In Defence of Sour Grass
Bothriochloa pertusa
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Bothriochloa pertusa or Barbados sour grass was introduced into the region as pasture and grazing options for livestock. This is a plant with polarity and duality, being steadfast in its uprightness during each dry season, yet extending the structure underground to help reduce soil erosion once rainfall returns to the parched territories. Barbadian artist, Annalee Davis, finds this plant underfoot during her morning walks and connects it to the remediation of the land and the quiet revolution that is happening within the internal landscape.
Water:
I have been thinking, of late, about the drought.
Barbados, like much of the Caribbean, has entered one of the worst dry weather eras since the 1940s. This is not unprecedented, but for the last two to three generations, we come with little memory of how to address this climate shift within our behaviours and our expectations. We have lived with excess, and as such traditional and conservative ways of looking at our environments; how interconnected and interdependent we are to nature has drastically shifted.
In this COVID-19 era, driving around the island with my farmer's emergency pass is surreal. The landscape is dry and brittle, the soil is broken up with cracks that are inches wide, the aquifers are low, and by all knowledge and sense, we are in the worst drought yet of our lifetime. This, however, is overshadowed by the virus.
Despite the immediate urgency of this pandemic taking precedence, it is necessary to raise awareness of this environmental plight. With the populace largely confined to their homes, more individuals have the opportunity to focus on domestic duties or begin to grow new gardens or crops—possibly in response to valid concerns around food security—cultivating conscientious behaviour and practices becomes all the more essential.
Woman’s Tongue / Shak Shak.
On these drives, my attention is called to the Woman's Tongue trees (Albizia lebbeck), off of which hang cream and white pods that fill the air with a constant shaking-sound like maracas, sonorous and all encapsulating. My favourite sensation is when you drive along a boundary line, and the sound stays with you. My mind does the trick and recalls the reverberation soon after it's gone.
Instant replay, a sonic energy loop.
Fire:
These droughts bring back the memory of dried sour grass sprawling along the hills of Mt. Pleasant on Bequia. The nostalgic recollection of rolling hills turning fire yellow every dry season and then black as ash with annual burns reminds me of my childhood and early teenage years. This is the essence of longing. A group of young cousins would get cardboard carts ready to skate the hills, often ending on the boundary of a cedar and bramble forest. The mounds were treacherous, filled with bumps, big stones and shards of glass.
“The sour grass was our windswept landing, our soft bed of comfort, and partner in crime.”
I am not sure how we made it out of the sour grass sessions unscathed, but on any given Easter holiday or dry season Sunday evening, from around three once the sun made its way to set, the hills and streets came alive with dirty and rambunctious children walking uphill, panting with cardboard in tow. This was exhilarating for me, as I was allowed to participate. My mother was ever diligent, and did not indulge us in much "dangerous play," but I think as she grew up doing the same thing, we got an easy pass. The sour grass was our windswept landing, our soft bed of comfort, and partner in crime.
Even if one of us managed to get a scraped knee or, god forbid, hit a mound and go headfirst into the ground, we would always still be up for the ride. We exercised caution, as if anyone was wounded in any severe manner, it meant that the entire sliding would be banned or at least halted for the rest of the day.
I think my blood sprang twice.
Sour grass on Bequia.
Earth:
“A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along, as though thinking were travelling rather than making. And so one aspect of the history of walking is the history of thinking made concrete—for the motions of the mind cannot be traced, but those of the feet can.”
Bothriochloa pertusa or Barbados sour grass is also known as Hurricane grass, and was introduced into the region as pasture and grazing options for livestock. It can be cut for hay and used as silage but has meagre nutritional value. However, it is used for erosion control and is extremely drought resistant. This is a plant with polarity and duality, being steadfast in its uprightness during each dry season yet extending the structure underground to help once rainfall returns to the parched territories.
This plant has abundant connections to water and the lack thereof. It is everywhere, and as such dismissed as a waste plant, something not beautiful, useful or worthy of a second look.
It is not very surprising then that contemporary artist, Annalee Davis, finds this plant underfoot during her morning walks across the curtilage of Walker's Dairy, in the parish of St. George. Located in the central part of Barbados, which has a higher than average annual rainfall, her studio is on a former plantation. Now one of the top 5 of 14 remaining dairy farms in the island, Walker’s is home to 140 dairy cows inhabiting the pastures, with a higher than average growth of sour grass.
As more rab lands have emerged with the shift from monocrop agriculture—the Caribbean lost the reigns of sugar decades ago—the landscape and soil have a chance to remediate by being left to recover after the degradation, assault and exhaustion.
This recovery, in all honesty, has had very little to do with human intervention and more to do with nature’s resilience and its innate language, something that most of us would find hard to understand. If we get a sensation of it, we tend to intellectualise or seek to rationalise or “control” the natural world, when rather, we should go with that feeling of not knowing and remain in awe of the true wonder of this life encounter.
On these rab lands, the wild botanica is robust and fragile, mysterious and lucid. And in most cases, uncharted territory for sources of knowledge, ancestral and otherwise.
As a flâneur, Davis expresses her keen interest in post-plantation ecologies and the remediation of the "ground beneath her feet" by walking with intention, setting a different energetic resonance with the fields. These to her aren't only lands under duress or lands that are demised or abandoned; the landscape is historically and presently complex. They simultaneously hold the trauma of the past as well as the promise of life, healing, transformation and eventually freedom from our postcolonial conditioning.
Davis wanders through fields studying wild plants and draws upon many for medicine: the blue vervain, bay leaf and cerasee are among frequent encounters. A few years ago after the production of ‘We Suffer to Remain’—an exhibition which was the last of three funded by the British Council across the Caribbean as part of the ‘Difficult Conversations’ series, addressing unresolved issues around postcolonialism—the artist gifted me a small drawing of a blade of grass. The work sat as a curious object on my table with other trinkets, tinctures and various kinds of plant medicine.
Annalee Davis. Wild Plant Series. Latex on Plantation, Ledger Pages. Each 22" x 13". 2015.
Sometime later, I encountered another version of a blade of ubiquitous sour grass in her studio, larger in size and drawn on plantation ledger paper which is now the customary substrate for her small and medium scale drawings. The drawing is a part of a larger body of work called the Wild Plant Series from 2015, where she maps the physical structure of wild plants and their blooms; not different from early women botanists and artists, like Anna Atkins, who were interested in making order and giving structure, feeling and legibility to the landscape. The drawings counter the daily logging of economic activity on the plantation by inscribing other images that offer alternate ways of reading the site. For example, wild plants can be seen to act as agents in the process of decolonising fields, performing a quiet revolution by asserting themselves against an imperial, monocrop landscape.
Here, the simple task of culling plant material into the studio is an act of compassionate learning. With a chance to breathe, the land has given birth to complex apothecaries, and the body is given another chance to heal. It is a gift likened to divine consciousness, where the land produces brews and remedies without being asked that correlate with our physical and spiritual needs.
“The indigenous peoples of our lands before Columbus’ arrival to the New World and those who have persevered and survived worldwide, along with most of the East, hold keys to much of this sacred knowledge. They have tapped into its codex by building ancestral connections to connect with the natural world. ”
The indigenous peoples of our lands before Columbus' arrival to the New World and those who have persevered and survived worldwide, along with most of the East, hold keys to much of this sacred knowledge. They have tapped into its codex by building ancestral connections to connect with the natural world.
Sour grass at Walker’s, St. George.
During this global COVID-19 pandemic, and during this drought when the land is parched, cracked and it seems like nothing can prosper, the medicines keep flourishing and we are bearing witness to their wisdom. The sour grass keeps on keeping on; its nature is to prosper and to be unrepentantly authentic in times like these. To us, its proliferation, blooming and devotion to being might seem like resistance, an assertion or a revolution, but to the plant it is just doing what is natural. It is attempting to retain wildness and freedom in a space that is under duress. Its thin tendrils, stems and inflorescence crisscross the fields, frequently staying low to the ground, swaying in high Easter breeze, but they remain interconnected.
During the dry season, fires come often, and the grounds are cleared again for new growth. The deep clearing along with responsible creative intervention is a different kind of medicine. It is a companion and a reminder of how the very act of creating can be a life-raft in these post-plantation environments during times of great crisis.
Air:
The now thriving sour grass fields, flourishing without being manicured or walked on, remind us how quickly wildlife and the wild botanicals can take over. The monkeys are out with their usual folly and terror; the bees are finding new garden nectar to feed on and the yard fowls, pigeons and doves are conquering territories, especially the streets. The bougainvilleas herald beauty and abundance, and the pouis and flamboyants are gearing up for early spring blooming. These sights signal the humility and respect we need to bestow to nature and the elements. Even in this hostile environment, they bloom and are.
I hope these sublime vistas and moments of deep introspection fostered by isolation during our partial and total lockdowns have given us all pause to see what we are losing, and how we can personally invest in our growth to mitigate the macro and micro life changes to come.
Walking might seem innocuous, but it can be a powerful meditative and imaginative tool that allows us to contemplate the world in which we live, with all things coming into sharp relief. It can be a place to problem solve, to clear mental and emotional blockages, to find new ways of being with self and our communities. As the roads become populated with morning walkers and as our curtilage curfews become extended, might we all find new kinds of levity and charge in our brief encounters with the road, fields, backroads and beaches.
As artists, we might not provoke change with a simple and well-behaved drawing of a blade of sour grass, but we might provoke new thinking about our space unleashing other kinds of consciousness and awareness. Walking might even allow us to encounter life afresh and greet our internal landscape anew, even if it's an uncomfortable or darker terrain.
A blade of grass might teach us something about possibility and freedom after all.