00:11:51.680One of the first plants to grow in open sandy conditions is marum grass.
00:12:10.900In the Sandbanks Provincial Park booklet,
00:12:14.960the naturalists who collaborated to create it wrote,
00:12:18.540One of the first to grow in open, sandy conditions is marum grass.
00:12:25.120This plant spreads by underground stems called rhizomes.
00:12:30.080From each node on the rhizome, fibrous roots are sent down, increasing its water-gathering ability
00:12:36.240and providing an extensive anchoring system that in turn helps to hold and stabilize the sand.
00:12:43.780From each node, a shoot is also sent up.
00:12:47.680Each shoot slows the wind, allowing sand to gather at its base.
00:12:53.440In hot, dry conditions, the leaves curl, much like corn, to help the plant hold moisture.
00:13:00.940But perhaps the most amazing thing about this plant is its ability to grow in blowing sand.
00:13:07.520The more it is hit by moving sand particles, the faster it grows, preventing it from being buried.
00:13:14.580In winter, when the plant dies back, its leaves turn down above the level of the sand rather than lying flat, increasing the plant's ability to hold sand.
00:13:26.360These unique abilities have made this plant an important resource management tool in both creating and stabilizing dunes.
00:18:58.680So if you look back into the late 1800s, early 1900s in this area, the dunes on the West
00:19:23.720lake are we're impacted by human activity specifically the house being sent to graze on
00:19:33.180the dunes and what they noticed from 1860 to 1920 by 1920 the sands were shifting at a rate of about
00:19:43.24050 feet a year and it was going on farmer's field it was doing that sort of thing and by 1921 there
00:19:51.500was a forestry station set up within what is now the provincial park so back then how they stopped
00:19:59.500the shifting sands was through a program of tree planting of a few species fencing as well as
00:20:07.060mulching and that what alt what is ultimately stopped the shifting sands and allowed the park
00:20:13.840to kind of re-establish or in that area now we always say like when you know better you do better
00:20:20.440so now how we stop shifting sands we understand that it's a big deal to help a tree grow in a
00:20:27.040shifting sand environment that ignores the laws of succession and planting so at least for the
00:20:34.120past 30 years since Yvette Brie was the chief park naturalist when she identified that there
00:20:40.600were shifting sands in areas of blowout and then increased use by visitation that was fragmenting
00:20:48.640the habitat we use marum grass because marum grass we understand to believe the first plant
00:20:55.260to kind of wash up on the shore of just a barren sandbar and start start colonizing the bar so it's
00:21:02.920like marum grass is the first one and marum grass is so cool some plants right can't thrive in the
00:21:08.820shifting sand environment marum grass actually as sand hits the leaves it stimulates root growth
00:21:16.360It can expand immediately half a year by the rhizomes underground, so the way it propagates is those rhizomes in 2017 and 2019, which were really high water years in Lake Ontario.
00:21:29.220You can see the damage that was done with high water levels and erosion, but on the sides that were torn away, what you see is this interconnected network, like a net that held the rest of the dunes in place.
00:21:46.360marimgrass as one of these like pioneer plants or primary species primary succession species
00:21:52.740what's interesting i describe it to people it's like the like a reluctant reluctant hero it comes
00:21:59.040in it is the first to establish but as soon as other species begin to move in you will notice
00:22:05.260that marimgrass is no longer found there so like on an open sand dune we'll put marimgrass you'll
00:22:11.800see probably year one there's not a lot of growth and expansion it's year two and year three where
00:22:18.160you see it reach that peak grows out a meter and a half like you can in some instances follow lines
00:22:24.300and you'll see the shoots so you can see it's all from the same parent plant it's real
00:25:18.020That's like the buzz that we talk about.
00:25:20.720We have to have thinking generations ahead.
00:25:24.200We have to have that forward thinking.
00:25:25.920but the reality is we don't know we so we need to deal with what is in front of us manage to the
00:25:32.580best of our ability now but be adaptive be nimble in the sense of oh we shouldn't be doing that why
00:25:41.440are we doing it and adjust rather than digging in your heels and saying this is what's going to work
00:25:47.460um we are far more aware now too of like indigenous ways of knowing i've done some
00:25:54.160conference with a gentleman this company called creators garden and he does education around the
00:25:59.740great lakes basin about indigenous people have been gardening this area for time immemorial so
00:26:06.720what we have and what we see and what we from a western perspective are like we need to conserve
00:26:12.860this nature he very rightly so is like whoa you need to reconsider conservation is very eurocentric
00:26:21.060It's very from one point of view that actually harvesting in these areas, in some cases, that's what some of these species need, because that's what has been done for centuries.
00:26:32.760And and by thinking we need to keep it just how it is right now, we could actually be doing more harm.
00:26:39.180I am Marim Graskin, descendant of those who traveled the world and made homes for themselves everywhere, and tried to belong, but who left holes behind them, always searching for a way to fit and be whole and well, always on the water to the next place, chasing a belonging that could never come, because home was never safe.