Save-A-Plant… Save the World

M.A. Dworkin

Close your eyes and imagine a world without any plants. Ridiculous. Not even within the realm of possibility. Never going to happen. Not on my watch…Oh really, well don’t bet on it.

The rapid loss of species, both plants and animals, that we are witnessing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate. The natural extinction rate is the “rate of extinction if humans were not present.” Unlike the mass extinction events of geological history, the current rapid loss of species (extinction) is one in which a single species - in this case specifically ours - appears to be wholly responsible for the extinction of species.  

Now, if you are living in high rise canyons like New York City or Chicago, or some other so-called cement jungle, it’s quite possible you may be able to walk out your front door, take a stroll over to the supermarket, stop at Starbucks for a latte on the way home, and hardly even notice that all the plants have disappeared, that is until you walk past a newspaper stand (if you can find one) and check out the daily headline screaming out at you in 30-point bold: Plants All Gone! Experts Claim They’re Not Coming Back This Century!

Now, of course, if you’re living in Florida, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, or any other Caribbean Island, you probably couldn’t make it two steps out the front door before you noticed such a natural catastrophe. You wouldn’t need a newspaper to tell you Plants All Gone! You would see it everywhere. Instantly! It might send your brain into a chaotic tailspin of which you could not easily pull out. You might suddenly feel as if you had just been robbed of everything holy, stripped to the bone of every reason you had to come live in this natural paradise, this place brimming with flora of every sort. 

You may very well be tipped to the breaking point of finally losing faith in all of humanity and believe that the Good Lord has finally abandoned the lush greenery of mankind as we know it. You might feel the Powers That Be have finally turned this great spinning orb back into the ball of mud and rocks that it once looked like in the days of the primordial soup. And that the time had come to ride one of Elon Musk’s Starships to Mars. Mars or Bust! The towel has finally been thrown in and the next sign you will see reads: “Abandon All Hope Ye who Enter.”

But alas, all hope is not quite dead. As Mark Twain aptly put it: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Because there is in fact an organization here in the Virgin Islands (there may be 100 plus organizations across the globe) of dedicated people, who aim to stop the spiralling extinction of plants: The Virgin Islands Rare Plant Initiative (VIRPI). This brave group of botanists, scientists and plant lovers, have decided to stick their collective thumbs into the bursting ecological dam and try to stop the hemorrhaging of species before these species arrive at the gates of extinction. They believe that we have no choice but to try and reverse the rapid extinction rate of all species that have been accelerated by man’s carelessness to his fellow inhabitants on planet Earth. Be they, plants, animals, fish, etc. 

The VIRPI is dedicated to preserving the rare, endangered and unique plants of the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean. Led by their fearless leader and Director, Dewey Hollister, former Executive Director of the St. George Village Botanical Garden on St. Croix (SGVBG), these dedicated individuals, who may only be armed with scoop shovels, a few handfuls of seed, and ten fingers worth of Green Thumbs, are looking to propagate the earth’s rare species from as many plants in the wild as possible to maximize genetic variation. It’s the Noah’s Ark approach, with a dash of Johnny Appleseed, and yet they do recognize that we need a lot more than two of each species to succeed in such an endeavor.

“Some plants will be planted in long term safe groves,” Mr. Hollister told the St. Croix Times. “They will be drawn upon for future propagation needs or emergencies. But planting large numbers for reforestation and restoration work is very important as well.”   

The SGVBG is a member of the VIRPI which is a collaborative effort on the islands of St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John to identify, collect, and propagate threatened or endangered plant species. The goal of this important initiative is to preserve and protect our botanical heritage for current and future generations. Ultimately, by distributing these plants to residents across the Virgin Islands for their own gardens, the VIRPI helps to ensure the preservation and cultivation of our unique botanical legacy. 

Granted, certain plants are naturally rare, and the cause of their rarity may be an age-old mystery. And even though these rare plants are not necessarily in danger of extinction, botanists agree that rare plants are more likely to become extinct than more common species. Many plants that were formerly more common have become rare due to the changes in their environment. These changes are brought on directly or indirectly by people’s patterns of settlement, transportation, recreation, and use of natural resources. Botanists believe that we can help rare species recover and even thrive by making changes in our own behaviors. For most species, rarity results from some combination of anthropogenic (human-induced) and evolutionary (natural) factors rather than from a single cause. 

The fact of such a discussion may very well seem like a laughing matter to some, an insignificant triviality over a bunch of weedy-looking greenery that we stomp down on our way to throwing out the garbage, or trample as we cut through the park on the way to a packed house concert, or mistakenly chop off when we make too wide a swing with the mower, but fortunately there are all sorts of people who take these matters with the utmost importance, as if they’re survival in itself mimics in some way the survival of our own species. As if our carelessness with even the smallest of living things is indicative of the larger picture. 

In the 1973 New York Times Bestseller, The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, the book documents controversial experiments that claim to reveal unusual phenomena regarding plants, such as plant sentience. The duo lay claim to the paranormal idea that plants are sentient, that they respond to humans in a manner that amounts to ESP, and that they experience a range of emotions or parapsychological states.

The notion that plants are capable of feeling emotions was first recorded in 1848, when Gustav Fechner, an experimental psychologist, suggested that plants are capable of emotions, and that one could promote the ability of plants to feel pain or pleasure demonstrating the universal beneficence of a Creator.

Believe what you want, but herein lies the crux of the matter, it’s not as if it’s exclusively important, or even possible, to save every single species on the planet, it would be absurd to think so. But given the shockingly rapid decline of certain species, the horrendous onslaught of climate change speeding faster and faster at us every few years; given the fact that we are in a battle for our very existence for life as we know it on this habitable orb; given the fact that even though we have identified dozens of other possibly habitable orbs (go and set up shop on them), are we not in a desperate race to save everything we hold dear? If not for us but for our kids and certainly our kid’s kids. 

Plant Conservationist David Given explains global warming and the greenhouse gasses scenario: “Species with large habitat area requirements may become extinct. In any case, associations of species will be squeezed into decreasing areas as they ascend.”       

“The goal of the Virgin Islands Rare Plant Initiative is quite simply to save rare plants throughout the Virgin Islands from extinction,”states Mr. Hollister.

The lessons clearly have to be learned from the ground up. If we can learn the lessons and procedures to save the weakest and most vulnerable of the species, maybe we can put a new spin on the old adage: Only the strong survive…All Creatures Great and Small.   

There is a plaque at the St. George Village Botanical Gardens on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, that reads: “This planting will grow into a Caribbean forest community.”