Home Tree Map

I very much enjoy spending time outdoors. Doing so puts my mind at peace as if I am supernaturally zapped by some Zen energy. Sometimes I go outside - even if it's blistering hot - to feel revitalized when something has kept me indoors too long. Being in my yard makes me feel spiritually connected to it. I know that a similar effect happens on a larger scale when I spend more time within my town (enjoying its event offerings and people). As I spend time in my yard, my brain comes up with fun activities for me to deepen my connection to my environment. Since I love botany, herbs and working with all kinds of plants, I knew I would have fun with this month's exercise: creating a tree map of my yard.

Of course, I started with a key or guide to the trees in my area. After moving here, I never got around to buying a local plant guide. But I'm lucky to live near all the overachievers who attend Duke University, so I was able to find some great keys through their online projects. Some of the trees were very difficult due to varietals and hybrids.

Once I knew what was growing, I started to draw it out. As I was drawing, I tried to imagine that I would have to hand this guide to someone who didn't live here who had to identify all of the trees. Even still, I'm sure the map has its confusing areas. Though I used graph paper, my drawings are not to scale. My property is wedge-shaped with a stream running down the side, so I made the front yard in landscape orientation and the back in portrait. I tried to use different colors and tree textures to show the trees since some overshadow others.

With the map finished, my next step has been assembly of a plant field guide to my yard. It only has those few plants that grow on my property, but it helps me to connect to my environment one level at a time. As I expand outward, I will begin to add entries for plants in my region of town, then to the physiographic province of my state.

When one composes a work of lore such as a local guide to plants, it is vitally important to have knowledge of the presence and an understanding of the impact of invasive species. Certainly, these species are part of nature. Certainly, they have some right to grow as they do and they can be very useful. But just as human folly allowed these species to take root in areas that permit them to function as super-beings over their comrade plants, it is up to personal human opinion whether or not one wishes to allow the continued growth of these plants.

In these situations, I ask myself these questions:
Is it abundant elsewhere?
Does it have any useful properties that would make me want it around (medicinal, incense, soil stabilization)?
Are there native plants that prefer this particular habitat (slope face, moisture level, drainage, sun/shade levels)?

My purely pagan position is this: if the plant is listed as an invasive by your local extension service, botanical society, or green smarty-pants, you can be sure that it is far from being endangered. Likely, it exists throughout your region in population densities that are detrimental to otherwise native plants. When I find a plant I don't know, I look it up and get to know it. If it has no medicinal or aromatic properties that would bribe me to nurture it or leave it alone, then I pull it up, chop it down, or spray it with killer. Losing it from my property will not endanger the plant community because my city is infested with it! What I've found is that an enormous number of other herbs begin to sprout from the seed bank in the soil. Sometimes more of the invasive plants return, attesting to their invasive nature, but more often I find new colors that have not seen sunlight for quite a long time.