Braiding Sweetgrass

The early successional plant species arrive immediately and get to
work on damage control. These plants—known as opportunistic, or
pioneer, species— have adaptations that allow them to thrive after
disturbance. Because resources like light and space are plentiful,
they grow quickly. A patch of bare ground around here can
disappear in a few weeks. Their goal is to grow and reproduce as
fast as possible, so they don’t bother themselves with making
trunks but rather madly invest in leaves, leaves, and more leaves
borne on the flimsiest of stems.
The key to success is to get more of everything than your
neighbor, and to get it faster. That life strategy works when
resources seem to be infinite. But pioneer species, not unlike
pioneer humans, require cleared land, hard work, individual
initiative, and numerous children. In other words, the window of
opportunity for opportunistic species is short. Once trees arrive on
the scene, the pioneers’ days are numbered, so they use their
photosynthetic wealth to make babies that will be carried by birds to
the next clear-cut. As a result, many are berry makers:
salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, blackberry.
The pioneers produce a community based on the principles of
unlimited growth, sprawl, and high energy consumption, sucking up
resources as fast as they can, wresting land from others through
competition, and then moving on. When resources begin to run
short, as they always will, cooperation and strategies that promote
stability—strategies perfected by rainforest ecosystems—will be
favored by evolution. The breadth and depth of these reciprocal
symbioses are especially well developed in oldgrowth forests, which
are designed for the long haul.
Industrial forestry, resource extraction, and other aspects of
human sprawl are like salmonberry thickets—swallowing up land,