Still growing here: A pearly plant that grows near oysters

Most of the time it’s hard to imagine what Brooklyn was like before colonization. Its original terrain has been leveled, filled in, covered with concrete, and buildings stand where there were once trees. But there are some places that can serve as portals to Brooklyn before. One of those places is a stretch of shore at Bush Terminal.

The portal is not available to those trying to get a panoramic view. A panoramic view will lead you to a mishmash of eras. Looking straight ahead at the brick MADE Bush Terminal buildings will transport you to the 1890s, when the campus was first built. If you look over the water you see lower Manhattan where One World Trade Center will mark the year 2012 on the horizon, the year it was topped out.

To get to the year 1609 — the year Henry Hudson first saw New York City, thereby sealing its fate, you have to look down. The sandy shore features native grasses that peek out of the water at high tide, herbaceous perennials, and a congregation of waterfowl. The beach and shallow, sheltered waters are a teeming neighborhood that includes Atlantic blue crabs, clams, mummichog, and bloodworms, all of which would have been here when the Lenape were the only people who called this place home.

In the winter the green in the grasses is drained and nutrients are held in their roots and they shimmer gold in the sun. These stalks are no longer alive but that doesn’t stop them from dancing in the wind. One plant is a little shier, or just likes nestling in the charismatic grasses. Its shine comes not from stalks and stems, but from its dried papery flowers which look like they were crafted from flecks of pearl—appropriate because there are oyster shells with the same shine hiding in the waters nearby. These flowers last through the winter.

If you rub the stem and leaves of this plant it emits a sweet syrupy scent, hence one of its common names is sweet everlasting, the other is rabbit tobacco, which makes me think of Bugs Bunny—but instead of chomping on a carrot he’s pulling on a pipe as he says “Ehhh, what’s up doc?” While rabbits do not smoke sweet everlasting, though they do like to nibble the leaves—and leave the smoking to people. And docs may have frequented the plant. The internet informs that Native Americans used it for pains, cramps, colds, and more.

The plant’s scientific name is Pseudognaphalium obtusofolium. Pseudognaphalium means fake lock of wool. Obtusifolium means “blunt-leaved” which may be true of the basal rosette leaves of the plants when they are young. A basal rosette is a cluster of leaves that grows at the base of a plant. At this stage the leaves are fairly rounded. Later in the season the plant can shoot up to around three feet. At all stages the leaves and the stems are sage colored, and pale peach-fuzz hairs give the plant a silvery glow, as if dipped in moonlight. In its mature, flowering state the leaves of sweet everlasting are not blunt, they are more slender and pointed. Though they might look like daggers they are still soft and pliable. Sweet everlasting grows well in dry, sunny soils; so it grows well on the beach—a place that many plants would recoil at the thought of inhabiting.

I have been to a fair amount of beaches throughout the Northeast — including areas less ravaged by human disturbance than the coast of Brooklyn, but I never noticed this plant until I saw it at Bush Terminal — a formal industrial dumping ground that was remediated and reverted to a more natural habitat. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t always on the lookout for plants, but I like to think it’s because Bush Terminal is special. It knows its past, and now it gets another chance to be a gentle nurturing haven for shy, pearly eyed plants and crabs that tickle her beaches. It’s not just a portal, but also a place that gently beckons you to look down and learn.