pampas

Horticultural invasives, such as butterfly bush, English ivy, pampas grass and many other garden favorites that have escaped cultivation, are of increasing concern.

Whereas glass scrapers were an incremental improvement over flint and obsidian, the introduction of the horse sparked a profound shift on the open grasslands, or pampas, of Patagonia.

Years ago, when he read Bruce Chatwin’s “In Patagonia,” he retraced the writer’s 168-mile trek across the pampas of South America to the Cave of the Giant Sloth.

He pointed to a cavernous undercut that likely destabilized the bluff and noted the clusters of pampas grass, a fluffy, straw-colored weed that wedges its roots into the rocky cracks and joints.

Outside the city, on the broad and dusty plain of the pampas, is the landscape that provides the country its power.