Soldiers Delight | Kill Your Lawn Clip | EarthX

Name: Soldiers Delight | Kill Your Lawn Clip | EarthX
Uploaded: 2024-08-13T15:38:22+00:00
Duration: 5 min 7 s
Channel: EarthX

EarthX

3 weeks ago

EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/

Plants are pretty - but looks aren't everything! Joey & Al explain the ecological importance of non-invasive plant species and uncover how native plants have evolved to survive in toxic soil from serpentine rock.

About Kill Your Lawn:
Best friends Joey and Al set out across America to accomplish their mission: carry out a turficidal killing spree and leave a trail of pollinator-friendly, native plant gardens in their wake. It’s time to laugh our way to a lawn-less future!

This clip comes from Season 2, Episode 2: "Anti-Lawn Gospel"

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Transcript

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00:00While Rajuta and Rahul's yard transformation continues, we make the 30-minute drive to

00:07Soldier's Delight Natural Area, which is home to 39 rare, threatened, and endangered

00:12plant species.

00:13And let me tell you, as soon as we get there, the horticultural travesties are clear as

00:18day.

00:19This is f***ing nuts, man.

00:21I can't believe this grass right here is Miscanthus.

00:24That's the invasive s*** we just pulled out of their yard.

00:29Invading the surrounding countryside.

00:31What?

00:32Could be the first step of what ends up being a larger invasion.

00:37Miscanthus.

00:38On the woods, escaping captivity.

00:41Yeah, they got people planting s*** with no regard to ecology.

00:44It's that mindset that like nothing you do actually matters, it's just like how it looks.

00:49Yeah, none of this matters, it's just greenery.

00:52But that's because we're raised in a society that views plants as nothing more than pretty.

00:57It's either pretty or it's not.

00:59There's no context for ecology and that's what we're trying to change here at Kill Your

01:01Lawn.

01:02Get people to stop being nimrods and pay attention to the context of the world that they live

01:06in.

01:07Start observing it, you know?

01:08Though it sounds like it'd be a reference to some horrible venereal disease, it was

01:12actually observations by British soldiers patrolling this area in the late 1600s that

01:17led to its name.

01:19And Soldier's Delight doesn't need invasive plants moving in.

01:22It's got enough problems with native Smilax rotundifolia, known as common greenbrier,

01:27which, due to fire suppression and poor land management, seems to be crowding out everything

01:31else.

01:32It's so weird that this is, just from an ecological standpoint, that the Smilax is so dominant.

01:39Greenbrier stems can photosynthesize like leaves, crazy.

01:43So it has a longer growing season than other nearby plants, and its thorns protect it from

01:47getting totally devoured by forest animals.

01:50Ah, this f***ing greenbrier, what a pain in the a**.

01:56It's evolved to grow in all kinds of habitats along the east coast.

01:59But out here, in what's known as the Serpentine Barrens, native plants are uniquely adapted

02:04to survive in soil infused with minerals from serpentine rock.

02:09You can see a paucity of forest here, it's because the soil is quite toxic.

02:15Okay, so turns out, excess amounts of magnesium and iron and low amounts of essential nutrients

02:22like nitrogen inhibit plant growth in many species.

02:26Now serpentine got here via an ancient subduction zone.

02:31A subduction zone is what happens when a piece of oceanic crust dips back down towards the

02:37mantle to be recycled, but on its descent, little pieces of that oceanic crust get scraped

02:45off, such as serpentine, and that's exactly what happened here.

02:50This is all serpentine rock.

02:52That's the geological piece of the puzzle.

02:54The botanical piece comes from the power of native plants to adapt and survive.

03:00Evolution being what it is, some plants have evolved to tolerate this chemical toxicity,

03:08and not only have they evolved to tolerate it, they've evolved to outcompete other plants

03:14which may not.

03:19So this solidago, this goldenrod, this is a different species of goldenrod, of solidago

03:24grown in Juta and Rahul's yard.

03:28Because we're on this serpentine kind of meadow, prairie, and this is like a hardy little b****

03:34right here who's just hanging on.

03:36It's a different species of rad.

03:40It doesn't get that tall because the soil's kind of toxic.

03:43Serpentine basically causes speciation in plants.

03:47If you've got, say, a solidago that grows on non-serpentine soil that abuts a patch

03:52of serpentine soil, it's just continuously dumping seed onto that serpentine soil.

03:57Most of the seed that lands there and germinates is not going to be able to tolerate that serpentine

04:01soil, but eventually, one out of however many thousands of seeds that do germinate on that

04:06serpentine soil will have a mutation that enables them to deal with the innate soil

04:10toxicity.

04:11That image is blowing my mind, man, of the border of serpentine and a different kind

04:16of soil and those solidagos on one side on the non-serpentine soil just doing their thing,

04:21throwing seeds down, and it's just generational after generational adaption.

04:27To tie all this back to the yard, we hear that a lot from our producers.

04:32It's great that Aaron and his crew are planting native plants that are local ecotypes, meaning

04:37they were grown from local seeds and plant material.

04:41This preserves local biodiversity and gives these newly planted natives a better chance

04:45of thriving where there was once only the bland uniformity of the lawn.

04:51Make it look a little random so it doesn't look all cookie cutter, and that's going to

04:56be better for how they end up growing in, too.

04:58If you offset them a little bit, they get more root space to grow in.

Soldiers Delight | Kill Your Lawn Clip | EarthX

Transcript

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