I don’t really get the idea that nature is an unending struggle for survival – red in tooth and claw – and all that violent guff which gets pressed into service to provide an ideological scaffolding for behaving in greedy and vile ways – as if Tennyson were a fan of the dark satanic mills. This isn’t a sudden insight brought on by a dose of Cornish spring (although life feels a lot better when the sun shines). We’ve had five days wandering the footpaths and hedgerows of the Roseland peninsula; photographing and recording plants as we go, and this time I was paying particular attention to the succession of plants; especially the carrot family, the Apiaceae, as they emerge one by one in the spring.
I remember the first time I tried to get to grips with this family of lookalikes. I’d noticed the plant known as Alexanders – almost always the first to emerge with its shiny celery-like leaves and an umbrella-like flower head of creamy yellow-white. I’d just bought my very first flower book, published by Warnes, and I went about finding my plant in the traditional beginners’ mode; turning the pages one by one until I found an illustration that looked right. So far so good, but fired with enthusiasm I went on to look at the others in the same family and when I came across some fine drawings of the seeds (alarmingly similar) which were the ultimate key to naming them all; I sighed, shut the book and didn’t open those pages again for years.
Six decades later I know a little bit more (not that much!) and it’s all very interesting, because there’s a distinct succession of these plants every year. Alexanders is usually first to appear as a handsome plant, but soon starts to yellow off and look very tatty. Then comes Cow Parsley – an unfortunate name for such a dazzlingly white and beautiful plant with lace-like leaves; shortly followed by Hogweed and all the others, and yes – it’s quite hard to tell some of them apart because they rarely grow side by side simultaneously. They go on mucking me about, popping out for their brief lives one by one until October and then there’s only the seeds to identify, and they are so beautiful when you look at them through a hand lens; ridged and horned as if carved by a miniaturist sculptor. They emerge, flourish, flower and die but I’ve never ever heard a Hogweed beating up a Cow parsley plant in the dead of night while no-one’s supposed to be about. I’ve never seen a Pignut abuse a Wild Carrot or cheat a Sanicle of its inheritance nor a Hemlock Water Dropwort leave its stream to poison some Rock Samphire and spoil a forager’s day. I just can’t see any evidence that there’s a battle for survival going on out there unless it’s to develop some resistance to chemicals.
The plants – not just the Carrot family – seem to have evolved a scheme to allow all of them to flourish and complete their life cycle in relative peace apart from the predation of cows, hogs and numerous small bites from insects. They grow to different heights; the later ones being generally taller than the early ones and pop their clogs before they become a burden to their neighbours – and I’ve never heard any moaning about the brevity of life from the depths of a hedge or a ditch. By and large they seem enviably contented, if that’s not a category error. We humans like to whinge about the way our happiness has been stolen (always someone else’s fault) when in fact we’ve hidden it because we don’t want to own it. Before long, the safe place where we concealed it is forgotten and we can relish the tragedy of our lives over a couple of bottles of cheap wine. Plants don’t do that.
I have the great fortune of meeting a teacher who’s thought deeply about this and whose work crosses many borders that are patrolled by legions of gatekeepers – a brave soul. He explains the fruits of his labours as “Natural Inclusion” – as against Natural Selection in its purest and darkest form. You can Google the phrase and you’ll see who he is in much more detail, his name’s Alan and he’s a great teacher. He uses scientific conceptual language, but he also uses poetry and painting to express his ideas.
Basically, and dangerously simplifying, with a little help from Google Gemini here’s a very concise summary of an important antidote to lazy evolutionary thinking that plonks us down in the middle of a merciless battle. If ever we needed to visualize ourselves as a working and living part of nature it’s now. There are many threads that have joined together to create our bondage to greed and exploitation as if it were something natural, and we have a few decades at best to cut through them and set ourselves and the ecosystem free before it’s too late.
Alan Rayner proposes a new concept called natural inclusion which challenges some aspects of traditional evolutionary theory. Here are the key points of his ideas:
- Natural Inclusion (NI): This is Rayner’s core concept. He argues that nature fundamentally works through inclusion, not separation. Boundaries between things are seen as dynamic interactions, not fixed lines. Imagine the difference between walking through a doorway (inclusion) versus hitting a brick wall (exclusion).
- Questioning Natural Selection: Rayner believes natural selection isn’t the whole story of evolution. He proposes that the process of change is more about the flow of energy and the dynamic interplay between organisms and their environment.
- Nature as a Guide: Rayner suggests looking to nature for moral guidance. He proposes honesty, reasonableness, and kindness as core values because they reflect natural processes.
Rayner uses art, alongside writing, to explore these ideas. His paintings serve as a way to connect with people who might not be drawn to scientific explanations.
St Francis talked about the sun, the moon and the stars; the animals and the earth as our brothers and sisters. I found the Geranium in the photo on the footpath leaving Portscatho. It probably escaped from a garden somewhere nearby and I instantly fell in love with it. If our current worldview doesn’t allow us to fall in love with a plant, we need to get another world view!
