Solving a Mystery

 Sometimes I think I must have been a plant in a previous lifetime. In some ways, I seem to be tuned into plants even more than people. They are such interesting fellow travelers on this earth-space. Everything about them is fascinating if not downright magical-seeming. Take how a tiny dry lifeless seed lies around for perhaps years, but once it comes into contact with water and warmth, a new lifeform emerges. It's miraculous. I love to plant seeds just for the excitement of seeing plants come forth out of the tiny dry time-capsule. I love the way the world is covered in green, at least in these non-desert climates. And there is such diversity. Tiny vines growing along the ground, huge tall trees reaching into the sky.... And though some plants live through the warm months and die when winter comes and everything freezes, there are lots of plants that have found a way for their roots to survive all winter, even if the ground is frozen deep. They are ready to push up their green growth again once spring comes. That is amazing to me. 

Getting through the winter months and waiting for spring, I usually plant flats of seeds in preparation for later warmer weather. So my home was full of seedlings when the green began to show outside this year. In this cohousing community, where everyone looks toward spring during the cold months, it is always a happy time when we see plants start growing in the herb garden, our flower beds and vegetable gardens, the fruit trees or the prairie on our higher ground. And this spring, as I looked at the explosion of life coming up, I noticed a difference. There was more abundance. The leaves were larger and greener, the blooms fuller. The world was more quickly covered than usual with our perennial plant friends from the year before. It felt a little weird. I wondered if this was just my imagination. Maybe I was longing for spring so much that I was more sensitive to the change. But no, I felt in my gut that something was really different. And then I remembered the mystery of the bumper crops last fall. We had been in drought for most of the summer, and temperatures were hot enough to stress the landscape. Yet for some strange reason, rather than failing gardens, some plants had bumper crops. So did fruit trees. It did not make sense. 

So I began to think. What could be happening? With so much environmental degradation on our earth these days, it was very strange to be looking for a reason to explain why plants were doing so well! But I thought about what plants need to grow: water, soil, sun. And air! I knew that plants and we animals play a beneficial role to each other where air is concerned. We use the oxygen in the air, releasing carbon dioxide. And plants need that carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Plants have tiny breathing pores on the under sides of their leaves, so they really do breathe.  

Now, I wondered, what if there is more carbon dioxide in the air these days than there used to be? I had heard nothing about this, but luckily I could ask my computer what it could find on that. And sure enough, the carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere has been steadily climbing since the industrial age began. In fact, there has been a 47% increase! Much of this can be traced to burning fossil fuels, which also depletes oxygen and lowers the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere. Especially in the last few years, the relative percentage of carbon dioxide has been climbing dramatically. The websites I looked at did mention that this change in our air benefits plants. If one were to write a fairy tale about this happening, one might imagine that gradually plants would take over the world, and oxygen-breathing animals would decline. However, the truth is that the situation is more complex. We don't need just oxygen, nor do plants just need carbon dioxide. And the percentage of other gasses in the air is changing as well. Plants may be temporarily benefiting, but it would be good if we could stop our fossil fuel burning and head toward a healthier mix of gasses in the air we all breathe.

As with so many things, this is not a black and white story. It is fun to see plants exploding with life at this stage in the world. But everything is in motion, and we and the planet are evolving. The weather changes and our landscape changes. Warm weather plants and animals are moving north, where higher temperatures than before will support them now. Many species of both plants and animals are going extinct. Climate change is disrupting our coasts and in other ways interrupting the way we've led our lives. And now I know that our air is changing, the oxygen getting scarcer. That doesn't sound good, not for us. It's good to be aware, to notice what's going on around us in the natural world. And share what we see. And share our ideas about how to support the health of the whole. And be grateful for each other, for the ways small and large that we all do our bit.