Building Resilient Landscapes

Last night my chapter of the Minnesota Master Naturalists had a meeting. The topic was Building Resilient Landscapes and the speaker works for the Anoka County Soil and Water Conservation as an ecologist. As she spoke she said several times, "What I love about the Anoka sand plain . . ." and I kept thinking about if I loved the Anoka sand plain or not. The sand plain is the least productive soil for agriculture but it does have quite a few rare plants. She spoke about in the process of building resilient landscapes, much plant killing is required.  Besides buckthorn and garlic mustard and purple loose strife there is wild parsley.  She said there have only been two places in the county where wild parsley has been spotted. She asked if we saw any wild parsley we should call her right away because she has hopes that it won't spread and be as common as it is in the southern metro  area. She showed us maps of what Anoka County looked like one hundred years ago and what it looks like now. At the end of the talk she gave us ideas for volunteer opportunities. One example of a volunteer opportunity is removing rare species before an area is developed. Up until now the department of natural resources has  not allowed rare species to be removed before the bulldozers come in. The thought was some plants have symbiotic relationships with organisms in the soil and the plants would not survive if moved. But now they changed their minds because rare plants are not going to make win a match with a bulldozer. Anyway, in northern Blaine, there  is a housing development going in a place where they found lance leafed violets. I signed up to help dig up those lance leafed violets. The violets will be taken to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum for culture and propagation efforts.