BiodiverseCity St. Louis logoBiodiverseCity St. Louis is a growing network of organizations and individuals throughout the greater St. Louis region who share a stake in improving quality of life for all through actions that welcome nature into our urban, suburban and rural communities.

BiodiverseCity St. Louis recognizes our region's reliance on biodiversity, the variety of life, and natural systems. We depend on biodiversity, not only for the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, but also for the basic health, livability and economic prosperity of our region.

Species Spotlight

Liverworts (Marchantiophyta)

Liverworts up close
Photo by Jean Ponzi

Tiny green structures, low on the surface of our driveway gravel, have taken root in my mind. Or—since liverworts have no actual roots—they’ve embedded their hair-like rhizoids in my imagination. Who are these odd, miniscule plants? Where do they come from? How do they thrive?

I first “asked” Robin Wall Kimmerer, a PhD botanist and indigenous scientist, best-selling author, storyteller, MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, and my Green Hero. Her award-winning first book, Gathering Moss, focused on their plant group, the bryophytes. She calls out conventional science for labelling liverworts as primitive plants, for verbally reducing them to inferior status.

Dr. Kimmerer, from her global respect and fame, honors these humble plants as Ancients.

Studies of their mitochondrial DNA say that liverworts (phylum Marchantiophyta) were the first living beings to make the BIG leap onto land. The journal Nature reported in 1998 that liverworts are the oldest known land plants, who began, about 476 million years ago, to transform early Earth’s toxic CO2 terrestrial soup into a literal atmosphere of life-friendly oxygen.

BiologyDictionary.net says this drastic changing of global chemistry would later lead to “climate change and massive extinction events.” We know from contemporary climate science that change-at-scale has happened before, though never with the speed and intensity ramped up through our Homo sapiens actions.

Our venerable institution Smithsonian says, “The world of mosses, liverworts and hornworts, collectively known as bryophytes, form a beautiful miniature forest; nonetheless they are often overlooked, due to their small size and lack of colorful flowers.”

Indeed! Moss is well established along our driveway edge, but these liverworts? No idea how long they’ve been growing in community below our cars. Given my husband’s gravel weed-pulling vigilance, they may be new neighbors.

When I used my magnifying glass to genuinely meet them, I saw dark green, smooth surfaces and ruffly-edged leaf-like shapes, called thallae. Many of these have tiny cups (gemmae) budding from their surface. They also have Horton-Hears-A-Who structures sproinging up on tiny “stems”—some resembling umbrellas (archegonia), some looking like fans (antheridia)—which are the female and male reproductive parts, respectively.

Wee worlds on the gravel between our pick-up truck and car.

Like ferns, whose bio-lineage liverworts were long thought to share, these simple plants reproduce by distributing spores. Cells and wind! The drifter romance is one of Earth’s greatest hits.

Bryophytes are non-vascular plants: no roots or water-conducting tissue. They absorb water and nutrients from the air through their leaf-like surface. Most of them are only a few centimeters high. Without roots, they can grow where other plants can’t, on the surface of rocks, walls, and pavement.

They thrive in damp, shady environments, but we find these adaptable beings in the most extreme places, from deserts to the arctic. From Dr. Kimmerer’s viewpoint, what can we learn from beings who bring plant life-giving, life-supporting capabilities to places otherwise hostile to life? Everywhere on Earth!

Globally there are 7–8,000 species of liverworts, about 11,000 species of their moss relatives and 220-ish species of hornworts. Big-time diversity in small-scale spaces.

Reading about them buzzed my brain: sporophytes and gametophytes; haploid and diploid; mitosis and meiosis. I dodged fundamental science classes in my youth, but Indigenous Science perspective on these vivid little lives prompts me to learn both about and from these Ancestors in my driveway.

—Jean Ponzi
Green Resources Specialist, EarthWays Center

 

 

 

Great Read

Book coverThe Milkweed Lands: An Epic Story of One Plant: Its Nature and Ecology
by Eric Lee-Mäder, illustrations by Beverly Duncan

Many may know the power couple of a milkweed plant and a monarch butterfly, but as The Milkweed Lands shows us, the plant is so much more complex and essential.

The Milkweed Lands guides the reader through the history of the plant, shares its journey though all four seasons, and teaches how to work milkweed into your own life. This is a book for everyone from wildflower lovers, to soil scientists, to art-lovers, to biodiversity conservationists, and more.

The author, Eric Lee-Mäder, begins the story with a nod to the Native Americans who first named and cultivated the plant, and acknowledges the irony of his “taking over” the plant’s story and speaking for it. “The milkweed is a displaced citizen in its own land. Where it once owned the continent, it’s now a kind of vagrant, occupying the botanical equivalent of homeless encampments.” 

He uses the story of the milkweed to tell the story of many native plants, particularly prairie plants, recognizing their collective need for human stewardship for the land. I found this intentionality beautiful, and loved the way it set the scene for the story that followed. We know today how crucial it is to protect and steward the land, but Native people had been cultivating this land for many years. The book notes that while we’ve cleared many of the Midwest’s vast prairies to industrialize, the milkweed plants have found sneaky ways to stick around, although not the same as the original grassland ecosystems.

The illustrator, Beverly Duncan, tells the monarch’s story visually with beautiful watercolor paintings throughout the book. Her details add a vivacious energy that brings the plant to life as they complement the writing.

Together, the author and the illustrator bring their passion for pollinator plants to craft “an epic story” of this key plant species.

The milkweed “lands” are the variety of sites the plant can be spotted, from tiny pockets in abandoned parking lots, to backyard gardens, to rolling hills, and beyond. This idea of place carries strong throughout the book, reminding readers of the interconnectivity between animals and the land.

The use of alluring details and captivating tales created a beautiful book that motivates readers to take advice from the milkweed plants. “We hope you take some inspiration from the fact that so many wild things are still persisting in these jumbled-up circumstances, evolving, every day, all the time. As we all are.”

The Milkweed Lands is engaging, educational, and personal, and is a fantastic read for anyone looking to feel more connected to the ecosystem and what it can teach us about life.

—Hannah Gibson
Community Conservation Coordinator, Missouri Botanical Garden

 
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