Why do we call it "vacant"?

It had been a stay at home and catch up on chores day, so after supper, Laurie suggested a walk across the street to the vacant lot.

The lot is a block wide, maybe two blocks long, and divided in two sections: half has been abandoned ever since I first saw it, a good five years ago; the other half serves as a gravel and construction materials dump, and gets more or less levelled every year. The first half is turning itself into swamp and young alder forest.

As we neared the edge of the gravelly half, a few steps before the trees start, a killdeer called, off to our right.

Killdeer, almost hidden in the weeds and dirt.

Looking worried.

We followed it, trying to get a clear photograph; standing still, it disappeared into the background, but never for long; a moment later, it would call, flash that white neck at us, and run again. After a bit, its mate joined it, beckoning us on, even treating us to the broken wing pantomime:

"I'm injured! Come and catch me!"

We weren't fooled; we gave up the chase and went back where we first saw them to look for the nest, a mere scrape in the dirt, out in the open. We didn't find it. One of the birds flew over our head, panicked and crying, so we backed off and left them alone.

Killdeer running over old rocks and construction leftovers.

All the vegetation on this half had been torn up last winter and buried under fresh hills of gravel and piles of broken concrete. People have been using the site as a dump for old carpets and lumber. But nature can't be beaten; new growth is springing up everywhere.

Buttercups

Red grasses, swaying in the wind.

Tiny yellow flowers, with purple leaves.

Mushrooms. This one looks like one of those Mexican breads, pan de dulce. Or a lemon meringue pie. Yum! A slug has been nibbling at it.

Horsetails, just starting out. They will cover this hillside in next to no time.

And we found another bird:

Smiling duck.

Daisies are about to bloom, thistles are growing apace, so are grasses and plantains, dandelions and the first of the tiny pink vetches. As we left to come home, I gathered a handful of broom to brighten my table.


After I'd put it in a vase, small critters started dropping out, and walking across the table. Tiny things, just walking dots. I caught a bunch with a paintbrush and examined them; they're leafhopper nymphs, barely two millimetres long.

Leafhopper nymphs.

The leafhoppers have been disposed of. Now there is a tiny spider in the bouquet, looking for them. Sorry, spidey; I've emptied your larder.

All in all, the perfect ending to the day. (The spider may not agree.)

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Too much of a good thing. Far too much.

When I was a kid, half a century or so ago, we lived for a year in White Rock. I walked to school most days down Buena Vista, rather than the slightly shorter route straight along Thrift from our house. I liked Buena Vista; one of the houses* had a hedge made of Scotch broom, and in season, the yellow pea-flowers were heaped high over my head. In winter, the hedge was dense and green, while everything else was just bare sticks.

Mom said it was a bad weed, but I didn't care. It was beautiful.

So I find it understandable that Captain Grant, back in 1850, brought seeds from Hawaii to plant in his garden on Vancouver Island. Only three germinated. And from those three seeds, the "bad weed" jumped his property line, galloped south to Victoria, crossed the Strait to the mainland, and dug itself in, evacuating any of our native flora that stood in its way.

Scotch broom, Cystisus scoparius, is a stiff, dusty-green shrub that grows to about 3 metres tall. It was probably called "broom" because of the long, flexible, but tough new growth; a couple of branches bound together would make a quite acceptable broom.** The leaves are small and inconspicuous; off-season colour is provided by the new green branches. The flowers are a glorious, sunshiny yellow and cheddar cheese orange. In the fall, it produces thousands of seeds in black pea-pods.

Old branches, new branches, dead wood, of Scotch broom. Iona Beach Regional Park. No leaves or flowers yet; it's early spring.

Broom is well equipped for survival in our climate. It grows well on poor or disturbed soil, because it is able to fix nitrogen from the air. Photosynthesis goes on even in the winter in the green branches, giving it a head start on other deciduous plants. It is winter-hardy, tolerating temperatures as low as -25 Celsius. And it produces seed in abundance; up to 3500 seed pods per plant, with about 7 seeds per pod. That comes out to about 20 thousand seeds. Per plant. And it throws them as far as 5 metres from the parent. Then they can wait up to 10 years for conditions to be best for germinating.

Add to this, toxins that protect it from foraging animals, deep roots and a waxy coating that prevents water loss in periods of drought, and a tendency to acidify the soil, which prevents the growth of native meadow plants. No wonder three plants were enough for an invading force!

Mom was right. It is a"bad weed". If it were well-behaved, and stayed in the gardens where we planted it, things would be fine. But rampaging over the fields, it is a destroyer. It crowds out native forage plants, out-competes evergreen seedlings, grows too densely to serve as cover for small animals. It is highly flammable; even a healthy plant always contains dead wood, and the fresh branches are high in natural oils. It is mildly toxic to animals and humans, and unpalatable to foraging animals.

Eradicating a patch, digging it out, leaves a gaping hole where nothing will grow, until the dormant broom seeds take advantage of the empty space. Burning it off stimulates the seeds.

Clearing land, whether for infrastructure, construction projects, or even logging, opens new ground for broom. Once it has a foothold, it prevents the regrowth of forests, even dooming tree-planting operations.

Iona Beach, where I took the photo above, has the worst infestation of Scotch broom in all the Vancouver metropolitan area. In Surrey, we have found it on the cleared strip under the power lines; a great highway for rapid expansion. On the Island, it is moving north rapidly.

Mom's generation had a saying; "Beauty is as beauty does." I guess broom is not so beautiful, after all.

*The hedge on Buena Vista is gone now; I checked. So is the big old farmhouse I lived in, the sloping meadow behind it, the little maple wood we played in, the henhouse and the fox that haunted it. It's all close-packed housing now. We're invasive, too.

**Or, more likely, vice versa. See comment by Christopher Taylor

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