I learned that the fruit of the [mesquite] tree was one of many in our landscape that had evolved to be eaten by the giant mammals who disappeared from this continent not long after humans showed up, one of those factual nuggets that punctuate a truth about the deep history of the Anthropocene in ways reading alone cannot. […] [W]e will soon need to learn not to take for granted things like the wild food that goes uneaten due to the absence of the animals whose extinction our dominion coincided with.
I wonder what kind of cake we will make, if we have to make it from the fruit of the old tree that grew up in the brownfield.
Christopher Brown, A Natural History of Vacant Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places (2024)