Creosote Bushes Carbon Sink Ancient Forest

1. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 1/7
Menu Search
Coyote Crossing
Writing and photography from the Mojave and Sonoran deserts by Chris Clarke

The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Posted by Chris Clarke
Imagine we found a country the size of France covered in ancient forest, where trees a century old were mere saplings
just getting started, where the oldest sprouted when near­mythical monsters roamed the landscape.
Imagine visiting this country, standing in a particular spot and watching. Perhaps you’ve left the house on an errand.
Perhaps you just went out to get some air. And you walk a half a block from the place you’re staying, caught up in one
important thought or another, and you suddenly realize that within 60 feet of you are three trees more than a thousand
years old. You turn your head and there are two more.
You start to see the open, park­like forest with new eyes, really seeing the unimaginable ancientness of it. Everywhere
you look: trees 700, 1,000, 3,000 years old. You rack your brain for half­remembered scraps of human history.
Charlemagne was emperor when that tree sprouted, and that one a dozen paces east was probably sending out leaves
when the Magna Carta was written. Every now and then you see a tree that could have sheltered Nefertiti, had she the
airfare.
And imagine that as you really see the trees for the first time, you remember hearing about a hundred different plans
to cut them down. It’s not that their timber is valuable, or that people need centuries­old firewood.
It’s just that people have deemed this incredibly ancient forest worthless, and they’ve decided the land it occupies
could be better used for other things. And so they plan to bulldoze it, stack the trees in debris piles to rot, and build
their more important parking lots and garbage dumps.
This country, this forest: they exist. I live there. The trees rarely exceed ten feet in height. They are well known to
science: Mojave yucca, diamond and buckhorn cholla, Mormon tea, but mostly, and almost everywhere you look
below 5,000 feet in the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan deserts, creosote.

2. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 2/7
The oldest known creosote bush, about 40 miles from my house as the raven flies, is estimated to be 11,700 years
old. It’s a ring of seemingly independent shrubs. A single creosote seed germinated, its stem grew and widened for
perhaps a century, then a side shoot emerged from the ground next to the original stem. It grew. Side shoots emerged.
After another century or five, the oldest stems began to die, leaving a widening hole in the clump of stems.
That 11,700­year­old creosote, which for a tiny fraction of its life has been known as King Clone, expanded outward
across the Mojave landscape at an average rate of three quarters of a millimeter per year. It’s not the only creosote
that has done so. When I take my dog out for her walk in the morning, I pass within stone­throwing distance of two or
three dozen smaller rings, some of them ten or twelve feet across at the soil. Some have open soil in their centers.
Others have not yet cleared the dead stems from their hearts.
Do the math, and use a much more conservative millimeter per year to defend against charges of hyperbole, and
that’s 300 years of age for every foot in width of those rings. Creosote stands in excess of 500 years old are as
common as dirt where I live. (That’s literally true: just about the only humus you’ll find in this part of the desert gathers
at the base of these creosote clumps.) A ten­foot clump of creosote may have germinated about the time David threw
his stone at Goliath, a 12­foot clump before people in Japan started growing rice.
I have been thinking these days about a particular large­scale plan to convert much of the California desert
to renewable energy generation plants. This plan has been a decade in the making. It is controversial, but it is getting
less so as the years pass. There are provisions in this plan to set aside wide swaths of the California desert for
conservation, in arrangements as permanent as anything can be when it’s the U.S. government doing the arranging.
There are provisions to protect certain threatened species, and to preserve habitats that are rare or ecologically
important or which possess the ineffable characteristics of wilderness.
And so many environmental organizations have been persuaded to support the plan, which trades those protected
areas for freedom to convert a large number of square miles of desert deemed to have no wilderness characteristics,
lesser ecological significance, fewer endangered animals, fewer rare plants.
A mere baby of less than a century

3. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 3/7
« Previous
Leave a Reply
Enter your comment here...
Like 1.6K Tweet Share 12 submit
July 24, 2016
8 Replies
Creosote is the most common woody plant in the Mojave. No one fears its extinction. In this renewable energy plan,
creosote is mentioned primarily to identify the kind of habitat it dominates. It is not a special status species; it is
barely a regular status species. It is ubiquitous and environmentalists peer through its branches hoping to see
something interesting on the other side.
I have seen creosote rings 1,500 years old on the footprints of proposed desert solar facilities, at the verges of dirt
roads in off­road vehicle sacrifice areas. I have seen them bedecked with discarded plastic bags in vacant lots next to
chain drugstores.
They make up the only ancient forest I’ve ever heard of that no one can see, though they look square at it.
I see it lately, and it tears my heart. And once seen, it cannot be unseen.
Share this:
Email
Like this:
Like
2 bloggers like this.

Camille Thompson on July 24, 2016 at 9:10 pm
you mean the old greasewood trees? their blossoms and branches make an oily tea that has to be drunk in
small sips. usually a room temperature tea. very
toxic if taken too much or too fast…whistling wind through the branches helps the tea go down.
Samantha Vimes on July 24, 2016 at 10:55 pm
I had no idea.

4. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 4/7
Search
ON THE COYOT.ES NETWORK
Nemesis Bird and the Chronic Nostalgiac
Birds and Words ­ Published on July 25, 2016 by Julia Zarankin
In the Field, Finally
Dispersal Range ­ Published on July 24, 2016 by Meera Lee Sethi
A weekend in Lake Tahoe
View from Elephant Hills ­ Published on 7 June 2016 by T R Shankar Raman
Bill Tuck Jr on July 25, 2016 at 3:57 am
Great Story. I always thought the first Desert Protection act would eventually produce a World Park? I don’t
know what to think now?
Jonah Olson on July 25, 2016 at 1:08 pm
I have a show that just opened at a gallery in Berlin about this exact topic and king clone in particular. I live in
apple valley. We should chat
Ken Erickson on July 25, 2016 at 3:24 pm
Delicious prose: “It is ubiquitous and environmentalists peer through its branches hoping to see something
interesting on the other side.” And after a rain, one’s whole body smells the eons. Thanks, Chris.
Susan on July 26, 2016 at 6:32 pm
Fascinating. I didn’t know this about creosote.
Bob Lien on July 26, 2016 at 6:41 pm
Awesome – been saying this for years also. There are rings near our domes that are at least 5,000 years. And I
have watched in horror as pristine desert gets bulldozed. I have researched and used creosote tea and as an
external poultice. Thank you for spreading the word.
Chris on July 26, 2016 at 9:16 pm
Thank you for enlightening me in such a beautiful way!

5. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 5/7
Musings on the tinkling of glass from the almost shattered ceiling of American democracy
Reconciliation Ecology ­ Published on June 6, 2016 by Madhusudan Katti
Australian Magpies Are Not Corvids
The Corvid Blog ­ Published on March 7, 2016 by The Corvid Blog
The Heart of Freedom ­ Cecil the Lion
Wild Within ­ Published on July 29, 2015 by Jennifer Molidor
California note 1
Slow Water Movement ­ Published on July 7, 2015 by slowwatermovement
Joe Eaton calls "Fowl!" A Review
Toad In The Hole ­ Published on July 4, 2015 by Joe Eaton
The Silurian Valley spared­ but will it be conserved?
Miracle or Mirage? ­ Published on December 5, 2014 by Patrick Donnelly
Lone Pine's 'lone pine' Is Dead
InyoOwnWay ­ Published on August 13, 2014 by Mike Prather
A Good Defense...Is Not Enough
The 'Not Essential' List ­ Published on August 18, 2013 by Shaun G.
Nevada Part 2
Basin and Range Watch ­ Published on July 17, 2013 by Basin and Range Watch
Recent Posts
The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Berta Cáceres and the California Desert
Movement
Day and night
Antisocial media
Recent Comments
Chris on The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Bob Lien on The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Susan on The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Ken Erickson on The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Jonah Olson on The giant ancient forest you cannot see
Get my free email newsletter
Enter your email address
Subscribe
powered by TinyLetter
On Twitter

6. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 6/7
Embed View on Twitter
Tweets by @canislatrans
46m
Everyone's a critic instagram.com/p/BIX2LP3g0og/
Those of you who are on Fb may find my note of
Chris Clarke @canislatrans
Chris Clarke @canislatrans
Feeds
RSS ­ Posts
RSS ­ Comments
My writing at Beacon
A Landscape of Shattered Bones June 14, 2016
Got Back to Where I Still Belong March 23, 2016
Time, Flood, and the Migration of Desert Trees December 12, 2015
Napping In the Belly Of The King August 27, 2015
The Central Valley’s Second Coming May 27, 2015
The Desert Is Not Your Blank Canvas April 19, 2015
Cynicism and Sentiment In The Desert February 17, 2015
My writing at KCET
Top Posts & Pages
The giant ancient forest you cannot see
About Chris
This is what happens when it rains in the desert
20 Amazing True Facts About Introverts and Extroverts
Berta Cáceres and the California Desert
Coyote Crossing
Belief in Evolutionary Psychology May Be Hardwired, Study Says
My old dog
Coyote­killing “tournament” in Fallon, NV
Deadman Creek, Mono County, California, 1994
Meta
Log in
Entries RSS
Comments RSS

7. 7/27/2016 The giant ancient forest you cannot see | Coyote Crossing
http://coyot.es/crossing/2016/07/24/the­giant­ancient­forest­you­cannot­see/ 7/7
WordPress.org
Follow this blog
Tags
Animals Biography Blogging Bloggy stuff Books Botany Coyote Crow's Foot
Desert Endangered Species Energy Family Food Friends Garden Hiking Ivanpah
Valley Los Angeles Mojave National Preserve Music National Parks Off­Roaders Paleo Paleontology Parks
Pets Phoning it in Photography photos Poetry Politics Public Lands
Recommended Satire Science Solar The Creek The Neighborhood Thistle
Travel Video Visual Art Wildlife Writing Zeke
View Full Site
Proudly powered by WordPress