"Who Ordered That?"

When hiking on the bluffs around La Crosse, it is not uncommon to come across something that seems out of place. When this occurs, I sometimes think , “Who ordered that?". Finding something odd is often followed by doing an internet search which uncovers more about that peculiar sight than if it had been something "familiar". Like the saying goes, "Confusion is the sweat of learning". Without being puzzled, like when we know the name of something and dismiss it as if we know it thoroughly, our curiosity can be dimmed. Which reminds me of an occasion long ago when I first started learning about birds with a well-known birder in the La Crosse area. Equipped with a lousy pair of Bushnell binoculars, I saw a very red bird in the distance and initially thought it was a scarlet tanager. But, it turned out to be a cardinal. When the group asked what I was looking at, I uttered the line, "It's just a cardinal" dismissing it as something so familiar that it was hardly worth mentioning. Immediately, I was humorously chastised by the expert birder..."JUST a cardinal???" Since then I have tried to stay humble about the little I truly know about even the most familiar subjects. Which makes me think of line from Socrates- "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know."

Recently after a morning on Zoerb Prairie, I left via the grassy field above the prairie and I noticed a plant growing with a bunch of bumblebees scurrying about its flowers. Here it is:

Initially it threw me off because it seemed to be out of place- is that swamp milkweed? Growing on the bluffs in a field full of reed canary grass and smooth brome? True to this plant, it was a bee magnet with brown belted bumblebees swarming it, but, why was it growing here? Doesn't it grow in wet, swampy areas, hence the name? Who ordered that?

Further up the field, there was another oddity- rattlesnake master.

Where did that come from? This was a cultivated field back when the State of Wisconsin owned it from 1931 to 1962 and where the USDA investigated sustainable farming- the “Experimental Farm”, or, as we learned in a previous post, the “Upper Mississippi Soil Conservation Station"- https://manage.wix.com/dashboard/dd371e1b-7be1-4480-b8f1-e87c693ced60/blog/aa16dd90-c91e-4d2a-988b-6aaedc3eb7d2/edit . Since it was plowed and planted with a variety of demonstration crops, it shouldn't be a native plant left over from the original sod. Maybe it was from one of the nearby planted prairies. But, a review of the seed mix for those prairies showed no rattlesnake master. Hmmm....a mystery! Maybe some "Johnny Rattlesnake Seed" threw some seeds out there. Once again, who ordered that?

Further along in the field this caught my eye:

Ahhh, something familiar! It's good old rosinweed in the genus Silphium! I've looked that up a few times in the past... I can tell you the name, so I know all about it. Right? Not really. Again, I'm humbled every time that I think something is "familiar" and less interesting just because I know its name... like that cardinal. Here is a short video of the great physicist Richard Feynman discussing the difference between knowing the name of something vs knowing about something: https://youtu.be/lFIYKmos3-s?si=oUW2jb-EJwIADYGt And what about all of those insects? I think they are hoverflies and probably the oblique stripetail, Allograpta obliqua, but that's just a name and maybe a rabbit hole to go down some other time!

In this same field, a cardinal flower was growing a few years ago:

Again, out of place. How was a cardinal flower growing in this field of thick grasses and other tough competitors? And doesn't it like wet spots like along streams? What was it doing here? Who ordered that?

The lesson from this trip through a "field of weeds" is that life is full of mysteries. In 500 BC, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, "If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail." Be ready to be surprised even in the most "degraded" of places. On your hikes, find interesting tidbits to add to your collection and be willing to include even a few of those most familiar of plants and animals for further thought. But be humble like Isaac Newton when he said, " I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in the now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

"Who ordered that?" is a memorable phrase said by the American physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi in 1936. It was his reaction to the discovery of the muon, a cousin to the electron, which at the time had no clear place in atomic theory... it was "out of place". Since then, this line has been repeated frequently in the physics community when something comes up that is completely unexpected. And if you want to learn more about Rabi, a good book to read is "Rabi: Scientist and Citizen" by none other than my father: https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/199807/scientist.cfm .

I've taken to co-opting Rabi's line on my hikes when I see something unexpected as a way of saying that mysteries will always surround us. Some are profound, others rather trivial. Some have answers, many do not. But they will always be there, even when walking across an old weedy field. So, the next time you see something and are puzzled, think "Who ordered that?" And, á la Feynman, just because you know the name of something, don't be fooled into thinking you know much about it.