[HN Gopher] Plants that are signs of former human settlements
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Plants that are signs of former human settlements
Author : dnetesn
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-07-26 10:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| Baeocystin wrote:
| The mustard blooms in spring here in California are closely tied
| to Spanish mission settlements.
|
| Here's a bit of local history, for those of us in the Bay Area.
|
| https://gilroydispatch.com/the-mustard-king-of-san-juan-baut...
| hinkley wrote:
| I think I heard somewhere that when the Hopi drove out the
| Spanish missionaries they kept their fruit trees.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Obviously, those missionaries never did anything good for
| them.
|
| /s
| [deleted]
| goodcharles wrote:
| In Big Sur you can find prickly pears and sweet lemon trees at
| old homesteads.
| rvba wrote:
| > Their preferred ecological niche involves poor, salty soil.
|
| I looked at Wikipedia, to see what is a honey locust and
| Wikipedia (that arguably is not a grear source) says that those
| trees are "mostly found in the moist soil of river valleys". (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_locust )
|
| So it seems wikipedia says something else than the article? The
| self named researcher is confused why trees that like water grow
| near water?
| wak90 wrote:
| His point was that it isn't the trees "natural" placement?
| That's kind of the theme of the post?
| oasisbob wrote:
| Discovery Park in Seattle is built within an old Army base dating
| back to 1920 or so.
|
| While exploring some hidden corners I ran into a metal
| detectorist, and we got to talking about other fun places in the
| park.
|
| His best tip for finding the site of old military housing was to
| look for yew trees. Apparently it's a very old tradition.
|
| Sure enough, you go back and look at old photos, and there's a
| yew tree outside every door.
|
| Edit: another one from the PNW; holly trees oftentimes coincide
| with the location of old logging roads. The berries have a size
| which would easily lodge in cat tracks and other nooks within
| earth movers and were easily transported among sites.
| cprayingmantis wrote:
| I think an equally interesting point might be why Daffodils tend
| to outline the foundation of where a house used to be. Yes of
| course because people planted them there but then you'd expect
| wild animals to eat and carry the seeds away. Which would mean
| that the daffodils would expand out adding some background noise;
| this doesn't happen though. My theory is it's because not many
| animals eat daffodils and spread the seeds around.
| agp2572 wrote:
| Same can be said of Eucalyptus trees in California coast
| xyzwave wrote:
| IIRC, these were planted as potential wood for railroad tracks,
| but ended up proving too fragile.
| goodcharles wrote:
| Too flammable, and the wood twists too easily with the
| coastal humidity.
| stevula wrote:
| These are mentioned in the article ("gum trees"):
|
| > Maybe the ruins of a city will be denoted by the descendants
| of trees planted for shade: pin oaks, gum trees, sycamores.
| mikrl wrote:
| I used to poke around ruined castles (just a few walls left) in
| the UK and they were typically a sea of stinging nettles.
|
| Also, stinging nettles make wonderful soup.
| karaterobot wrote:
| In addition to fruit trees, I was told that finding lilacs
| growing in an unusual spot might mean there used to be an
| outhouse or waste pile nearby: they planted lilacs to mask the
| smell. No idea if it's true or useful.
| pvaldes wrote:
| not really useful
| pvaldes wrote:
| Lilacs season is very short, between two to four weeks each
| year. If the winter is warm they don't even flower at all.
|
| Even using different varieties to spread the season to six
| weeks you would still have 11 months to enjoy the smell of
| manure. if is the unique candidate, is a poor choice.
|
| So, nope. Definitely not useful. We have much better options
| Loughla wrote:
| Lilacs or hollyhocks in my experience.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| You can look for palm trees in French Polynesia, they're a good
| sign that someone settled there at some point in the past. The
| first thing the polynesians would do is plant palm because that
| brought coconuts and the fibers can be used to make a variety of
| things.
| dalke wrote:
| In geography class in college, the teacher talked about
| identifying old house locations sites in the Caribbean. I've
| forgotten the details over the last 30-odd years, but what they
| did was look for a place with multiple tree species with edible
| fruit. The idea was that if you found a small area containing,
| say, an orange tree, an avocado tree, a mango tree, a guava tree,
| and a lime tree there was probably someone living there.
|
| (I picked those tree since they were the trees closest to my
| childhood house in Miami, not because I remember what the teacher
| said.)
| Thoeu388 wrote:
| [flagged]
| enkid wrote:
| They weren't literally everywhere. Even today, with a much
| larger population and higher land usage, there is a lot of
| wilderness in the Southeastern United States. That's why
| finding a consistent indicator of an archeologicial site is
| important.
| Thoeu388 wrote:
| Do you have any proof, that they were not everywhere? On next
| sentence you literally admit, there is no evidence for such
| claims! Much of the archeological sites were not explored!
| Another white supremacist manufacturing evidence!
|
| All land in US was used, there is no "higher land usage" now.
| Single hunter needs several hundreds of miles of territory!
| They fully used the land. Until they were genocided, and
| colonizers called their land "wilderness"!
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I have seen this at the site of my great grandparents home. The
| only sign that you're in the right location are weeping willow
| trees and spring bulbs.
| bitpow wrote:
| > It may not hold in the rest of the South, but periwinkle in
| Virginia very often co-occurs with cemeteries.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/africanamerican-grave-...
| jmspring wrote:
| A couple brewery owners up in the Sierra near Truckee CAlifornia
| have been finding old hops fields.
|
| It's not uncommon to see abandoned old orchards in places.
| tschuy wrote:
| Similarly, in the Pacific Northwest, patches of berries and other
| edible plants may be remnants of Indian/First Nation settlements:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/pacific-northwest-s-...
| pugworthy wrote:
| More recent but one can see lots of daffodils around old
| homestead sites in various places in the Willamette Valley.
| Also old apple trees in the middle of nowhere .
| Loughla wrote:
| Way more recent, but if you see forsythias in the Midwest
| without a house around, there was a settlers home there at
| some point.
|
| We found an old foundation after digging around where there
| were forsythias growing in the woods on our place after being
| keyed into that one.
| bozhark wrote:
| So... the entire PMW near water?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Much of the Pacific Northwest (coast, including lake coast)
| is extremely rocky with scant amounts of sand. Much of it,
| heavily wooded, even today. A number of invasive species
| (like the Himalayan Blackberry) have muddled sites, that
| would have been obvious, based solely on plant sign.
| GenericDev wrote:
| Damn Luther Burbank[1]!
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/29/4917977
| 91/th...
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| In New Zealand, a row of poplars or a large Monterey cypress or
| two on a river flat is often all that's left of an old farm
| homestead or goldrush settlement, so for antique bottle
| collectors, they're a good indicator of where to start looking
| for Ye Olde Rubbish Pit.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Peach grove road, Hamilton (Aotearoa/New Zealand) - named after
| the grove of peaches local Maori had planted.
| Maultasche wrote:
| I had never heard of a honey locust tree. Those things look like
| they have really nasty thorns.
| aimor wrote:
| I grew up with a mature locust tree in the backyard. They are
| nasty thorns, over a foot long on the trunk (article said as
| large as a hand, but they can be as long as a forearm), and
| many inches long on all the branches. They go out in every
| direction too, like caltrops. I played baseball in the backyard
| without shoes exactly once.
|
| I never even considered eating the pods.
| klyrs wrote:
| Yeah, honey locusts are pretty wicked; their thorns have
| thorns. I first met them on a trip to Utah, where they commonly
| occur in urban settings. They aren't native to Utah, so I
| imagine some brilliant city planner must have _really_ hated
| the idea of children climbing trees. Which doesn 't really
| explain the delicious mulberry trees of a similar age that I
| encountered.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Any decent landscaper knows about a special group of plants
| that have the so called architectural trait. Those aren't
| necessarily colorful, nice or covered in big flowers. They
| stand among other as a living sculpture.
|
| Strongly geometrical plants are useful to integrate the rigid
| shapes found in man-made garden objects. We can culture a
| snow white Onopordum thistle near to a light-grey granite
| pavement, and it creates a subtle reverberating effect that
| is very desirable, both in color and in geometry. The
| horizontal lines on the pavement are balanced by the strong
| vertical lines of the thistle creating a structure that
| people often find pleasant, even if they don't know why. If
| well done, it just feels right.
|
| Honey locust are cultured because they are hard and tolerate
| neglect, but they are not unique trees in this sense. What
| made them stand among other are its beautiful uniquely-shaped
| architectural spines.
|
| And they are beautiful indeed. Locust trees are winter
| actors. The combination of clusters of black spines covered
| on ice, under a winter morning light can bright a long winter
| season when there is not much more to see. Connoisseurs
| appreciate it as a certified way to introduce drama and
| contrast in a garden that otherwise would feel bland, dull
| and uninspiring.
|
| On the other hand finding this trees on riverbeds don't
| whisper to me "navajo settlement" necessarily. It speaks:
| "floodings and vegetative multiplication by roots".
| doodlebugging wrote:
| We had one in our yard in north Texas years ago. It had been
| intentionally planted by the original owner of the property
| next door when he built his house in the late 1920's. He said
| that he thought it was a pine when he planted it. There was
| also an ailanthus, a true trash tree known as the "tree of
| heaven" for some ridiculous reason. These were planted in the
| strip between driveways and together with the other trees
| offered abundant shade.
|
| When we bought the house the tree was more than 45 feet tall
| and had these awesome thorns all the way up the truck to the
| crown and along the branches. Squirrels would hang out sunning
| themselves on the branches.
|
| Of course those thorns will dry out and drop occasionally so
| you did need to watch as you turned into the driveway to make
| sure there wasn't a huge thorn in the way. One day for reasons
| lost to history I decided to climb that honey locust as high as
| possible without using any ropes, moving hand over hand and
| carefully placing feet as I climbed.
|
| I found that it was actually pretty easy to climb the tree as
| long as you verified that the thorns bunches were alive and
| strong since they would be well attached to the trunk. I found
| that I could carefully grab hold of multiple thorns or if a
| limb was available I could firmly grasp the limb between thorn
| bunches and move myself up. The hardest part was preventing
| being impaled by those long thorns as you tried to stay near
| the trunk. It was a balancing act of locating a competent
| foothold higher up the trunk, locating open spots for each hand
| with as few thorns as possible and weaving my fingers between
| protruding thorns to gain the best grip and then slowly and
| gently easing my weight onto the upper foot while I maneuvered
| my midsection around the worst of the thorns or eased into them
| so that they were bent away from me as I climbed.
|
| I ended up making it over twenty feet to a large limb where I
| cut some thorns out of the way so that I would have a place to
| sit. I sat there for a few minutes admiring the view and lying
| to those people on the ground about how easy it was. Then I
| carefully examined the trunk, the limbs, and the thorns so that
| I could select a path down before slowly twisting myself into
| position for the slow descent.
|
| Other than a few shallow punctures and some scratches I had no
| injuries of note. I was wearing my old Vasque Sundowner hiking
| boots and the rubber on the toes was pretty helpful.
|
| If you ever decide that you would like to try climbing one of
| these trees I found that the old, dry thorns should be avoided
| if possible since the sharp point of the thorn tends to dry out
| first and if you get punctured it will break off under the skin
| and may become infected if you don't remove it. It would be
| hard, and very painful, to get a deep puncture wound from one
| of those thorns since they rapidly narrow to a sharp point and
| the older thorns are thick. Newer growth can be thin enough to
| go pretty deep like a mesquite thorn. All things considered you
| should avoid driving over or steeping on these honey locust
| thorns.
|
| I also took a elective archery class in college and one project
| we all had to do involved making a recurve bow and at least one
| arrow with a hand-made arrowhead or other type point. I tipped
| one arrow with a flint arrowhead that I knapped myself and the
| other with a honey locust thorn hardened over a fire. Both my
| arrows flew towards the target but the honey locust point flew
| straighter probably because it was lighter and more aerodynamic
| so I ended up with a good grade.
|
| Honey locust are beautiful trees. The ailanthus was a PITA with
| all the seeds it dropped. Every year there were hundreds of
| sprouts threatening to fill the yard with those damn trees.
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