Service Learning by Parker
On January 15th, The Blue Heron canoe and the Snohomish tribe, along with Tom Murphy tmurphy@edcc.edu hosted a volunteer get together at Gold Park in lynnwood. Our mission was to clean the park, and take out invasive species. My sub-group had the task of pulling out invasive species, specifically the Himalayan blackberries. I volunteered for 3 hours this day.
Before we got started working, we had a a fire and the elders of the tribe told stories. This one specific story stuck with me. It was about how the weathers started to change, and all the animals got cold and huddled in the bears warm coat. The brave bird, with very colorful feathers went flying to tell the gods to bring back the heat. The bird also had a beautiful voice, and sang all the way to the top of the mountain. Once he reached the top, he realized he had to fly even more. Completely exhausted when he reached the top, he eventually changed the weather. However, on the way back down, his beautiful colors turned black, and his voice turned into a “caw”. Once he returned, the bird was thanked by all the other animals, but found out he will be eating the garbage and leftovers from “the two footed animals” until they clean up after themselves. I thought this was an interesting view on the environment, and made me want to better the environment. I thought it was true that all plants and animals need to have a clean area for them, to keep up their pure beauty. To keep the areas clean, humans need to pick up after themselves, and limit the invasive species that can overrun the native plants.
While volunteering, we learned about different types of the blackberries, and how to tell the difference between them. To identify, we looked at the leaves. The native ones have 3 leaves, while the himalayan had 5 leaves. The main goal was to take up the root system of the plants, to make sure the plant cannot grow back in the future. The himalayan plants had a very long, deep root system, making the job of digging them out way harder. Our group accidently took out the root system of the native one, and noticed that the root structure was much shorter than the invasive ones. I think this was an adaptation that benefited the invasive plants more. With the deeper and thicker roots, the plant can get more water and nutrients that the native plants would have used if the Himalayan plants were not there.
Questions:
- What other effects can invasive species have on the environment?
- Are there better tools to take up the root system of blackberries?
- Do the himalayan plants grow bigger with the 5 leaves, compared to 3?
- How was the Himalayan blackberries introduced into the Pacific Northwest?
Photograph taken by Janessa Wangadi on January 15th
I love the story you retold; it just states that humans take away the beauty from the native land and cause harm to plants and animals. I see why Gwen doesn't like humans, just kidding. It's important to give back to the land and clean up since the animals and plants have a huge impact on us. This is interesting that Himalayan blackberries exist in the Northwest; maybe the plant has developed new traits that allowed them to survive in the PNW or they had similar genes from the previous location. In addition, the invasive plant(s) could cause harm to people when consumed or harm to the environment which is why they're up rooted.
ReplyDelete