permaculture

[YankeePerm@aol.com]

In a message dated 11/14/97 10:44:43 AM, FranksFarm@aol.com wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Just wondered if there is some sort of publication/research available that
>contains a list of "indicator" plants and what they indicate.
>I've seen lots of scattered references, but wonder if there's not something
>fairly comprehensive out there.
>
>Thanks. frank

The best job I've seen on this is Bob Kourik's edible landscaping book,
available from us and about every other permaculture book supplier.  He does
a phenomenal job of pulling together info from all over and sorting out the
myth from the fact.  (Myth may be valid, but it is nice to have solid info on
such a concerete subject.)

Every time I put out on one of these lists offering to coalate such
information, I get the same two or three plants that everybody knows about
anyway and that obviously I know about having looked into this for some time,
so I am concluding that if the information exists, either it is not in the
permaculture movement or that people are keeping it to themselves.  Maybe
your inquiry will do better.

I did get one inquiry about plantain, privately, asked the inquirer to post
my answer on the list for everyone, and I don't recall ever seeing it posted.
 So the sharing zeal among permaculturists may be less than we like to think.

Well the short answer is that EVERY plant is an indicator plant.  Moreover,
plant communities are indicators.  Animal species may be indicators, too, of
certain conditions.  I don't need dissolved oxygen tests in my canal to know
that BOD is overwhelming, as there are only aquatic animals with capability
to breath air, either regularly or in emergencies, in that water.  Even
catfish, with pretty good air bladders are rare.  

It is really nice to have clues but so far everything I've picked up, with
scant exceptions, has been from observation.  For example, I observed that
there was little clover in my garden until I added lime or wood ash to an
area, then we got a burst of clover seed germination.  (Trifolium repens,
folks.)  Either pH or calcium levels are required above a certain threshold
in acid soils to trigger T repens germination.  Interesting, eh?  One could
fined out by adding gypsum or bone meal and looking for the response.  I
suspect that there is none, although one doesn not get startled by the lack
of a side effect, as the number of side effects imaginable is infinte, unless
primed to look for it.  Then you have to remember.  Witht he clover
germinating, you don't have to be primed to recall anything, there it is
asking you to explain it to yourself.  

I strongly suspect that indications vary from climate and soil type to other
climates and soil types.  

Insect damage is often a good indicator.  For example, lack of Colorado
potato beetle damage in potatoes (Solanum, not Ipomea) is likely due to
avaiolable P.  I have grown potatoes with very light dressings of bone meal
between beds that lack the bone meal and they were virtually untouched while
the other beds were way more than decimated.  (Decimated means, literally,
killing one soilder in ten.)  

I walked the fields at the Massachusetts prison at Shirley (sorry, no juicy
gossip, I was hired as horticultural instructor there) and did a soil
analysis based on weeds, crop responses, and insect damage.  For example, red
clover looked good, except that it was heavily infested with aphids.  I said,
"Potassium defficiency."  Why.  1) Aphids generally proliferate when there is
an imbalance between N and the other macronutrients, P & K.  2)  Clover will
have adequate to good N from nitrogen fixation.  3) Clover will have adequate
P or it will be stunted because it is incapable of growing without a proper
N/P ratio in its leaves.  4)  This means that K was defficient by process of
elimination.  Money wasted on analysis confirmed this, my pH estimate to the
first decimal, etc.  

Here in Florida, I walked our pastures and predicted pH 5.  For this I got
derision from some folks who have lived here a while, as the soil is
supposedly limestone base.  However the pastures are on old lake bed and the
limstone is probably way down under many, many feet of muck mixed with sand.
 (Well, techincally muck is 50% organic residue or more but you get the
idea).  Much of this composted anerobically under a eutrophic lake.  In other
words, pickled muck.  Moreover, I saw no legumes and predicted unavailable P.
 It could be absent or blocked from uptake by low pH.  We have redish tips on
the leaves of different species of vegetation, also indicating that they
arent getting enough P for some reason. pH tested out at 5.1 to 5.2, I was
off a bit.  

I spread lime on one paddock and see no great improvement, probably because
most vegetation is adapted warm weather grasses.  On another, I used lime
plus bone meal to spread legume seed (joint vetch contaminated, happily, with
crimson clover, both annual summer legumes).  This was a wetter paddock.  In
a third paddock, I broadcast cow peas with no ammedments.  In all cases, I
broadcast seed into the soil and mow over it to cover it for germination.
 Since the pastures were neglected, this stacks functions as it weakens the
weeds that are unpalatable to bovines.  I see no difference between cowpeas
broadcast in either wet pasture (in a remarkably dry summer) -- they are both
great.  Cowpeas broadcast on higher ground did poorly or failed altogether,
likely due to insufficient mositure, particularly for the method of planting.
 The longer the seed is around, the happier the local crows, possums, coons,
rats, field mice, etc., are--not to mention hordes of squirrels in an
oak/hickory wetland environment (There goes that indicator combination!)  So
cowpeas we will broadcast only when we have reason to beieve there will be
abundant moisture.

Other than that, how do you pull indicator species out of this whole mess of
analysis and response, largely, I must say, relying on intuition
 supplemented by information.  

Meanwhile, I've learned some really good indicator plants of moist, wet, and
wterlogged soil.  Some species here only grow where there is frequent flooding
 which they probably like.  They seem, also, to be allelopathic.  Button bush
is a serious pasture weed, with huge roots, but languishes in a dry "rainy
season" indicating that it must, must, must have water, where as very large
bay myrtles were killed by high water last winter, obviously marking the
highest water in their lifespan.  However they thrive where occassional
flooding occurs and in very low water tables.  One old reliable indicator,
Sambucus (elderberry) proves unreliable, with seedlings surviving nicely in
absolutely dry conditions in dead logs under conditions where nothing else
but cacti thrive.  they just wait until their hole int he log is waterlogged
and grow a bit until it dries again.  Small wonder that they are prevalant on
the margins of Florida wetlands where the sand soil can drain sufficiently to
stress even native species  three days after rain in hot windy summer
conditions.  

So the point is to look around and ask the locals.  We probably have a
subspecies of Sambucus canadensis here--some books even list it as a
different species.  Obviously, it has learned to be both a cactus and a
wetland plant.  It doesn't behave that way in Massachusetts and confines
itself to wet or quite moist areas, unless cultivatd and irrigatd.

One more.  Alder is commonly considered a wetland plant.  Certainly that is
where you are likely to find it.  Probably, though, it is because that is
where it has a competitive advantage, being tolerant of wet and flooded
conditions.  I have also found it growing in cracks betwen rocks in mining
denuded lands in Eastern Pennsylvania.  Again, nothing else much likes it.
 So it grows where it grows because it doesn't have competition and can
thrive very well without companions in almost any condition.  It does look
much better in swamps than in poisoned soil between cracks in rocks.  So

This doesn't mean alder is not an indicator plant.  But what it indicates is
poor conditions for most other plants.  Blueberries are the same.  Red cedar,
sumac (sometimes) and others also are such indicators.  

OK, ask the neighbors and pay attention.  If someone really does put this
stuff to gether, be sure that the observations work in your back yard
too--they may not.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
courses via email.  One is now underway.  Next Live program:  Paraguay, 9/98.
Internships available. Copyright, 1997, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52,
Sparr FL 32192 USA  YankeePerm@aol.com  

We don't have time to rush.