Wild abandon: the mystery and glory of plant diversity

I am standing on the rocky ledge that is Ring Mountain on a spring day. Within sight are San Francisco and bustling, built-up Marin County. Houses, cars, people, and roads — all the trappings of “civilization” — are everywhere. And yet, I am surrounded by a staggering variety of life.

The plant diversity alone is astounding. Wildflowers are blooming: three different mariposa lilies, orange poppies, pink checkerbloom, blue dicks. Yellow and white tidy-tips, pink and white buckwheat. Two different wild onions, milkmaids, iris in all shades of purple and white. They grow among a mix of grasses, from three inches to two feet high. Some with narrower or broader leaves, and tight or airy inflorescences.

Above their heads, hawks and vultures wheel. Sparrows, thrushes and wrens nest in shrubs edging stands of wind-sculpted live oak. A coyote emerges from among the rock outcroppings, stops at the sight of me, and chooses another direction. A snake makes a quick, sinuous getaway at a movement of my feet.

Butterflies of varied hues float by. Different species of bees are busy with the wildflowers. The dirt at my feet holds billions of microbes, yeast, and fungi. When I aim my camera lens at a flower for a close-up, I might find it full of tiny beetles.

Raising my eyes to neighboring Mount Tamalpais, I know of lives there that aren’t here. Orchids, trillium, houndstongue, varieties of ferns cascading down hillsides. Bobcats are roaming there, and the tapping of woodpeckers softly echoes through the forest.

Just a few miles north, the redwoods start. Three hours east, alpine plants and bears are coming to life under the snow in the Sierra Nevada. Another hour and I’d be among the desert plants of Nevada. Just west, beyond Mt. Tam, I’ll float among whales, dolphins, seals. There are countless fish and plants that make up the life of the Pacific Ocean.

That’s just a tiny sample of what’s living in one tiny area of the world. And an area that is also full of the trappings of human life. It’s not remotely wild here. And yet the plant diversity and the sheer exuberance of life that has characterized evolution is on full display.

It’s estimated that there are between 500- and 600,000 plant species on Earth. We’ve identified about 250,000 of them. More are evolving all the time. A 2011 study postulated that there are 87 million species on the planet. But the fungus crowd immediately disagreed with the study’s parameters. Fungus alone could eventually account for 5 million species. 

In other words, we don’t know. It’s a noble effort to track all of this, and crucial for species preservation amid a frightening rate of extinction. But lists don’t tell us why we have all this exuberant abundance of forms. On an Earth that itself offers an array of habitats: mountains, ponds, forests, rivers, deserts, savannah, estuaries. Rolling hill country, prairie, arctic tundra, valleys, mud flats, rainforest, oceans, canyons.

Evolution clearly chose variety as a driving force. There is innate wisdom in diversity; we’re living proof of its benefits. The mammalian world, including us, exists today because tiny mammals survived the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Genetic diversity within a species is also a strength, which is why sexual reproduction dominates the planet. Having genes from each parent keeps subtly mixing the gene pool. This makes it more likely that plants will gain resilience so they can prosper in their particular habitats. Combining new genes, generation after generation, allows for mutations that give rise to different colors, shapes, and adaptations, leading to this flowering of plant diversity.

Even so, I puzzle about this. Why the unbelievable profusion of forms? Why so many sizes, shapes, and colors, so many wondrous and sometimes odd variations? I accept the idea that the wildflowers surrounding me on Ring Mountain evolved to compete for resources and pollinators. But that just moves the question laterally. Why are the pollinators so diverse, and why are their tastes — in nectar, color, pollen, approach — so varied? 

Though I’m delighted with the way things worked out, I can imagine an evolution that included less diversity. There are many more yellow flowers than purple, pink or red, implying that yellow has an evolutionary advantage. Why didn’t nature stick to yellow? Pollinators could have evolved to suit an all-yellow-flower world.

It’s almost as if the creative forces just couldn’t help themselves. Wide petals! Strappy petals! What’s the oddest shape we can think of? Let’s fill California with orange poppies! We’ll surprise everyone and give luminous, silky flowers to tough, prickly cacti! Let’s perfume the roses!

It’s easy to understand why people for millennia would think all this is for our benefit and joy. But those luminous cactus flowers were there for bees and hummingbirds, for the propagation of more cacti, not for human delight. The ancestors of the wind-blown wildflowers on Ring Mountain and the tiny, vivid spring orchids on Mount Tam? They were around for over 200 million years before we cast our receptive eyes and processing brains on them and found them beautiful.

Carl Sagan, Thomas Berry, and others have postulated the idea that the universe evolved humans to contemplate itself through those eyes and brains. I love this thought, but I also find it hard to wrap my head around. What kind of universe would this be? To say that we evolved so the universe can contemplate itself implies a mystery of intent that I struggle — happily — to fathom.

For today, though, I simply celebrate the gifts showering my senses — breeze, color, scent, birdsong. Happy to be part of the enigma in this sunlit spring moment. “The most beautiful and deepest experience one can have,” Albert Einstein said, “is the sense of the mysterious.”

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Top photo: tidy tips (Layia platyglossa) and California poppy (eschscholzia californica)

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