A sea of lovely purple, sweet-smelling, pea-like flowers calls to me to join them as they celebrate the strength of their strong vines that wrap themselves around everything they encounter. Their entire plant provides rich fodder for livestock, erosion control for over-ploughed fields, and their roots make medicines for a variety of ailments such as upset stomach, hot flashes, alcoholism and much more. But today, instead of reaping the bounty from them, this vine called kudzu is vilified, and is perhaps the plant most often thought of when someone mentions invasive plants.
We rarely look at what a plant has to offer once it has been labeled as invasive or a weed. They simply become “bad,” and unwanted. Nowadays, we relentlessly cut back—or worse, spray with herbicides—most vining plants, keeping them at least well-trimmed, if not eradicated, in our yards and landscapes.
Like our fears of invasive plants, our worries that our heart’s deepest desires will run amok and lead us astray, terrify us. We treat them like we treat the so-called invasive plants because we have been told repeatedly by our culture that our desires are too-much, that they will make us too visible and vulnerable, and leave us open to being hurt. We fall into endless attempts to control them, to keep them from growing unchecked and spreading to places they are not wanted. But like the invasive plants, our desires cannot be eradicated, only checked. And at what cost? What is lost? What gifts do our suppressed desires and vilified invasive plants hold for us? Writer Stephen Harrod Buhner says, “Invasive plants are Earth’s way of insisting we notice her medicines.” The same is true of our desires—they hold keys to what we need most for our lifetime here on Earth.
In the years that I was drinking too much wine, I might have told you that my desire to drink was too much, a desire out of control. But my desire to drink wasn’t an authentic heart’s desire. Rather it served to numb my true desires, my deep soul-felt longings, so that I was unable to feel the pain of not allowing them to blossom. I thought my life was the business world and was not compatible with my dreams. It took me a long time to learn that my drinking suppressed all my feelings, not just the bad ones, and kept me from feeling the deep joys that awaited me as well. Only when I quit drinking and began to feel how excited and happy I felt when I allowed myself to take a class or follow a creative urge, did I begin to understand the power and necessity of allowing what I truly and deeply desired. I finally stopped trying to eradicate my desires, then I pruned them less, and at last I began to nurture them and feed them. Most of all, I began to make space for them to expand in my heart, little by little.
Vines and invasive plants often get disparaged because they don’t grow in orderly, nice, and predictable fashion and they don’t stay in their own lane. We talk about invasive plants as if they are unwanted immigrants, as though they are something other, that we fear and must eradicate. Imperialistic leaders historically and still today use similar terms—invasion, threat, infest—to justify violence against groups of people they want to keep out, lock up, or whose land they want to steal. And there actually is a literal war ongoing against invasive plants. The concept of non-native and invasive plants being “bad” only started relatively recently, first with the Nazis and then in 1958 with a book titled “The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants” by Charles Elton. In the late 1990’s, the National Invasive Species Council was started by executive order with help from Monsanto and other chemical companies who looked to profit from selling herbicides. The cultural war against our individual desires is just as relentless and prejudiced because they often don’t fit into the prescribed norms that serve productive economies and hierarchal societies.
Defining a plant as invasive in an ecosystem assumes that there is a baseline in time, before which there were only native plants, and that is not as simple as it sounds. For example, most of the plants brought by Europeans are widely thought of as native species but are not. Plants and animals have been migrating, immigrating, and evolving for millions of years. It is what they do. The plants have trained us well—we humans who are perhaps the most invasive species of all time—to be their legs and help them travel great distances to increase their habitats.
These so-called invasive plants have adapted to be at our side, waiting for the exposed dirt that we continually create, so they can cover it and heal the scars. They are a stabilizing force, bringing scarce nutrients to depleted soils that won’t grow much else, weaving new life into the dirt. Because vines don’t have to put a lot of energy into making upright support structures, they can put all their energy into growing rapidly. In fact, studies show that with the increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere, the vines are growing faster than the trees, and the total mass of vines is increasing in tropical and subtropical forests.
What if we can’t take our ecosystems back to the way they were, or even keep them the same as they are today? I can no more go back to the time before I started asking to know my heart’s desires than the invasive plants can go back to where they came from. I can only allow myself to explore and accept the ways I am evolving now. What if honeysuckle and kudzu, and all the vines that we see “taking over” are just part of a larger regenerative scheme of the Earth that we can’t see the pattern of yet, and likely won’t see in our own lifetime? The vines and their purposes will continue to evolve over the next several thousand years, or even millions of years. This is the scale of time that the Earth operates on, weaving us together in ways we can’t understand yet. After all, roses grow on vines too.
What if we asked questions of the so-called invasive plants, instead of trying to control them? Questions like: “What are you here to teach us?” “What does the land need from you?” “How can we work with you?” and even, “How are you an answer to our prayers?” Successfully navigating our changing world may increasingly depend on our ability to ask these kinds of questions.
What new perspective might arise if we asked these same third-person questions of our heart’s desires? “What are you here to teach me?” “What do I need from you?” “How can I work with you?” Especially when a desire seems at odds with where we imagine ourselves to be, asking questions is an especially valuable tool, instead of fearing them and trying to control them or suppress them.
We want our world to stay like it is and to progress according to our human designed plans. What we know is easier—we don’t like change. We don’t like vines and invasive plants consuming our suburban landscapes, even when they have lovely flowers. Understandably, we like our ecosystems to be dependable, growing the foods we like, the flowers and trees we know and love, and for them not to disrupt our monetary economies. Dependability, structure, neatness and being economical are not the goals of flowering plants, however, especially not the ones we consider invasive. Rather, they are focused unceasingly on their desires to create more life, more seed, and more plants. Evolution is the relentless way of nature, especially in these days of unprecedented rates of rapid change to our climates.
I love witnessing the wild abandon of unrestrained flowering vines—their sensual and exuberant growth awakens my own deep longings. Yet, I am also aware of how deeply in my own yard I am conditioned to control both the vines in my forest and the wisteria on our pergola. Many years ago, I spent two months clearing very aggressive vines from the forested part of my backyard because they were pulling down and taking over the mature trees. At the time, it felt like I was bringing balance back to that piece of land, but now I am not so sure. This small pocket of forest at the edge of my backyard is recovering from being disturbed twenty years before and from ongoing overgrazing by the deer that continually eat all the new growth. The oriental bittersweet vine full of red berries was something they wouldn’t eat. Perhaps the long-term design of the vines—longer than my lifetime—would bring a longer lasting balance.
We keep our wisteria vines close to our house and they provide incredible sumptuous fragrant purple flowers every spring and cool shade over our west facing patio. We trim them several times a year to keep their relentless growth from invading our gutters and crawling under our roof shingles. We have a happy balance where we trim back their full desires to grow where they will, and they reward us in turn with their incredible blooms and delightful shade. Their desire to grow so wildly and vibrantly always takes my breath away and reminds me that applying the least amount of control—and none if possible--brings the greatest rewards.
Wisteria says: “Endlessly reaching, seeking, twining—I long for intimacy with my beloved, finding how we best fit together, even as I grow my own way. Our dance is the lovers dance that is as old as the dirt, and each spring we bring forth the fruit of our passion into our luscious purple flowers. Come close and sink into my sweet blossoms and awaken the depth of your own longing.”
Allowing our desires is radical. As radical as allowing invasive plants to have their way in our ecosystems and allowing them to show us what we need. Invasive plants are responding to the needs of the land, just as our heart’s desires are responding to the needs of our bodies and our souls. If we cut back too much of the new growth, it is hard for our roots to be fed. Allowing them both to grow as freely as possible, with little or no trimming back, is crucial to our own growth and that of the Earth. Every time we set aside our fears and tap into our heart’s desire—our perception changes, and everything is possible.
Thanks for this thoughtful and beautifully written essay on one of my passions - the war on invasive species. I too am a fan of Stephen Harrod Buhner who transformed my understanding of plants and more. For me the disconnect is around instinct/conditioning. Also, the insane wish to halt natural process at a point we were comfortable with blinds us to possibility. I could go on....and on....
I love this context you brought in of how "invasive species" as a term and concept came to be....interesting how they shape our thinking that most often serves to fill someones pockets, and yet we pour our whole selves into this idea, taking it as our own... and suddenly go around pulling out living plants from the earth in the name of defending an invasion. It's laughable really. So thank you for bringing in this reminder, indeed the earth is in constant flux. Always changing. We, as creatures of the earth, facilitate in that work of change as all creatures do. It being good or bad is not an innate true but a human ideology. Hear, hear! Embrace the weeds, they are family <3