TGIFF - Yes, nothing can lift spirits more than another wonderful flower to ponder and appreciate. One of the great things about teaching rain forest ecology are the field trips, and today's flower grows in Costa Rica. Like many tropical trees, this species is cauliflorous, the flowers sprout right out of the tree trunk, rather like a overly gaudy baubles. And of course it helps to be conspicuous in the dim light of the rain forest understory. This flower can also take you a bit of time to figure out because there seem to be more parts than typical flowers and they are arranged rather differently than typical flowers. And that's where the fun is! This is a wild species of Theobroma, literally the "drink of the gods", and the domesticated species T. cacao is our source of cocoa, chocolate. Got that? C-A-C-A-O is the plant, C-O-C-O-A is the product.
Field of Science
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Change of address1 year ago in Variety of Life
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Change of address1 year ago in Catalogue of Organisms
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Earth Day: Pogo and our responsibility1 year ago in Doc Madhattan
Ludicrous Flower Friday
TGIFF - Yes, nothing can lift spirits more than another wonderful flower to ponder and appreciate. One of the great things about teaching rain forest ecology are the field trips, and today's flower grows in Costa Rica. Like many tropical trees, this species is cauliflorous, the flowers sprout right out of the tree trunk, rather like a overly gaudy baubles. And of course it helps to be conspicuous in the dim light of the rain forest understory. This flower can also take you a bit of time to figure out because there seem to be more parts than typical flowers and they are arranged rather differently than typical flowers. And that's where the fun is! This is a wild species of Theobroma, literally the "drink of the gods", and the domesticated species T. cacao is our source of cocoa, chocolate. Got that? C-A-C-A-O is the plant, C-O-C-O-A is the product.
Not a rock, not a rose
Who needs a rationalization for planting all kinds of different plants? Let the Phytophactor admit to being a plant junkie, to having a certain penchant for strange but wonderful plants. And so while our estate is home to many native species, many exotics grace our gardens as well. Lately the cause of much interest among passersby is a low growing mound of an evergreen shrub covered with cheerful, colorful flowers, and it’s probably just about the only one around as our climate is a bit too cold, so it needs mulching and snow cover to survive our coldest temperatures. So far its luck is holding. This is a member of the rock rose family (Cistaceae), a smallish group more common around Mediterranean climates. This particular shrub is called Helianthemum, which means sunflower, so even scientific names can be a bit confusing and misleading (Helianthus is the other sunflower), but this isn’t one of our native species. Here the name refers to the plant’s habit of only opening its flowers when the sun is shining. Now think how much fun it is when you’ve got a class of plant taxonomy students who are thinking, Cistaceae, no way that shows up on a family ID quiz. Zingo!
Lawn care and OCB
The Phactor has lectured you at length about the terrible things that happen when the object of your desires is a monoculture of grass. Indeed, it appears that one of the foibles of grass-only lawn care is the development of a full-blown obsessive-compulsive behavior. And that starts with B which rhymes with G and that stands for GUN, and what is the use of having one if you don’t use it? Can we not at least agree that shooting a neighbor because their dog urinated on your lawn is improper if not uncivil lawn care? At least the dog was not shot, blameless as it was for doing what was expected when out on a walk, and when you got to go, you go. So the lesson here is obvious. Do not walk your dog past properties where the lawn is perfect because the owner is likely a mental case and should your shadow fall upon a blade causing an asymmetry it might ruin the whole boring aesthetic. And out here in Lincolnland that is a hanging offense, but since that might break a perfect branch out of your carefully nurtured Bradford pear, not the strongest tree to begin with, shooting is the best thing of your landscape. Hope you are all looking forward to that next seminar on lawn care to be held down at the Cook County jail.
Another fine semester shot to hell
As they say about flying, any landing you can walk away from was successful, so this was a successful semester. There will still be a few loose ends: a senior who wants to use all too familiar excuses in lieu of accomplishments. The day or two following a semester can be eerie on a college campus; the quiet, the emptiness. A quad that was bustling with people just a day ago is totally deserted, and if you don’t have some gizmo stuck in your ear or buzzing in your pocket, the quiet provides you with an opportunity for reflective thought, a dying art in an era of short attention spans, mobile distractions, and jingoism discourse. Where are thoughtful young people going to come from? Even in the university thought seems at a premium, and so my thoughts turned to a student commentator who opined that student evaluations of “teachers” were a sham because no matter how “bad” the evaluation the faculty never got fired. Indeed, what of student evaluations in this day and age? Speaking from a great deal of experience, you learn a lot about what students like and don’t like, but very little about what was effective teaching. After all, what do students know of teaching or learning? Do we ask students what was effective some 5 or 10 years post graduation? No, let’s get an opinion right now while those labor-intensive assignments are still fresh in their minds and they have yet to see what success in the real world is all about. And if you are one of those reviled professors, was it because you made them think, and it was hard, like really, really hard? Many moons ago my fate was intertwined with a senior colleague in a team-taught course, and his pandering, his lite-weight coverage of the subject, and his easy exams were shocking , and his teaching evaluations were sky high while mine languished at merely average. And he taught what seemed to be the behavior of baby zoo animals while genetics and evolution were left for me. Cute vs. dihybrid crosses, easy vs. hard, fluff vs. basic biology; clearly a no win situation when the scale is based on student likes and dislikes. In subsequent years, when partnered with another member of the faculty, my teaching evaluations instantly jumped over 1.5 points on a 5 point scale without changing a thing except the basis for comparison. So what do really high teaching evaluations tell you? And thus my expectations for teaching accolades are modest, and the grand thing is that they do not matter at all at this time of year when quiet reigns.
Extinction is forever
A news article about the rarest tree on Earth caught my eye about a month ago, and since it is still living, it is worthy of some attention. Life is a process that generates genetic and biological diversity, and also destroys it. The ultimate fate of all species is extinction, but some species have a longer run than others and the Phactor has commented about the reigning king of longevity, the cinnamon fern, before. Many species are close to extinction, and human activities are way too commonly the cause.
A couple of rare trees provide some examples of how close to extinction you can get. Pennantia baylisiana is a species of tree that has consisted of a single individual at least for the past 65 years, which grows on one of the Three Kings Islands off the coast of New Zealand. Introduced herbivores in the form of goats may be the reason only one big tree remains, but it has a sex problem. Like many other plants, it cannot pollinate itself, so while you can make cuttings and root them, they are all genetically the same individual. But there may be an out; sex determination in plants is complicated, and occasionally a female produces some male flowers or flower parts and hand pollinations have yielded some seeds (and surely you understand that designations of male and female are totally inaccurate because the flowering plants with which we are familiar are the asexual spore-producing generation). With a bit of human assistance seedlings may be produced to help repopulate the island, however, they would all be siblings, so genetic diversity would be reduced, and this is a problem for any rare species.
Another contestant for the down-but-not-out extinction sweepstakes is the King’s Lomatia a tree that grows on the southern end of Tasmannia. About 500 trees exist, but this is a clone and again one genetic individual that has survived by asexual reproducing itself for 50,000 to 150,000 years. And because it has 3 sets of chromosomes, it may be the result of a hybridization that produced a sterile “mule” that has persisted by growing as a clone. Not much hope this species will “recover” unless it undergoes a spontaneous chromosome doubling to restore fertility. Although you may be unfamiliar with it, hybridization followed by polyploidy may be one of the most common types of speciation in plants.
Clearly both trees are in the running as the rarest organisms on Earth, each reduced to a single genetic individual.
A couple of rare trees provide some examples of how close to extinction you can get. Pennantia baylisiana is a species of tree that has consisted of a single individual at least for the past 65 years, which grows on one of the Three Kings Islands off the coast of New Zealand. Introduced herbivores in the form of goats may be the reason only one big tree remains, but it has a sex problem. Like many other plants, it cannot pollinate itself, so while you can make cuttings and root them, they are all genetically the same individual. But there may be an out; sex determination in plants is complicated, and occasionally a female produces some male flowers or flower parts and hand pollinations have yielded some seeds (and surely you understand that designations of male and female are totally inaccurate because the flowering plants with which we are familiar are the asexual spore-producing generation). With a bit of human assistance seedlings may be produced to help repopulate the island, however, they would all be siblings, so genetic diversity would be reduced, and this is a problem for any rare species.
Another contestant for the down-but-not-out extinction sweepstakes is the King’s Lomatia a tree that grows on the southern end of Tasmannia. About 500 trees exist, but this is a clone and again one genetic individual that has survived by asexual reproducing itself for 50,000 to 150,000 years. And because it has 3 sets of chromosomes, it may be the result of a hybridization that produced a sterile “mule” that has persisted by growing as a clone. Not much hope this species will “recover” unless it undergoes a spontaneous chromosome doubling to restore fertility. Although you may be unfamiliar with it, hybridization followed by polyploidy may be one of the most common types of speciation in plants.
Clearly both trees are in the running as the rarest organisms on Earth, each reduced to a single genetic individual.
Ludicrous Flower Friday
Difficult it is to describe my mood. The semester is over except for posting of the grades. The many student achievements please me, and the missed opportunities sadden me. Relief is certainly a prominent reaction. So what better to improve my mood than to provide you with a cool flower to ogle, a hybrid with a rather interesting geographic background. Quite a number of plant genera are disjunct between eastern China and eastern North America, and although the two parents bear different generic names, Calycanthus and Sinocalycanthus, they are so very similar they are now often considered a single genus. Like other magnoliids of which the Phactor is so fond, all the floral parts are numerous, spirally arranged, and gradually shift from green sepal-like parts, to petals, to stamens, to pistils. Fully open the flowers are a bit over 3 inches in diameter and so make for a quite a display. The fragrance is a fermented fruity odor. Our native species, C. florida Carolina allspice, has dark purple flowers; the Asian parent white flowers.
Passing on the National Day of Prayer
Yours truly is going to pass on the national day of prayer. This is not because of any particular anti-religious fervor on my part, but it is based on a practical conviction that prayer alone just won’t do any good. When my students conducted a well constructed experiment, prayer couldn’t even help beans grow better, so I doubt it’s going to help with the national debt. Asking for gods’ continued guidance (Here use of the plural is deliberate so as not to offend any believers, e.g., in gods we trust.) does not strike me as particularly sound course of action because of late this hasn’t resulted in very impressive leadership given our unwise military actions, unwise business practices, and our policies reflecting considerable religiously rationalized bigotry. Perhaps messages are mixed, coming as they are from so many different deities, after all President Obama did invite “all people of faith” to join in, so maybe the one true God (mostly likely Odin) is pissed to hear so many prayers so wrongly directed, so the guidance delivered may be deliberately poor. And lastly prayer just strikes me as a bit childish and naïve, a rather poor substitute for hard-nosed pragmatic thinking, a most uncommon national practice.
Global warming is messing with me
April here in Lincolnland has been a warm one, in fact apparently the warmest since records have been kept. The average temperature for the month was 6.2 degrees above normal, but it's hard to know what that means because while you can average the weather here in the great midwest, you never get average weather. It's either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too windy or deadly still, and then somebody averages these numbers, but the averages are not normal.
After you have taught plant taxonomy and plant identification for a number of years, experience tells you when, where, and what will be in bloom, but this year such a warm April has pushed the flowering season for many things so far forward that some of my favorite subjects to use as unknown specimens for students to identify have come and gone already. Finding enough good replacements is a pain, so now this climate change thing is getting personal. Unfortunately climate change is also going to get personal with agriculture, and we're all down stream in some sense.
After you have taught plant taxonomy and plant identification for a number of years, experience tells you when, where, and what will be in bloom, but this year such a warm April has pushed the flowering season for many things so far forward that some of my favorite subjects to use as unknown specimens for students to identify have come and gone already. Finding enough good replacements is a pain, so now this climate change thing is getting personal. Unfortunately climate change is also going to get personal with agriculture, and we're all down stream in some sense.
Dragged into boobquake
After posting a picture of a scantily clade young woman sporting a botanical tattoo a couple of months ago, the Phactor decided that posting any kind of comment about “boobquake” would be a bad idea because it might give people the wrong idea about the kind of person writing this blog. But circumstances at my local coffee shop this morning force me to comment for the sake of science correcting a misconception arising from popular news accounts of the event.
Now the basic premise was to test whether “indecently” clad women were the cause of earthquakes, and the less said about that, and the less worn by the experimenters, the better (?). OK, that certainly did not come out right, which shows what dangerous shoals are being sailed.
So right to the main point. A barista was displaying a bit more cleavage than usual and someone said, “Are you trying to cause an earthquake?” The barista's response hinted strongly that she thought the idea, and the comment maker, absurd, not unreasonable positions. However the follow up comment was that there was an earthquake in Taiwan on the “boobquake test” day.
My reaction: BFD – big deal! The earthquake in Taiwan proved nothing. On average the Earth experiences just a tad over 4 earthquakes per day of magnitude 5 or higher. To determine if cleavage had any possible relationship to earthquake frequency you would have to compare the number of earthquakes actually observed (1) with the expected number of earthquakes (4) using a statistical test like Chi Square. To get a significant result, one where you are more than 95% certain of a relationship, the number of earthquakes observed on boobquake day would have had to have been greater than 4, and somebody mathematically inclined can work out how many more would make for a statistically significant result. Clearly having fewer major earthquakes than expected disproves the boobquake hypothesis. This is how scientists think about such things, and why nearly everyone in the media reporting on this sounded like the basic science requirement for their communications degree was insufficient. Of course a good scientist would have run more than one trial, and we’d all have something to look forward to.
Now the basic premise was to test whether “indecently” clad women were the cause of earthquakes, and the less said about that, and the less worn by the experimenters, the better (?). OK, that certainly did not come out right, which shows what dangerous shoals are being sailed.
So right to the main point. A barista was displaying a bit more cleavage than usual and someone said, “Are you trying to cause an earthquake?” The barista's response hinted strongly that she thought the idea, and the comment maker, absurd, not unreasonable positions. However the follow up comment was that there was an earthquake in Taiwan on the “boobquake test” day.
My reaction: BFD – big deal! The earthquake in Taiwan proved nothing. On average the Earth experiences just a tad over 4 earthquakes per day of magnitude 5 or higher. To determine if cleavage had any possible relationship to earthquake frequency you would have to compare the number of earthquakes actually observed (1) with the expected number of earthquakes (4) using a statistical test like Chi Square. To get a significant result, one where you are more than 95% certain of a relationship, the number of earthquakes observed on boobquake day would have had to have been greater than 4, and somebody mathematically inclined can work out how many more would make for a statistically significant result. Clearly having fewer major earthquakes than expected disproves the boobquake hypothesis. This is how scientists think about such things, and why nearly everyone in the media reporting on this sounded like the basic science requirement for their communications degree was insufficient. Of course a good scientist would have run more than one trial, and we’d all have something to look forward to.
Garden flowering log – April
OK, someone did comment that keeping a garden flowering log seemed like a lot of work, and the Phactor chided them for a lack of commitment. To be honest, who knew how big of a project this would be, and the log data has been kept to the minimum by only recording the 1st date of flowering. So the results for the month of April were a bit of a surprise. To recap, 17 different plants flowered in our gardens during March; 113 plants flowered during April! Not every variety was counted as a different plant especially if they co-flowered, so at the variety level the total would be much greater. Here’s the list by date:
April 1 – a species tulip (no fooling!), late daffodils
Apr. 2 – Korean azalea, Nanking cherry, star magnolia
Apr. 3 – spring beauty, celandine poppy, species tulip(2nd), marsh marigold, Labrador violet, common violet, grape hyacinth, variegated sedge
Apr. 4 – rue anemone, Dutchman’s breeches, yellow upright ginger (Saruma henryi), Japanese maples
Apr. 5 – anise magnolia (M. salicifolia), Brunnera, bellwort, white trout lily
Apr. 6 - rhododendron (“PJM”), prairie trillium, sugar maple, hackberry, flowering quince, tulip magnolia, creeping Charlie
Apr. 7 – bleeding heart, red bud, june berry
Apr. 8 – Mukdenia, golden corydalis
Apr. 9 – red barrenwort, nodding trillium (T. flexipes)
Apr. 10 – species tulip (3d), wild ginger
Apr. 11 – apples, red trillium (T. erectum), blue cohosh, rhododendron “Ramapo”, Burkwood viburnum, saucer magnolia, Ohio buckeye, yellow archangel (deadnettle)
Apr. 13 – fothergilla, fragrant sumac, Carolina silver bells, flowering crabapples, Mazus reptans, species tulip (4th), giant bugle (Ajuga reptans), Siberian bush pea
Apr. 14 – blueberry, pin & burr oaks, lilac, yellow barrenwort, magnolia vine (Schisandra chinensis), red buckeye
Apr. 15 – jack in the pulpit, Solomon’s seal, orange-flowered avens, prairie smoke, strawberry, small bugle, late tulips, spicy lights & blue gem rhododendron, lily of the valley
Apr. 16 – Flowering dogwood, fern-leafed peony, Herbert rhododendron
Apr. 17 – dwarf Iris
Apr. 18 - bird’s foot violet
Apr. 19 - crested Iris
Apr. 20 – Jacob’s ladder, star of Bethlehem, wild Geranium, tree peonies (white & diverse shades of pink)
Apr. 21 – wild columbine, large-flowered speedwell, American holly, cult. columbine, red choke berry
Apr. 22 – spring cult. anemone, wild hyacinth
Apr. 24 – miterwort, mulberry
Apr. 25 – large white trillium, soapwort, may apple, early deutzia, poet’s narcissus
Apr. 27 – smoke bush, bridal wreath spirea, golden lights & rosebud rhododendrons
Apr. 29 – false Solomon’s seal
Apr. 30 – yellow tree peony, large-leafed rhododendrons, sun rose (Helianthemum), black walnut, pussytoes, cat mint, ragwort, Carolina spicebush, sweet cicely, black raspberry, cult. geraniums, Tartarian honeysuckle, euonymus
April 1 – a species tulip (no fooling!), late daffodils
Apr. 2 – Korean azalea, Nanking cherry, star magnolia
Apr. 3 – spring beauty, celandine poppy, species tulip(2nd), marsh marigold, Labrador violet, common violet, grape hyacinth, variegated sedge
Apr. 4 – rue anemone, Dutchman’s breeches, yellow upright ginger (Saruma henryi), Japanese maples
Apr. 5 – anise magnolia (M. salicifolia), Brunnera, bellwort, white trout lily
Apr. 6 - rhododendron (“PJM”), prairie trillium, sugar maple, hackberry, flowering quince, tulip magnolia, creeping Charlie
Apr. 7 – bleeding heart, red bud, june berry
Apr. 8 – Mukdenia, golden corydalis
Apr. 9 – red barrenwort, nodding trillium (T. flexipes)
Apr. 10 – species tulip (3d), wild ginger
Apr. 11 – apples, red trillium (T. erectum), blue cohosh, rhododendron “Ramapo”, Burkwood viburnum, saucer magnolia, Ohio buckeye, yellow archangel (deadnettle)
Apr. 13 – fothergilla, fragrant sumac, Carolina silver bells, flowering crabapples, Mazus reptans, species tulip (4th), giant bugle (Ajuga reptans), Siberian bush pea
Apr. 14 – blueberry, pin & burr oaks, lilac, yellow barrenwort, magnolia vine (Schisandra chinensis), red buckeye
Apr. 15 – jack in the pulpit, Solomon’s seal, orange-flowered avens, prairie smoke, strawberry, small bugle, late tulips, spicy lights & blue gem rhododendron, lily of the valley
Apr. 16 – Flowering dogwood, fern-leafed peony, Herbert rhododendron
Apr. 17 – dwarf Iris
Apr. 18 - bird’s foot violet
Apr. 19 - crested Iris
Apr. 20 – Jacob’s ladder, star of Bethlehem, wild Geranium, tree peonies (white & diverse shades of pink)
Apr. 21 – wild columbine, large-flowered speedwell, American holly, cult. columbine, red choke berry
Apr. 22 – spring cult. anemone, wild hyacinth
Apr. 24 – miterwort, mulberry
Apr. 25 – large white trillium, soapwort, may apple, early deutzia, poet’s narcissus
Apr. 27 – smoke bush, bridal wreath spirea, golden lights & rosebud rhododendrons
Apr. 29 – false Solomon’s seal
Apr. 30 – yellow tree peony, large-leafed rhododendrons, sun rose (Helianthemum), black walnut, pussytoes, cat mint, ragwort, Carolina spicebush, sweet cicely, black raspberry, cult. geraniums, Tartarian honeysuckle, euonymus
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