Native seeds! They are safely placed in a bank that does not take money of any kind. Have you robbed any banks recently? As it turns out, we all have in the modern civilized world in some form or another. This “seed bank” has been a key to survival for so many native plants, humans, and varied ecosystems over the eons in the wild. It marries in with the evolution of gradual soil development from the erosion of rocks and decay of other living organisms over the eons. The surrounding geosphere and resulting weather help decide which seeds get withdrawn and allowed to be expressed in the wild as a growing plant.
The seed bank seems simple, yet is not fully understood in many ways in terms of how it has always thrived, even in this modern highly scientific world we humans purport to thrive in. But, shhh, you are not supposed to talk about things we do not fully understand in this modern world! We are a world full of “experts.”
Well, all self-deprecating sarcasm towards the human ego aside. The seed bank has traditionally been beneath our feet and has been in business for hundreds of millions of years. In the past 200 to 300 years it has undergone great stress, as many branches of this bank have been prematurely closed to native plants thanks to the actions of humans in the past few centuries.
When you think about a seed bank, you have to think about the soil and realize this is the “bank” that holds the seeds. Why do some native plants seem scarce and others seem abundant in the wild? Some scarce in areas where one would think they should thrive? The answer certainly has to do with how we have treated the soil over the past few centuries!
Human Stress and Desires
Humans have been altering the land for as long as we have been in existence, without question. However the mass sterilization, mass erosion, and mass overturning of the soil on such grand scales have not come from human hands until the past few centuries. All in the name of progress, comfort, careless ignorance, careless selfishness, and even from noble acts that have their heart in the right place of love towards one another and towards the Earth in other ways. Yet in this modern world of cities, suburbs, and agrarian landscapes, there is an inner knowing that nature thrived hundreds of millions of years with or without humans. As the classic progressive rock band Rush references in their still relevant 1982 song and video about the mentality of modern humans entitled “Subdivisions,” it really is “the far unlit unknown.”
There is no blanket answer towards inner human desires. We as humans are complex, mystifying, beautiful, and puzzling as anything else in nature is on a deep level. Our actions towards the life-sustaining native seed bank exemplify this and also show how we sometimes react and then act in great ways to an inner Garden of Fear toward the short term internal turmoil that exists within us all, to varying degrees, at different times in our lives. This turmoil can be caused from biological processes, to benign boredom, to the extreme, such as the loss of a loved one, to the tempest behavior that nature unleashes, and whatever you can imagine once basic survival needs have been met, such as water and food. Yes, “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man” (a very poignant line from the 1977 Blue Oyster Cult song “Godzilla”).
Hunger, Tastebuds, Money, Non-Natives = Starving Native Plants
Think about it. For example, the action of mass agriculture in South Carolina, and all over the planet, led to a practice of tilling of the soil in ways and on a scale never seen before (which modern scientific studies are showing could be a significant factor in releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere and helping accelerate climate change). When this first occurred, many countless native plant seeds were exposed. The plants then pulled, sprayed, and some dead seeds washed away towards the ocean over the centuries (according to the online South Carolina Encyclopedia, nearly 40 percent of South Carolina’s arable topsoil has been eroded away in the past 200 years). Many native plants were seen as a nuisance and obstacle towards monetary wealth, and therefore a “weed.” (Did you ever notice how many modern native plant common names have the word “weed” in them?) Over the generations many of these fields are now depleted of native seeds except for what blows in from the wind, or passed in from an animal or external force.
Certain native, and non-native, plants can dominate in this type of environment once a field is abandoned from agricultural purposes. This would help explain why some non-native plants have such an easy foothold to take over when this occurs. Non-native plants would normally have competition that would keep them at least more in check if the plethora of native plants that had seeds in the soils had never been so poorly treated and abused in such a manner.
Why Are Native Plants Here, There, or Anywhere?
Even some native plants that we think of as so abundant, such as the South Carolina state wildflower, Solidago altissma (tall goldenrod – not to be confused with the SC state flower – yellow jessamine vine [Gelsimium sempervirens]), most likely shared space with much more variety of other native plants in many areas at one point when the seed bank was fully stocked from eons of nature’s deposits. Without competition, the rhizomes spread on goldenrod without abandoning course around other native plants’ roots and chemical reactions that take place between plants, and can now dominate spaces much easier in modern times and in certain places with a particular soil use history. A native plant to an area can’t grow if its seed does not exist!
One can find great examples of this pre-European southeastern settlement plant diversity and biodiversity in places such as Congaree National Park in lower Richland County. Also, Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve in Horry County shows just how native plant abuse can rebound when properly managed. In both of these cases it is the way the soil was treated and not eradicated of the buildup of native seeds over the years that has allowed the natural native plant diversity to exist today.
In Congaree National Park’s case, large tracts of the property have never seen disturbance at all from human hands (a rarity in modern times). And in the case of Lewis Ocean Bay in modern times, a history of minimal farming, being used as a gunnery range for the military, and timber harvesting allowed enough of the seed bank to stay viable to see the rebound of diversity seen today at the property with modern land management techniques, such as prescribed burns.
Another helpful aspect to the preservation of the seed bank on both properties to not overlook is the geological province they both reside in, which is the relatively flat Middle and Lower Coastal Plain geologic areas of the state. With a gentler slope comes a slower rate of erosion of bare soil and thus also the seeds contained within. Whereas in the Piedmont province in the upstate, when bare soil is exposed without soil-stabilizing native plants, the soil and the seeds contained within wash toward the creeks, drowning them to infertility, and thus get washed eventually to the ocean at a much faster rate due to the hilly landscape and rocky-clay (saprolite-in many cases) subsoil.
Juxtaposition & Deciphering the Past
With mass erosion of soils and so many more devastating actions over large swaths of land such as urbanization and suburbanization, it’s easily conceivable there are plants that existed here in South Carolina that were made extinct before they ever were recorded as existing. Our lifespan does not lend well to understanding what the Earth has seen in its lifespan. It is mind blowing to think about! And the ranges and density of known native plants today are also certainly different due to modern human influence.
The mystique of some native plant seeds and their ability to defy scientific knowledge in remaining viable when stored and spread in the correct conditions over long periods gives hope and shows how native plants and native seeds evolved to the local conditions over long periods. Though, just like with other living things, some native plant seeds are tender and need the most ideal of conditions the surrounding Earth geosphere can provide to continue to live. In the untouched wild they were able to find plenty of places to do so. Not so today in many cases.
Love, Inspiration, & Perspective
So when thinking about native plants, their distribution range, existence today in the wild, and how to incorporate them into the landscape, remember lessons from the history of the planet and how the soil or “seed bank” has been treated in the past 300 or so years.
It’s just another validation of Henry David Thoreau’s infamous written quote, “In the wildness is the preservation of the world.” And remember, the beyond excellent reference for understanding humans, human attitudes, and the relationship of humans in the modern civilized world towards the natural world, which includes native plants, can be found in Aldo Leopold’s classic, iconic, and literally Earth-changing book entitled A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There.
I’ll leave you with this: remember there is an added personal bonus for us all in this seemingly complicated aspect. Continually growing and feeling a deeper understanding of the many interconnected layers of the Earth, its ancient history, and all of the plethora of interconnected and mind-staggering layers, such as the seed bank, may help bring a larger, more encompassing perspective to that short term inner turmoil we all have sometimes in our day-to-day lives. Sometimes understanding the massiveness of everything and literal blips of time our lives are in comparison helps bring humility, caring for others in a genuine loving way, and personal growth. The seed bank is part of this interconnected and spiraling reality we and everything exists in.
Jason L. Flynn
July 3, 2023 & September 1, 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.
A multi-generational agriculture field located in the Middle Coastal Plain of South Carolina (South Carolina’s geologic region with the most naturally conducive soil to agriculture for many crops). The diverse and rich native seed bank from pre-colonial times when Native Americans inhabited the area has long since been depleted and sterilized. This is an example of something that has happened across the region, state, and entire country.
Native goldenrod in an autumn sunny golden blaze of blooms at the author’s home garden. A lack of additional native plants inter-planted in this garden bed show how this encourages the rhizomes of this plant to dominate every square inch of space given the time.
Interconnections: goldenrod intermixing and sharing space with eastern purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) having already gone to seed at the author’s home. Two purple coneflower plants that started from seed years ago before the goldenrod was planted have spread into a yearly self-seeding multiplication and rejuvenation of the plant as seen in the small green coneflower starts covering the ground. The now-encroaching goldenrod rhizomes spread around this existing coneflower and coexist. The goldenrod growth pattern pushes the coneflower to a more vertical growth habit and bloom in the spring and early summer before the goldenrod reaches its full height later in the year. Also note some damage from modern neighborhood controlled lawn care herbicide weed spraying at the edges of the garden bed beyond the author’s control.
Note the signs of high heat and drought from the early part of the summer on the goldenrod. Also note the round seed heads of the purple coneflower. This bed was never hand watered once and the goldenrod will still flower in the autumn. Native plant. Right plant. Right place. Purple coneflowers, though they grow well from the mountains to the coast, are rarely seen across the state today, partially because the transitional edge stage between forest and field that they thrive in is rarely allowed to occur in modern times and thus this plant’s seed distribution has dwindled significantly in the wild. Along with soil abuse, this has depleted this plant’s seed distribution. It can’t grow where there is no viable seed in the ground.
Congaree National Park, only 15 miles from the capital of Columbia, harbors a true climax and healthy coastal plain floodplain forest. With the real threat of the area being harvested for timber in the 1960s, it was a grassroots effort that launched this conservation success. Large portions having never been disturbed by humans have created an ecosystem of vast plant diversity that would have been common all over the floodplains of the southeast 300 years ago. Not only champion-sized trees, but trees of all sizes, and the occasional forest opening from a fallen tree creates habitats for plants of all types to find a home.
Ground level at dusk in Congaree National Park–a healthy and diverse seed bank of native understory forest plants stretch throughout the park. It is not immune to non-native plants transplanted by people either, such as Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), as just one example (not pictured).
The urban landscape of the oceanfront in Myrtle Beach contrasts with Myrtle Beach State Park. Myrtle Beach State Park is essentially an island of a native plant ecosystem surrounded by development, thereby cutting off the transportation of many native plant seeds from other populations and ecotypes. The city of Myrtle Beach shows just how an urban landscape can virtually permanently wipe clean what may have inhabited the area 150 years ago. It is easily possible some plants not cataloged or known to exist inhabited the area in small populations in such a vast area of land.
A natural waterfall at Wildcat Wayside Park in Greenville County, SC, just off the Highway 11 Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway. Watershed system erosion over long geologic periods of time are an often overlooked way native plants find their distribution range in the wild. Soil and native seeds slowly travel downhill through natural slow erosion processes while dropping seed year after year. They then can germinate and establish populations if they find their way to favorable soil, sun, and water conditions that the plant thrives in. This creek on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains eventually drains into the Santee River basin which empties into the Atlantic Ocean on the Georgetown-Charleston, SC county line.
An area of harsh soil disturbance in the Piedmont of South Carolina creates a look that would have been commonly seen during the cultivation of cotton in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the province. Due to the hills and valleys of the Piedmont, the once rich and fertile topsoil impregnated with native plant seeds was largely washed away in many areas exposing clay rich and rocky saprolite subsoils.
Native sprawling frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) and a variety of Helenium, or sneezeweed, cover an area unintentionally in a local park on the Grand Strand that has never seen modern non-native turf grasses planted. One way these particular plants have spread to this state is by the slinging effect of a blade of a lawn mower. Both plants can flower and go to seed very low to the ground even if cut much shorter than they would normally grow if left alone… Could this be a viable alternative to non-native and ecologically harmful turf grasses in the Coastal Zone of the Coastal Plain?
Lewis Ocean Bay, a South Carolina State Heritage Preserve since 1989. A variety of native plants and habitats exist at this site such as Carolina Bays and their sand rims and pine savannahs. This 10,000+ acre site in 100 years could conceivably be surrounded mostly by development and a five lane highway isolating it to an extreme degree from the Waccamaw River natural corridor. In the 1980s this land was just a fraction of a much larger undeveloped area that stretched for many miles in every direction. Can landowners, politicians, and citizens have a deep co-operative understanding of this aspect and think that far out to consider the actions we take today? Does most of the population even know this is an issue? As Aldo Leopold, would say, “can we think like a mountain?”
Modern-day construction of a new subdivision of homes being built on land that had a forest previously harvested for timber multiple times in the past 120 years. A common sight across the country. The topsoil completely turned over, bulldozed, and filled with outside sediment to create a more solid foundation. Even if these projects were abandoned, the soil ecosystem and seed bank will never be the same.
Originally intentionally introduced and well-known all over the southeast, non-native and invasive kudzu (Pueraria lobata)! A summer coating of it is seen here on an isolated forest lot of land within the city of Myrtle Beach. This land does not harbor that plant diversity in the seed bank it once did before settlement. And with the disturbed roadside soil, kudzu found a great non-competitive place to get its roots established, then take over and choke the other vegetation.
Native frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora), sprawling onto a city sidewalk on the edge of an area dominated by non-native turfgrass. Much turfgrass soil stays in a state disturbance, or ruderal environment. Certain native plant seeds like frogfruit find favor in these areas.
An empty lot on the oceanfront in Myrtle Beach that has been in this state for years until recent nearby development disturbed the soil. The Indian blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella) (there isn’t agreement on whether or not it is truly native) that blanketed the lot for years disappeared for a year, but is showing signs of returning to dominate if the lot is left alone since the seed bank was quite rich. Gaillardia is a plant that has shown more growth in the area on some lands because of the disturbed nature of the soil construction and constant mowing causes, which it thrives in. Later successional stage plants to the coastal zone have a lower count these days in the seed bank in many areas. Thus the Indian blanket flower seed has been building to higher levels in the area since before initial modern development in Myrtle Beach 120 years ago.
Memories of when this suburb area was undeveloped and harboring a native plant and wildlife ecosystem still linger to those old enough to remember and have experienced the area before development. To newer generations, and to those who have moved to the area since development, it will seem like a more normal, or non-destructive place towards the local area. Development that permanently alters the landscape has a slow snowball effect on the sometimes Swiss cheese memory and feelings of the populace. This pattern has been repeated for centuries now in the human population regardless of socio-economic class and personal beliefs on nature conservation.
