Addendum
Brazilian pusley (Richardia brasiliensis) and coast sandspur grow in the four-acre wilderness on the succeeding dredge heap next to my campus here in Florida. Both of them are beautiful plants, elegant in their structure. They are ubiquitous, and so unnoticed ­ unless one of those spurs catches your ankle. They have, along with two strains of carpet grass, dog fennel, castor beans, ragweed, capeweed and Brazilian pepper, reclaimed a large pile of fill left in a barren heap behind the Chapel Pond two years ago. A slow amble through these places reveals a stunning display of diversity and resilience and tenacity. Each individual plant, a remarkable structure on its own, together, something else even more inspiring. Not Darwinian at all, no brutal competition, inter-dependence, and a gentle form of it at that. There are otherwise well-meaning nature lovers who turn up their noses at these tremendous plants. Weeds, non-natives, invasives, they spit. Yet they are all plants, valid in their living, and all of them advancing an ecosystem where human disturbance had taken one away. Thoreau was right about this, our home soil is always rich in Emersonian metaphor.