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Autumn Blooms Deep: A Personal Exploration of Autumn through Native Plants, Ecology, Nature, Interconnectivity, Feelings, Experiences, and Musical Amalgamation

Posted on by Jason L. Flynn

Marsh American Aster (Symphyotrichum elliotti) blooms with bee – November 2024 at author’s home. Credit: Jason L. Flynn

It is coming…prior to the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere, the season of autumn peers over the horizon on its way to stir the soul and spirit. The change in the angle of the shadows in the latter part of the summer is the first sign that something is coming, with perhaps a slight drop from oppressive summer humidity and heat that is typical in South Carolina summers. This glazing glimpse is familiar and gently nudges something within. Familiar wild muscadines (Vitis rotundifolia) fully ripen falling from a tall tree providing an afternoon, after work, or early evening replenishment of summer’s purposeful heat. Perhaps the snooze button is hit again on this stirring as the summer heat picks back up for another final hurrah or two (but is that slightly less oomph with this temporary return?!). But the alarm goes off again as it is supposed to. Gentle memories of one type or another peer in through a crack in the seasonal door, but this time the door does not close back again. 

Autumn slowly presses the door open allowing its relieving, yet somewhat eerie air to come in. The first true cold front brings a refreshing blast of color for the senses on all levels whether that be with late Fall blooming asters such as Marsh American Aster (Symphyotrichum elliotti), or the red-yellow color of that, in some circles, taken for granted Red Maple Tree (Acer rubrum), or gentle pink swaying of flowers from the statewide native Pink Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris), or the now unfortunately rare (due to development mostly) coastal zone and predominantly beach dune Muhlenbergia sericia (synonym Muhlenbergia filipes),or the silvery white seed heads of variously familiar Bluestem grasses, or long beyond. Indeed a botanist’s dream full of native plants provides an autumn exclamation point of blooming colors and resting colorful hues descending from the season of spring and its once birthing exuberance. 

 

Plant view of Marsh American Aster (Symphyotrichum elliotti) at author’s home in 2024. Credit: Jason L. Flynn

Comfortable temperatures lull one into thinking the pleasantness will not end at some times of the season, but the shortening days and nature’s reminders of finality seen around remind the senses of the soul that relative change is a normal action that seems to eternally persist to the limited human level of understanding the process of change. The feelings of thankful preparation, upcoming rest, and harvest arrive with an invitation to celebrate from the soul. Long stretches of darkness during hours once filled with light not so long ago bring back the need for a literal fire, beyond that seen in the spirit, to be lit in one form, whether resulting in real embers and smoke, or with increased electric fires lighting the modern internal cave we call homes. 

The attitude that resides in the far arctic decides to take a long journey south to explore its North America friends below. To this weather visitor following the global jet stream to South Carolina from the arctic it is a welcome warm escape from the normal frigid living conditions it resides in. To those being visited this arctic attitude brings the end of the autumn and ushers in the steady extremes of winter, and to those observant enough, the beginning of a new cycle of seasons and the start of life.

For some it is the most exciting time of year. To others it can be the bleakest. To others autumn might seem blah just for a season in their own lifespan and stirring in another season of that same human lifespan. Everyone seems to have a favorite season that awakens something inside without effort on some level. Is it tied to when you were born, events in your life, biology, a personal mixture of things seen and unseen, understood and not understood, the collective unconscious popularized by Carl Jung? Who knows? One thing is for sure, based on the collective experiences of individuals around the globe, the personal effect is real!

Native plants experience all depths of this seasonal phenomenon also. It’s all based around that big fireball seen in the sky and the Earth’s bonding solar dance in the cosmos that people and plants must acknowledge and know, without consciously knowing most of the time. The Sun! The seasons occur in their yearly rhythm thanks to the rotation axis (or tilt) of the Earth relative to the Sun. When the North Pole is tilted towards the Sun it receives the sun’s direct rays and summer is expressed to us here in South Carolina. As the South Pole starts to point toward the sun , eventually the autumn season occurs as a battleground of expression from the product of the winter, spring, and summer already seen in our native plant landscape earlier in the year.

Change is stirring to the soul. The change harkens back with respect to the viewpoint from our ancient Hunter/Gatherer ancestors of our past. Autumn brings about a time to be consciously aware in the present moment with an eye towards the unusual clouds and weather on the distant horizon. In modern times of some humans it brings about festivals, final vegetable garden harvests of summer bounty and the first of cool season crops, sports, holidays, returning to an academic world of learning, family, and variables tangible to your own unique season of life whether happy, sad, or in between. Our autumn acknowledges the unsettling acceptance of the unknown that comes with change, perhaps seen with Halloween, and the acknowledgement of thanks towards nature’s bounty that keeps life alive on Earth, such as seen in Thanksgiving

With all respect towards the inverse similarities of the season of spring, no other season displays the alchemical mashing of seasons more than autumn in the United States. It’s electric and vibrant, hurried and still, unnerving and calming all at once. It’s a season of display of the cycle of life come full circle. It’s the starting of the 3rd and final act of the show where revelations are revealed. 

On the ground in nature, ecotone areas in nature’s landscape always bring a display of uniqueness from native plants due to this melding. Comparing the idea of drastic habitat change within a relatively small area to the geology of South Carolina, perhaps the Fall Line, where the piedmont meets the coastal plain, or the unique geological composition of a Carolina Bay, express this clashing creation of uniqueness in similar fashion. With the beauty from the reaction of native plants to the autumn season brings an entire ecotone-like expression to the entire landscape, whether physically in an ecotone area or not. 

 

To the Rooting Core

Welcome back! Autumn always arrives, expressing itself in one form or another. Whether it’s your 7th, 46th, or 103rd time experiencing this Earth-Sun celestial alignment, we only get so many of the season’s transitional breadth in our lifetime.

Strip away all your learned knowledge about the season and try to place yourself in the mentality of being consciously aware of this relatively extreme seasonal change in such a way that is more acutely and easily experienced by the senses for the first time, as opposed to coming from a lifetime of experience.

From that point of view the season strikes up contradictions and ambivalence in every way, throwing the human psyche in a state of growth-stimulating confusion. Autumn challenges all the consistencies of the intended straight forward timeline of spring into summer that living things grow accustomed to. It’s a time of abundance from many native plants in the form of life-giving harvests, such as with acorns from native oak trees (or abundance of chestnuts once upon a time in the not too distant past from the American chestnut tree (Castanea dentata), now a ghostly occurrence thanks to a non-native blight brought over by human hands), or persimmon fruit from the native common persimmon tree (Diospyros virginiana) as just a few examples. It’s also a time of death for many plants and insects, or at the very least, dormancy from the vital signs of life we humans find easy to relate to with our own physiology experienced 24/7. Perhaps one can find at least a surface parallel of dormancy with the act of human sleep. 

The forecast of rebirth can also be seen in autumn if anyone has experienced spring and understood its relationship to winter and autumn rather than as a stand-alone experience. But will we survive to see this rebirth in spring? This persisting question has tugged at most living things on an almost collective unconscious level since the Earth started responding to interactions with seasons. Nature adapts and responds over long periods of time beyond the human lifespan of comprehension.

These deep-rooted feelings are some extremes of life manifested throughout the season of autumn. Look at just some of the holidays celebrated such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and shortly after the shortest day of the year on the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, Christmas. Needless to say the parallels are present, at least on one level. Imagine how this season must appear to some native plants!

For some native plants, there is no season of winter. Autumn is the pinnacle. Its first presence is the silent hand that takes life away. “Annuals” as they are called, put all their energy throughout the year into the goal of producing seed so that the seasons may one day give these newly formed, and nature-spread products life to create another generation. It should be no surprise that something that has just one goal wants to attract as many pollinators as it can with a showy flower, like is typically seen with annuals.

Just like all living things do not pass at the same time, not all annuals call the end of autumn their date of passing, but many do. Some plants though do find a way to hold on, or go dormant and live to see autumn again. Not surprisingly it is those that were born at just the right time to have their youthful vitality (before going to seed) intact at the time of the change that winter brings, and then be able to tough it out through winter. Biennials, as we call them, have a curiosity about them to see what is on the other side of this sunset of colors called autumn. 

The once multi-culturally adored Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium, more commonly known as Rabbit Tobacco, or Sweet Everlasting, is one such example that more often never lives to experience what comes after autumn as an annual, but occasionally sprouts at just the right time and place and with the right genetics to go into a state of dormancy and more root establishment during the winter, rather than flowering, and hence, a seed-producing state, thereby living to see another year of seasons from a unique plant perspective.

From Native Americans, to the Gullah culture, to many rural South Carolina dwellers of all cultures until at least the mid 20th century. This plant’s fall blooms, with its white fuzzy rabbit tail color and earthy-maplesque scent, signaled autumn was taking place, or was around the corner. The plant achieves its pinnacle in autumn. Producing seed which can give birth to a new generation of this plant when the Earth starts to reverse its wobbling axis trend back to where it came from, and the Earth’s weather has a chance to catch up (aka spring). In fact the plant has learned to love and embrace this lull between autumn and spring, called winter, to the point it requires its typical weather patterns to help it germinate in the spring.

But to those able to experience and learn, this plant gives a gift all cultures came to appreciate greatly before the modern first-hand nature-isolating world humans live in today generally speaking. Whether in tea, or smoking the leaves (some even eat it in moderation), all these drastic resulting changes express themselves to finality in the season of autumn.

Some native plants are able to experience multiple autumns within their lifetime, through the act of dormancy. Perhaps at some point these plants (what we call perennials in the English language) realized if they contain themselves during the exuberance felt in spring and channel their energy into more root growth and a different physiological state with root modifications, and perhaps sacrificing a little showiness with their flower later on, they could stretch their life out a bit. Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?

 

Sea of Goldenrod (Solidago) white/silver seed plumes at author’s home in November 2024. Credit: Jason L. Flynn.

Thanks in large part to human activity, the native and now unfortunately rare in the wild of South Carolina, Eastern Purple Coneflower, or botanically speaking Echinacea purpurea, is one example of a perennial. In this case it is one that typically does not have a long lifespan; maybe 3-6 years typically in the wild, maybe a little longer in a garden setting (sometimes not, especially if it is a modern human made hybrid cultivar). Just like all living things, plant lifespans vary also, despite gardeners’ and horticulturists’ best efforts. 

This particular herbaceous perennial likes to show its flowering splendor in late spring and into summer while then extending much energy into seed production for autumn. This plant with its spiny protective seed coating harkens back to pre-colonial days in South Carolina when a healthy population of large fur-bearing native wild mammals roamed the state, such as wolves, bison, elk, mountain lion, and a larger density of black bear (and thus not surprisingly a smaller population of white tail deer than seen today). The round spiky and sticky balls (discs, to use the correct term) containing seeds could easily be broken incidentally by these beautiful and breathtaking animals, get caught in the coats of fur, and be carried elsewhere to eventually be dropped and spread. It is just one of many other interconnecting reasons this plant is not commonly seen today as much as it most likely was in pre-colonial times.

Again spreading across many human cultures this plant almost in its entirety, from root to foliage, to seed, is edible, and/or has been traditionally used medicinally. From Echinacea leaf salad, to animals eating the seeds like we would eat sunflower seeds today, to root and leaf teas purported for their anti-cancer and immune boosting properties. A plant this wise and generous would seem to have a greater and deeper understanding of all the seasons, and the important change of autumn, than an ‘annual’ plant which is a stranger to what comes after. Perhaps better than most humans have in modern times, given the ultra-sheltered world and environment we have created to block out the natural elements from ourselves.

Perennial expression varies up to the form of the magnificent diversity of trees and shrubs, which seem to almost want to consciously show their mastery of the season of autumn to the rest of the plant and animal world. With their hue of varying colors and life-sustaining autumnal gifts, some trees can literally save lives in the winter months ahead. Many types of trees live much longer than any human can realistically fathom today. If one thinks about a tree as a limb of nature as a collective unit, it becomes easier to see the relationship it has with the other parts of nature’s body. Much as the arm is nothing without the blood being circulated by the heart, and brain to send impulses of movement and function, a tree depends on its counterparts throughout the natural world to survive. In return it also may continue by giving these gifts. 

Holly Tree oddity in Congaree National Park, S.C. November 2024 – Can you spot what appears to be two trees, but is actually one, in the two pictures? Connected by a common root (or limb, depending on your interpretation) above the ground with one end becoming a tree with the roots growing down to the ground over a different fallen tree’s root system, and using and keeping that soil in place. Credit: Jason L. Flynn.

 

Native Holly fruit given to many mammals and birds in a beautiful autumn forest setting at Congaree National Park, SC – November 2024. Credit: Jason L. Flynn.

An autumn oak acorn that has matured on an oak tree to the point of being ready for consumption or germination will ripen on the tree itself. From there it will fall and either decay into organic matter to enhance the soil, germinate as a tree, be transplanted to another location for safer storage for an animal and maybe forgotten about by that animal and then germinate, eaten as food-which can then be fuel and incentive for a living creature to go back and transplant more acorns that can become trees, or perhaps be rolled to a new location during weathering and erosion processes that act in quick episodes of strength enough to move surface material.

An oak tree even knows that if it can provide shelter to animals formed by cavities in the trees from natural aging processes of decay, or perhaps from insect infestation scars that were deadened in the tree, this may aid in the attraction of animals to the tree and its eventual future seed dispersal. More animals in the vicinity also promote more potential soil fertilizer for its roots through the expelling of waste matter from animals after eating its gift of acorns to them.

And through natural consideration it may be hard to understand why any tree would give a gift to a human in modern times because of our temperamental emotions and desire to gorge our complicated psyche with these given oak tree gifts. Many an oak tree has reached the point of death (and native plants and forests at large) by the energy given to humans from an oak tree’s gifts. The tree never fathomed we would do what we have done in modern times after millennia of cooperation. 

A tree’s natural and slow limb pruning process over its lifespan, in one form or another, provided food to humans by the means of giving fuel for fire, thereby attracting humans back to the tree. It has given suitable shelter during some weather events, another attraction. Until recent anomalous times, acorns were a common source of food for humans also. Perhaps the fire was an acknowledgement from the tree (used in hot-leaching) that we may need a way to make this food of some acorns more to our liking, tastebud-wise (though some acorns, such as those from White Oak trees almost have a mild sweetness). We also have hands and feet that can travel many miles with acorns clasped, and inherently dropping a few along the way, again much to the liking of the tree itself.

With all this to consider, the oak tree, and many other large perennials certainly welcome, and dare say spend the year planning and looking forward to, the onset and occurrence of the culmination of deep blooming autumn and the dormancy and slower times that winter brings.

So if life feeds on life, and life begets life, then how can life exist without other life? By further deduction and reasoning it would seem to support the interconnection of all and everything. But just as a foot is part of the same body as the shoulder in a human body, if one was somehow able to attach a foot to the area of a shoulder, they both would cease functioning altogether, causing the body at large to be greatly injured, and conceivably become deceased. Perhaps this is the way non-native plants should be thought of. They greatly reduce, if not cease the function of the other parts of the local ecosystem if they are so far removed for their next interconnected part of the whole body.

Imagine then an autumn bare of early season buzzing of pollinators feasting on the blooming fall plants such as Goldenrod (Solidago spp.), or mammals feasting on fallen fruit from persimmon trees a little later. Just like the enlightening and massively impactful researcher and author Rachel Carson wrote in her aptly titled book Silent Spring about a lifeless season of spring caused by careless chemical pesticide use and other environmental damage, a Silent Autumn would be just as devastating. The feelings felt, the life cycles completing or expressing, missing and gone, all gradually leading to an interconnected correcting on a grander scale, a correcting from Earth that would cause a dormancy of much life on the planet by and large for a long geologic period of time, leading to a budding in the far distant future. Do we really ever want to experience that nightmare scenario? Or would we even be aware of that scenario happening, so caught up in our own temporary survival successes, leading to a naïve assumption of these temporary self-sought successes equating to long-term flourishing? Would we be the frogs in the pot of water getting to a point of boiling so slowly that we never understand or feel the end is near? 

Credit: Jason L. Flynn.

Remember changes that happen on the planet as a whole are like the seasons over long periods of time. The seed that is planted now can provide a bountiful autumn harvest, a magnificent deep inspiring blaze of color, and survival for countless life forms in the years to come! Drastic and sudden change has happened in the past environmentally and will happen on Earth in the future. This has been proven. At some moment, there is an eco-tipping point where the action turns into a freight train that has lost its brakes going down a mountain. Do we want it to be from our hands? To say we as humans understand what all eco-tipping points can exist is foolish because the collective interconnections of nature are cosmically massive and not fully understood. What we do know for sure is the collective and individual choices and resulting actions we make now will impact native plants and all of its Earthly connected body parts for centuries and well beyond. 

With that thought, take time to understand and appreciate the seemingly magical aspects of autumn. It beckons you to feel on a deeper level and understand points of view coming from other places seemingly far away to help connect the dots and bring those faraway places closer to the heart. Happy Autumn!!!

 

A Note on Time and Autumnal Cooperation

In a way no other season is as truthful in its essence as autumn is. Autumn is blazing bluntness in ways! It comes at you truthfully providing a platform for plants to show their true colors. The birth of an autumn bloom has its origins from the nature of time itself.

Autumn is truth showing itself from behind the summer facade. Even if blatant and harsh sometimes, truth can give the choice to breed beautiful. The native trees show their true colors this time of year when chlorophyll production slows and stops, as just one mechanism seen. This opening up of the trees’ true colors provides the mechanism that conserves energy in the cold winter months and preserves their lives to bloom anew in the spring.

Time is something so direct and abstract. It is understood on the simple level and yet not understood at all. It shapes and helps mold every piece of matter. Yet does it even really exist? Theoretical physicists from Albert Einstein to Michio Kaku have, and continue to wrestle with the concept of time and its actual existence to the point that the struggle itself of understanding time actually seems to bring other mind enlightenment on many levels and helps bring the expansion of understanding into many more realms and other aspects for the human race. So no matter what answers of the nature of time are, the concept of time certainly seems to have its purpose. It helps to spur life forward out of an idle state. Time is truly Epic.

Nature talks to us every day and every moment about the nature of time. It’s so engrained and engulfing of everything. Geology is perhaps the loudest voice in nature about long-term celestial-like levels of time. Yet the human life has a hard time understanding this geologic time scale without a voice of wisdom sparking understanding on a level mirroring that of the ethereal understanding. Perhaps observation of active stream geology is where one can view geological change in a timely manner that fits in with the human lifespan and brings about deductive reasoning. Yet nature in the northern hemisphere has understood what is a puzzling geological riddle to humans, and given us the weather seasons to help us scale the peaks of understanding time. It provides repeatable general structure and a dome of understanding native plant reactions and patterns.

Native Plants seem to understand this message and concept of time in some way. The idea that a plant can understand the angle of the sun and be triggered to know that it means it is a time to begin the process of going dormant in autumn to conserve energy and water for the upcoming winter months (even when growing temperatures still persist in autumn during warmer than normal years). Much has been observed, measured, and generally confirmed that this is the case in many native plants to this area and across the planet. However the full understanding of WHY the plant understands this is still unknown. Is the plant conscious on some level we do not understand, which triggers the biological mechanisms observed through scientific research? Can it be compared to a collective consciousness that is passed down through genetics possibly? Time, weather, native plants, and human feelings (whether the conscious or subconscious variety) are all interwoven into the seasons in one form or another. For example, for most who were present in New York City on the tragic day of September 11th, 2001, including myself by chance the weather was a quietly repeated element of remembrance of the experience (visiting the big apple for the first time ever, beginning on September 8th, 2001, after driving from Columbia, SC, to see my brother who had just began attending grad school and moved there months before, and my sister-in-law). Just a week-and-a-half or so before the autumnal equinox, a cold front had pushed through the east coast the day before bringing a gorgeously clear and comfortable day and morning of 9/11, compared to a summer filled with heat (the same cold front passed Myrtle Beach, SC on September 14-15). It was the type of day honestly, until the first plane hit, that hyper-jumps you into anticipating the natural joys of autumn. Had the day been rainy, cloudy, or oppressively hot, the entire experience would have had another element and be remembered somewhat differently collectively, and by myself for sure. I don’t always associate observing this tragic event firsthand with the cusp of autumn, as I choose to remember much more pleasant associations in my life with the cusp of autumn that should eclipse an action that did not care about humanity or the planet one bit. But every now and again the contradiction of that day strikes me, as it does others, and I try to associate that beautiful weather with collective unity and brotherhood we saw on the streets of NYC following the attacks that the scarring actions stirred up in the collective of humanity for a while thereafter. 

Native Plants seem to have some type of long-term associations with weather patterns also, seen on a time-scale level that we do not fully understand. The first time in ancient history an oak tree began to appear and then evolve, or be able to react accordingly to preserve its own life by changing foliage colors and producing acorns in the late summer into autumn, there had to be some striving to survive on a deeper level that we do not fully understand. Understanding and feeling weather and the Earth’s interactions seems the most logical answer, even if to many scientists that might seem like an unscientific way to explain what is happening by using the term “feelings.” Everything comes from a common distant collective source, whether that be Earthly or in the collective cosmos from the form of stardust and everything else astronomy and physics is trying to unravel and understand. If one wants to call that a base for a consciousness mechanism in a plant on some level it would seem fair. It would seem odd that human consciousness is the only way to feel true consciousness. 

It also shows another direct association as to why a native plant to an area is more adapted to support life in the area it originally evolved to inhabit. Cooperation had to occur to survive. A pine savannah, maritime forest, Carolina bay, sandhill, piedmont prairie, or forests, fields, and ecotones in South Carolina of all types filled with non-native and sometimes invasive plants robs the landscape of the natural autumn beauty and interconnections that the collective whole of life expects and needs to thrive. It disturbs food, plant, and animal webs into a state of imbalance, which history shows can lead to a greater chance of mass devastation. Destructive and turbulent imbalance building for decades certainly had something to do with the attacks of 9/11/2001. This does not mean change should not happen and is not sometimes a good thing. It just means there has to be cooperative change on some level between all parties to make change beneficial. A non-native plant thrown into a landscape from the other side of the planet, such as Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense Lour.), is like a thief stealing just for its own benefit and giving nothing much back.

Autumn in some ways is the pinnacle expression of cooperation visually seen to the human eye across the planet and to all of humanity’s senses. So in a sense time trickles down into its many branches and comes to a pinnacle exposure point in the autumn season. The truth shows up blazing with electricity for the senses for those who choose to feel it!

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Wishing you all the best memories for your Autumn into Winter and throughout the seasons of your year and life!

Tori Amos: Winter (1992)

 

Jason L. Flynn

November 19, 2024

Affiliations:

South Carolina Native Plant Society – Grand Strand Member

Brookgreen Gardens – Horticulture – creator of the South Carolina Geologic Garden

B.A. in Environmental Studies – V.W.U.