Orchid pollination and fungus mimicry

Orchids are a fantastically diverse family of flowering plants that employ many fascinating and equally diverse pollination biologies. Animals used as pollen vectors don't pollinate flowers because they like them or anything like that; they visit flowers because they get a reward or they have been fooled, tricked. Some orchid flowers mimic female insects and get males to visit the flower and transfer pollen while attempting to mate with the flower (pseudocopulation). My old friend Peter Bernhardt (He shares an undergrad alma mater with the Phactor.) is among a group of botanists who very recently described a very unique mimicry involving a ladyslipper orchid (Cypripedium) native to China. The leaf spots look like a fungal infection and the flower produces fungusy odors thus attracting a fungus-feeding fly to transfer pollen, a whole new mimicry for a whole new group of pollinators . This is a great looking little orchid (scale bar = 2 cm). Is that cool or what!

Berry-Go-Round April 2011

Life is good. Had freshly made rhubarb pie and a new round up of plant related blogs is up over at Foothill Fancies. So many goodies you hardly know where to begin. The Phactor is a bit surprised to learn how bloggerific he was this April. Guess there were lots of plant things happening combined with a desperate need to share the utter trivial with others. So go enjoy yourself. Sorry, not enough pie to share.

Lawn biodiversity versus monoculture

As many of you probably know, the Phactor is not a fan of grass monocultures. Lawns with some diversity are so much easier and cheaper to maintain. So quite to my surprise and with no effort what so ever, a considerable expanse of lawn has become a virtual monoculture, but not of grass, but the common violet. If full bloom 2500 square feet of purple and white violets is quite colorful and virtually nothing else is growing there at all. This is ecologically perplexing unless the violet is indeed the most competitive species. Now the question is to intervene or not. Oh, Mrs. Phactor says there is no choice, so some violetence is going to be exacted upon this lawn. In another area Viola labradorica is proving a well behaved component of the lawn. Wonder what conditions led to the violet takeover. Based on the number of seedlings, violets had a very good year for reproduction. Wonder if some experimental quadrats could be set up?

Feeding a hungry world

This is good news if you want a career in botany and plant science. The world is going to need lots of people who understand plants, who understand ecology, who understand conservation, who understand people, and who can put it all together. Because who else is going to feed a hungry planet? Pay attention people, this is the future calling.

What's Trump?

The Phactor tries to stay away from commeting on too many current events, especially politics. As a pretty natural cynic, events seldom disappoint me, but the sudden grand entrance of Tonald Drump onto the GnOPe presidential stage fills me with wonderment about how low can the bar be set. Years ago the Phactor told a conservative colleague that no one dumper than Reagan could ever get elected president, but then came the shrub. And then a senile senator selects the dumbest yet running mate, although she's demonstrated a certain low cunning in terms of figuring out what side of the bread the butter is on. No question she like butter and attention. But now Tonald. Anybody who thinks they look good with a silly comb-over isn't very smart, period. And their self image doesn't indicate a mature personality. But once you hear him blather on about anything, anyone who thinks he's viable presidential material has just made an argument in favor of having an IQ test to determine voter eligibility. If you fall for his crap you just aren't smart enough to be voting. Simple minded answers for simple minded people are not a prescription for fixing anything. So for now the Phactor will be sticking with the type of Rockefeller Republican he grew up with, Obama.

A Trillium by any other name would still have 3 leaves

For reasons that cannot be fully explained, other than they were cheap, the Phactor bought a package of six "white trillium". That certainly doesn't definitively tell you what you had bought, but what with lots of shady areas, and a big area to transform into a woodland wonderland of spring ephemerals, more trilliums could not hurt. All six corms grew and here's the score: Trillium ceruum, nodding trillium, which is white - 4, Trillium sessile, toadshade - 1, Trillium erectum, red trillium & several other common names - 1. So in general this is a happy enough outcome. Nodding trillium was new to our gardens as was the toadshade, so our species diversity went up by 2. Our gardens already have Trillium grandiflora, T. recurvatum, T. erectum, and T. luteum, so in a way this was a pretty good deal, but honestly, the actual name of the plant being sold should be known, and in a manner of speaking we have an honest claim that they owe us two white trilliums because it was their sloppy handling that mixed the corms so that the order included two non-white trilliums, or cynically, white trillium was selling well and not others, so lets stretch the inventory by a third. Who knows. Any similar stories to share?

Last Friday, Last Lecture

Today is the last Friday of the semester. Today was my last lecture in plant diversity. It turned out just about right. Changes that took place during the last 65 million years (since the Cretaceous) had to be covered and that's 1.5% of Earth history, and one lecture is 2.2% of a semester, so the Phactor lavished lecture time upon this time period. But it shouldn't be called the Cenozoic; it should be the Anthofloric, but such is the animal bias.
For many different reasons this was a difficult semester, but mostly it was the additional demands being made upon us because we're terribly under staffed. There just never seemed to be enough time, so you do your best for the students, but ultimately they are the ones who get shorted, and no one is confident that our administrators understand all of this. Of course there will be some sad stories when a few students realize that they have run out of time and should have invested more effort all along. But then you have those students who improve all semester and find out that they really like learning; those are our success stories. Wish they were all that way. These are students who finally realize that you don't study for exams, you study to learn, and if you do that exams take care of themselves. That is a lesson too few students learn. You should see the looks when the Phactor tells 1st year majors that they shouldn't study for exams. They never hear the 2nd part.

Friday Fabulous Flower - ID Quiz

Name this plant. This makes a nice Friday fabulous flower not because it's gaudy, but because it's a much over looked component of our spring woodland wildflowers. So rather than give it away, let's see who's been observant, who's seen this beauty before. And even though natural in our area, the Phactor has only seen it a handfull of times. Maybe it doesn't get noticed because everyone is looking for morels. Hint: Pay close attention to the number of floral parts.

Watching the prairie disappear

Here's a very nifty graphic that shows the spread of agriculture and the increasing intensity of agricultural land use over the last 300 years. If you get your eye on Lake Michigan in North America watch as the prairie to the south and west gradually turns yellow as it disappears. Here in Lincolnland less than 1% of the original prairie has survived thanks to John Deere. As human demands have increased, it has come at the cost of natural communities. Nothing mysterious at all. HT to the Scientist Gardener.

April showers bring floods

This April nearly concluded will go down in the record books as the rainiest April in over 50 years. Rainy also means cloudy, and cloudy also means cool, and this translates into general depression and miserable field conditions. Early spring perennials do well in this type of weather as do early plantings of trees and shrubs, and any transplantings, if you could find a day or two without rain to garden. And of course April is windy. That's spring here in the upper midwest. But it is without question that such weather slows down growth and flowering, so many flowering events in our gardens are running 7 to 20 days behind last year. While the mild winter and late spring means that some shrubs have burst forth with some amazing flowering displays, for example, our tulip-flowered magnolia, but unfortunately rain and wind have then conspired to fore shorten their longevity. Nature gives and nature takes away, so you enjoy them while you can. The weather is affecting migratory species too, and several avian visitors usually seen April have yet to arrive. Maybe they're taking Amtrak. As a natural consequence of flood plain levees and rain up here, down stream, especially where the Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio join the Mississippi, it floods. It always has, but without wide flood plains to spread the water out, and wet lands to absorb, reduce, and slow down the flow, the flooding tends to be sudden and catastrophic. This part of it is man made, and right now decisions are being made whether to flood farm lands or cities, but neither one should be there without being ready to deal with the consequences. Guess we can look forward to May flowers.