On the sunny side of the street - the problem with monocultures

Three years ago three large white ash trees lined the street in front of my house and my neighbors spaced about 60 feet apart (all over 3 foot diameter trunks).  The city just removed the last one; it was clearly moribund.  Thank you emerald ash borer.  Three really big trees make a lot of shade and when you remove all three essentially at once you notice the difference.  The lesson here is simple: monocultures don't work.  They are inherently unstable and unworkable ecologically.  Someone about 70 years ago decided to plant a monoculture of white ash trees down our side of the street.  They were getting old, but you expect as they age, one by one, for them to be replaced, and someone chose white ash trees.  No imagination.  The newest trees are more diverse, red oaks, white oaks, new elms, and some smaller ornamentals.  The problem with monocultures is when one is susceptable to something, they all are, and they all die at once, and at about the same stage of life rather than being staggered.  There are virtually no exceptions, and yet is this not the most common of human cultivational strategies?  Our landscaping in part reflects the sun-shade environment as it was a decade ago with healthy shade trees.  A few of our beds suffered in last summer's heat and drought made worse by they more open exposure.  Fortunately our city arborist is being more proactive diversifying plantings and planning ahead and getting replacements going a few years before trees in decline are removed.  That's the way to do it.

Globalization & international diversity on campus

It's always nice to get new dean-lets and new provostettes; they are like a breath of fresh air. Our new assistant provost is interested in globalization, and she looks nice dressed in our school's colors. “As the world becomes smaller through globalization, we want to be prepared, and we need to continue to internationalize the campus.”
Dear AP, Although personally unaware the globe was shrinking, the Phactor can only say, "It's about time the rest of the campus caught up to biology!" Although you may be unaware of this, international boundaries are human constructs that have little meaning to biological organisms or biologists except as they serve to restrict our activities. Biology is a global field, so when next a legislator wishes to know what benefit is it to the people of Lincolnland that some of us study rain forest, at what they imagine to be state expense (doesn't the Phactor wish they were picking up the tab!) you will be there to say biology was the first field to be truly global and what happens in the tropics actually can have quite an impact here. Rather than taking students on European tours, ours actually go on field trips where they go, and stay, and study rainforest biology learning about dozens and dozens of species. Please understand, the Phactor is not a tour guide. You go on to say the campus needs more international diversity. Great! Biology could not agree more and we already study more species than you can imagine. Why there are probably more than 500 exotic species of plants in our glasshouse alone, and they could use more space. All by his little old self the Phactor has studied and published on more species than the whole rest of the non-biological campus, who more or less total 1, humans. Perhaps yours truly could be considered for the next diversity award for which a species list will be provided demonstrating his committment to diversity. While humans and their institutions have dithered, embracing or fearing, globalization, biologists have been whole heartedly global for at least a century. So should you need any assistance, any advice, any suggestions from people who are leading the way, feel free to call. Oh, and given that biology is achieving our stated goals so well, might you not put in a good word with your boss that letting biology dwindle through loss of positions is counterproductive to globalization and diversity? Good luck with the new position. It's sure to broaden your horizons. All the best, TPP.

Diversity award nomination invalid!

Wow! The Phactor got nominated for a diversity award at our great public university! What an honor! Except the award committee informed me that my nomination was considered invalid!
Having spent the greater part of my adult life teaching biological and botanical diversity, you may wonder in what respect was my involvement with diversity invalid? Well, people, it's because the Phactor is not about people. Yes, rather than considering diversity in some meaningful sense, diversity at a university only refers to human diversity: different sexes (covered), different cultures (covered), different varieties (covered), different countries of origin (Different geographic origins covered, but what do organisms care about political boundaries?). And this then is symptomatic of the whole problem of our egocentric approach to knowledge. About 5% of our faculty and about 5% of a college degree are about life and the universe; all the rest is about humans and human artifacts. Does that seem a fair balance? US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, US, and everything else. A historian complains that not enough is required to teach "ancient" history. Ancient! Plant diversity covers 3.8 billion years of history! In comparison, human history is like reading yesterday's newspaper! Even biology suffers from a human biomedical bias that does its darnedest to reduce diversity. Why some of my colleagues do not even want to include those organisms, plants all, that prevent us from being naked, miserable, and hungry. The Phactor needs no stinking diversity award of that type!

Gneater (neater) than all get out!

Visits to our teaching greenhouse still manage to deliver surprises even thought I have been doing it regularly for years.

This is something the Phactor had never seen before: the ovulate strobilus (cone) of Gnetum (knee-tum). Hmm, that's pretty funny, telling you how to pronouce a silent G with a silent K.

Gnetum is a tropical liana, and that's one of the reasons I've never seen strobili before. They're usually way, up, there. The closest I've come before is the seeds, mature ovules, which are about 4 cm long. They have a fleshy, reddish outer seed coat that attract and reward an animal disperser. Finding these seeds on the rain forest floor means that somewhere far above where the vine clamors along in the canopy, a strobilus just like the one above got pollinated.


The strobilus consists of several whorls of small bracts (modified leaves) above which is a whorl of ovules. Ovules are not eggs so their name is a misnomer. Ovules are jacketed, indehiscent megasporangia. The single megaspore produced develops into a haploid female (a gametophyte) who then produces an egg. The jacket prevents the pollen access except through a small hole. The ovules shown here are ready to receive pollen. The ovule has exuded a a drop of sticky liquid out through this small opening and any pollen grains (endosporic males) that adher to the surface of this pollen drop get pulled inside the ovule when the ovule reabsorbs the liquid.

This is not the work of a passive female. She reaches out, grabs passing males, and pulls them into her lair.

Now if the foregoing description wasn't a tipoff, what makes Gnetum so Gneat is that this is a gymnosperm, a relative of conifers, albeit a fairly distant one. Yet as you can see, this vine has broad leaves, and it has vessel elements in its wood, both features usually associated with flowering plants. And of course there is a certain flower like quality to the strobilus.

Do flowering plants share a common ancestry with Gnetum? The jury is still out. For many years data suggested that the answer might be yes, but most recent studies suggest this strange plant is more closely related to conifers, and not in a gymnosperm lineage having a common ancestry with flowering plants.