So my friend Jeannie, who works in land conservation, reminded me last week:
A long time ago, you and I had a conversation about cheatgrass. I maintained that it was noxious and provided no nourishment while depleting scarce water resources and taking over where native plants would have thrived. You said that all plants have a purpose. What did you find out about the purpose of cheatgrass, one of the most widely disliked and dangerous plants in all of the fire-sensitive world?
What a great question! It sent me back to living in Santa Fe some years ago, pulling cheatgrass out of my yard daily, and writing a blog post about it.
Here’s my answer: I don’t know! I don’t know the purpose of any living being, to tell the truth. We living beings aren’t like mops or brooms, made for a specific use. Living purposes are inscrutable. We might, after a lifetime of watching, be able to say one or two things about the purpose of our own life, for starters, but a fuller picture about purpose lies way beyond the scope of human understanding.
Dislike prevents us from seeing clearly
Yet here’s one thing I do know: that when universal dislike gets heaped on one being or one form of life, it is hiding something. Dislike is a strong emotion, and it will get in the way—every time—of seeing a fuller, truer picture. Hate prevents us from seeing clearly.
A bigger picture
And the research does suggest there is a bigger picture. For instance, there’s finally some research being done on the nutritional value of cheatgrass. For decades everyone believed—without actually studying it—that cows won’t eat cheatgrass once it’s dry, and dry grasses don’t have any nourishment. (Call it an old husbandman’s tale?)
But a study in 2001 showed that if cheatgrass gets a little late-summer rain, it’s great for fall grazing. And another study from a few years later showed that not only do cows eat it in the fall, but that sending animals to graze on it in the fall and winter actually reduces the spread of cheatgrass. After winter grazing for a few years, cheatgrass was diminished and more native plants could take root.
Fighting doesn’t work
And here’s another thing that nature teaches: Fighting it doesn’t work. Cheatgrass itself is a good teacher on this one. Large-scale wars have been waged on cheatgrass with pesticides or by introducing other non-native grasses to keep it in check. Pesticides just poison land and water. Introducing new grasses tends to introduce new problems. The “waging war” mentality simply doesn’t work.
Much better is what one rangeland manager from Reno wrote: “Make peace not war,” he said.
We need to change our perception of cheatgrass and look at it as a resource—something to use and reap economic benefit from. Use it to our advantage instead of spending billions trying to eradicate it.
He practiced what he preached by experimenting on his ranch with grazing the animals on cheatgrass during the fall and winter—with good success.
Cheatgrass and climate change
I’m also intrigued by how cheatgrass might figure into a bigger picture of climate change. As the Earth warms and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increases, plant varieties may change. Many native plants may not do well on a hotter, higher-carbon environment. Cheatgrass, by contrast, will be happy and hardy on a hot Earth, as this experiment at Colorado State showed. We may need cheatgrass in coming decades to feed grazing animals during fall and winter. Wouldn’t it be something if this hated and reviled invader turned out to be a life saver?
Weeding a garden
If I still lived in cheatgrass country, I would likely continue to weed it from my garden or yard. I’m not likely to cultivate its seeds for a kind of coffee, though some people have used it for this. The seeds are way too tiny to provide much protein, which is why the gruel that can be made from them is called “famine food.” I still get more pleasure out of bending to the earth to weed it than I do from watching it grow. On the small scale of one garden, cheatgrass can be discouraged completely if it’s weeded out carefully over several years. If I’d rather look at other kinds of plants and wildflowers, I would feel free to take out the cheatgrass.
Yet even as I weeded it those years ago, I had to think of that quiet little voice inside raising its pesky little question:
Does cheatgrass know something you don’t?
Perhaps its wisdom will become visible only decades or centuries from now, long after my lifetime is over.
Yoked together
So I clearly don’t know the purpose of cheatgrass. But I’d like to remain open to what it has to teach. And I’d like to be guided by an ethic of living in partnership with other species rather than being at war with them. War on nature is costly, and we never win. Pulling in the opposite direction from the one that forces way bigger than us are pulling is a losing proposition.
Like it or not, people in the American West are now yoked with cheatgrass. And cheatgrass is a powerful force. Wouldn’t it be great if we could learn to pull in the same direction?
Thank you for this intriguing post, Priscilla! The thing that makes cheatgrass hard to “pull together” with is that it acts as the primary combustible for the huge fires that have eliminated big sagebrush from millions of acres across the western US and Canada. When Mark Twain called big sagebrush, “a forest in miniature,” he was prescient. It took another century for researchers to begin to discover how the aromatic shrub that once was the West’s most ubiquitous benefited the ecosystems it covers: it acts as a forest overstory in miniature, shading the soil and tempering the harshest extremes of the high desert climate, channeling moisture from rain and snow deep into the soil where it isn’t evaporated quickly, adding a rain of leaves and fine bark that nurture soil fertility, and providing home and food for over 350 species of wildlife, from black-and-white hera moths to sage-grouse and pronghorn. Without big sagebrush, huge swaths of the west are now truly desert, and cheatgrass fuels the fires that remove this charismatic shrub. How we work with cheatgrass may involve a quieter sort of removal involving the native soil bacteria that researcher Anne Kennedy discovered over several decades of work, bacteria that inhibit the growth of cheatgrass enough that native bunch grasses, wildflowers, and big sagebrush can be reestablished. We’ll never remove it from our ecosystems, but if we can ease its grip on sagebrush country, we’ll have a healthier West…
Yes, some characters—human or other—are harder to cooperate with! And cheatgrass is clearly one of them. Cheatgrass does not play well with others! It acts rather like the settler-colonists who brought it with them (inadvertently) from Europe. Because cheatgrass is taking over, we are losing exactly the other plants and habitats you mention, such as big sagebrush. As you saw, I’m not opposed to encouraging cheatgrass to play better with others; I too would try to keep it out of habitats where it isn’t yet established, and I would look for creative ways to keep it from taking over. So I think the course of action you mention is a great example of “working with”: easing the grip of cheatgrass rather than trying to eradicate it completely.
But I’m also intrigued by what we don’t know about the positive possibilities of cheatgrass. And I’m especially intrigued by an out-and-out contrarian voice, like one rancher from the Great Basin who actually encouraged a a thick cheatgrass cover on his land to carry animals through the winter. (James DeFlon’s paper, “The Case for Cheat Grass,” was published in Rangelands in 1986 and can be downloaded here.)
Dear dear Priscilla,
You’ve done it again. I live in the lands of cheatgrass. I have known it as an enemy although a beautiful one when all else fails to grow. I who grows her roses in pots.
I sense there is a profound point here in thinking that all the animate and inanimate have purpose and place. Their mysteries are not always clear and their reason for being may not be either but what if like all of us no one or nothing else can do our role — fill our place. What if there is a perfection in all that is. That’s not easy for me to swallow or cook up but perhaps it’s a necessary thought in these days and times.
Always sending love my friend.
Love to you too, dear Kate! When I think of cheatgrass now, I think of how it’s getting started in the open space under the shadow of the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico, where I used to live. If I were still there, May might find me on my knees beside the fire roads, pulling and bagging cheatgrass. And organizing groups of volunteers to join me! 😀 And being bothered at the same time by pesky questions from a quiet voice inside, such as, “Can you see into the future? Do you know what will be needed a hundred years from now? Does cheatgrass know things you don’t?” They’re questions that remind me how limited is our human knowing and how much we have to learn about moving in concert with the other beings here. Mysteries indeed!