Do Your Plants Suffer From Indignation?

Did you miss the Nature article about the Swiss government throwing a thorny one to a govt ethics committee: to debate the dignity of plants?

The story itself makes enough sense if you read the whole thing through; among the things this committee intends to debate is whether genetic modification is more than simply controversial when it interferes with a plant's ability to reproduce and therefore, remain itself.

What's been far more amusing is how the very idea of plants having dignity has brought out great humor in those cheeky Brits and to a lesser degree, we Americans (alas, unless we're crude, we're simply not as clever and prone to humorless, narrow-focused diatribe).

See what happens when you throw me to the blogs? Hell with it, I'm heading back to the wildflowers. Will post pix tomorrow...

12:26 PM ET | 05-13-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Pomegranate Juice Fights Cavities

So we know (or think we know) that pomegranate juice -- like acai from Brazil, and other superfruit juices -- helps with everything from lowering bad cholesterol to inhibiting prostate cancer and reducing some of the risks from diabetes.

Today word arrives that two young men from Flatbush have discovered that pomegranate juice can help fight cavities. Here's a bit more from Touro College contact Barbara Franklin about Zev Zelman and Elliot Lutz:

The students based their research on the knowledge that cavities are not caused by the consumption of sweets, but rather the bacteria that ferment the dietary carbohydrates to produce lactic acid, which eats away at tooth enamel. However, pomegranate juice, and to a lesser degree pomegranate tea, effectively deactivate the bacteria within 10 minutes of contact. Other beverages tested that were effective included grape juice, cranberry juice, and some wines. The other beverages tested in the research had slight or no effect on the bacteria.

So maybe this should have been a picture of pomegranates in the wild instead of Zelman and Lutz in the office of their Dean of Students (Robert Goldschmidt) to merit the TP blog? Perhaps. But if it's the thought that counts, my thinking is this: Man brags while Nature indulges.

photo credit: Richard Lobel Photography

 

Feedback, please. Do you or don't you want to see TP venturing this far from Eden?

1:04 AM ET | 05- 1-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Paul Zindel wrote the play, Paul Newman directed the movie and it looks like the European Space Agency is now going to show us how to grow marigolds on the moon.

The BBC reports:

A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface.

Wouldn't have spied this if not for our own Greg, who turned me on to http://pruned.blogspot.com/ which mixes plants with science, landscape architecture, environmental issues, all the juicy and provocative stuff. Check it out!

11:35 AM ET | 04-30-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Talking Xeric in Albuquerque

One of the biggest water-saving heros in the Southwest these days is Scott Varner, who over the last decade has cultivated quite the crowd for the New Mexico Xeriscape Council annual conference.

The bad news is that you just missed the latest conference; fortunately, 400 of your green-thinking peers took notes.

Thanks to one of them, Susan Tweit, who both captured some of the highlights and linked to the TP blog. Other people you might want to know about are dynamo L. Hunter Lovins (Time Magazine 2000 Hero of the Planet) and landscape architect/ecological restorationist Keith Bowers, founder of Biohabitats, whose inspiring mission is nothing less than "the restoration of the earth".

Which brings me to my own meager participation in the conference, during which I made the observation that Sustainability is a very dicey assumption if we don't soon address issues of Population.

I can assure you, the idea that we need to live in places with more resources and do a lot less breeding did not go over too big. And so I invite you to step into the fray.

Q: If we continue to settle in regions where resources are limited (e.g., water in the desert SW), if we continue to procreate with abandon, and if we continue to believe we are entitled to what we want when we want it without having to sacrifice, compromise or just recycle the bloody newspaper (which is far from second nature here in D.C.), is it realistic to assume assume we can be sustained?

2:43 PM ET | 02-25-2008 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

Rosario's Jungle: a Brazilian Adventure

If I let go of my Amazon adventure, I might find myself in Washington, D.C. And you wouldn't wish that on anyone, right?

So here's to living in the moment ... just not this one. Instead, I've collected a few of my favorites -- some in sound, some in pictures, some in words -- and buoyed by the stunning skills of my digital media colleagues, I invite you to visit the Rosario family on the Mazagao River in nothern Brazil.

The trip's on me.

...CLICK TO PLAY..CLICK BOTTOM RIGHT SQUARE TO GROW..

4:16 PM ET | 02- 6-2008 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

Amazon Q&A

Just to catch you up, this week we're focusing on Rosario Costa Cabral, one of the world's more inspiring farmers.

Talking Plants community member Julian Blackwood recently asked a number of in-depth questions that were beyond the scope of the NPR Amazon story. I thought I'd post his q's (edited for clarity) with answers provided by Columbia U. ecologist Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, who is an expert in Amazonian biodiversity and has known Rosario for a decade.

Q: Since (Rosario farms on) tidal land, presumably the water is somewhat saline? Or is it backed-up fresh river water that floods her land twice a day?

A: The water is not saline. The fresh water of the Amazon actually extends far into the sea.

Q: If the flood-tolerant pepper plant anecdote was accurate, it raises the interesting question of how that particularly valuable gene combination for flood tolerance (if that's what it is) is maintained in a partly cross-pollinating crop.

A: Well, the flood threat (and natural selection) is constant as is the human selection process. So presumably if cross-pollination does occur, any non-tolerant plants that might result are quickly eliminated. But I also saw that Dona Raimunda (Rosario's mother) seems to do some hand pollination with some vegetables; she shakes the flower of onions onto other onions. She says that way she gets better bulbs. How and where she learned this I don't know.

Q: The reference to distributing cassava "seeds" (of her improved selection) presumably meant the usual stem cuttings used for clonal propagation - as cassava is cross-pollinated. But the really big question is exactly what land was she actually farming when you visited?

A: When Rosario and her family came to Mazagao they could not bring cuttings but rather seeds (although as you point out, reproduction by cuttings is the usual process). The family had been dispossessed from their farm and were not sure when and where they would plant again. Any cuttings would have probably died. She also apparently distributed seeds not cuttings; people try out the seeds on their own land, select on their own. On her own land she plants her own cuttings.

Q: I understand Rosario's farming on logged-over land. She is probably planting gaps in various glades, cropping them until soil fertility or pest build-up drives her to a new plot (similar to traditional "shifting" cultivation). Let's hope she changes plots regularly so that the soil is not exhausted to the point where only tertiary scrub can regenerate (her planting of local tree species was good news).

A: Rosario is indeed planting in gaps and she moves annuals and semi-perennials around every few years to other parts of her landholding. Of course many of her crops are actually perennials and are native trees. The problem with fertility loss in the floodplain is not nearly as great as you might have in an upland site. The twice-daily tides carry and deposit nutrients and the flooding (both tidal and seasonal) probably helps keep down some pests.

11:28 AM ET | 02- 6-2008 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

More from the Sinkhole

Here's the plant, here's the sinkhole, look inside and there's the people...

First up, let's take a look at Prichardia aylmer-robinsonii, a species of the lo'ulu palm that David and Lida Pigott Burney planted in "their" sinkhole. The plant is named after the family that currently owns the island of Ni'ihau, the only place this species is known to grow in the wild.

This baby has grown almost 30 ft in three years, happy to be home again after give or take a thousand years.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Alas, the palm is no "missing link" as one of our delightfully optimistic TP members suggested; at least no more a link than any other plant in the chain. But seeing it restored in the Makauwahi Cave sinkhole does feels like an Indiana Jones moment of discovery, particularly if you stumble across it as you're walking the landscape above. I mean suddenly YIKES! there's an eight-story drop into this promised land.

Here are the palms in context. I chose not to crop out the pots, etc., because this is a working conservation site, but once you're there, you'll have no trouble transporting yourself to a very pre-plastic (more like a Pleistocene) place and time. (Ahem, that's a joke; the sinkhole's only 10,000 yrs old).

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

11:57 AM ET | 01- 4-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

The Little Green Orchid That Could

On behalf of all your chlorophyllic friends here at Talking Plants, Happy New Year!

Now I don't mean to twist your arm, but what I'm going to tell you about field botanist Steve Perlman and his search for Platanthera holochila is likely to make a whole lot more sense if you listen to the Morning Edition feature.

It was a habitat kind of day when Steve Perlman led our merry band of plant hunters through the Alaka'i Swamp on Kaua'i, just a dozen miles from Mount Wai'ale'ale, the second wettest place on earth. Our quarry: the fringed orchid.

photo credit: David Bender, National Tropical Botanical Garden

 

It wasn't a very big plant, maybe 20 inches high. The chances of spotting it were absolutely nil. But Steve Perlman of the National Tropical Botanical Garden had seen this rare orchid years ago, before it was dwarfed by knee-high shrubs. So it wasn't entirely miraculous — but it was pretty damn impressive — when he found it growing the middle of a wind-swept, fogged-in swamp.

His timing was perfect; the orchid was ripe for picking. So he carefully removed a couple of pregnant pods for safekeeping, each filled with hundreds of dust-sized seeds.

An ancient plant finds its future in the hands of men like Steve Perlman, who is shown here collecting seed from the fringed orchid. The next day this vial was winging its way to Illinois College where the seeds would be propagated.

photo credit: David Bender, NTBG

 

This fringed orchid was the last of its kind on Kaua'i, and previous attempts to propagate it had failed. Since there could be no certainty that the orchid would live to see another September, the seeds Perlman was collecting this day were crucial to its survival.

One of the main reasons this particular orchid survived was because the enormous bog it was growing in was pig-proof. No lie. Hawaii's wild pigs are like living rototillers; one of the only effective defenses against them is some very serious fencing.

Not an ounce of mean in this man, honest. But a lot of talent. A debt of gratitude to botanist Dave Bender for his many great shots, including this seriously macho self-portrait with fern frond.

photo credit: David Bender, NTBG

 

The next day, Perlman shipped this vial of seed pods to orchid specialist Larry Zettler, professor of biology at Illinois College. (Think: Larry, Larry, he's our man, if he can't do it, NO ONE CAN).

And now, through the magic of radio, you can Be There! when he gets the package.

About six weeks after receiving the little guys, Zettler e-mailed Perlman with good news, saying, "in a nutshell, this has not been an easy orchid to work with, but I am much more optimistic." I wrote to Zettler just the other day. Here's his response:

Hi Ketzel. We sowed the seeds that Steve sent us and they are in incubation. At last check, the embryos appeared OK. Platanthera species in general take considerable time in vitro, especially without fungi, but I'm becoming more convinced that this should be our option with this extremely fastidious species ... I find it ironic that my research with fungi may be taking a back seat with this species in favor of the asymbiotic technique which I had little faith in for the terrestrials. But that's how science sometimes works.

In other words, after intensive work growing terrestrial (ground) orchids in different fungi typically associated with the plant in the wild, Zettler's coming to the conclusion that he might have better luck not using any fungi at all. His findings seem to be consistent with a recent breakthrough in orchid growing at the Atlanta Botanical Garden (beware annoying little "chirps" at this site!).

I have to admit that despite the looks of this, um, shall we say underwhelming orchid, finding the little sucker made for one of those all-time perfect days.

photo credit: David Bender, NTBG

 

So will the little green orchid that could ever grown on Kaua'i again? Chances are pretty damn good, given that there's not a more delicious spot in the world to set down roots if your idea of a very good time is relentless wet, muck and rain.

Yes, you're right, this job definitely has its perks.

photo credit: Clay Trauernicht

 

3:15 PM ET | 12-31-2007 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

Size Matters - Even To Plants

So do aesthetics and the right ratio of gin vs tonic according to Science Daily. Here's the upshot of some research just in from the John Innes Center in England:

We are now uncovering how the genetic blueprint of a species tightly controls the size of leaves and flowers", says Dr. Michael Lenhard, who led the research.

1:14 PM ET | 12-20-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post