In Dr. Ava Goodale’s Environmental Science Research Course at Deerfield Academy, high school students collect environmental data as volunteer scientists, analyze those data in a technical report, and create an interpretive writing piece that tells a story about their experience. The students featured in this series participated in Nature’s Notebook campaigns and were kind enough to share their interpretive writing pieces with us.
About Henry
Hello! My name is Henry Cron and I am a Senior at Deerfield Academy. I am a part of Deerfield's first Environmental Science 2 Research Course, and in it, we have done extensive research on many aspects of phenology, including looking at the growth patterns of invasive Knotweeds. Along with Environmental science, I love to play tennis, lift weights, and I am a part of the Deerfield Acting program as well! Enjoy my interpretive piece!
Interpretive Writing Piece
My grandmother had beautiful rows of hydrangeas at her home in Vermont. They were warm, comforting, and inviting, and she was proud of them. She spent hours in her front yard, surrounded by the Vermont landscape, ensuring that the hydrangeas themselves were maintained, cared for and loved. She was a true steward, as she treated her garden with love and passion. When I was young, I would play hide and seek with my sister and mom in those bushes, and the beautiful smell of the bloomed flowers in spring always brought a smile to my face. However, my grandmother was not able to be the steward she wanted to be. She got sick and was not able to care for her beautiful hydrangeas anymore. Eventually, they were overtaken by weeds and invasive plants. After many months of her garden not being tended to, I visited with my family. The place that once brought a huge smile to my face slowly faded, as I saw invasive Japanese knotweed taking over the place where I made memories when I was young, taking over the areas that my grandmother cared so much for. These plants drained the color from those gorgeous bushes, and wrapped around them, squeezing all the life out of them.
Now, as an older and wiser student in an Environmental Science research class at Deerfield Academy, I have the ability to put what happened to my grandmother’s garden in a larger context about invasive plant stewardship. In a class project this fall, I was part of a research project to understand how invasive plant phenology can inform stewardship practices.
When I started this project, I walked down to the Deerfield River at the beginning of my senior year, contemplating the difficult year ahead. I began to take in the beautiful scenery, the trees, the flowers, and the gorgeous stream. However, this beauty that was made up of so many different colors and plant species was suddenly interrupted by the ugliness of an array of dead trees, due to the competition of the non-native uninvited Japanese and Bohemian Knotweed. This scene was a reminder of my Grandmother's house. The trees and other plants along the river bank could have been magnificent, but there were no stewards to make a difference. I began to do research on these plants and found that both Japanese and Bohemian Knotweed are invasive plants that originate from east Asia, but now harm the land of North America economically, as well as physically through property damage and ecosystem degradation. This wasn't just a problem with my grandmother's house and the trees on the riverbank, but rather, it affects so many. Such a big problem, but with such little intervention. Japanese and Bohemian knotweed not only hurt a tree or a plant you may see walking around, but it takes over ecosystems, decreases biodiversity, and affects the longevity of the ecosystem. I imagined what this area would be like if it had a steward like my grandmother, who visited daily, cared for the space, and tended to its needs. Feeling that absence of a steward in the place and knowing firsthand how impactful that role is, I felt called to action.
Our environmental science class decided that we could be the hub for a change, and decided to continue our research in order to make a plan to get rid of these plants, and be stewards by logging our information almost everyday through Nature’s Notebook, and keeping exact logs of the observations we as a class made. We learned that along with Japanese and Bohemian Knotweed causing so much damage, they also are virtually impossible to get rid of without continuous application of herbicides, and this constant application needs to take place at a certain time of variability for the plants. With that in mind, we needed to figure out the certain time frame that would be most optimal for land owners to use said herbicides. In order to find out this, doing external research told us that the best time to be able to have these knotweeds was after the flowering of these plants. As a class, we then took turns monitoring knotweed phenology along the river to understand the flower phenophase timing by using our specific logs. This information would inform stewards when the most optimal time for targeted management practices. We figured out that on the day of 9/16 and 9/18, both were almost fully flowered, and then on 10/09, that was the last day that any flowers or buds were observed.
Now, with this information, it was another step towards advancing citizen science and increasing overall stewardship here at Deerfield, but more importantly across the whole world. The information that we obtained through our research can now be used through the USA National Phenology Network to help create a better understanding of Japanese/Bohemian Knotweed, therefore increasing stewardship on a level that we would normally not be able to do.
After helping to create a change, I now understand why my grandmother cared so much for her flowers. It was not because I was able to play hide and seek in her garden or the flowers just looked pretty. Rather, she understood that her garden stood for something bigger. To be a steward, and to be someone that cares not to gain anything, is someone who also archives reciprocity. When my grandmother cared for the land, the land then also cared for her. By doing what my grandmother did by caring for something bigger than her, something that was able to give her a sense of home, a community, I am now able to try and do the same here at Deerfield Academy. My grandmother was able to foster her own community and make a difference at any opportunity that she could, and I think I am one step closer to becoming the steward my grandmother once was.