I’m starting to gain insight into why people turn into conspiracy theorists. Some topics are so totally neglected that it looks like they were intentionally and maliciously erased, instead of falling victim to arbitrary lack of interest.
I think it’s a vicious cycle; when people don’t know something exists, they’re not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.
This post is about native bamboo in the United States and the fact that miles-wide tracts of the American Southeast used to be covered in bamboo forests
@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.
Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches
And THEN.
I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.
HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.
I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was “Whoa! That is BIG.”
Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just…little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.
I dive down the Research Hole™. Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren’t viable.
It’s barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there’s not enough research
There’s a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA
Some gardening websites list its height as “over 6 feet” “Over 10 feet” There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES “AS THICK AS A MAN’S THIGH.”
The interval between flowering is anyone’s guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone’s guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.
It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.
I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it’s an inch.
Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I’m growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.
The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that’s 140 individual PLANTS.
Also, the consistent low estimates of the size Arundinaria gigantea attains (6 feet?? really??) suggests that colonies either aren’t living long enough to reach mature size or aren’t healthy enough to grow as big as they are supposed to. I doubt we have any clue whatsoever about how its flowers are pollinated. We need to do some research IMMEDIATELY about how much genetic diversity remains in existing populations.
it’s called the Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant and there are, in total, 11 known sites where it still grows.
in general i’m feral over the carnivorous plant variety of the Southeastern USA. we have SO many super-rare carnivorous plants!!!
Protect the wetlands. Protect the canebrakes because the canebrakes protect the wetlands.
Many years ago I did some (non-academic) research on native canes in the USA because I thought I remembered seeing a bamboo-like something in the wild that I’d been told was native, and I thought it might make a nice landscaping accent. But the sources I found said something like “unlike Asian bamboos, the American equivilant barely reaches the height of a man”, and I went “nah, that is exactly the wrong height for anything.” But if it gets 10 feet and up, I think there are a lot of people who would be VERY happy to use it as a sight barrier in public and private landscaping, and if it means putting in a bit of a wetland/rain garden, all the better. The lack of a good native equivelant to bamboo is something I have heard numerous people bemoan. Obviously it’s very important to protect wild sites and expand those, but if it’d be helpful, I bet it wouldn’t be hard to convince landscapers to start new patches too.
For instance, a lot of housing developments, malls, etc. seem to set aside a percentage of their land for semi-wild artificial wetlands (drainage maybe?) planted with natives, and then block the messy view with walls of arbovitae or clump bamboo from asia - perhaps it would be a better option there?
Good Lord. Arundinaria isn’t just a better option, it’s perfect.
I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.
The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.
It grows slowly compared to Asian bamboos, and seems to need some shade to establish, so it would take time to become a good barrier, but no worse than those stupid arborvitae.
Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i’m researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there’s an awful lot of just, like, “Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else”
I’d have to research this, but I kinda feel that, what with how much the eugenics movement pervaded everything for a huge chunk of recent history, our narrative of how disability was for much of history has gotten a little warped.
I feel like I always heard “yeah they assumed people were possessed by demons Back Then” but actually researching religious history? I’ve found a lot more of people seeing a person showing signs of (what we would call) neurodivergence or mental illness and being like “hm. yea that’s god.”
It’s also definitely like…in the US anyway fundamentalism has absolutely decimated a lot of AWARENESS of what Christianity specifically can look like.
american evangelicalism is based a lot on Belief in your religion as axiomatic Fact and at the same time a very buddy-buddy view of god where Jesus is like, your cool dad. Both of which are not very good for allowing the numinous and divine “mystery” to exist
So I think we assume people throughout history would default to “things I don’t understand are of the devil.” when very often they would instead be “things I don’t understand are of God.”
and they would see someone speak in strange sounds or move his body strangely or respond differently to the world and see something divine in it, and there are instances of this across many religions
@invisibleoctopus There’s this fascinating book about the cultural aspects of how mental illness presents called Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters that is not without its flaws, but that (among other things) discusses how schizophrenic people do significantly better in cultures where there’s a precedent/religious or spiritual explanation for people ‘hearing voices’ and such, because for one thing, they’re not treated as social outcasts for it. Those environments are better equipped to help and accommodate those people on the basis of being able to keep them integrated into a community. At least according to the Ethan Watters guy.
The thing about imagining that autistic children would have been left to die for most of history is just… it’s so lazy. And it betrays a huge failure to understand what autism looks like for autistic people and what daily life looked like in history at the same time. It’s very frustrating.
There’s this weird idea that autistics only develop special interests in this very narrow stereotypical STEM-field domain of life, also, which is total nonsense. Of course religion autistics are a thing. Judaism, too, has a lot of room for autistics: you develop very deep spheres of knowledge, about which you argue constantly, and prayer is sung and you get to move back and forth during it rhythmically.
The other thing that gets me is that it’s not just that there’s historical room to interpret weird behavior as Godly, it’s that autistic people are relatively likely to come up with unusual ideas about people and how people do and should work. If you’re talking about any theological tradition that involves contextual study and argument, you often find a very autistic sort of perspective writing the theology.
Also, just as a general data point: my stepdad, who is in his mid-70s, grew up in a rural farming community, and was never diagnosed with anything, is Obviously Autistic to anyone who knows what autism is.
He can only tolerate about 2 different fabrics against his skin.
And can only eat about 5 foods for obvious food texture reasons.
He hums softly and continually.
He never looks at people.
He has a bunch of other people-related sensitivities, like the inability to tolerate a lot of sounds and nearly all perfume smells.
He has about 3 topics of conversation, which are a) tractors, b) agriculture, and c) Rottweilers.
And you know what? He has had a nice long life of being a Rural Farmer and gets along great with other old farmer dudes who want to talk dogs-tractors-farming with him.
I mean, it’s generally understood that he is Weird, but also that he knows Really A Fucking Lot About Tractors. Which counts for everything in a rural farming community.
It goes beyond lazy into a type of downright cruelty. No matter how autistic people did or did not fit into their communities in the past, chances are someone loved them. When they were little, someone found the clothes they could tolerate and food they would eat and something they could do that matched their interests and abilities. And people married some of them and had children with them. Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least were loved.
We know this because archeology shows over and over again a great level of care and because these traits are still present - they had to get passed on somehow. And we know it because we too feel love for others, despite them constantly failing to live up to any ideal whatsoever.
Anyone who approaches other people with this attitude is only seeking to perpetuate an excuse to be cruel to them. It has nothing to do with what happened in the past and everything to do with what they hope they can get away with in the future. They discount the love that must have existed because it can’t be used against us.
OP how does it feel to be completely right? Have a flower 🌹 as a reward.
My dad was one of 8 kids raised rural in the Rocky Mountains. I remember my grandma telling me stories about him growing up, fond and still just mildly perplexed over memories of her strange little boy–the way she had to bake him a separate miniature pizza from his older siblings just so she could put the cheese on afterwards because he refused to eat melted cheese; the way he wouldn’t take anything but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school for lunch his entire life even long after they had the money to eat better and his friends all grew up into more complex tastes; the way he was so dedicated to his after-school schedule that one day when his big sister was late to pick him up, this 6-year-old kid simply forged straight up the side of the mountain back to their home because it was The Time For Going Home and everyone thought he was lost for two frantic hours until he walked in the front door and quietly asked about dinner with no idea anything was off.
After I realised I was autistic and started exploring what that really meant, I thought back on my life growing up with my dad, understanding him in ways nobody else understood us–even my mom–and about stories like that from his youth, and realised how obviously autistic he is, too. But my grandma loved him and put in the extra care, on top of seven other kids to keep track of, to know what he liked and accommodate his needs.
His family just made room for him. His friends just made room for him. So he could still fit. They didn’t know about autism but there was just a little my-dad-shaped space in a bunch of people’s lives and that was fine.
And I think about how many people are just like that, and always have been when small communities are left to their own devices. Not all of them, not ever all when it comes to people, but so many. Whether it’s someone with thoughts too big for their age who must have been gifted by the divine, or someone so impressively good at one thing that they become a local community resource, or just someone who is extremely serious about unmelted cheese. They still belonged.
We were a little strange or a lot strange, but we were still someone’s. And as such we have so often been beloved. Humans, on the whole, take care of what’s theirs, or at least try their best; if what’s theirs is a bit different then they figure out how to accommodate that in practical ways. It’s just not that hard. Whether they ever cared about what autism was or not, or why we are the way we are, we have been loved. That isn’t a new concept, and the proposal that it is is horrifying and telling.
The only good reason for an autistic kid to get lost in the woods is because they are very committed to dinnertime. And everyone who loves them panics until they come home safe. Anyone who did otherwise would have been considered inhuman long before the modern day.
The commentator narrating the pup’s moves with the ball is AMAZING and I’m crying
“(…) right, but he decides to kick the ball. He gets close, and who grabs it? The Friend(dog)! Yes! A pup got into the field. He’s tied to it. He puts it under his paws and shows what football was missing in the Gasometro (field’s name). The [team]’s men want to grab him, but they cant! The Friend has his eyes on the ball. He runs to find it again. Yes! He bites! He kneads! He wants it close! He gets lost, he’s so happy! Castro (player) wants to kick his Corner but he can’t. He tells the pup “enough, enough, go over there”… however *commentator laughs*, there’s the pup! When he puts it on the floor, [the dog] goes again for the ball. And of course, as any skilled man, wants it all for himself. A bit of an over-eater, this pup. And he clearly has shown conditions / talent. [The team] found the way to the goal thanks to the Pichicho’s (little dog) essential input…. who, of course, as any protagonist had his place at [the tv show].“
*camera switches to interview where dog barks and mounches on the reporter’s mic (who allows him do it)*
I’ve been watching Argentinean football all my life and I can confirm this is the best to ever happen on a match.
