Bean seed redux

You try your best, you really do, but it never seems to be  enough.  This is the single most commonly encountered error that TPP sees.  He has certainly corrected it in enough biology textbooks (always accurately identifies botanically ignorant authorship), and quite recently posted a lesson on bean seeds. Of course, no one should actually read the Huffington Post for their science reporting, and although memory fails TPP on the specifics, he's certain he has corrected Landess Kearns (the author) before.  So here it is once again, sorry, Landess you are incorrect in your identification of a peanut "embryo".

 The "little" nub at the right is identified as the peanut embryo.  WRONG!  What do you think those two big things are?  This peanut plant at the embryonic  stage consists of a pair of cotyledons that function in food storage, and they are attached the main axis of the embryo.  The pointy end to the right is the embryonic root axis and above the attachment point (node) of the cotyledons is at least one pair of heart-shaped true leaves (each neatly folded in half).  The whole DANG thing is the embryo; this illustration shows 
2 peanuts, 2 embryos.  At maturity there is no endosperm in this seed, just a seed coat (removed in this case) and the embryo.  The endosperm was absorbed by the embryo as it grew.  But so many textbooks say seeds have endosperm that this misconception continues, perhaps because people cannot grasp that at this embryonic stage two leaves are so much bigger than the rest of the plant. So Landess, here's a helpful hint: split peas aren't split!  But they still make good cotyledon soup. And please don't try to figure out "pine nuts" on your own.

Botany within your reach - 4. bean seeds

Once again those wonderful people over at the Botanist in the Kitchen blog have beaten TPP to the punch, to the pulse. So here you go Botany within your reach - 4. Bean seeds.  As my colleagues note this is International year of pulses.  Hmm, thought it was the Year of the Monkey?  Ah, that's the ticket, time for a plant astrological calendar.  2016 -year of the pulse (old name for a bean or legume).  TPP will have to think about this for a time. And believe it or else this is exactly what TPP was working on for his next offering.  Maybe we should coordinate our efforts.  In his defense TPP has been way too busy giving presentations on tree ID in the winter and evolutionary thinking. Guess when you're giving it away the price seems right.  So, soak up some beans, peas, and lentils and have a go at this month's botany lab.  And you can also compare parts with whole roasted peanuts.  So now we ask the un-crucial question, are split peas split? 

Suppressed memories may be a good thing

This week heralded the beginning of the harvest of permanent prairie plots to get biomass data. Fortunately your memory of previous harvest seasons and how much work it entails dims, and you get newbie graduate students who know no better. Only 1/4th of a square meter is harvested but it can be a pretty impressive amount of vegetation in a community where the herbaceous vegetation reaches 2.5 meters in height and so dense it impedes your movement through it. While others were snipping TPP was marking out the portions to harvest and after just 1.5 hrs my hands and arms were covered in little scrapes, punctures, and abrasions such is the nature of prairie vegetation this time of year: hard, dry, sharp-ended and sharp-edged, like little hack saws. Unfortunately TPP's high mileage back was sore, so attention turned to sorting the bags of vegetation into piles back in the lab: grasses, forbs, various legumes, any exotic species, and a hemiparasitic plant. This is a really "fun" activity and much harder visually than you might imagine, but not so hard on the body. Harvesting is half done, and the sorting just barely started. Pile on the lower left is silky bush clover (Lespedeza cuneata), an invasive Asian legume. The 2nd image shows a thicket of this legume where it has all but replaced the prairie vegetation (except for the big grasses). It's so thick you have trouble walking through it, and it's essentially impossible to get rid of. Even if you nuked it with herbicide a sizable seed bank remains. Sad.