Participants are invited to adopt a biocultural landscapes lens on a plant niche ecology stroll around Martis Creek. This biocultural lens will be used to highlight the influences of natural landscape processes and human lifeway interactions that enhance the presence of culturally important plant (CIP) populations. Our saunter will be a hands on event with opportunities to interact with our storytellers, the plants!
The Martis Creek watershed, known as Timilick Valley by the Wa She Shu people, is an elaborate mosaic of wet camas meadows amidst perched humps of dry short sagebrush zones shaped by the meandering tributary waters to the Truckee River. In spring, bouquets of delightfully edible and medicinal plants begin their seasonal invitation of endearment. Many of the first genus to flower are starchy root foods (or geophytes) that speak to a longstanding kinship of subsistence provision: Lewisia, Lomatium, Allium, Fritiallaria, Camassia, Perideridia, Triteleia and Calochortus (in rough phenological procession). Before logging and drainage of sections of the meadow, the area was an important year-round fishery and likely plant gathering grounds for thousands of years.
We will track the layered stories of relationship to place by perusing macro and micro topography and discussing the autecology of various culturally important geophytes, to understand how they thrive with the continued reciprocity of horticultural tending. Curiosities will include: how rocks provide cool microclimates as lithic mulches; macrobiotic crusts and cracked soils are designed to catch certain seeds; the unique ways different soils retain moisture and the adaptive strategies of storage roots; playful penchants of propagules; and how the act of harvesting itself can be a beneficial disturbance that stimulates: by digging, scattering, grazing and trodding with care. We will also track the more recent layers of land relationships on our walk by investigating what types of plants show up where, and what they can tell us about underlying processes at play.
Together we will muse on the many ways that cultivating a deep understanding of niches is as much about how to move forward with our story of place as it is about the tales that came before.
