And the Envelope Please . . .

Here in North America it is the season of awards for creative performances. The award names are so personal—Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Obie, venerable Oscar, and so on. Of the hundreds of potential winners, creative artists all, just a few get anointed as individuals of very special achievement to be singled out and celebrated.

These high fliers in the world of aesthetics perform at a level few of us in the world of ecological restoration can reach. However, there are creative performers in a different world of aesthetic beauty which also surround us, the living plants and their mutualists which are the focus of our professional lives. One could argue that the evolutionary processes grounded in genetics are masters at creative achievement. The millions of species we work with elicit wonder and joys that often matches the pleasure we get watching theatrical or musical achievements. The spectacle of color, movement, odor, and sound in our habitats can be considered a performance molded by the creative force of natural selection.

We refused to stand away from the spotlight any longer and present to you the winners of our awards for high evolutionary creative achievements, "The Greenies". May I have the envelopes, please?

Best Deciduous Tree That's Native

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata)! Once a star of our forest, its wood valuable, sweet nuts provided annually, shade giver, wildlife food supermarket, and then crushed by a fungus brought in from afar. But it keeps coming back, and our forests remain scattered with sprouts refusing to face extinction. Maybe someday it will rise again, but our first award is for persistence in the face of endless trauma.

Best Deciduous Tree That's Not Native

The ginkgo (Gingko biloba)! Elegant, angular, city slicker, thriving where so many other trees refuse to go. Our streets are often lined with this male chorus line as the smelly females are left behind at the nurseries. Ancient, oddball, divorced from its reproductive partners, the ginkgo remains a favorite of our urban designers and their Asian food lovers, even if it fails many ecological service tests for food web usefulness.

Best Shrub

A big field and a close contest. This year's winner is shadblow, the Amelanchier species. In form and fall color, it is lovely. Its fleshy fruit attracts our birds. But it's magical flowering time is early in the year when the shad fish are entering our rivers, giving the shrub its common name. The flowers open and the fish arrive in the same short window of time, ancient adaptations that link the plant and aquatic animal worlds, reminding us of the great patterns of seasonality and life.

Best Ensemble

The chaparral! Burning, resprouting, tolerating continual fires, feared and often unloved, but it still keeps going. Supported by its smoke-sensing seeds and its oil filled, herbivore retarding leaves, it is a defensive whiz. It keeps coming back after every trauma.

Best Urban Immigrant

The nod goes to seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)! This beach dwelling specialist, tolerant of salt, has found a new role as a charmer along our urban streets. Where so many of our species fade away with high salinity soil, his goldenrod has moved away from the quiet coastal range to our downtown highways by following the salty soil created by our winter highway teams. By turning polluted microsites into new niche space, this goldenrod gives new color and floral resources to our urban curbs.

Best Supporting Taxa

Let's give a hand to the mycorrhizal fungi community in our old fields! New studies have shown that meadow community composition is dependent on a soil fungal community often invisible and hard to identify. These fungi remind us that one may be out of sight and consequently, out of mind, but still be a critical resource for the future of restoration.

Best Monster in the Room

Perhaps we should say, most effective monster. Take a bow, Mr. and Mrs. White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Gobbling up our woodland understory, crashing reproductive rates as well as into our cars, and harboring Lyme disease, this species is a public enemy on many fronts. To us, what makes it...