Pioneering Primrose

 

At the tip of the Overlook

a tiny plant is blooming, lower left

Another bright speck on the grout pile caught my eye this week. A flower managed to open unseasonably and improbably on the rim of the Overlook. It seemed a brave achievement.

The Evening primrose blooming in the gravel during November

The flower was produced by an Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) in its effort to colonize the seaside barrens. Bloom, pollination and seed production usually take place earlier in the summer. This calendar extension exemplifies the envelope-pushing that leverages life into dominion over vacuums.

The term biennis indicates that Evening primroses live for two years. After germinating from a seed they spend their first season as a low rosette of leaves developing a substantial root that in the second year launches a potentially towering flower stalk. Which raises the question, Is this a first or second year plant?

Fine hairs covering its stems and leaves help protect Evening primrose tissues from desiccation by wind-born salt. These features along with the fleshy water-storing root give it drought-resistant advantages on the stony shoreline.

The delicate flower engineers both procreation and evolution. Its intricate structures hint at the complexity of these tasks. Its vivid coloration secures insect partners in survival.

The grout pile has existed just over a century as a dumping spot for waste stone from the nearby quarry. It is being transformed from sterility to vitality by weatherizing factors like wind, rain, sun and frost breaking it down into the mineral components of soil. Microbes, lichens and pioneering plants further digest the granite. They add their organic tissues to the matrix. The soil gains tilth, nutrients, and the ability to retain water.

The primrose lives at the tip of geologic history. Its crust of earth that formed deep in the molten soup of the planet has reached this place through cycles of subduction, continental drift, glaciations and erosion. Human industry has further transformed the land in its brief but profound occupation.

An Evening primrose during summertime in the adjacent lowlands

Water and soil are more plentiful in the lowlands at the base of the grout pile. There Evening primrose plants thrive to their full 6-foot height in association with diverse vegetation. But their advantages in drought and salt tolerance ultimately give way to the growth of more robust species in a richer habitat.

Reforestation is under way.