Fleabane

Yeah.

But the genus Aster or Erigeron or, you know, some of those like that, all of those flowering herbaceous plants that are native are generally pretty good.

Mm-hmm.

As long as they have an upright umbrella-like stature-

Well, when soil is exposed, say, from a fallen tree or human construction, It is highly vulnerable to washing away in the next rainstorm.

Fleabane grows incredibly fast, sending down these fibrous root systems that act like steel rebar and concrete.

They bind the loose soil together, preventing erosion while slowly improving the soil quality.

So the slower growing quote unquote fancier plants can eventually establish themselves.

Since Muir's lists did not follow any particular order of classification, we have adopted the order of families laid down in the last edition of Gray's Manual of Botany.

Special interest attaches to the fact that Muir found on the Arctic shore of Alaska, near Cape Thompson, a species of Erigeron new to science.

It is an asteraceous plant with showy, daisy-like flowers.

In reporting this find to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Asa Gray described it as the most interesting and apparently the only new species of an extensive and truly valuable collection made by Mr. Muir in a recent searching cruise which he accompanied and which extended to Wrangel Island, Wrangel Land.

The plant seems to have been abundant, for it occurs in the collection under three numbers, end quote.

Gray promptly named it Erigeron muirii in honor of its finder, thus redeeming for the second time a promise made ten years earlier when he wrote to Muir, Pray, find a new genus, or at least a new species, that I may have the satisfaction of embalming your name, not in glacier ice, but in spicy wild perfume.

William Frederick Bade, Harvard University Library, June 1917.

End of Introduction Read by Mark Harrington, Framingham, Massachusetts Chapter 1 of The Cruise of the Corwin by John Muir This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Unalaska and the Aleuts Unalaska, May 18, 1881 The storm king of the north is abroad today, working with a fine, hearty enthusiasm, rolling a multitude of white combing waves through the rocky, jagged straits between this marvelous chain of islands, circling them about with beaten foam and heaping a lavish abundance of snow on their lofty, cloud-wrapped mountains.