Cyanide in food plants, naturally!

Your taste buds are a nice simple chemical testing kit. You can measure pH, how acid (sour) to how basic (bitter) something tastes; you can detect salts, soluble carbohydrates (sugars), and to some extent, metallic tastes too. In particular humans have a strong aversion to very bitter tastes, and this is an excellent instinct for avoiding two very common classes of toxic compounds, alkaloids and glycosides. One of the more famous glycosides (a molecule plus a glucose sugar) produces cyanide by combining with water and dissociating after the sugar is removed, and many plants use this compound as a chemical defense mechanism against herbivores. If you have ever read any murder mysteries, a good detective always notices the odor of "bitter almonds", and then declares, "cyanide." Actually it always smells more like rank almonds to me, but it's so hard to describe smells. We eat "sweet" almonds, seed of a close relative of the apricot, peach, and plum, and they are not actually sweet, but here sweet is used as meaning "not bitter", so they don't have any appreciable amount of the cyanogenic glycoside. The seeds of these other species tucked safely away inside the inner stony fruit wall (pit) are quite bitter and inedible, as are apple and pear seeds. Don't worry if you happen to consume an apple seed or two. First, you seldom chew them, and when unchewed their impervious seed coat allows the seed to transit your GI tract intact (a typical small seed gambit). Second, very small doses of cyanide are not particularly harmful. Whew! Larger pitted fruits operate on the eat the flesh and discard the pit model, something we primates are quite good at. Here's a recent news article about a colleague who studies cyanide producing plants, and while this subject is covered in my economic botany class, even the Phactor was surprised to learn that Lima (lee-ma, as in Peru, their native home) beans were cyanogenic. The good news is that cyanogenic compounds are both water soluble and heat volatile, so people have developed methods of food processing that reduce the bitter taste, thus reducing their toxicity. However, when we jigger with the genes and turn off the glycoside production, the crop suddenly becomes very tasty to herbivores. So you can't win even when you rig the game.
HT to the BSA.

Tree Tower

Search engines, the card catalogs of the digital age, often surprise you with unsought items, and so it was while searching for articles on tree architecture (how trees are constructed), the search engine happened upon a year old article on tree architecture of a very different sort, growing live trees to make a tower. In general this is pretty cool, although not at all a new thing as the Phactor pointed out in a blog some time ago. Still supporting a framework with live tree axes woven into a magnificently large espaliered tower is quite a trick. One of the interesting things about both willows and twigs is that both grow around objects very well and both will readily fuse axes, although figs are better at forming woody roots from stems. This puts whole new meaning on the idea of a tree house.

Garden Flowering Log - July 2010

As you would expect flowering is slowing down in terms of the number of new species, but many of these summer perennials flower over a considerable period providing long displays. July has had a lot of hot and steamy weather, more than usual, and the trend has carried on into August, sadly. This isn't just summer weather, but really oppressive heat and humidity, the kind that melts your sneakers into the blacktop, the kind that is only pierced by the shrill calling of cicadas, the kind that tropical plants love, but that cook plants from cooler climates. For this reason a small conifer, Siberian cypress (Microbiota decussata), while hardy to zone 2, it suffers in this kind of summer heat. But plants at the northern end of their ranges, like the Magnolia virginia, seem quite happy. Having missed the last bit of July and the first bit of August, one or two flowering events might be mis-logged, but those things happen. For absolute certain another 19 species flowered in July bringing the year's plant flowering total to 252. Mrs. Phactor thought we might hit 300, but that seems a bit high. Her perennial bed is big, and you count on them for summer color, but there's also considerable redundancy. So far the champion in terms of longevity remains the Sinocalycanthus, which is still in flower having started on May 1.
July 2 - Purple prairie clover
July 4 - Bottle brush buckeye
July 6 - Globe Thistle
July 7 - Leadwort, Bouncing Bet (soapwort)
July 8 - Culver's root
July 10 - Gladiolas, Sacred Lotus, Black-eyed Susan
July 13 - Phlox, Sneezeweed, Chaste tree (Vitex)
July 14 - Summer sweet (Clethra alnifolia)
July 17 - Cardinal flower, Prairie Beebalm (Mondarda fistulosa)
July 18 - Hydrangeas - several varieties
July 20 - Joe Pyeweed
July 21 - Magic "lily" Amaryllis
July 22 - Summer sedums

Won't use the E-word

The Sunday Chicago Tribune had a major article on antibiotic resistant bacteria and lack of incentives to seek new antibiotics. They quoted several experts and kept using phrases like "bacteria develop resistance", then it dawns on you, the one word to describe the whole thing is not being used; evolution. Bacteria develop resistance is a very misleading phrase. A very small number of bacteria out there in the bacterial universe will have some genetic difference that provides them with resistance to a particular antibiotic substance. But it matters not, and these bacteria may not even be as vigorous as those without the resistant genotype. This all changes when a population of bacteria encounters an antibiotic which exerts very strong selection in favor of any bacterium with genetic resistance because it kills all the rest. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are becoming more common because of the use and misuse of antibiotics. The more we use them, the more resistant strains are selected for. When first discovered antibiotics were treated as a magic bullet against infections, and at first they sure seemed that way. But physicians don't study evolution, and many don't even think it's a valid theory so deficient is their biological background, and this lack of understanding created the problem. People even demand antibiotics to treat viral diseases when they only work on bacteria, thus demonstrating a double dumbness. So now humans are in an evolutionary arms race with bacteria. Have no doubts about who will win; the odds greatly favor the bacteria. Here is a case where the biology behind the story is simply lacking, and we're left wondering if it's because the "experts" and/or the journalist just don't get the concept, or if the newspaper is just afraid to use the e-word for fear of offending the biologically ignorant. Those of us who are experts at explaining biology would surely explain it differently.

Home Again

Vacation and meetings are over, and the Phactor is back to the midwestern flatlands. As usual for August, lots of things need water, but not as badly as some years. Pennsylvania really loved us; based on the number of long, frustrating construction delays on I-81/80 it was clear their new approach for increasing tourism was to hold everyone hostage. While construction is necessary, constrictions that result in 5 to 10 mile backups are totally rediculous, and no one seems to care how bad it gets. Managed to detour around one long backup, but grimly endured the rest. In comparison similar construction in NY and Ohio was being done, and while it required slowing traffic down, traffic continued to move. Get your crap together PA! On the home front the kitty girls were most happy to have us back. Weather has not improved one bit, and very hot conditions continue, so it was great to have escaped if just for a couple of weeks. But the weather and what it does to our gardens is only one reason why August is so disliked; it means the fall semester is just a couple of weeks away and all kinds of crap will be coming our way. Hmm, maybe time to hit the road again afterall.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Rose mallow

During the past two weeks, visits to beaches have been pretty frequent, but that only included three with natural vegetation pretty much intact. In this part of the NE USA, this very gaudy plant, the rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) occupies a zone where the beach vegetation meets more inland vegetation, particularly where it is a bit wet. The rose mallow has typical enough mallow/hibiscus flowers, but they are 6 or more inches in diameter. These herbaceous perennials grow to 5-6 feet under good conditions and several cultivars exist for some mid-summer color, but note that Japanese beetles love members of the mallow family.

Botanical meetings - C'est fini.

Another fine set of botanical meetings are shot to heck. Unfortunately this is the only chance many of us get to see each other, spread out across the continent as we are. This year's banquet was a refreshing change from the ordinary; it was really good what with steamer clams, mussels, and chowder. There was other stuff too, but why? Oh, yes, natives of the midwest. Of course we make lots of contacts, initiating collaborations, trading specimens and information, and in general doing the people side of the science business. It will take a couple of days to go through all my notes and respond to all the requests and queries. So, now to hit the road and head back to the midwest. Nothing like a relaxing drive along I-95 to start things out. Ta.

On the Road Again - Internet Access

It takes a considerable amount of nerve, gall actually, for a hotel that charges you nearly $200 a night to then charge you an additional $11/day for internet access, especially when you only want to use it for a short time each day. This is nothing but piling on, especially when you can get free wifi internet access merely for buying a cup of coffee at the local caffeine shop. So this is just pure greed on the part of these hotel chains. Oh, and then there's the $25/day charge for parking your car. Are these guys taking lessons from the airlines? You wanted a pillow or sheets on the bed? You wanted hot water in the shower? Just a small additional charge! OK, you definitely know when you've been away from home long enough. All for now.

Botanical Meetings 2010

When about 1000 botanists get together you learn a few things. It's also nice to see alot of colleagues and friends, some of which go back 40 years, and it's important for the students to see that there is more to a profession, a career, than just the degrees and stuff, it's the people. And the exciting thing is too find out about all the new things that people have learned. They know how big the first trees were and how they grew (cladoxylopsids). People continue to discuss (argue) about the results of different data sets and the resulting evolutionary relationships among seed plants (but that part of my book isn't going to be revised again!). Parasitic plants may rob nitrogen from grasses and then recycle it in such a way as to benefit grasses. But the ones in my research are doing something different, which is good because otherwise these guys would have scooped the Phactor. Someone found rootlike structures on fossils of some of the earliest land plants, but they probably aren't roots, but rhizoids, filamentous outgrowths with an anchoring/absorbing function. And just an hour ago a convincing argument was made that carpels and anthers, the reproductive organs of flowering plants, predate flowers, i.e., that organization of parts that we call flowers. All very wonderful, and best discussed over cold beer. And my pocket is filled with business cards for collaborations and sharing of information and specimens, and lots of new connections will result. And this is why it's important to be an active part of a profession, and you cannot find a better one than botany, and when you see the vitality of this group is doesn't seem possible that our profession can be in jeopardy, but it is and more and more jobs and programs and departments disappear into human bio-medical black holes.

300th Blog - Botanical field trips

Supposedly the first 300 blogs are the hardest, so the 301st should be easy. Just returned from a field trip associated with the Botanical Society of America's annual meeting, and it had a familiar qualities: a bus load of plant fanatics ranging from senior citizens to undergraduate students, generic food box lunches (How is it that they are all identical?), and someone who has the responsibility for getting us back on time. Now if ever botanists surrender to the clock, our professionalism is toast, and no use setting some precident of being on time. No when some little fern requires that a group bushwack through a mucky sphagnum bog, green briar, and poison ivy, why no problem. How fun to hear students tell us that this is their first national botanical meeting. If you tell them you still remember yours, which was in 1972, they look at you in rather disbelief that anything so ancient might still have functional gray cells. Sorry not to include any pictures, but no way to get them out of the camera and into this hotel computer. Sorry not to have a better story to celebrate 300 blogs over the past 2.5 years. This is not a torrid pace, and seldom is there time for more than one internet session a day; too many real things to do. Like visit beach communities and some strange holly forests with lots of ferns and fungi, and lots of plants that we associate with more southerly ranges (holly, mountain laurel, and so on). Now to wash off the dust, get a drink, attend a lecture on evolution and a mixer of several hundred botanists, some of the best people on Earth. What! You don't believe me? Well, just ask them!