Badass blooms

By T. W. Burger

Mulling over the second mug of coffee this morning, reluctant to begin another day in front of the keyboard, I considered the mass of flowers in the vase at the table's center. It was a typical spring mix, several varieties of daffodil, with a smattering of giant snowdrops.

It has often been said that it is a shame that flowers last such a little time before they wither. Wouldn't it be great if they could bloom all the time, some say?

Yes. And no. They would not mean the same thing if they were not so ephemeral. Somehow, flowers tough enough to last all year are hard to imagine. Delicacy is the very essence of flowers.

But then, toughness may be a matter of definition. After all, flowers may well have helped bring about the end of the age of dinosaurs or at least boost the fortunes of their successors.

Consider that millions of years ago, toward the end of the rule of the giant reptiles, flowers did not exist. Plants reproduced through pollen and spores, as surviving species such as ferns and conifers do today. Plants spread slowly.

The lords of the earth, the cold-blooded leviathans, survived by eating enormous amounts of green plant material, or by eating huge amounts of dinosaurs who had eaten huge amounts of greenery.

Then, along came flowers, with their self-contained seeds, each of which had a miniature version of the adult plant and a rich supply of food to set the new sprout well on its way.

Over a relatively brief period, as such things go, flowering plants and their seeds took on a bewildering array of shapes and functions. In the grass family alone, which includes all the cereal grains that make up the bulk of our modern diet, there are more than 6,000 species.

As luck would have it, those little packets of food, in their uncountable varieties and numbers, also made a wonderful food source for so-far insignificant small creatures. Among them were the mammals, a group that would one day, scores of millions of years in the future, include us.

And, as luck would have it again, something went terribly wrong for the dinosaurs. A big rock hit the planet and screwed everything up. The world got cooler after a bit, a lot cooler. On cold nights, the great lizards still around moved around, if at all, in a torpor, winding down like great, weary clocks.

Meanwhile the mammals, our ancestors, and the birds, once reptilian but now warm-blooded, ate their seeds or creatures fattened on seeds, and sprang about in the undergrowth. Sparks of life in the chill, they darted about the feet of the giants, fertile, warm, and getting smarter.

Their warm-blooded condition meant that they had to eat, pound-for-pound, more than a reptile of comparable size. There was a trade-off, however. When the temperature dropped, those with the internal furnaces remained alert and active, ready to feed or flee, whatever the occasion demanded.

The reptiles, meanwhile, turned into zombies when their blood cooled with the air.

So, maybe from now on when I head for the garden, hoe over my shoulder to wreak havoc among the weeds, I will be a little more respectful, showing a little respect. It is, after all, proper in the presence of something that changed forever the face of a planet and kicked dinosaur butt.

T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks,

He is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.