Calling all plant phanatics

As lone time readers may have noticed, this blog has no ads and makes no endorsements, unless TPP has been handsomely rewarded, which he hasn't, so you may also conclude how much impact the 623,884th ranked webpage has commercially, essentially none. However as a service to fellow plant lovers, and if any one factor can describe the diverse readers of this blog that may be it, other than my kid sister who just likes to check up on me.  So here's a link to Strange Wonderful Things, a purveyor of rare and unusual plants, but not having done any business here, this is simply an information item, not an endorsement.  Perhaps if a reader has purchased something, they will supply a comment about their satisfaction or lack thereof. The list of what's available is pretty unimpressive, but the list of everything they supposedly grow is a lot of fun to peruse. A couple of the descriptions are sort of amusing and include culture information. The listing for Amborella trichopoda caught TPP's eye touted as the oldest flowering plant species on Earth. This in all likelihood is not true but a misunderstanding about the uniqueness of this species. This is an upland evergreen tropical shrub/small tree that only grows on New Caledonia, a very old, very isolated piece of real estate that used to be part of Gondwana. So rare and uncommon, oh, yes. This species also has a very unique phylogenetic position; it has the most ancient common ancestry with all other flowering plants. So if your draw an evolutionary tree of flowering plants the bottom most branch is a single species. Now what this means is that this evolutionary event happened at the dawn of flowering plants, and one lineage flourished and gave rise to all other flowering plants, and one lineage did not flourish and is now represented by a single species. It does not mean this species existed when that evolutionary event occurred. Sorry. It's like Gingko in that regard; a single species has survived of what was a very diverse lineage but that species is not as old as the lineage is. It does mean that this species may have retained a lot of features with the common ancestor of all flowering plants. Does TPP want this plant?  Oh, yes, very much! He already has representatives of the other two basal branches of the flowering plant evolutionary tree: water lilies and star anise (Illicium), so it would be nice to complete the set. 

Rare plant theft at Kew

Now this really pisses TPP off.  Plant theft in general is annoying, but when the plant is rare to the point of being extinct in the wild, and it's hard to grow to boot, and it may occupy a critical place in flowering plant evolution, then it's worth drinking a few pints while deciding if any imaginable punishment is sufficient.  And then to add insult to injury, you have the "so what" attitude of a member of Parliment who could intellectually qualify as a member of our GnOPe.  It happens everywhere whether it's cycads (Fairchild Gardens) or Wollemia pines that must be grown "jailed" in cages to prevent theft (Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney) or just coffee trees in a university glasshouse (stolen in frigid weather and just as quickly frozen to death). In this case the plant is a waterlily that only grows at the margins of hot springs.  This demonstrates one of the critical roles of botanical gardens around the world.  And this waterlily is so cute, at least to plant people!  But as we all know fuzzy, furry, feathery cute animals get all the conservation attention.  HT to AoB Blog. 

What is a rare plant?

"Do you have any rare plants in here?" asked a recent visitor to our teaching greenhouse. This is an interesting question that left the Phactor a bit uncertain how to answer. Our teaching greenhouse is on the smallish size, but an impressive amount of plant diversity is housed therein, and so the only question was what did our visitor mean by rare? Do you mean rare in the absolute sense as in nearly extinct? No, nothing in that category. Our greenhouse and collection couldn't be trusted with any plant so very rare. Do you mean rare in the sense as in this plant is very uncommon anywhere anyhow although not in any danger of extinction? Well then yes, we have at least one plant that is an narrow endemic from a Pacific island, a rather non-descript amaryllid. Do you mean rare in the sense that the plant is uncommon in collections and not commonly known, but it could be as common as dirt where it is native? Yes, lots of plants here would fit that description. A dozen or so may be the only specimen of that species in North America, or a most one of a handfull, like a wild nutmeg (a couple of offspring were given away). And it's always nice when the Missouri Botanical Garden gives us their exhibit left overs for safe keeping. Do you mean simply rare in the sense of something exotic that you've probably never seen or noticed before? Then probably there are a couple of hundred species that are rare in that sense. Not many places around where you can see 9 different genera of cycads, especially in such a small place. The Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago has the biggest collection in these parts, but we recently donated several new things to that collection via a former student of mine. Maybe you just mean rare in that you can learn something new that you never knew before, and in that case virtually all our plants are rare, and that's the point of maintaining collections like this. Plant collections give you an opportunity to get curious and explore in a way that you seldom get elsewhere, and unlike an arboretum or botanical garden (the Phactor has been barked at more than once; actually he gets barked at a lot) where playing with the specimens is frowned upon, students are actually encouraged to examine things to the point of taking them apart to see how they tick. So let's hope the examples were impressive because this particular visitor holds some purse strings. Now what the Phactor really wants is a conservatory greenhouse surrounded by a modest sized botanical garden. $20 million should get us off to a good start.