Thorny Neighbors
The Bane and the Benefits of Gorse
by Gowan Batist
Settlers came to the Mendocino Coast in the late 1800s. They grazed cattle and razed forests and drove away and murdered Native inhabitants on a scale that I still can’t fully imagine, even with as much of my life as I’ve spent studying it. With those settlers arrived seeds of gorse—stowed away in a bale of hay, or in a bag of grain, or perhaps even brought to the New World intentionally, given its cultural importance in the farming communities of the British Isles.
Caspar, where I live, became a bustling boom town of thousands. There was a railroad trestle in the woods behind our farm, and where there was once noise and motion, now there are only crowded sword ferns and the closely spaced fir trees that sprang up after deforestation. The boom turned into a bust, as they always do. The mills closed by the late 1930s, the loading docks collapsed and eroded, and the multitudes ebbed away to other booms. Left behind were a few stragglers, who were later joined by a wave of Back to the Land settlers in the 1970s.
In the midst of all this tumult, gorse was doing what it does best—growing rapidly and propagating itself wildly. If you’re not familiar, gorse is the punk rock older brother of Scotch broom. It has similar golden pea flowers, but where Scotch and French broom have long thin branches with shiny or fuzzy leaves respectively, gorse has thorns. An understatement, honestly—gorse is riddled with incredibly sharp, long, dense thorns.
Caspar is the center of what is considered a serious gorse infestation. Our farm has been involved in gorse remediation for ten years, on our own land and in surrounding landscapes. Gorse is difficult to control for many reasons, but a central challenge is its ability to adapt to almost any condition. Gorse can grow like a vine up into a tree, like a ground cover where it’s mowed (I’ve seen seeds and flowers on 3” tall plants), and into an impenetrable hedge 14’ high where it has sun and water.
It is also a very dense hard wood full of volatile oils, and as such burns incredibly hot. It can explode with heat in a fire (while also releasing explosion-propelled seeds), and the roots can burn underground. There have been several gorse fires in Caspar, both intentional and unintentional, but the fields that burned didn’t stay fallow long. Gorse seeds are fire-adapted, and they germinate quickly and well after a fire. Gorse is also allelopathic, meaning it releases chemicals that inhibit the germination and growth of other plants. Ground that has grown gorse will produce only yellow, stunted blades of grass if it produces anything, even after the gorse is all ripped out.
The traditional European culture of gorse management did not take root here. In fact, gorse is so successful in our coastal climate because it is so similar to where it originated, but it lacks any of the evolved ecological checks and balances one typically finds in a native ecosystem. Ironically, many of the strategies we use to control gorse, like mowing and burning, are also used in the UK to conserve and expand patches of gorse. Gorse sends up long, straight sprouts when the base is cut, making it suitable for coppicing. Hedges were traditionally laid with gorse this way—a branch would be partially cut through, then twisted and pinned diagonally near the ground. This process of leaning branches would be repeated around the area where a fence was wanted, and in the next few seasons, the sprouts that grow straight up would lattice weave between these diagonal posts, and then fill in with spikes.
Gorse can be a hard neighbor to live with, prone to fires, aggressively taking up space and pushing out native plants, and drawing blood from any who bump into it. (Only the brave and foolish wear sandals in Caspar.) The prickly nature of gorse has led to multiple and sustained efforts to eradicate it. The documents created by the County, State, National Resource Conservation Service, and citizens themselves, tend to be very martial—”a war on gorse” is the general idea, with the stated intention of “eradication.”
The problem with these eradication projects is that, one or two seasons after the grant money is gone, the gorse is back. People have spent their lives mowing and spraying and burning and pulling, and there have been very few permanent successes. Gorse is the kind of opportunistic plant that just loves living with humans in the disturbed soil we tend to create with our roads and houses and gardens, and most of the attention we give it just encourages it. I was once shown an example of successful gorse eradication. The result was a flat field, with 2” high grass—nothing else grew, no native shrubs or trees, no tussocky native bunch grasses. In fact, it’s highly likely the grass in the field was itself not a native. There was no gorse there, but there was also no biodiversity.
The herbicides used to control gorse are problematic bordering on horrifying. One of the herbicides is cited in ongoing litigation about the cancer it causes. Another has been linked to horrific birth defects in mammals. Persistent toxicity to bees, including ground dwelling native bees, is also of extreme concern, as well as the risk of toxins accumulating in larger mammals, including the humans and dogs who use hiking trails. We have never and will never use herbicide on the gorse on our farm, and State Parks have gone out of their way to avoid it, but I know it was sprayed on this land in the past.
A fellow farmer once told me that if we never did anything to manage the gorse, in one thousand years we would have a biodiverse and thriving native landscape. I think that’s likely accurate, as the gorse eventually thins itself out because it is a nitrogen-fixing legume that enriches the soil past the point that it thrives in it. However, in the process of letting evolution balance itself out, many native species that I love would likely be lost, and I would also be long dead. So if I’m unwilling to pave Caspar to get rid of the gorse, and also unwilling to let it have the farm... what are my options?
Over the last ten years, I have come to embrace a kind of messy conservation that believes that if a field is 10% gorse, but also has vibrant native plants growing and native animals thriving, then that’s good enough for me. The consequences of total removal are unacceptable—too much else would be destroyed in the process. Preventing the gorse from dominating everything will have to be enough.
We’ve accomplished this mainly by encouraging dense growth of grasses, and with planned grazing. We looked at how gorse is contained and managed where it actually comes from, and mulching, covering, and grazing are the preferred methods. Our sheep love to eat it, and once they’ve stripped the plants, we can more easily cut the stalks down. Gorse actually dies in dense pasture, especially pasture mixes including legumes. Most of those mixes aren’t native either, but after a few years of heavy cover cropping, native grasses can be introduced, and often just come in on their own.
Fields that were a total blanket of gorse are now full of native plants—the red threads and ridged leaves of potentilla, the feathery bushes of elderberry, the crawling wild strawberry, and tall graceful blue wild rye. Many of these I planted, but they are now showing up everywhere, moved around by animals. Yes, we still have gorse, but under a particularly dense patch there must have been hiding ancient seeds, because we now have a patch of a beautiful red coastal lily, which a biologist informed me is extremely rare. Now that they have come back, I can’t just mow the gorse without hitting them as well, so we carefully time grazing for when the lilies are beneath the ground, and we cut back the bigger gorse plants if they are getting too pushy.
In the process of learning to live with gorse, I found deep cultural mystery and magic, and practical utility. In Irish mythology, gorse wood is sacred to the sun god Lugh, and was the first wood used to start a ceremonial fire. Gorse was burned at transhumance festivals twice per year, when herds were driven up to highlands for the summer and then brought home for the winter. The flocks were run through the smoke for purification. There is some science behind this—gorse is anthelmintic, meaning it kills worms that infect livestock. A diet of chopped gorse is not only high in protein (gorse is in the same family as alfalfa), but also protective for animals in close quarters during the cold time of year.
So many uses have been found for this difficult plant. Gorse, being dense, fast growing, and burning at a high temperature, was often used to fire commercial bread ovens. Gorse branches thatched granaries because the thorns kept rodents from burrowing in after grain. Gorse flowers make a beautiful yellow dye (we’ve tried it on our wool), and some people make tea and mead with the flowers. Gorse stems have bast fiber, especially the long thin sprouts that come up after the main stalk is cut. An artist friend of mine cut these, soaked them in water, extracted the fibers, and made paper with them. Another friend, a natural builder from the UK, followed the same process on a larger scale and, with the addition of some earth elements, created a natural plaster wall out of gorse. My mother’s office is a cozy nest entirely finished in polished gorse fibers.
And not least, the amount of gorse on a field was a factor in determining its value, because it was used in so many ways. In a real sense, it was the gold of the pastoral communities that relied on it.
Then it came here, and it has acted poorly. Gorse has driven out native plants and animals, made land inaccessible to humans, caused dangerous episodes when it burns and explodes, and generally taken up too much space. What a metaphor for the settler experience. I want to live in a biodiverse landscape where the speckled trumpets of red lilies can bloom, the wildlife is safe from herbicidal harm, and the coastal prairie grasses are free of the grey, tick-infested thatch of neglect—a landscape of dynamic change.
The gorse could offer a mirror to some of us, should we choose to look in it. How much do we need to step back to make room for others to live? What does environmental justice look like without any party needing to be eradicated? What systems of cultural accountability does this landscape need in order for everyone to live here in peace?
Gowan Batist of Fortunate Farm is a Post-Industrial Pastoralist following sheep around the skeleton of a boom town. She is seldom seen, but sometimes glimpsed with a baby on her back, propagating native plants, spinning wool, hand shearing sheep, or meal prepping baby food with local bulk food via the MendoLake Food Hub.