The Cradle of Spring

Kay Broome

Easter Egg Wreath (Photo: Bianca Ackermann)

I personally enjoy winter, but I don’t ever regret when it comes to an end. My favorite season, spring is cherished in all its permutations: from sepia and white March, with its tree sap perfume; through the mud slop, bird song and showers of April; to the glorious apotheosis of May. The trilling chorus of our local red-winged blackbirds emanating from the ponds and ravines of my neighbourhood, is just one more gift of spring. This year however, I am facing the return of these feisty birds with some trepidation.

          Red-wing Blackbird Male (Photo: Mana5280)

Back around 2018-19, High Park management decided to deal aggressively with some invasive phragmites reeds from Europe. These have choked out many of our native wetland plants and Toronto Parks authority decided the best way to deal with the problem was by limited use of pesticides and then cutting back the invasive species. Sadly, no one told the red-winged blackbirds. In previous years, after their long flight back from their winter homes in the south, these birds had no issues making their nests within the phragmites, as good a home as any.

          Phragmites in High Park (Photo: Kay Broome)

The Tiny Terrors of Spring

Red-wing blackbirds have always been famous for their fearlessness and their dive-bombing assaults on larger, potentially predatory birds or animals. In recent years, I have noted their increasing aggressiveness towards humans encroaching anywhere near their habitat. Spring walks in High Park used to be a joy to me. Now, a stroll among the cherries in April and May gives me anxiety, due to the certainty of being kamikazied by at least one of these little terrors, gaudy epaulets flashing and wings aflutter.

Blackbird Getting Ready to Strike? (Photo: Walter Siegmund)  

Some say red-wing blackbirds have always been like this, but until recently, I’d never had any issues whenever venturing near their territory. I truly believe it is because this songbird’s habitat is being removed. They build their nests in thick reed beds near the water. If these plants are removed or even thinned out, there is more danger from predators, thus no safe space to raise a family of fledglings. No wonder the red-winged blackbird is so angry!

Mother Nature Knows Best

I understand the need to keep High Park as ecologically sound as possible, but when numerous people are frequently terrorized by tiny birds, I wonder if we’ve changed nature’s balance too suddenly. We forget just how adaptable and tough the wilderness is. To cite a familiar example, the common dandelion (French: dents de lion) is not native to North America, probably brought here from France in the 17th or 18th century. Until very recently, we were exhorted to uproot as many of these annoying yellow weeds as we could. Now we are instructed that dandelions flourish only because of our insistence on having grassy lawns, instead of the endemic meadow or woodland. We are told that this herb’s appearance is usually a sign of heavily impacted grass-only soil. Most recently, we are urged to leave dandelion flowers alone until they go to seed, because hungry bees coming out of hibernation receive crucial nourishment from the plant’s pollen and nectar.

To return to the issue of invasive species in Toronto’s wetland, we are witnessing in High Park, fewer reed beds and angrier songbirds. Hopefully, our native cattails can quickly recover and the red-winged blackbirds may return to a safer homestead where they can raise their fledglings with less stress and worry.

Female Red-wing Blackbird Preparing a Nest (Photo: Charles Skip Martin)

A Reed by Any Other Name

True reeds, Phragmites are the most common wetland grasses in the world. Growing everywhere save Antarctica, they display feathery plumes on the end of very long, hollow stems. Despite its name, Phragmites australis originated in Europe and the Middle East. To make matters more difficult, there is a subspecies (P. australis americanus) native to North America that has been rudely usurped by its lookalike European cousin.

The reeds that should be growing throughout Toronto’s wetlands include our native cattail (Typha latifolia). This family has hollow cylindrical stems and the familiar oblong flower tip, which dries out and scatters on the wind in early fall. We frequently refer to cattails as bulrushes, but actual bulrushes (Scirpus) do not have the familiar cigar shaped flower famous to Typha. They are in fact, similar to true rushes (Juncus), displaying clusters of small, roundish brown bulbs on the tips of their stems.

Left: Cattails – Typha latifolia (Annie Lang), Right: Bulrush – Scirpus atrovirens (Jennifer Anderson)

Carex are true sedges, a family of mostly wetland grasses, generally possessing long, flat, blade-like foliage. Papyrus (Genus Cyperus) is a type of sedge famous for its ancient use in making paper. This plant somewhat resembles bamboo, which surprisingly is neither sedge nor reed, but a true grass.

Some North American Water Reeds, Left: Juncus effusus (Maggar), Right: Carex aquatilis (Andrey Zharkikh)

A Civilizational Plant

Reeds are crucial in cleansing and purifying natural water sources, and provide food and shelter for many of the life forms that dwell in lakes, rivers and marshes. A wetland without reeds and other aquatic plants is in danger of drying up or becoming toxic from the waste given off by human enterprise. Reeds, especially cattails and bulrushes, are increasingly employed to clean up pollutants from wetlands and industrial sites.

Because of the ease of using reed grasses to create baskets, thatch for roofing and other necessities – even fabric for clothing – these plants were instrumental in early human societies. Reeds thrived anywhere humans gravitated for an essential fresh water source. The reed was perhaps as crucial to human civilization as was the discovery of fire.

Reeds in Hamilton Area (Photo:Kay Broome)

In the early Mediterranean and Middle East, reeds were highly esteemed – associated with mighty rivers such as the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia and the ancient Nile of Egypt. It is no surprise then that reeds were connected to various deities. In Sumeria, the reed goddess, Ningikuga was the wife of Enki, wise god of the waters. Some scholars believe her to be the mother of Ningal, wife of the moon god Nanna, and thus grandmother to Inanna, Queen of Heaven. Others argue that Ningikuga was an alternate name for either Ningal or even Inanna herself.

The Worship of Ningal, Stele Detail from Ur Nammu, ca. 2100 BC, Museum of Pennsylvania (Photo: Onceinawhile)

In Egypt, the place of paradise was called Aaru, meaning “field of reeds”. Some sources mention a goddess, Sekhet or Sekhot (NOT the fiery lion-headed Sekhmet!) who presided over marshes and reeds and ruled in Aaru's realm. As Osirus was the guardian deity of Aaru, perhaps Sekhet is yet another name for his consort, Isis in her heavenly aspect.

Aaru ca. 1775 BC, from Dayr-al-Madinah, Egypt. Note the predominance of reeds in the middle sections (Photo: N.N., Wikipedia)

Reeds made baskets for babies, thatch for roofing of homes and paper to write on. They also created music. The syrinx or pan pipes is a multi-reeded flute with a plaintive, wild and evocative sound. A Greek myth tells how the shepherd god Pan was attracted to the nymph Syrinx. His half-human, half-goat appearance repelled her and she called upon the river god Ladon and her fellow nymphs to rescue her. When Pan caught up to Syrinx, he found himself holding only slender reeds, the nymph's new form. Chagrined, the shepherd god noted however that the wind made a pleasing sound over the hollow stems. Undaunted, he fashioned himself a new instrument by tying seven of the reeds together in varying lengths. These represent the seven notes of the western musical scale.

Pan pursuing Syrinx, Bas-Relief, Claude Michel, aka Clodian, 1770, Louvre, Paris (Photo: Christophe Cagé)

Ancient Greek pan pipes were most likely fashioned from the Arundo donax reed, native to the Mediterranean. However, the instrument was anciently known in various parts of the world, with pipes made from a variety of local hollow stemmed plants, having anywhere from five to eighteen reeds. Pan flutes are common to Africa, South America and East Asia, thus the syrinx is one of the oldest instruments known to humans.

Modern 12-Reeded Panpipes made in Poland (Photo: Open Source, Wikimedia Commons)

Runic Reeds

In the Celtic Ogham, Ngetal is attributed either to the broom plant (Cytisus scoparius) or to the reed, two very dissimilar species. Their only commonality is that both were used to cleanse or purify – boughs of broom to sweep up dust and dirt – hence the modern name for our common household implement. According to Erynn Rowan Laurie in her book Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom, Ngetal’s meaning is more accurately attributed to wound or charm and is more attuned to aspects of healing. Thus Ngetal has no close affinity with the Talking Forest Reed, but perhaps more with Cedar, the key of healing, scouring and purification.

The Ogham Ngetal (Illustration: Kay Broome)