June 16, noonish on a beautiful, late-spring day, and a handful of citizens — Will and Nason, two staffers from Parks and Rec, two Conservation Commission members, Brunswick’s environmental planner and a dozen volunteers from Stantec’s Topsham office — gathered to receive instruction and size up the afternoon’s opposition.

Behind Environmental Planner Ashley Charleson and Stantec’s Rachele Spadafore rose a phalanx of green, leafy plants. Given a little more time, it seemed, these knotweed plants would envelope our two leaders, shade them out, as they do with all competitors. But after being enjoined to work safely and being thanked for being here, we all took our cutters and loppers and our large black bags and fanned out along the green front. We began to cut; others among us began to bag. The green front shied from us, then it began to vanish.

Fast forward some 2 1/2 hours. We have cut and gathered more than a truckload of knotweed, plus some Asiatic bittersweet, which will be trucked from the site. Among its many persistent capabilities, knotweed will re-root itself if left lying on the ground after cutting. And we’re under no illusion that this is a one-and-done cutting. There will be more needed in the future. But for now, it’s a freeing improvement on this rugged, sloped public land visited by many for fishing and river-gazing.

We pause in the shade of some trees overlooking the rock-bent current of the Androscoggin as it runs beneath the bridge, then spreads into broad flow as it sets out on its final run to Merrymeeting Bay and confluence with the Kennebec. A loud smack draws our ears and eyes to the water under the bridge. Ripples spread. Some seconds later, a large fish flies straight up some 4 feet above the water, seems to pause there, then tips back and falls home. SMACK. Sturgeon. Our labors are rewarded.

Writing over time and land

By my count, this is column number 100 for Your Land. Paging back through files, I find that I began in April 2017 by writing about the magic of our summer monarch butterflies and their dependence on milkweed for their caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis. That column, too, promoted some management cuttings, a trimming out of white pines from a small meadow near Middle Bay Road in Brunswick’s extended Commons. Keeping the pines out and the meadow open for milkweed would offer a support spot as the monarchs gathered for their summer generation, which would later set out for the far south and their winter quarters.

From 2017

Amid these northern milkweeds, monarchs sire the next generation, which will, when fall nears, fly to their wintering trees in Mexico or Florida. It is an astounding migratory life, lived out over three or four generations annually. Somehow, the monarchs born in Brunswick “know” to head for the far south each year. You may have seen them on a clear September day, bearing southwest on the tailwind of a cold front’s northern breeze.

Next gen monarchs arriving in our area in early summer seek out milkweeds and lay their eggs on their broad leaves’ undersides. Soon, those eggs hatch as caterpillars and the leaves become their food.

The milkweeds, with their own migratory seeds shaped like a tiny heart beneath their wispy parachutes, are a crucial food in the caterpillar cycle of a monarch’s life. Milkweeds contain a chemical that, once ingested, makes the monarchs toxic to most birds, and so more of them survive to take on their thousands-of-miles migration. But, of course, this milkweed immunity depends upon milkweed availability. Because milkweed is an unlovely plant, except to a monarch, and because it grows in meadows, which tend to go over to forests, a natural stand of it can be uncommon and, so, prized. It seems worth doing minor battle with our common white pines to keep this Commons’ prize.

For your own sense of wonder, try a visit to this little meadow, a quarter-mile from Middle Bay Road amid the nearly 200-acre span of Brunswick’s Commons. It will put you in touch with its monarchs in season, with its sun-washed face amid the pines, and with its role in one of the world’s amazing migrations.

Now, again

Today, our second very hot one, I walked down in the Commons to check on this milkweed field. The milkweeds are flowering and thick among the grasses, even as the pines and some aspens are edging toward the space. Time, then, for a little trimming to keep the milkweeds central, to help them do their little bit at keeping the world knit together.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chairperson of the town’s Conservation Commission and the town’s Steering Committee for Mere Brook, and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.