The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons by Glen Chilton Read Free Book Online Page B

across sands covered everywhere by five centimetres of sea. No matter what my route, each step submerged my sandals and toes, but not my ankles. There seemed to be no way to get around flocks of birds taking advantage of the low-tide bounty. There were lots of gulls, plenty of raucous oystercatchers, with a handful each of turnstones, ducks, and geese, accompanied by endless shorebirds that even the most devout birdwatcher doesn’t try to identify.
    Patches of oysters became larger and more common as I got further from shore. I stepped over and around beautiful patches of red, brown, and green algae, and avoided stranded jellyfishes, knowing that their dying remains can still sting. I marvelled at tinytransparent comb jellies and strained to see minuscule transparent shrimp that could be found most easily by spotting their shadows.
    And after more than twenty minutes of walking, I got to a really substantial oyster bed. It was as ugly as the biggest one at the first site, but without the fetid black ooze underfoot. But I found that I couldn’t stop there. Like a magpie drawn to a broken metal watch-strap, I walked further and further out, following oyster beds that turned into oyster reefs, reaching upward from the sand. In spots, cormorants roosted on the oysters, drying their wings in a crucifix posture.
    Then I remembered that along parts of Canada’s east coast the tide comes in faster than a person can walk. I checked my watch and then the tide table in my pocket. The tide was returning, and I was more than a kilometre from shore. Checking the tide table again, I found that, where I was standing, the sea would reach almost exactly the crown of my head. No real need to worry though, as I had only a thirty-minute walk to shore and the tide would require six hours.
    It had taken several decades, but I really felt that I was getting the hang of working for a living. Like everyone else, I had survived plenty of jobs that were less than entirely appealing and barely paid the bills. I had washed trucks, filled oxygen cylinders, unloaded empty beer bottles from trucks, and scraped bakery floors. But on this day my life as a biologist was transcendent. As the sea slowly recovered its oysters, Lisa and I watched the sun shining off clouds to the east, making a stunning reflection in the wet sand. Lisa was in such a good mood that she indicated that she would be willing to eat an oyster if it would help my narrative. I explained that it wasn’t part of her job description.

CHAPTER THREE

The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons
    REASON NUMBER THREE FOR INTRODUCING A FOREIGN SPECIES: BECAUSE I NEED TO REPLACE THE TREES I CUT DOWN.
    W HEN IT COMES TO BIG, BOLD, AND BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS, it is hard to beat a rhododendron. You also have to give them big points for variety; there is something like 1,000 recognized species, supplemented by all manner of hybrids. Colourful and showy to a fault, they have a wealth of admirers. In Victorian Britain, there was no shortage of adventurers willing to travel to eastern Asia and risk their hides in order to collect new species of rhododendron and bring them back to England. This troupe included such luminary botanists as Joseph Hooker, who brought back about thirty species, and the aptly named George Forrest, who hauled home an astonishing 300 species. Today, rhododendron fanciers’ clubs are found everywhere the plant can be cultivated. Rhododendrons have even been named the state flowers of Washington (
Rhododendron macrophyllum
) and West Virginia (
Rhododendron maximum
)
.
    And this is all well and good, because most species of rhododendron know how to sit still and shut up. But at any large party, there is always one guest who doesn’t know when to stop drinkingor when to go home. In the world of large and showy flowering plants, that unruly guest is
Rhododendron ponticum,
sometimes called the common rhododendron, which is native to parts of southern Europe and the Middle East. The great