Despite challenges native plants persist

If you step outside your apartment one of the first things you’ll see is a tree. You probably don’t know what kind of tree it is, but if it’s in a tree pit chances are it’s a London plane, honeylocust, Callery pear, pin oak, or a Norway maple. These are the five most common street trees in the city. Three of these species are considered invasive in this region and only the pin oak would have existed before European colonization.

The same is true with many plants we see in our parks, our yards, and on our streets. Daffodils were never a sign of spring in North America until Europeans brought them here. Before Henry Hudson accidentally found his namesake river in 1609, spring would have been announced by the white flowers of the serviceberry, or thick carpets of Virginia bluebells. Most of the plants we see around us do not give any clues about what the city looked like before colonization. There are many though, that planted themselves in our parks and grow through the cracks in sidewalks or stake out spots in empty lots. They do the best they can with the real estate they have available–just like you and me. But unlike most of us, their ancestors have been here for ages. They are living relics, and some of our only links to a world that was lost, but can still be found if you look in the right places.

NOT IN A SWAMP AND NOT A ROSE, A SWAMP ROSE MALLOW FINDS A HOME

The swamp rose mallow does not have shy flowers. They look like pink taffeta satellite dishes, each with a column of intertwining pistils and stamens that rise outward like antennas. Their flowers would not look out of place on a Hawaiin shirt, but this moisture loving shrub is more likely to be seen in Canada than anywhere on a Pacific Island.

In fact you can see at least one specimen on Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront. She grows on top of a pile of urban rubble on Brooklyn’s industrial coast on the edge of Bush Terminal Park. The swamp rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) usually dwells in wetlands, swamps and salt marshes so it was surprising to see this one growing in the crevices of a rocky jetty during a recent excursion to the park.

But once upon a time, before New York City became a concrete jungle, it was known as Welikia, by the Lenne Lenape who inhabited the area before European colonization. Welikia, meaning our good home in Lenape, was likely full of freshwater habitats and also swamp rose mallows–which are more related to okra than roses, by the way. We will never know what Welikia looked like; we can only see what we imagine, so let’s imagine that there was a small pond at the corner of 44th Street and Sixth Avenue. A little over a hundred years ago people who lived in Sunset Park didn’t have to imagine this pond–because it was still there. In fact Sunset Park had as many as five ponds.

Let’s say there was a seasonal creek that flowed from the pond. Maybe it had gently flowing waters that nudged their way to a rocky shore, or a soft sandy beach, perhaps a saltmarsh. Maybe it meandered this way and that until it followed what we now know as 45th Street. From July through September imagine the banks of the creek are lined with shrubs bearing pink and magenta satellite flowers. The air may have been thick with hummingbirds and moths beckoned by the flowers’ signals. At night fireflies created a milky way all the way down to shore.

It’s quite possible that the ancestors of our present day swamp rose mallow grew out of a salt marsh fed by the creek. The marsh would have been destroyed by infill or buried by heaps of trash and spent a few decades marinating in industrial sludge. Later it was topped with rubble and turned into a jetty. Instead of one swamp rose mallow maybe there was a whole community. Maybe they were there to witness Giovanni da Verazzano’s ships passing by, unaware that there would eventually be a bridge named after him.

Nowadays, you can follow 45th Street all the way where it cuts off at Second Avenue, right at Urban Air’s front door. If the street continued it would take you through the block to First Avenue and a lot empty of everything except weeds. If you cut through the fence, past a feral cat colony, a construction site and some train tracks you will find your way to the jetty and the swamp rose mallow, at the very margins of Brooklyn. It is clear she planted herself. No human hands would have placed a shrub on a pile of rocks. In order for her to exist the swamp rose mallows before her had to have made their homes in cracks in the cement, in empty lots, places wet enough and abandoned enough to allow them to mature, flower and seed before making room for the next parking lot, luxury housing or water treatment plant. But where the forests, ponds, marshes, then farms, then factories could not persist, this swamp rose mallow does.

Right now, after winter, in place of bright flowers there are woody seed pods. When open they look like an alien’s gaping beak. The seeds have a thick coating that makes them buoyant, so if they fall into the harbor they can be carried to other shores by the tide, or by waterfowl. This is also a rational explanation for how our swamp rose mallow got here. Maybe her mother grows on Governors Island. Maybe some of her seeds will drift to new margins, or find the right spot in the rubble and grow next to their mother. Maybe enough will gain purchase, and soon there will be a whole community of swamp rose mallows growing on the banks of a Brooklyn jetty. It’s not a swamp, or a creek or a saltmarsh, but for now it’s home.