A Vinyl County Almanac

Green Carptetweed (Mollugo verticillata), also known as devils-grip, originated in Central and South America, but has now become a common resident of parking lots, sidewalks, and driveways throughout temperate North America. What would you say that the opposite of a meadow full of wildflowers is? How about a shady forest full of big, old trees? Answers will probably vary, but I suspect many people reading this will say that it is some variety of paved surface. On the spectrum of land cover types, paved areas such as parking lots, sidewalks, freeways, or city centers seem to offer the most striking contrast to the green spaces and wilderness areas that most people picture when they hear the world “nature.” Whereas lawns, parks, and gardens represent spaces in which humans attempt to shape communities of plants and animals in ways that aligns with our own wills, paved areas seal off the major sources of nature’s vigor — the sun, the rain, the soil — from each other and in doing so, appea