@johncarlosbaez thank you for posting this. It is absolutely fascinating!

That is an ongoing conversation in both herbalism and in native plant restoration work. Should we be looking at what "pristine" areas were like and be emulating them? Should we be upset when what we plant doesn't emulate what we assume was originally growing there?

Or, should we be flexible, and go with what works? Let the plants guide us, let the plants tell us what they need and where they want to go?

I'm in the second camp; not only do these plants know exactly what they need, you can't force them to do anything (trust me, I've spent years trying to convince home gardeners that they should add native plants to their yards, but also cautioning them that they can be unruly and downright willful about whether or not they like being in your garden).

They migrate, they creep, they communicate, they make choices about where they're going to grow or not grow. They have a lot more intelligence than we give them credit.

I love that these folks are approaching these areas without bias and just learning about what's happening there now. It's amazing!

Ecologist Alison Anastasio visited a former US Steel South Works site in Chicago. She expected to find “all crap plants” — common invasive weeds. To her surprise she spotted little bluestem and three species of native milkweed. She already knew she didn't want a career as an academic scientist. But she came up with the idea of forming a group to study this ecosystem: “a dream team of people I wanted to work with.”

She knew Laura Merwin from the University of Chicago, and later she met Lauren Umek, a project manager for the Chicago Park District. She invited them to brunch to pitch her idea to research plants growing on slag. Not for any obvious career goal. Just from sheer curiosity.

Merwin and Umek were excited to join her project - which she called a “reverse side hustle,” since it involved a lot of work, but didn't make any money: it actually costs money.

And thus the Slag Queens were born.

Their first paper, “Urban post-industrial landscapes have unrealized ecological potential,” was published in Restoration Ecology in 2022. It argues that slag fields don't need to be fixed. They have ecological value in and of themselves. And land managers should forget whatever ecosystem was there before. Instead, they should look to more exotic ecosystems as a guide, like the dolomite prairies of Illinois, where magnesium-rich rock near the surface makes it hard for ordinary plants to thrive. Slag too is rich in magnesium.

The Slag Queens are continuing their revolutionary work even now! For more, start here:

• Carrie Gous, The beauty of slag, https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/beauty-slag

Some of what I just wrote is a paraphrase of this article.

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@johncarlosbaez
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/243204/the-new-wild-by-fred-pearce/9780807039557

@arisummerland @johncarlosbaez I’m with you: Let the plants decide. It’s never clear how much human intervention is helpful, but the track record thus far suggests that the prudent thing is for people to do less. Maybe reintroduce some species and see if they take hold, and maybe remove “crap plants” to let plants that take longer to establish have a chance. But then stand back and let evolution do its thing.

@johncarlosbaez

Lived half my life in the Calumet Region. Nature does thrive in some places among the heavy industry. Thanks for sharing the story.

@quoidian - thanks! The ethics of "invasive species" will need to be rethought as we go deeper into the Anthropocene and "pristine nature" becomes a thing of the past. This book looks interesting!

@quoidian - thanks! The ethics of "invasive species" will need to be rethought as we go deeper into the Anthropocene and "pristine nature" becomes a thing of the past. This book looks interesting!

@johncarlosbaez @quoidian isn't 'pristine nature' one of those impossible ideals? I'm in Australia where we've had 100m of sea level rise since people arrived so questions like "what would nature look like here" are pretty abstract.

"The Biggest Estate on Earth" is a book asking which bits people made.

Here's a tale of how nature triumphs in the end.

Steel mills dumped molten slag in parts of Chicago and nearby areas. The slag hardened in layers up to 5 meters deep. These places became barren wastelands. Other industries dumped hot ash and cinders there.

But eventually the steel mills closed.

The deep layers of hard, toxic material were not friendly to plants. Cottonwoods are usually 30 meters tall or more. In the slag fields, stunted cottonwoods grow to just 2 meters.

But rare species that could handle these conditions began to thrive. The lakeside daisy, a federally threatened species lost to Illinois for decades, turned out to grow taller on slag than on topsoil! The capitate spike-rush, last recorded in Illinois in 1894 and considered locally extinct, was rediscovered growing on slag.

And more! Native prairie grasses like little bluestem. Native milkweeds. Even tiny white orchids called sphinx ladies' tresses.

A team of women ecologists began studying these unusual landscapes. They call themselves the Slag Queens.

(1/2)

Ecologist Alison Anastasio visited a former US Steel South Works site in Chicago. She expected to find “all crap plants” — common invasive weeds. To her surprise she spotted little bluestem and three species of native milkweed. She already knew she didn't want a career as an academic scientist. But she came up with the idea of forming a group to study this ecosystem: “a dream team of people I wanted to work with.”

She knew Laura Merwin from the University of Chicago, and later she met Lauren Umek, a project manager for the Chicago Park District. She invited them to brunch to pitch her idea to research plants growing on slag. Not for any obvious career goal. Just from sheer curiosity.

Merwin and Umek were excited to join her project - which she called a “reverse side hustle,” since it involved a lot of work, but didn't make any money: it actually costs money.

And thus the Slag Queens were born.

Their first paper, “Urban post-industrial landscapes have unrealized ecological potential,” was published in Restoration Ecology in 2022. It argues that slag fields don't need to be fixed. They have ecological value in and of themselves. And land managers should forget whatever ecosystem was there before. Instead, they should look to more exotic ecosystems as a guide, like the dolomite prairies of Illinois, where magnesium-rich rock near the surface makes it hard for ordinary plants to thrive. Slag too is rich in magnesium.

The Slag Queens are continuing their revolutionary work even now! For more, start here:

• Carrie Gous, The beauty of slag, https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/beauty-slag

Some of what I just wrote is a paraphrase of this article.

(2/2)

Ecologist Alison Anastasio visited a former US Steel South Works site in Chicago. She expected to find “all crap plants” — common invasive weeds. To her surprise she spotted little bluestem and three species of native milkweed. She already knew she didn't want a career as an academic scientist. But she came up with the idea of forming a group to study this ecosystem: “a dream team of people I wanted to work with.”

She knew Laura Merwin from the University of Chicago, and later she met Lauren Umek, a project manager for the Chicago Park District. She invited them to brunch to pitch her idea to research plants growing on slag. Not for any obvious career goal. Just from sheer curiosity.

Merwin and Umek were excited to join her project - which she called a “reverse side hustle,” since it involved a lot of work, but didn't make any money: it actually costs money.

And thus the Slag Queens were born.

Their first paper, “Urban post-industrial landscapes have unrealized ecological potential,” was published in Restoration Ecology in 2022. It argues that slag fields don't need to be fixed. They have ecological value in and of themselves. And land managers should forget whatever ecosystem was there before. Instead, they should look to more exotic ecosystems as a guide, like the dolomite prairies of Illinois, where magnesium-rich rock near the surface makes it hard for ordinary plants to thrive. Slag too is rich in magnesium.

The Slag Queens are continuing their revolutionary work even now! For more, start here:

• Carrie Gous, The beauty of slag, https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/beauty-slag

Some of what I just wrote is a paraphrase of this article.

(2/2)

@johncarlosbaez love Love LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH! it’s about resilience outside of neoliberal, settler-capitalist conventions and not just from an ecological point of view; but a academic and scientist point of view as well.

@johncarlosbaez As they point out in the article, the management decisions are highly site-specific. If it’s a wasteland for miles around, go wild with the invasives.

But, wow. The sedge that’s been missing for more than a century? How did it get back there? One gets the impression that somewhere off in a forgotten corner, some plants have been quietly biding their time.

Here's a tale of how nature triumphs in the end.

Steel mills dumped molten slag in parts of Chicago and nearby areas. The slag hardened in layers up to 5 meters deep. These places became barren wastelands. Other industries dumped hot ash and cinders there.

But eventually the steel mills closed.

The deep layers of hard, toxic material were not friendly to plants. Cottonwoods are usually 30 meters tall or more. In the slag fields, stunted cottonwoods grow to just 2 meters.

But rare species that could handle these conditions began to thrive. The lakeside daisy, a federally threatened species lost to Illinois for decades, turned out to grow taller on slag than on topsoil! The capitate spike-rush, last recorded in Illinois in 1894 and considered locally extinct, was rediscovered growing on slag.

And more! Native prairie grasses like little bluestem. Native milkweeds. Even tiny white orchids called sphinx ladies' tresses.

A team of women ecologists began studying these unusual landscapes. They call themselves the Slag Queens.

(1/2)

Ecologist Alison Anastasio visited a former US Steel South Works site in Chicago. She expected to find “all crap plants” — common invasive weeds. To her surprise she spotted little bluestem and three species of native milkweed. She already knew she didn't want a career as an academic scientist. But she came up with the idea of forming a group to study this ecosystem: “a dream team of people I wanted to work with.”

She knew Laura Merwin from the University of Chicago, and later she met Lauren Umek, a project manager for the Chicago Park District. She invited them to brunch to pitch her idea to research plants growing on slag. Not for any obvious career goal. Just from sheer curiosity.

Merwin and Umek were excited to join her project - which she called a “reverse side hustle,” since it involved a lot of work, but didn't make any money: it actually costs money.

And thus the Slag Queens were born.

Their first paper, “Urban post-industrial landscapes have unrealized ecological potential,” was published in Restoration Ecology in 2022. It argues that slag fields don't need to be fixed. They have ecological value in and of themselves. And land managers should forget whatever ecosystem was there before. Instead, they should look to more exotic ecosystems as a guide, like the dolomite prairies of Illinois, where magnesium-rich rock near the surface makes it hard for ordinary plants to thrive. Slag too is rich in magnesium.

The Slag Queens are continuing their revolutionary work even now! For more, start here:

• Carrie Gous, The beauty of slag, https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/beauty-slag

Some of what I just wrote is a paraphrase of this article.

(2/2)

@quoidian - thanks! The ethics of "invasive species" will need to be rethought as we go deeper into the Anthropocene and "pristine nature" becomes a thing of the past. This book looks interesting!

@quoidian @johncarlosbaez

I think there is a perception that resources for invasive species management are directed at any invasive species wherever they may occur simply because it is non-native. Or that the concern about invasive species impacts (and scientific work on the topic) are unobjective and inappropriately value laden. The reality is that the vast majority of invasive species are largely or completely unmanageable, and most interventions must be defensible from a variety of perspectives before the limited resources that may be available are invested. As someone who has lived and worked on oceanic islands a lot, invasive species' impacts are very conspicuous. Their impacts also create ethical dilemmas in relation to the fate of endemic biodiversity. Functional equivalency arguments don't hold up IMO as they seem to reflect our tendency to view nature as being there primarily to serve human needs. I think this slag heap site acting as refuge for specialist native species is cool, but the story says only a little about the legitimacy, ethics or complexity of our concerns about invasive species - these intersect with so many different aspects of the environment, human health and welfare.