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Gabriella Carcelli

LARCH2600

09/27/2023

Reflection on Rosetta Elkin’s Lecture

The introduction of Rosetta Elkin stated that Elkin’s career has been about analyzing the

relationship between plant life and human life. refuses the idea that plants are objects without

needs and abilities to create a human-plant symbiosis. The lecture focused on the idea of

afforestation, or society’s dependence on the “simplicity” of planting trees. Elkin pointed out

that plant stock has become increasingly bureaucratic, and industry centered. Afforestation is

treated as an “offering to the planet” as if it makes up for the irreversible damage human

industries have done. The matter has become politically influenced.

The rest of Elkin’s lecture described planting certain species according to environmental

needs. For example, tree planting can often be a solution to soil erosion. The most significant

point was about blowout beard tongue; a controversial plant that Elkin argues is exquisite in

appearance and behavior. The plant grows in places where soil has been disrupted due to weather

or human activity. An endangered species, blowout beard tongue, only grows in the Nebraska

Sandhills and a distance into the Wyoming border. It performs well for the sand dune habitat.

Regular blowouts disperse the seed through the sand, which has remained viable for decades.

Blowouts can be artificially simulated to disperse seeds and we see this as a common practice in

agriculture.

Overall, I appreciated the point of Elkin’s lecture which is to appreciate all plants, their

histories, and functions to our industry. Elkin said, “conservation is cultural” and we must

“consider the plant for its own sake.” I agreed with her ideas, as the lecture taught me that so
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many different plants that would be generally unknown or considered not useful can be

functional in ways we did not realize.