woods and thousands of others that I don’t even know about.

            Oh, don’t think I’ve forgotten wildflowers—roses, honeysuckle, fireweed, paintbrush, bear grass, trillium… Wow! I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of the vast array of native plant life to our country that I love so much. Uncle Walt would be ashamed of my catalogue list being so short. Where’s the cottonwood, the black spruce of the taiga? I didn’t even mention Engelmann spruce… At any rate, take the time to get outside and do your own cataloguing. If you have to distance yourself from people then you should take a family member, a plant book, or printout from the internet and see what you learn about plants in your area. #optoutside and stay well.