Magnolia vine

One of the stranger plants in our gardens is the magnolia vine (also called the 5-flavored fruit vine)(Schisandra chinensis)(Schisandraceae). As readers well know, TPP has a thing for magnolias, and anything with that name included. As many readers will not know the flowering plants have three basal lineages referred to as the ANA lineages. The first A is for Amborella, a genus that is native to New Caledonia only, a bit of old Gondwana.  N is for Nymphyaeales, the waterlilies and their close relatives. The 2nd A is for the Austrobaileyales, which includes the magnolia vine. These lineages have ancient common ancestries with the rest of flowering plants. So when you have taught plant diversity and plant taxonomy for so long, you like having these specimens around. A second, and more mundane reason is that at the corner of our house is an old, but very sturdy TV antenna tower from the pre-cable days.  It has two current functions: one, it's an emergency escape ladder from a bedroom's balcony, and two, it serves as a trellis for the magnolia vine where it regularly climbs well above the roof line. At any rate it flowers in the spring although the flowers are not very large (about 1 cm across) or very colorful (sort of light greenish to cream colored).  But the floral parts are spirally arranged rather than in whorls. While supposedly dioecious, our vine is monoecious probably selected for producing fruit with only one vine. The flowers are "unisexual", either having pistils or anthers. The image shows one flower of each "sex" (the pistils are green). Eventually, the pistils will ripen to red fruitlets (very tart) and if like members of the rose family, the fruit would look rather like a raspberry, but the post-pollination elongation of the receptacle spatially separates the fruitlets so that they look like individual fruits on a flowering stalk, a feature that may be present in some of the earliest fossil flowers.

Date the 100th plant flowered

It been a pretty average spring so far; maybe just a bit dry. Yesterday the 100th plant flowered, not the 100th individual plant, but the 100th different type of plant, mostly different species. So 100 different plants flowered by April 28th. Since beginning this data gathering a lot of plants have come and gone, so it isn't the same species list, but let's assume it hasn't been biased toward one direction or the other. The earliest the 100th plant flowered was March 25th in 2012, an exceptionally early spring. The latest the 100th plant flowered was May 5th in 2013 and 2014.  In 2010 the 100th plant flowered on April 21st and in 2011 if was on April 29th. TPP is struggling to get all this data out of notebooks and into a nice data base, but it isn't easy and is time-consuming. Things are listed in a goofy mix of common and scientific names, plus bloody cultivars and hybrids, and that takes time to sort out. Some people find it hard to believe that our gardens contain so many different plants. And things do surprise us at times. Last year a new Erythronium x "Pagoda" grew quite well and a nice display was expected this spring, but thus far it's a no show. So what happened? Don't know.

Senior cell phone 876 area code scam

TPP's new cell phone just rang (or doodly-doed) and that's still a pretty new thing since very few people have his number (except maybe from a previous cell number life), and so rather than just answering reflexively, TPP glanced at the device, and beneath the caller's phone number sporting an 876 area code was the word "Jamaica".  Very few people in Jamaica ever call; in fact none.  So figuring people can always leave a message ("Yah, moan."), the call went unanswered. A quick look around the internet indicated TPP has good instincts; calls from the 876 area code are often scams directed toward senior citizens.  Why? Is we more gullible? Oh, yes, we gots money.  Good thing skepticism seems to come quite naturally to biological scientists, so consider this a warning y'all. Good thing the iPhone indicated the origin of the phone call!    

Bored with nothing to do?

You know it was a busy weekend if you need a Monday to rest up.  The weekend started with a TGIF with friends and a walk in the garden.  A little cool, but the smoked trout was excellent with a tart NZ chardonnay, and several spring flowering plants were looking quite nice (look for a blog later this week). Saturday was cold and wet with rain all morning. TPP found the last butternut squash in the cool cellar and since it was still in good condition transformed it into a curried squash and apple soup (this isn't exactly the recipe but close), perfect for a cold, wet day, but it hasn't been eaten yet. When you can't garden, why not garden shop? A Mrs. Phactor motto that makes her such a favorite with our local garden shoppe proprietor. Went out to dinner with friends to try a restaurant that was new to us - Escobar's (E. Columbia, Champaign, IL); it is very much worth a visit.  Sunday was much nicer, so the garden spring clean-up continued with pruning, shifting of bunny protection cages from shrubs to emerging perennials, fertilizing, pruning of trees and shrubs, and the first mowing of some lawn (avoiding the blue lawn-green slime Scilla dominated areas).  Found time to make a ground lamb ragu pasta for din-dins.  Ended the day with a very heavy nostalgia trip by attending a gray hairs' concert by the Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band who still perform well and sound pretty good.  Whoosh! Where did the weekend go?  And best of all didn't hear or see anything about a single playoff game of any sport!  No such boredom 'round here.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Redbuds

Redbuds are a fantastic spring flowering tree, dark-barked shrubs and small trees festooned with lacy pink flowers (and the less said about all the seedlings the better).  Redbuds are the species Cercis canadensis, a member of the legume (bean) family. Their flowering is unusual in northern temperate climes because they flower on old wood (cauliflory), which is a much more common trait in the tropics. Our gardens have about a dozen redbud trees, and presently the redbuds are competing with the crabapples and dogwoods to grab our attention. Our university campus, an official arboretum, has lots of redbuds, but for reasons to be explained, a smallish one next to our teaching glasshouse caught TPP's eye.  It was different, somehow, redder for certain (image above).  A quick comparson determined that the flowers were over twice as large as our native redbud. Ah, yes, a check in with our woody plant horticulturalist confirmed that this specimen was Cercis chinensis, Chinese redbud, a very handsome plant, but not one in the local horticultural trade, but when has that ever stopped TPP?

Voting your professor out of the university

Zounds!  Here's another terrific idea for improving a university education: Let students vote "poor" professors out of the university. In other words, fire professors who get low teaching evaluations from students. What political party does this legislator represent? Anyone?  Anyone? Not having done the homework, the class simply waits for the answer to be given. TPP moves on. A hand is raised, a question posed, "Well, which party?" Ah, yes, well, you were able to get that from the article (see link above) you were assigned to read. Bing, dropped a tenth of a point right there. So many fallacies and misunderstandings are presented in this article TPP checked to see if it came from the Onion, but no, the Chronicle of Higher Education. Close. So where does one begin? Let's just take the most obvious. This hawk-eyed  legislator thinks 18-22 year olds are qualified to make such decisions because they are spending thousands of dollars for this instruction. Who is spending the money?  Mostly parents.  OK, TPP has 40 years of teaching evaluations that argue students really aren't qualified to determine what is and isn't good teaching. They know what they like and what they don't like. High on that list of dislikes is working to learn, studying. Many students end up in your classroom with the attitude that it's your job to educate them no matter what. And even if they make little or no effort their failure to learn is your fault. "I was so turned off by his attitude that students needed to work harder that I didn't learn nothing." And even in a low-stakes contest of determining faculty raises, in which teaching evaluations play some factor, some faculty shamelessly pander, and lots of students just eat it up. The highest teaching evaluations TPP has ever seen were "earned" by a colleague who was very entertaining and very, very easy. When team-teaching with this colleague my own evaluations suffered in comparison, and when teaching the same material without this colleague, my evaluations jumped up more than a whole point on average on a 5 point system. As an undergrad, TPP had one professor who was an arrogant SOB, a difficult and demanding teacher with an insufferable manner, but after a few years, TPP recognized that the man was simply a brilliant teacher who was way ahead of the curve in science education. He'd give you instructions for a lab, which of course we didn't read. There was a problem to solve. He'd walk into the lab, smile, and say, "Any questions?"  Nobody asked anything, so he'd say, "Good, good." And he'd leave, checking on the class at intervals. Some students simply got up and left too. Some of us decided to finally read the assignment. When we finally had decided what to do, discussed how to proceed, and finally had some questions, he was quite helpful. If students had used today's system of evaluations, no telling how low his evaluations might be, but his teaching influenced my own teaching for a whole career.  Now don't get TPP wrong, there are poor teachers and there are discerning students who recognize it and pandering when they see it. But they aren't the majority particularly in those larger lecture courses. You know maybe if 18-22 year olds voted in greater numbers this legislator wouldn't be so eager to put his fate in their hands. And there's much more that could be said about this legislator's misunderstanding of higher education, e.g., his failure to understand the role of research and scholarship in teaching, but TPP just recently touched upon this issue. Oh, yes, another suggestion from the party fixated upon improving higher education, the GnOPe.

Maple syrup, the waffle antibiotic

Here's a research news report from McGill University touting the antibiotic properties of maple syrup. This is not surprise to TPP because honey has long been used as a wound dressing, but here probably it's the osmotic properties of honey that probably fight infections. Perhaps that's why the study found that maple syrup worked best with other antibiotics, enhancing their affect.  Most people have no idea what real maple syrup is, or how good it tastes. "Pancake syrups" these days don't contain any at all, and while some use an artificial maple flavoring, it's awful. The Phactors are pure maple syrup people; yes, it's expensive but you don't need to use all that much and we just don't eat waffle, pancakes, etc. all that much either. Of course in the process the F1 was spoiled. And we've converted a number of German students who often return home with maple syrup as gifts for family & friends, at least that's what they claim. On the bad news side, this is another nature friendly product that might become way more expensive because of global warming affecting the distribution and growth of sugar maples.

Earth Day Bouquet

Mixed lettuces: Bibb, black-seeded Simpson, oakleaf, harvested today and in the sink for washing.

Happy Earth Day!

It's Earth Day and TPP doesn't know whether to celebrate or cry. You see TPP remembers the first Earth Day because he was a senior, and it was spring, and he was going to graduate school, and he had a great girl friend who he had figured out he was going to marry one day. But all that hope and good fortune was tainted by the protests over the Vietnam War that led to Kent State and all the rest. All these things remained inextricably linked in memory. Environmentalism seems to be losing ground as corporate power over government increases, and while corporations might have a religious conscience that they are allowed to impose upon their employees as if their religious freedom meant nothing, few have any environmental ethic at all. It's a cool, but actually quite pretty spring day here in the upper midwest; a good day to enjoy all the flowering trees. Yet, here in Lincolnland GnOPe legislative bubbas from the far southern reaches of the state are proposing, successfully so far, hunting bobcats, a non-game species just now recovering its population due to long-standing protections. The bobcat boys legislators know nothing about how big the populations are ("I've seen lots of them every time I'm out in the woods.") or how much hunting the population can stand, or even what is know of bobcat biology ("They're blood thirsty killers of dogs and cats."). This is just plain stupid legislation based on ignorance and willful disregard for what bobcat biology is known. But then they don't care. Such is their regard for nature that their only thought upon seeing wildlife is shooting it. Locally another gun-owning lover of nature shot an eagle nesting above a nearby river. The news keeps reporting about the drought in California as if changing weather patterns (a prediction of global warming models) were not wide spread and having a global impact. Your water rights don't automatically provide you with precipitation, so farmers fight over the scraps and no one seeks real solutions.  Helpfully (not) religious conservatives bray that it is God's punishment for the wickedness of giving people equality and since the end times are so near (a former GnOPe congressperson said it) no need to protect nature at all.  How can we elect such pathetic non-leaders?  TPP finds it all too depressing at times especially on Earth Day. Now to spend the rest of the day doing something hopeful.

April Flowers

April has been quite mild, even warmish, so the gardens (and field work) are charging along at an alarming pace. This must be pretty close of peak flowering, whatever that may mean. So far over 75 different plants have flowered in our gardens, and a long-time friend upon hearing this at a brunch said, "That's inconceivable." And yes, for that person, that many different flowering plants is inconceivable. You see, it's like this: Trillium - nivale, recurvatum, flexipes, erectum, sessile, and 2 more to go. Magnolia - loebneri, stellata, salicifolia, liliflora, soulangiana, x acuminata "butterflies" and 2-3 more to go. Things like that begin to add up. Right now the crabapples, lilacs, and flowering dogwoods are just beginning. This is the first year that the yellow-flowered magnolia produced a big floral display, and it was not a disappointment. Of course there are many other things that aren't so noticeable like the blue cohosh hidden among a profusion of bluebells. But just knowing they are there makes you feel good. While most things survived the winter, including a Sinocalycanthus seedling, some of the survivors are showing signs of some die-back so they will need some evaluation.