4 ms·

Came here to say this. Yes it's startling how fast this chamomile spreads, and we ought to preserve the native brittlebrush. But it's worth considering the ef

Came here to say this. Yes it's startling how fast this chamomile spreads, and we ought to preserve the native brittlebrush. But it's worth considering the effects of 50 years of ground cover, 50 years of pollinators and their predators, 50 years of accumulated organic detritus, 50 years of improved rainwater retention, 50 years of migratory birds bringing seeds in their droppings to a rejuvenated soil substrate. Could any of these things improve local ecology? I'd imagine that 50 years and thousands of square miles with a radically different emissivity coefficient could even altar weather patterns and change annual rainfall totals. Some of these effects would be straightforward to model. Might we see water table restoration leading to year-round springs instead of annual floods? Could we accelerate any of these effects?

kylewatson 3y ago
brittlebrush and globemallow are beautiful native plants. Same with the "weed" version of Arizona sunflowers. The 'weed' version of dandylion is pretty gross, but even that I'll sometimes just replant to the desert near me. But these little yellow ball things are pretty obnoxious. They're easy to identify and pull early though. They're pretty so people are defending them, but I'd rather have native flowers for the native butterflies, bees and humming birds. Of the approximately 5,000 different species of bees in the United States, around 1,300 live in Arizona, meaning Arizona contains the most diversity of bees in the country, and perhaps the world. People in these comments think sahara when they think desert. Truth is Arizona is more diverse than most states with their same 5 trees everyone else has and their stupid grass everyone else has. As for this plant doing anything good, I appreciate your optimism, but I don't think it lives through the summer so it's just a wham bam spread then catch on fire disaster. If we had more rain maybe it would be not so bad. But when it dries out so much and then this is laying around waiting to burn, it's bad news. It seems that you couldn't do a better job burning the desert down if you wanted to. This literally puts tinder all over the place. You can't rival that even with blowtorches and napalm. You could firebomb the desert and in the absence of this stuff, those fires would burn out in between sections of growth. But with this stuff, one cigarette or lightning strike can take out hundreds of acres.

kylewatson 3y ago

brittlebrush and globemallow are beautiful native plants. Same with the "weed" version of Arizona sunflowers. The 'weed' version of dandylion is pretty gross, but even that I'll sometimes just replant to the desert near me. But these little yellow ball things are pretty obnoxious. They're easy to identify and pull early though. They're pretty so people are defending them, but I'd rather have native flowers for the native butterflies, bees and humming birds. Of the approximately 5,000 different species of bees in the United States, around 1,300 live in Arizona, meaning Arizona contains the most diversity of bees in the country, and perhaps the world. People in these comments think sahara when they think desert. Truth is Arizona is more diverse than most states with their same 5 trees everyone else has and their stupid grass everyone else has. As for this plant doing anything good, I appreciate your optimism, but I don't think it lives through the summer so it's just a wham bam spread then catch on fire disaster. If we had more rain maybe it would be not so bad. But when it dries out so much and then this is laying around waiting to burn, it's bad news. It seems that you couldn't do a better job burning the desert down if you wanted to. This literally puts tinder all over the place. You can't rival that even with blowtorches and napalm. You could firebomb the desert and in the absence of this stuff, those fires would burn out in between sections of growth. But with this stuff, one cigarette or lightning strike can take out hundreds of acres.