Sunday, 8:15 AM. 54 degrees, wind W, light. Skies are mostly clear, the barometer is down, predicting partly cloudy weather.
Skipped church this morning and took Lucky to the beach. There are incipient signs of fall now, a lone red maple turning early; wild black cherry trees, Prunus serotina, laden with almost-ripe fruit.
The beach and its sand are constantly changing position do to the action of wind and waves. If not stabilized by nature, there would be constant destruction of habitat. The primary stabilizer and colonizer of our Great Lakes beaches is beach grass, Ammophila breviligulata, which although it produces seed, spreads and does its work primarily by stoloniferous runners that produce new plants, much as a strawberry plant does, by offshoots. This tenacious grass stretches across huge areas of sand, and if conditions warrant, other plants such as wild rose and sand cherry and poison ivy follow in its wake, and eventually other shrubs and finally trees. This whole natural succession process is of course often altered by wind, waves, fire or human activity, and then must start all over again.
It has been said, “grass is the benediction of nature,” and that certainly applies to beach grass.
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