Resillence (3/2/2026

The other day, at our UU church we had a program on the resilience of nature or may be on how nature helped us with our resilience. This brought me back to my Ph.D. study, and particularly my research project. We moved to Las Cruces, NM in 1986 for my studies. Nine years married and yes, we had our occasional marriage spats. I think the issues were mostly my doing and most likely caused by my insecurity concerning my qualifications even to pursue a Ph.D. (imposter syndrome) and the decision we had made to finally settle in the U.S.A. (being a Dutchman who had traveled most of his life, that was an alien concept).

My research plots were in the Jornada del Muerto. It was at the southern end of the of an area in New Mexico made famous by the Trinity site, where Oppenheimer and his compadres detonated the first nuclear bomb. My site was far enough away from that area for any remaining radioactivity to ever have gotten that far south and have any effect on me. This was a good thing, since we (my wife) became pregnant in 1988, midway through my studies.

One of the things that stayed with me from that time were the weekly trips to my research plots. We had to travel about an hour into the desert away from all civilization. I was taking physiological measurements on broom snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae); a common weed in this area of the country. I had to get there before daylight to take what are called pre-dawn plant measurements and compare them to changes that occurred during the day, when it got brighter and warmer. We got to the site when it was just getting light and stayed until two or three in the afternoon and took measurements on the hour. We hid in the shade under a shelter that we set up between measurement times. On some really hot days I would take a quick dip in a nearby stock tank if the water looked clean. Remember, the temperatures in southern New Mexico would easily soar over 100 degrees (38 Celsius) in summer.

At sunrise, exactly when the sun hit the site, the coyotes in the area started howling, just for a minute or so. It was absolutely amazing and, in a way, very moving. It sounded so wild and primitive. To think that there were all these eyes watching us and we hardly ever saw them. And then all the snakes (rattlesnakes) that were also observing us, the birds and other critters.

Recently I wrote a couple of posts about the more bashful coyotes in the woods behind our home. They excite our dogs, especially when they start howling at two in the morning. Hearing the howl or even seeing them brings me back to my studies in the Jornada desert and those early mornings when the coyotes graced me with their concert.

Coyotes are amazing animals. Persecuted and killed, they seem to survive, even in our urban areas. These are resilient species and fit into the discussions we had that Sunday morning. Resilience, we biologists sometimes used the word plasticity in place of resilience. At times this seems more appropriate, nature is resilient by being adaptable or what we would call plastic. An interesting concept to ponder.

The Coyotes behind our home (left and center)

Cup Plant (7/16/2014)

Our daughter bought this plant for us at a native plant sale in our area, and we had no idea what it was.  I am a botanist by training and have done a lot of wetland work in the past.  This definitively shows I have been away from playing with plants way too long; but after getting my plant identification books out, it was not difficult to identify this plant as a “cup plant” or Silphium perfoliatum. 

Cup plant is quite an interesting plant.  The plant’s leaves connect and form a cup around the stem which holds water that is used by birds and insects.  This of course makes me wonder about mosquitoes, but as my favorite quote of the week goes: “It is what it is.”  The web teaches me that the plant was used for human food (the young leaves seem to be ok, when cooked).  Furthermore, parts of the plant were used for medicinal purposes by some of the Indian tribes.  It appears to be able to treat everything from chest pain to asthma to liver disease to excessive menstruation.  Cup plant is high in various compounds that may have value as medicine.

Interestingly, the plant I studied for my Ph.D. research (broom snakeweed or Guiterrezia sarothrea) had some of the same medicinal properties.  I once read that the Native Americans used broom snakeweed (which has some of the same compounds as cup plants) for birth control (it causes abortions in livestock).

Plants hold a lot of secrets.  They have compounds and combination of compounds that can cure a person’s ailments or kill them.  They produce compounds that prevent other plants from growing nearby (also known as allelopathy or what I call chemical warfare between plants).  I have always had an interest in allelopathy and the field of ethnobotany.  As a Ph.D. student, I spent a week at Stanford discussing the intricacies of who owns certain plants and the chemicals in them.  The question was if a pharmaceutical company can patent a chemical in a plant that only grows in one country, or if they would need to pay royalty.  The same is the case if they found a medicinal use by studying a native tribe; would they have to pay royalty to the tribe from medicine they develop as a result of that study?  It is a fascinating subject and fun to think about it again. 

Anyway, it is also important to realize that when plants become rare, or go extinct we might lose some very important properties that we have not yet discovered.