Tree rats ask for trouble

Over the weekend TPP planted quite a few new woodland perennials, and naturally a day later a very nice young plant was dug from the ground, had the major roots gnawed off, and discarded. And this was protected by a little fence too.  "Oh, here's a nice soft place, maybe I buried a nut here last fall." "This doesn't smell or taste like food, but let's dig it up and chomp it to pieces just to make sure." And it's not like we don't feed the buggers anyhow.  This can be very frustrating especially when the plant is somewhat uncommon and a bit difficult to come by.

Plant "eats" heavy metal

First, TPP hates any science "news" article that says plants "eat" anything. What a stupid thing to say. Plants don't "eat" carbon dioxide either although they do absorb it. That being said, here's an otherwise interesting article about heavy metal accumulation in a plant. Heavy metal accumulation in plants is nothing new; they all basically do it because for some reason plants can't get rid of a heavy metal (plants don't "crap" either) once they absorb it. Now heavy metals are toxic, and plants can absorb them in non-toxic amounts, transport them across membranes and cytoplasm, and then accumulate them inside vacuoles, a handy compartment where it can accumulate in toxic amounts.  This is part of a phenomenon called biological magnification, and this is why heavy metal pollution and the recycling of sewage sludge can be a problem.  At any rate some plants are hyper-accumulators and they can take up and accumulate a whole bundle bunch of heavy metal to the point where the plant is quite toxic although unaffected itself.  In the western USA some plants accumulate selenium from certain types of soils, and cattle grazing on these heavy metal accumulators develop an intoxication called "blind staggers". The plant in this story accumulates nickel to such a level that it makes up about 2% of the biomass of the plant (the amount of stuff left after removing water).  Wow, talk about a wooden nickel!  To put that in scientific terms, it's a lot. The idea has been around for some time that such plants might allow you to bio-mine certain elements that are too diffuse to be obtained through physical methods, or perhaps to remove dangerous heavy metals from a polluted area so they can be put where exactly?  TPP has always been unclear on this last point. This is why heavy metal pollution is a bad thing. 

Top 100 Botanical Blogs

The Phytophactor has to thank those lovely people at the Online College Blog for posting the Top 100 Botanical Blogs. Yes, these are the sites that put the log in blog. There so many sites here for plant lovers to wallow in that their productivity, social life, and family values will be reduced to nil. What? Of course plant people have social lives! What do you think the birds and bees are all about if not pollination?

Of course the primary reason the Phactor is calling this to your attention is because the Phytophactor is number 20, one of the experts, which is as it should be! Actually modesty prevents me from suggesting a category for myself, the experts' expert, but perhaps this will get corrected the next time around. I'm sure they just didn't know.