Article September 15, 2003 Issue

PLANTS THAT TELL STORIES

Bill and Edie Overlease have traveled widely—from England's walking paths to the Grand Teton mountains to the streets of Philadelphia—to study the distribution and migration of weeds over the past century. "Most people don't pay much attention to weeds. Biologists would rather study 'good' plants. But weeds are indicator species," Bill Overlease says. They tell the story of change in our biosphere.

"The Native Americans," Overlease says, "called weeds 'white man's foot,' because they saw in these new plants the evidence of the settlement of people from Europe having impact on the earth."

Overlease explains that he's drawn a great deal of inspiration from studying plants that most people see as nuisances. Seeing something spectacular like the Grand Tetons, he observes, can have a profound spiritual impact, "but we also can find beauty in our own backyards, or in what's growing in the cracks in a city sidewalk. I like to think of all that's in what I call the sea around us—the sea of living things—as ideas that tell us something about the wonders of God's creation."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

A day of hiking & healing