It is amazing to see nature heal itself, after human destruction leaves it suffering . This should teach us a lesson though; to take out of nature and give it at the same time, instead of destroying it, and harming our planet, environment, and ourselves as humans. Our relationship with nature could only be defined by the actions we do towards it.
In this text, we share with you the story of a vast open-pit mine, that is now transformed into a plant community. In a hundred-acre wetland in the Adirondack Park in New York, millions of orchids are now growing naturally.
“It’s a testament to nature’s ability to heal itself,” said Grete Bader, a graduate student who recently wrote her master’s thesis about the plant life at the former Benson Mines, about 35 miles from the Canadian border.
Associated Press mentioned that the wetland, which remains privately owned and off limits to the public, formed on part of thousands of acres of coarse sand left over when granite ore was crushed to extract iron from 1900 until 1978. That bare sand eventually gave way to moss, lichen, grasses, sedges and trees, including willows, poplars and tamaracks.
“I’ve been involved in orchid-rich habitats all over the country for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Donald Leopold, a professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who has first explored the site 30 years ago.
However, the staggering number of orchids wasn’t quantified until recently when his graduate student, Bader, tallied them up in her thesis. Several factors contribute to the thriving plant community at the site, Bader said, including a variety of fungi that colonize a plant’s root system and enhance its ability to absorb nutrients.
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