THE HONEY-SWEET AIR

Years ago when I was still circuit-riding in Montana, the UUA had its General Assembly of the denomination in June as usual.  It was in some back east city, hotter than skunk as my mother-in-law used to say. I don't remember much more about it.  My return to Helena was indelible -- I can summon in up anytime.

It must have been a wet year because the sweet clover was everywhere, so much of it that the air was sweet as honey.  Helena was pleasantly warm.  The lone airport taxi had already taken a load into the town, so I had to wait for it to come back, but no worries -- I had been exhausted and cranky, but now I sat on a curb and blissed out.

I did know what made that ambrosial smell: it is coumadin which is also the "sweet" in sweetgrass and sweetpine.  I always wondered why sweet clover wasn't among the Blackfeet smudge sources, but it was because it is a "weed," an exogenous plant like spotted knapweed but far more benign than the lavendar mist of knapweed with its chemical that kills every other plant around it.  Oppositely, sweet clover is a legume that enriches the soil with nitrogen.

As early as the 16th century sweet clover was brought in from Eurasia as forage,  More recently it has been used to address erosion because it is so vigorous and likely to spread.  Its root system goes deep and breaks up hardpan.  This quality soon caused it to fill the barrow pits along every road and to delay horses who want to snatch as much as they can instead of paying attention to where the rider wants to go.  

When the practice of smudging developed, there was no sweetclover on this continent. Tobacco is valued as an insect control and for smoking, carefully grown in the small ecological niches where it is believed "little people" take care of it.  Sweet grass grows in swampy places and sweet balsam pine grows in the Sweetgrass Hills, so those landmarks should be call "Sweet Pine Hills."  

"It is the most drought-tolerant of the commercially available legumes.  Sweet clover is a major source of nectar for domestic honey bees as hives near sweetclover can yield up to 200 pounds of honey in a year.  Sweetclover has been used as a phytoremediation—phytodegradation plant for treatment of soils contaminated with dioxins."  Sweetgrass and white sage, another popular smudge, have been exploited commercially to the point that they are overharvested.  But sweetclover is mostly considered a weed and left alone. 

Anyway, the plant has a dark side.  It's a legume which means it's vulnerable to mold and rot.  More than that, the seductive sweetness of coumadin is accompanied by its ability to thin blood.  It's in the blood thinner of medicine and it's how rat poison works by thinning the blood of small mammals enough to kill them.  If a cow eats enough moldy sweetgrass, it will kill them, too.

The biggest problem is during birth, a wound or if surgery is required, because it will promote bleeding.  Dicoumarol can pass through the placenta so affects the calf, even unborn.  Vets say a rancher should take particular care to avoid moldy sweetclover for at least a month before birth is due.  North Dakota State University Diagnostic Laboratory can test for moldy hay.  This was a wet year and people cut hay early, so it may have gotten moldier than is desirable.

From the unknown author in Wikipedia:  "Melilotis officinalis is native to Europe and Asia and has been introduced to North America as a forage crop.  It commonly grows in calcareous loamy and clay soils with a pH above 6.5 and can tolerate cold temperatures and drought; it does not tolerate standing water or acidic soils, with a pH of 5.5 as the plant's lowest limit.  Common places where it can be found include open disturbed land, prairies, and savannahs, and it grows in full or partial sunlight. It is an invasive species in areas where it has been introduced, especially in open grasslands and woodlands where it shades and outcompetes native plant species.

"Sweet clover contains coumarin that converts to dicoumarol, which is a powerful anticoagulant toxin, when the plant becomes moldy. This can lead to bleeding diseases (internal hemorrhaging) and death in cattle. Consequently, hay containing the plant must be properly dried and cured, especially in wet environments."

I've never tried smudging with sweet clover, but maybe it's time I tried.  It's nearly out of season.  What's flowering now is sunflowers, the low soft kind along roads, but I've never tried smudging a sunflower either.  I think I'll pass but look around for some sweetclover, if not this fall then next summer.  

Since this land was once at the bottom of the shallow inland sea of the Cretaceous Era when coal was laid down, it is indeed calcareous from all the little shelly creatures who became limestone, is alkali from sea water, and is sunny for lack of trees.  This inland sea was an extension of the Arctic Ocean which didn't seem so possible in the days before it began melting.  It emptied when the uprising of the Rocky Mountains tilted the prairie enough to pour the water out through the Mississippi River complex.  People who drive through here and say they see nothing are simply not aware of what they should look for.

It's possible to buy sweet clover seed commercially.  I bought sweetgrass plugs one year, but now that town water is metered, I don't sprinkle so my yard is too dry.  Maybe I'll see what it would be like to have a yard full of sweetclover.

THE MEANINGS OF VEGETAL LIFE

This morning I made my usual coffee (cone filter, dark roasted, pre-ground) and then threw some sweetgrass strands onto the hot stove burner. Nothing fancy -- just the long blades the cats scattered around when they started sleeping in the box of drying sweetgrass. I pick the strands off the carpet to make this daily smudge. It’s an ordinary habit, a small household act. Then I go to the computer and find this on an academic listserv.

Manuscripts and proposals solicited for "CRITICAL PLANT STUDIES: PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, CULTURE" BOOK SERIES (RODOPI PRESS)

Series Editor: Michael Marder (IKERBASQUE / The University of the Basque Country, Vitoria)

The goal of the Critical Plant Studies, a new book series at Rodopi Press, is to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue, whereby philosophy and literature would learn from each other to think about, imagine, and describe, vegetal life with critical awareness, conceptual rigor, and ethical sensitivity. Literary works featuring plant imagery may be analyzed with reference to philosophical frameworks, while philosophical discussions of the meanings of vegetal life may be enriched and supported with the tools of literary criticism. Another dialogic dimension of the series entails a sustained engagement between Western and non-Western philosophies and religious traditions, representative of the human attitudes to plants. This “cross-pollination” of different fields of knowledge and experience will become possible thanks to the fundamental role plants play in human life, regardless of their backgrounding or neglect.

Ethically stated, the aim of the book series is to encourage an incremental shift of cultural attitudes from a purely instrumental to a respectful approach to vegetal beings. This is particularly important at the current time of the global environmental crisis, when massive de-forestation, seed patenting, and profit-driven agriculture threaten the very future of life on the planet. Not only will works included in the series shed light on the being of plants, but they will also assist us in critically thinking through the crucial issues and challenges of the contemporary world. Bioethics and genetic engineering, of which plants were the first examples; the role of spirituality and holism in the techno-scientific age; the reliance of our imagination and creativity on elements of the “natural” world; global food shortages and sustainable agricultural practices; the roots of our thinking and writing in other-than-human, vegetal processes, such as growth and decay, germination and branching out, fecundation and fruition—books included in Critical Plant Studies will, in one way or another, touch upon these and related themes central to the philosophy, literature, and culture of the twenty-first century.

Thus, we are looking to publish a mix of specialized manuscripts and introductory texts on the theory, literary criticism, and religious or aesthetic appreciation of plant life. Each title in the series will combine at least two of the disciplines listed above, with preference given to cutting-edge methodologies in comparative literature, comparative philosophy, comparative religious studies, etc., and trans-disciplinary approaches. Analyses of plant-related writings and artworks from any historical period and geographical area will be welcome.

Please, forward all queries and proposals to michael.marder@gmail.com

--

Ikerbasque Research Professor

Department of Philosophy

The University of the Basque Country,

Vitoria-Gasteiz

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I was okay with this until I got to “cutting edge.” I can even handle “trans-disciplinary” approaches. I mean I can talk about sweetgrass as incense, as ceremonial substance, as locally growing plant, as rhizomatous and therefore tied to the theories of DeLeuzeguattari about social action, and I can talk about it in Blackfeet life and as a tourist promotion. I could even mention the little home company that sells sweetgrass perfume. But is that what they want? I could contrast it with the culture of wheat, the rows and rows of genome-addled plants that cannot grow without human intervention and support. Sweetgrass grows where there’s an opportunity -- like soil disturbance or where there’s been a fire, like the little ones along the railroad where “hot boxes” (stuck wheels that scrape instead of turning) start them, and where the soil is wet, like in barrow pits along highways. You have to find it strand by strand, which makes it tough. So is that a difference in degree or kind?

How does local sensory information key into philosophical discourse and what does this particular plant, sweetgrass, have to do with being Basque? You could ask any local Basque sheepherder, I guess, since they’re likely to know it. In fact, being able to find sweetgrass in June sort of separates outsiders from insiders. I cheated. I ordered a “plug” from a nursery in the midwest and planted it in a box in my yard so it couldn’t escape. In a couple of years it has filled the box and I’m ready to give away plugs. Or should I sell them? Is it right to sell a kind of grass that has religious associations? How much should I explain about smudging?

Sweetgrass smells that way because of coumadin, the blood-thinning drug that in excess kills rats. (They die horribly, thrashing. No one tells you that.) MANY people take coumadin to prevent clotting. It’s in sweet clover, the yellow airy near-alfalfa that’s all over Montana roadsides in June, as well as in sweet pine which is really the balsam fir that the Sweetgrass Hills should have been named for. Is this the kind of stuff that this publication wants?

What about an article on sarvisberries and how they are used in pemmican? Then there’s ceremonial sarvisberry soup. What about tobacco: ceremonial substance, bundle-preservative, and social lubricant? I wonder whether any Christians will write about the meaning of unleavened bread and/or fermented grape juice, AKA bread and wine. Is this ethnobotany?

I looked up Michael Marder. He has THREE Magna Cum Laude degrees. He’s one of those rarefied philosophers spinning off of post-everything. Would he pay attention to a grounded old prairie thinker like me? I thought I’d find out for you so I sent him a copy of this. He said, “Thank you for your email. If you wish to propose a book for the series I would be happy to consider it.” Then he thought for a while and asked, “P.S. I am not sure how to take your characterization of my work as "spinning off of post-everything." My book on Jacques Derrida had 'post-deconstructive' in the title; other than that, I fail to see how you could reach this conclusion. It would be helpful, if you could clarify this point for me. Having said that, I will be looking forward to a potential book proposal from you, in case you are interested in submitting one to the series.”

In short, “if you come onto my turf, you will have to play by my rules.” Fair enough. Maybe one of my readers would like to propose a book. I don’t understand Marder’s rules and he never laid them out in rows. He DID respond to my email quickly and did NOT take my bait. In fact, this is one of the more intelligible calls for writing that show up on the academic listservs. I’ve always had a soft spot for Basques. I don’t think he is one.