Part 9:
Over the two years that I observed this plant I gained an ability to spot her and tell the difference between her and her cousin purple cudweed. In May of 2023 I had Amanda Lafleur, Bill Fontenot and Dr. Charles Ray Brassieur over for what we called a vineraire-coffee summit. I walked them out to the field to see one of the closest plants.
Since I had seen Dr. Allain last winter, every once in a while I would send him a new photograph of the plants. His photos on the USGS survey website were one of my main resources in identification, so we all knew his word was gospel. So finally on a particularly hot day in July I found 13 more plants in the overgrown coton jaune patch to the east side of the field. They were five times the size of the plants in the west yard. With that, I found the courage to call Dr. Allain, who lives 2 miles as the crow flies from me. I explained again what I had growing and encouraged him to come anytime to see the big plants. He was at my field within an hour.
As we walked around he told me that he was initially incredulous because he had never seen this plant just “growing in someone’s yard” like that. He said that it was a mid-successional species, and that they appear halfway to when the prairie habitat is “healed”, that is, back to its original vitality and biodiversity. I found some metaphor in this.
Although Prairie des Femmes is remote, she is hardly untouched. Dr. Allain said that this life everlasting can be found in some of the rehabilitated prairie habitats as well as prairie remnants, and as I understand, needs the biodiversity of the intact prairie soil and root system (never tilled for agriculture) to thrive. Although we are an old and somewhat insulated prairie close to the wild oxbow swamp to the north, our field was not a prairie remnant, but rather a fallow and overworked sweet potato field. In my opinion, this plant must have survived in our place not because it was pristine, but because of the way we managed the land, including planting native species, forgoing poison, minimal mowing and burning periodically.
So my field was not a prairie remnant but maybe the place where I found the first plant in 2011, in the far southwest corner of the yard, was rounded by the plow and retained some type of biodiversity needed for this plant to survive. Perhaps she came on the feet of some bird or deer, or in the fur of the coyotes who passed noisily in the field. Whatever it was, somehow this vineraire patch had survived here. The prairie has a memory.
When we went to the local neighborhood boucherie my neighbor Monique Verdin’s cousins from down the bayou were all there. I gave some of the rabbit tobacco to all the neighbors, Monique’s cousins, as well as her most matriarchal aunt who remembered it. That fall I was put in touch with Marlene Toups who called it the “lost herb” and said she had not seen it in 40 years down the bayou. When I hand delivered a bag to Mrs. Marlene at festivals Acadiens et Creoles, she smelled it and said, “you found it”. Mr. Clovis Billiot said that the salt water intrusion had “tout tue’ en bas”. Hurricane Hilda and Ida were the worst and the water stayed a long time inland, enough time to kill the tender medicinals. I gave the plant and beaucoup seed to Theresa Dardar as well as Janie Luster (or maybe I just called Ms. Janie and offered it).
I was also able to return a big bag to the Attakapas-Ishak tribe through their daughter Maaliyah Papillion, a Creole and Indigenous actress, singer, model, former Ms. Louisiana and third-generation healer. In return her father and uncle gave me information on the ceremonial blend rabbit tobacco was used in, as well as a spear point directly to my eldest son, who had escorted me there.
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