The cover story on this week's issue of The Hook is "INVASION: They live among us." I had never heard of The Hook before today - looks like it is a weekly color magazine targeted at readers in Charlottesville, Virginia. It sure is pretty, too. The article is packed with information about invasive plants and animals found in the Virginia area, and features interviews with a member of the Virginia Native Plant Society, a nature writer, and a parks official. Definitely worth a read.
3 comments:
The article avoids mentioning that Thomas Jefferson compulsively cultivated all kinds of exotics at Monticello. One simply does not crticize him in Charlottesville, where the bookstores are still loaded with Dumas Malone's multi-volume biography of the great man.
Interesting observation. I did some research on the topic for my thesis - it should be noted that Jefferson was also one of several exotic plant aficionados sending American botanical curiosities over to Europe as well. I cannot recall if he was the one who sent Collinson poison ivy but certainly he was in that saame circle. :-)
Silly Tom, he should be ashamed of himself for not being aware of the aquired body of knowledge of the coming 150-200 years. He,like the rest of us, can't know what he doesn't know, especially when nobody else knows it either?
I wonder how many invasive species studies were underway in 1800 and how Tom missed reading about the problem, as he had one of the most extensive library's in the country? Lazy, most likely.
Old Tom was human and certainly had his failings, but I'm not convinced that this is one of them. What will revisionist thinkers in 100 years lambast our time for not knowing, which will only be dicovered 50 years from now, in the future?
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