I’ve been going in the woods while wearing the baby in a sling. Sometimes she sleeps, but other times she soaks it all in. Leaves are especially fascinating. Her motor skills are continuously developing so that soon we’ll have to stop her from stuffing the closer ones into her mouth. Most forest leaves are probably just inedible. Some pack nasty surprises specifically designed for mammal browsers.

Like the single baneberry I came across on a random woods walk. It was a surreal addition to a familiar background with its fruit shaped like eyeballs on red stalks. The name comes from the fact that it’s a bane to those who sample its berries, thanks to some cardiac glucosides found in all parts of the plant. Birds and some mice, however, are immune. This is the sort of discovery I want to share with our daughter. The way the forest can be experienced in different scales and layers. I like to observe intersections of multiple histories, including both “natural” and “human.”

I love old, evocative names for plants which were obviously applied by those who paid more attention to such things than most people nowadays. These names can be based on incorrect assumptions. Take the spring flower hepatica, whose liver-shaped leaves are scattered in clumps throughout the forest where they will be green all winter before being discarded. Despite the origin of the name, this plant is not at all effective at curing liver disorders (hepat- = liver). The boneset scattered along the driveway with its strong, fused leaves adds possible liver toxicity to its lack of demonstrated effectiveness against “bone-break fever.”

A related plant, white snakeroot, is definitely toxic. I can’t find studies of its use against snakebites, but it’s infamous for spreading deadly “milk sickness” among early European settlers. Cows grazed in woodland when pasture was unproductive or unavailable would eat snakeroot and their milk would become contaminated with a toxin if they lived. Cows always seem to be eating something toxic in the annals of poisonous plants. The story of milk sickness felt much less distant when I came across this bit of the past growing on our land. White snakeroot seems particularly lush where the stream crosses the ghost of a boundary road.



But not all the stories I want to show our daughter involve humans. Nor are all the interactions in the forest antagonistic. Species can compete with, cooperate with, exploit, avoid, or even ignore each other. Interactions spread out and converge. This snag has fed fungi and insects. Woodpeckers have pockmarked the surface to find the insects, creating holes which spiders use as they weave webs to catch more insects. Poison ivy climbs up to replace the leaves which once belonged to the live tree. Poison ivy flowers cooperate to be pollinated by insects and the seeds are spread by hungry birds.

Sometimes these stories are easy to read, other times they play out over long time periods, or below the soil surface. Cooperation may not be readily apparent, like the trans-kingdom, more or less equal partnerships of fungi and algae or cyanobacteria which make up the lichens tinging many tree trunks or rocks green in our forest. In the soil, mycorrhizal fungi partner with plant roots, increasing their access to nutrients and water in exchange for carbohydrates manufactured by the plants. Little, ghostly Indian pipes actually parasitize these fungi, not the plant roots, to make up for their lack of chlorophyll.



But that’s not the first thing I think of when I stumble across a random cluster of Indian pipes in the forest. There’s the joy of discovery and recognition. I feel a connection, however brief. I want to share with my daughter a love of life and delight in all its variety. Whatever I share, she’ll find her own way.