Irregular blooming: What is normal?
- To: "m*@ucdavis.edu"
- Subject: Irregular blooming: What is normal?
- From: P* H*
- Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 09:41:48 -0700
When people start talking about irregularities in climate and plant
growth, I have to wonder why people think nature is so predictable and
why we think it's surprising or unusual for a bloom to be early or late.
What is normal, exactly? Is there such thing in nature? Sure there is
some order to things, but in general, nature is beautiful chaos. Just
because the sun, earth and moon are locked into fairly stable cycles of
motion, doesn't mean the climate and all the life forms on earth act as
predictably. About 150 years ago, Darwin discovered how swiftly life can
adapt and evolve into very different forms. Any life that successfully
creates new life is going to produce genetic variations at some point.
Science just barely understands the complexities of biological
adaptation and variation. Maybe humans just need the security of
thinking we can predict nature and intellectually understand an order in
our world. Is this thinking an attempt to validate our general beliefs
that we are masters of nature?
As for climate, fairly recent research of ancient glaciers — carbon
dating of dust particles in deep ice core samples — has revealed that
climate on earth can change much more quickly that previously thought. I
don't recall the exact dates, but I read somewhere that in just the last
500 years, the climate in the Northern Hemisphere has cooled and warmed
significantly and these changes occurred very suddenly, in 25 years or
so. Ice ages, too, ended much more quickly than previously thought.
Climate is not that predictable. It's curious that our modern
meteorology determines what is "normal" based on less than 200 years of
reliable weather data. That amount of time is a blink of an eye in the 4
billion year life of earth.
Yes, it's intriguing to wonder why flowering plants are blooming early
or why the butterflies are missing in the California Central Valley or
what La Nina will bring in climate. But it might be good to accept that
the more we try to understand these things, the harder it will be to say
what's "normal." I think the best we can do is say, the redbuds are
blooming more fully this year than last year and the narcissus were a
week early than last year.
I'll get off my soapbox now ...
Paul Harrar
Nevada City, California
Sunset Zone 7
2,700 ft.
