100 Maine Plants, ep. 3: 'The Pea Family' species 22-27 [the wild child project]

It took me way too long to edit the last episode so I knew I needed to try and focus this one around a core concept/focus better: I decided on "The Pea Family" -- ft. several species in the Fabaceae family -- the 3rd largest plant family with over 19,000 known species!

These plants are all of incredible benefit to the environment and to the animal life they support. The Fabaceae all tend to LOVE depleted and disturbed soils (Wild Lupines for example, tend to hate rich soil and will not do well there). They fix Nitrogen from the air via an interaction with bacteria that live on little nodules on their roots, which improves soil and benefits future plants through the cycle of plant succession. Nitrogen is one of the 3 essential nutrients plants need to survive. Most nitrogen in our industrial food system comes from petroleum fertilizers but organic and local producers understand that taking care of your soil with cover crops like clover and vetch and incorporating practices like "rotational grazing" mimic the ancient, time-tested forces of nature that replenish the Earth.

I think this is a powerful way to introduce someone to plant identification and natural history in general by giving very common examples of plants most people will be able to find in their backyard or nearby wild spaces and seeing the physical similarities (the flowers, leaves, and seedpods). This lets us see the relationship of plant "families" (one of the taxonomic groups we use to organize all of Life) and get a feeling for the ancient evolutionary relationship of these cousins.

Some 65 million years ago we had a huge extinction event that wiped out most of the life one earth. The plants we see around us today are descendents of those ancient ancestors. I find this incredibly fascinating and I hope you will be able to integrate this subject into your classrooms or personal learning experiences.

Please help me grow by subscribing to get notified when the next episode comes out (I've got 2 more on the backburner and am filming another today).

My channel has a diverse amount of content but it all surrounds the same theme: Swimming in the Dark -- learning through experience....being willing to try despite fear of the unknown...being willing to fail in order to develop the skills you need to succeed.

The Wild Child Project is a playlist-in-progress to help connect people to the natural world -- Its a personal mission area of mine to create a body of content in response to the immense pressure the human species is facing to change our disruptive and disconnected cultural patterns and create something simpler, more in line with the laws of nature -- a bioregional, permacultural model that allows abundance for all. We have all the answers and all the technology, we just need to change our internal worldview to allow nature and our highest potential to come out...

As Wendell Berry famously said, "They cannot protect what they do not know"... By choosing "100 Maine Plants" as a goal for myself, I'm hoping to create a very basic video library that gives students an introduction to the "pieces" of nature...like reading, we must learn the ABC's before we can read/write words and build sentences to tell stories. I'm coining the term, "Ecoliteracy" as a prerequisite to becoming "Ecological". You can help me by subscribing and commenting below with questions, suggestions or anecdotes that will help this community grow.

-Michael

Music by:

Gillicuddy

"Adventure, Darling"

on, "Plays Guitar Again"

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