Anti-cancer compound found in rare rain forest tree

This news came from Australia where a compound found in the fruits of a rare rain forest tree have some promise as an anti-cancer agent. TPP took particular notice of this news item because as soon as rare, rain forest tree, and Australia were mentioned together he immediately thought of the Atherton Tableland in far northern Queensland. A lot of quite unusual plants, and animals, live there and many years ago so did the Phactors, in fact the F1 attended kindergarden in Atherton and became a right proper little Aussie for awhile. The plant in the news article was Hylandia and TPP has seen it once and then only because a field savvy colleague pointed it out. This is also of particular interest because the tree is named after Bernie Hyland, a taxonomic legend of this area and he ran the herbarium for the CSIRO's tropical forest research center in Atherton. Before people go crazy and start the "natural/herbal cure" stuff, let's be clear. This tree is a member of the Euphorb family and they are mostly toxic. Finding a compound that reduces cancer tumors in mice is a great start, but understand what this means. Researchers are looking for a toxic substance that kills cancer cells at a dosage that is still tolerable (safe?) for the organism with the cancer, and the wider the window the better. Researchers will now monkey around with the molecule to see if some derivative molecule is better than the "natural" chemical because natural is not always better. Here's an example. The bark of the white willow (Salix alba) made great poultices for say a sore elbow, but the salicyclic acid in the bark would really upset your stomach if you tried to take it orally. But then someone found out that if you acetalized it, the acetosalicyclic acid was much easier on your stomach and a great general pain-killer was born (Got it yet? aspirin!). Of course this is a great argument for rain forest conservation, and a great deal of the Atherton Tableland has been converted to agriculture already because the basaltic soils, where they occur, are fertile. Good thing this rate plant wasn't exterminated in the process of raising peanuts or potatoes. 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Bottle plant

Even though this January day feels like spring outside, it's still January, so there are limited pickings available even in our glasshouse. However, over on the succulent bench, one of the pachycaulous (thick-stemmed) succulent euphorbs is flowering, Jatropha podagrica, sometimes called bottle plant because the stem abruptly widens toward the base. While it is generally grown as a curiosity because of its thick stem even on a quite young, quite small plant, the rounded inflorescences standing out above the foliage are quite showy. Here's a close up showing the unisexual flowers characteristic of euphorbs (staminate flower to the far left, a slightly larger pistillate flower to its right with the 3-branched stigma showing prominently). The inflorescence is a cyme and the pistillate flower always occupies the terminal, central position. Even after the pistillate flowers get pollinated, drop their perianth, and begin to develop as fruit, the inflorescence continues to produce staminate flowers. This plant is easily grown if you have a warm, sunny enough window and can avoid over watering. The pachycaul image is courtesy of Bouba via the Creative Commons.

Friday Fabulous "Flower" - Euphorbia

As the days lengthen and the sunlight heats up the greenhouse, a lot of our tropical plants begin to flower. This is Euphorbia splendens and as the name suggests it is a pretty spectacular plant, with a cluster of spiny stems terminated by a helical whorl of leaves and very showy clusters of "flowers". This plant grew in the miserable little excuse for a greenhouse that was at my undergraduate college, and a particularly perverse botanist (Aren't they all a bit perverse?) let a pair of us struggle all afternoon to identify the family knowing full well we were making a fundamental mental error. Yes, we kept trying to sort out the flower's parts and nothing made any sense because the key separated out plants with milky sap without regard to flowers, and this plant readily oozes latex, and if we'd paid attention it all would have made sense. The flowers in this genus and family are small and unisexual, and in plants like this a number of flowers are clustered together into an inflorescence surrounded by a pair of very showy bracts. So those aren't petals or perianth at all, and the number of flowers per cluster isn't constant, so it seems you have different numbers of pistils and stamens. But did the Phactor ever forget this lesson? No, you only get to fool me once.

Rainforest Field Trip - Forest Decor

Rainforest is a high diversity ecosystem; there's a lot of green out there and most of the plants have the same problem of making your presence known. Since individuals plants are at a low density, the plant must have a means of signaling their presence to pollen dispersers who must then move to the next individual of the same species if pollination is to be achieved. Plants whose flowers are small have to find ways to advertising and one strategy employed by quite a few is to group small flowers together and put something big, gaudy, and colorful right next to them, usually a modified leaf, a bract. This plant (Warszewiczia coccinea) is called the wild poinsettia but it is a member of the coffee family (Rubiaceae) not the euphorb family of the true poinsettia, which is another neotropical plant. That's the trouble with common names; you just can't trust them. But they do both use this mechanism of placing a bright red bract next to a cluster of small rather nondescript flowers, so you don't miss this one out in the forest.