‘It’s said, or assumed anyway, that every part of nature has its place. The predators keep populations of prey in check. Prey consume and distribute seeds. The lowliest forms of life, those that feed on the dead, churn out fertile earth. Everything depends on everything else, this is a lesson we’ve seen realized again and again.
Everything except for ‘The Fruitless Bramble.’
There is nothing quite so frustrating to biologists than ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ which covers a few acres in southern California and seems to do… nothing. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ is so nearly inert that most people assumed it’s dead. The thick, brittle vines ribbed with stinging thorns are green only for about a day as they squeeze out new growth. Following that, they fade into a brownish gray and move no longer, hardly twitching under even the strongest winds.
‘The Fruitless Bramble’ kills everything that enters. Mice and birds have not yet evolved to survive there and have difficulty avoiding the thorns. Their bodies litter ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ rotting in the sun because the ground is so hardened by bramble roots that no natural decomposition can take place. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ seems to forgo any of the nutrients it might receive from these kills. It needs next to nothing because it exhibits no seasonal change- no flowers, no berries, no leaves.
‘The Fruitless Bramble’ has proven to be resistant to nearly every type of destruction. It has survived fires set by disgruntled landowners with adjacent property. It has been struck by lightning more times than seems right. It doesn’t respond to any form of weed killer or pesticide and the one time someone attempted to drive a bulldozer straight into the field, ‘The Bramble’ was able to work its way into the wheels and disable the attack before local authorities could respond.
Sometimes nature turns out an evolutionary dead end and ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ appears to be one of these lost causes. It serves no purpose, makes no attempt to spread, but it persists all the same, baking angrily under the sun and howling in the wind and sometimes cracking, randomly, when one spiral of the bramble has become too heavy for bramble underneath.
Avoid those stalls selling ‘Fruitless Bramble Tea.’ It isn’t good, or good for you.
-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
